It should be a pulse-racing account of knife-edge real-life conflict and valiant heroics, full of needling political questions. Instead it's merely another slack thriller with underdeveloped characters and sputtering dramatic momentum.

The handsomely downbeat atmospherics overwhelm its themes of love, parenthood, crime and punishment. The narrative doesn't quite coalesce, and except for a few late-in-the-proceedings moments, it doesn't deliver the grim, indelible shivers of the best noir.

Everyone is extremely serious, which can be a bit of a drag at times, but as a study in trauma The Cured has its moments and the film plays best when it remains intimate.

The scene-setting works better than the storytelling in this sincere but clumsy picture, whose script (by first-timer Tony DuShane, author of the book it was based on) makes a bit of a muddle of the interactions between its teen and adult Jehovah's Witnesses (and the occasional troublemaking nonbeliever).

At its core is a well-intentioned message about inclusivity and valuing inner beauty, but the film, adapted from the 2012 YA best-seller by David Levithan (albeit with a problematic perspective shift), remains stuck in a stubborn rut somewhere between confusing and snooze-inducing.

Survivors Guide to Prison demonstrates just how seriously even a blameless citizen should take every interaction with the police.

If the way Davis wraps things up is neither surprising nor remotely satisfying, it does at least hold a lesson for white-collar tyrants who haven't seen 9 to 5 or the dozens of workplace-revenge fantasies that followed it: "The assistant controls everything."

While the pic proves too frivolous to make its satirical and social points fully register, it offers diverting pleasures along the way.

This B-movie thriller fails to go beyond its familiar underwater peril tropes, providing as nearly a claustrophobic experience for viewers as its characters.

The film, bearing no small debt to Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, inevitably has a familiar feel. But director-screenwriter Nguyen infuses it with enough fresh elements to make it fully entertaining.

For all its honorable intentions to address sensitive issues that still sting, Kings is an unconvincing tonal patchwork.

Is it possible for a viewer to be touched by a character’s predicament and despair when every element of their life is so strikingly arranged? Because Pfeiffer disappears into her role and plays it small, and because Dosunmu’s modus operandi privileges visuals and the unspoken over dialogue and facile melodrama, the film sort of gets away with it, if just barely.

Unsane is a dispiritingly pedestrian woman-in-peril shocker to have come from such a maverick filmmaker.

To be sure, the climax delivers copious amounts of blood and guts and tension and look-away temptations. But there are enough interesting surprises, in addition to the narrative promise, to provide for the presumed, and now quite desired, sequels.

There are chuckles here and there, but a striking absence of belly laughs; Girls Trip it’s decidedly not.

Though the emotional pull of this love triangle grows more compelling in the second half, for much of its running time November prefers to beguile us with the strangeness of its setting and characters.

Charlotte Rampling gives an emotionally rigorous display of bruising internalization, without an ounce of vanity, in the title role of Hannah. But although the lead performance commands admiration, the overall impact of this unrelentingly dour account of a woman struggling to carry on with her life after her husband's imprisonment is dulled by its distancing approach.

While the film is a much more powerful visual feast than the original Monster Hunt from two years ago, it offers little in terms of expanding the first film's themes or pushing the storyline significantly forward.

Neither impressive enough to prove inspiring or campy enough to be entertaining, Samson is as underwhelming as its title character if he went bald.

Whatever pathos is generated comes from Reynolds' commitment to all the self-exploitation. His inimitable charm is still there beneath all the corporeal decrepitude on which Rifkin and company shamelessly linger.

A pervy premise and top-flight cast yield a mixed-bag spy flick.

Though competent in technical aspects, the pic's third-hand script and uninspired direction make it hard to invest in the heavy weight each character carries around with him.

Cheang does his able best to balance a love story with the heightened fantasy action expected of the previous two films, and after a rocky start he largely succeeds.

A diverting if unimaginatively named little doc.

Wohl never manages to achieve the proper tonal blend. The result is neither sufficiently funny nor moving, lacking the truly daring humor that might have made the film a bracing dark comedy. It's a shame, considering the estimable ensemble.

The unique charm of Isle of Dogs is its bottomless vault of curios, its sly humor, playful graphic inserts and dexterous narrative detours.

The Scent of Rain and Lightning is a well-acted, intelligent thriller that ultimately rewards the viewer's patience even if it too often sacrifices narrative clarity in favor of atmosphere.

Considering its lurid story arc and troubled characters, the film almost feels tamped down as Hunter strives to create an atmosphere of mystery and slow-burning tension. What he delivers instead is tedium, where even the climactic reveal proves both underwhelming and predictable.