There is nothing radical or especially distinctive about the style of this mildly entertaining documentary.

Lucy in the Sky is the odd film that starts cosmically big and gradually becomes narrower and more conventional as it goes along, to diminishing returns.

Unfortunately, while Long Lost has its moments, it ultimately fails to capitalize on its intriguing premise.

Any viewers actually interested in the topic would be well advised to search elsewhere for information.

Given its focus, viewers might forgive Mia for its clumsy direction of actors, its contrived plot or its on-the-nose dialogue. But training impressionable kids to identify with a girl who sneaks into lions' cages is a cinematic flaw that could have heartbreaking real-world consequences.

The story gets a bit more involving as it goes, though some elements that might've been memorable (a musical number from a dog played by Janelle Monáe, for instance) fall flat.

Though completely implausible and hardly revelatory, the screenplay's identification with multiple points of view will be comforting enough to arthouse liberals that they might not object.

Like Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy or Granik's Leave No Trace, this low-key drama focuses on a regional American woman trying to sustain herself through rough economic and emotional times. It's derivative of both films, but, for a little while at least, not disagreeably so.

Lying and Stealing might have been more effective if its two leads had more charisma, but James is mostly bland and Ratajkowski never quite convinces as a woman of mystery. This is the sort of lighthearted exercise that requires genuine star power to overcome its triviality, and the lack of it here seriously diminishes its impact.

Awkward execution and technical imperfections prevent the film from having its desired emotional impact.

There's a shakiness in how Hormann utilizes the fact that Aynur's murder is a foregone conclusion. It's as if the director is delaying gut-wrenching emotion as opposed to letting it emerge organically from the stylistic severity.

A former MMA star, Carano clearly has the impressive physicality and charisma to compete with the male stars in this arena. But she's going to need far better vehicles than this humdrum effort.

The latest indie effort from writer-director Jérôme Cohen-Olivar (The Midnight Orchestra, Kandisha) modestly succeeds in its modest genre goals, particularly benefiting from its exotic locations. But don't look for anything particularly original in The 16th Episode (originally titled Little Horror Movie), which mainly traffics in overly familiar tropes.

The picture fares better at finding occasional moments of warmth than at convincing us of its characters' reality.

A bit more discipline would have helped this one, which struggles to hold viewer interest across two full hours but would likely register more strongly with 15-20 minutes removed.

The ever-righteous profile maintained by Boseman’s detective gets to be a bit limiting after a while; if anything was going to have multiple dimensions in this film, it should have been him, but the script is instead built around the goal of providing maximum movement and hoped-for tension. It’s got the former but only sporadically achieves the latter.

Clearly Diaz wanted to make a sotto-voce exploration of a difficult and heavy topic — instead of a histrionic melodrama — but in trying to rein in the emotions, he seems to have practically scrubbed them out completely. The screenplay, also by Diaz, is so predictable that most of the characters simply seem to be going through the motions, with audiences remaining at an arm’s length even during the supposedly cathartic final moments.

The film is notable more for its unusual conceit than as a serious exploration of grief and familial relationships.

It’s the entertaining scenery-chewing by the top-flight cast that carries the picture; each of the main actors far better than the material they’re working with.

DeNucci has a good sense for period detail, costuming and accessorizing the cast with a color palette ranging from earthy yellow through fashionable beige to muddy brown. Stylistically though, the film doesn’t have much in common with its most distinctive progenitors, missing an opportunity to recreate an authentic 70s aesthetic.

A capable cast abets the director, but the film's slow pace and half-hearted perspective shifts don't generate the gravitas that's clearly intended.

The story's final, intended aha moment falls woefully flat, but capping this flawed valentine to artistic independence is a closing-credits nod to Easy Rider, especially poignant so soon after Peter Fonda's death.

It sounds like the plot of a classic '50s film noir, but the movie squanders its potential with a lackluster approach that sacrifices thrills for uninvolving character study.

The filmmakers’ reliance on romantic situations throughout the midsection may have some older teens and adults rolling their eyes, but the final scenes over-deliver with a literal flood of action that enables Hinako to definitively prove herself and discover her true calling.

The movie, which will inevitably spur comparisons to such similar efforts as "Argo," works well enough on its own terms, with Mychael Danna's synthesizer-heavy score providing a suitably retro vibe.

Likely to inspire heated arguments about the ethics of nonfiction film, the diverting but not really satisfying pic makes weak lemonade from lemons that might have yielded something tastier.

Dipping less rewardingly from the same well in Thor: Love and Thunder, Waititi pushes the wisecracking to tiresome extremes, snuffing out any excitement, mythic grandeur or sense of danger that the God of Thunder’s latest round of rote challenges might hope to generate. Chris Hemsworth continues to give great musclebound himbo, but the stakes never acquire much urgency in a movie too busy being jokey and juvenile to tell a gripping story.

Ode to Joy fails to live up to its title by attempting to wring comic mileage from a medical condition that sufferers probably don't find very funny.