Throughout, connoisseurs of Cage's career should appreciate a performance that rides the edge of his crazy tendencies.

Director/co-screenwriter Pearry Teo succeeds in investing the silly proceedings with spooky visual stylishness, providing enough scary demons and possessed mannequins to deliver the requisite jump scares. Unfortunately, the film also features sound, which results in the audience being able to hear the inane dialogue accompanying the familiar horror tropes.

Amid the rarely very creepy buildup to the Amityville-ish showdown to come, the screenplay piles on more unrelated domestic drama than the picture can take.

Best when it reveals the painstaking details of investigative work, worst when it plunges into improbable emotional depths, SK1 is an above-average policier.

The ironies of gentrification will be a chief attraction for this lovely new 4K restoration of the 16mm original. But that theme is just a bonus in a picture whose in-the-trenches look at poverty is humane and, sadly, perpetually timely.

What it all adds up to is either laughably baffling or just plain laughable, depending on how much attention one has paid.

Tai chi devotees will find much to appreciate here, especially the extensive footage of Cheng demonstrating his skills. But the hagiographic approach doesn't delve very deeply, and the repetition of extravagant tributes by talking heads eventually proves monotonous.

Addressing its serious themes with subtle and insightful humor, Divine Access is a quiet gem.

It’s a sobering, collage-like overview of a problem that sadly hasn’t much changed since Michael Moore’s angrier and more provocative (if perhaps less rigorously journalistic) feature came out.

The comedy here feels secondhand and becomes grating when no cliche is left unused, whether about nationality, race, gays or the female gender.

Unfortunately, as a director, Foster shows no knack or instinct for building tension; her style is strictly presentational, brisk and efficient, but with no sly trickery, desire to surprise or to forge technique that suggests an imaginative approach to storytelling.

Malik Bader's Cash Only is one of the more convincingly gritty indies to hit fests in several seasons.

The artwork is achingly delicate, but there's nothing subtle about Belladonna of Sadness, a blast of psychedelic madness full of rape, tyranny and Satanism.

Directed by French director Anne Fontaine (Two Mothers/Adore, Coco Before Channel), this is another gorgeously appointed but also slightly overly formal film, with a muted emotional payoff that, while appropriate for the story’s convent setting, doesn’t exactly make for must-see cinema.

Wispy and familiar in its themes and humorous strokes, Café Society benefits from an exceptionally adept cast led by Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart and Steve Carell, as well as from a luminous glow that emphasizes both the old Hollywood nostalgia and the story’s basis in dreams and artifice.

A thorough knowledge of Israeli history and politics would be helpful for viewers, as Rabin in His Own Words is sometimes sketchy and scattershot in its narrative. But its subject emerges as a thoughtful and articulate chronicler, and the wealth of footage presented, including rare home movies, is consistently fascinating.

In between bouts of torrid sex, the men engage in the sort of anguished, confessional conversations that Eugene O'Neill would find over-the-top. None of the characters are particularly interesting, even with the dramatic revelations they've been assigned.

Despite the occasional jolts, Phantom of the Theatre is not particularly scary. But as befitting its milieu, it looks fabulous.

Depp is convincingly vulnerable and forlorn, all while maintaining the Hatter’s otherworldly eccentricity, and Wasikowska has the requisite grit. But Alice’s mission feels as manufactured as the story’s whatsits and doodads, as Bobin struggles to infuse make-believe with emotion.

Despite the undeniable presence of a huge amount of action, X-Men: Apocalypse is decidedly a case of more is less, especially when compared with the surprising action and more interesting personal interactions (including the temporary subtraction of some characters) in other big Marvel franchises.

In its genial, low-key way, the film, premiering at Sundance, is a chilling account of cyberbullying, perpetrated on a disturbingly wide scale over many years.

This is a lean and efficient mix of thriller, drama and socio-political commentary.

For a film that's presumably intended to convey the rich emotional rewards of motherhood, it's not terribly convincing.

There's nary a single B-action movie cliché missed.

At just 70 minutes it comes across as rather too tentative and brief to amount to much more than a sensitively observed but ultimately inconclusive coming of age narrative.

The animation punches well above its weight with properly Looney Tunes-standard sight gags, polished, highly expressive character design, and rendering so intensely computed nearly every barbule and rachis on each individual feather is visible.

A textbook example of how not to turn real-life headlines into big-screen drama, Jeppe Ronde's Bridgend is a toxic combination of the laughable and the reprehensible.

An evocative portrait of strained friendships and creative turmoil.