Bursting with the vibrancy of youth, both behind and in front of the camera, Days of the Whale feels comfortably familiar in its themes but daringly bold in its milieu.

To the extent that it works, much credit goes to Keery, for finding the real human need inside this twentysomething cipher.

It's all way freakier than it is frightening, but there's a distinctive taste for cruelty here that marks Garai as an audacious new horror auteur.

It's a confident, enjoyably nasty piece of work, unnerving enough to cure your FOMO about that canceled summer vacation.

Combining war and horror movie tropes in an awkward manner more silly than scary, this belated sophomore feature from writer/director Eric Bress (2004's The Butterfly Effect) makes you long for the days when American G.I.s didn't have to fight supernatural beings as well as German soldiers.

Here, the story and the characters' supposed naiveté and the almost-too-obvious stylistic flourishes aren't just nods to his younger, less-refined m.o. They are actually part of a master storyteller's tools to seduce a grown-up audience into considering how youngsters not only experience their own lives but also how they process and talk about them.

The result is a deeply intimate and revealing family portrait that proves admirable in its objectivity if occasionally frustrating in its sprawling sketchiness.

The result is a passably entertaining diversion, glossy and decently acted but devoid of any kind of edge.

Though tech values and supporting performances (especially Knoxville's) are unimpeachable, Suspicion doesn't conjure its setting as persuasively as some of the other drug-centric rural dramas we've seen lately.

Blissful, whacked-out, inspired, juvenile, dementedly inventive, hyper-energized — all of this and more apply to music video and advertising whiz Makoto Nagahisa's first feature We Are Little Zombies.

Beautifully directed and performed.

The feature writing/directing debut for a man whose history is in art departments, it should be no surprise that the pic looks wonderful, with distinctive design and lush settings; but Rothery also fares well with the human element, helped by a mature lead performance by Theo James, best known for the YA Divergent franchise.

It packs an unsettling message of empowerment very rare in the social injustice genre.

The sort of endlessly twisty, mind-bending puzzle of a film that will make you question your cognitive abilities should you fail to keep up. It's no wonder the uncommonly clever and inventive indie film received the Best Feature award at the Philip K. Dick Film Festival.

The film expertly captures the tensions in the Austrian capital on the eve of Hitler’s takeover, and it also manages to be a vibrant coming-of-age story and an intriguing portrayal of Sigmund Freud, expertly portrayed by Bruno Ganz.

In her first leading role, Kolesnik is as irresistible as an energy bar, exploring the Insta-queen’s shallow depths with cunning sincerity. Rather inevitably, she overshadows the rest of the pro cast.

A slow-burn haunted house movie becomes a disturbingly effective allegory for the ravages of dementia, which spreads like insidious rot from the afflicted into the family members witnessing her deterioration in Relic.

Greyhound is a taut action thriller that exerts a sustained grip.

Though not very subtle in presenting its thesis, the story is generally suspenseful and well-told by young HK actor and director Tsang (Soul Mate).

What makes this gripping graphic novel adaptation so distinctive is the trust it places in its audience to stay glued through the quiet, character-building interludes threaded among excitingly varied fight scenes that crescendo in an expertly choreographed showdown.

As a glimpse at the nitty-gritty of building a music career in the '60s and '70s, the film is instructive, though the record-by-record trajectory could have been tighter. Tracing the ups and downs and stops and starts, Firmager sometimes lands in the weeds and loses the beat. The film is strongest in its portrait of the formative years of Quatro's career and their emotional residue, which turns out to be the core of this chronicle.

I'm not sure who this remarkably tone-deaf, cynical-for-the-wrong-reasons film is supposed to be for, other than maybe college-hating gajillionaire Peter Thiel. As the kids used to say, thanks, I hate it.

Supposedly chronicling the experiences of a man attempting to reconnect with the alien form he encountered as a child, Skyman squanders whatever potential thrills it might have offered with its lackluster execution.

Denise Ho — Becoming the Song presents a thoughtful, if surprisingly reserved portrait, of Hong Kong-born, Montreal-reared singer Denise Ho, the first Cantopop superstar to come out publicly as gay.

A dispiriting film that has languished on the shelf since 2014, it stars Dakota Fanning but is likely being released now with the hope that small appearances by Evan Rachel Wood and Zoe Kravitz will add commercial appeal. Fans of the latter thesps will likely feel cheated.

More curio than classic, Four Kids and It may hold children’s attention (and sometimes test adults’ patience) over the movie’s brief running time, but seems unlikely to inspire many a rewatch.

While lacking the technical virtuosity of Sam Mendes' "1917," for example, the movie nevertheless does full justice to its stirring true-life tale of the 2009 Battle of Kamdesh — despite an obviously low budget.

There's a good reason behind every technical choice — closeups and moments of stillness intensify the intimacy of the more introspective songs; nimble camerawork juices up the contentious cabinet battles; wide shots and stunning overheads add to the scope of momentous scenes like the fatal duels that punctuate the story.