Deva is a diluted, labored retread.

Kinda Pregnant doesn’t deliver on charming main characters nor sustainable humor. It’s a staid affair, coasting on its zany premise and a handful of amusing moments.

In its mix of remarkable archival material, the film is both tender and galvanizing, summoning up what New York felt like in 1972 (yes, I would know) and offering a fresh slant on a country’s upheaval and a generation’s countercultural awakening.

Seeds is not a journalistic investigation but a poetic contemplation.

Despite its shadowy visuals and insidious soundscape, it’s neither frightening enough to play like full-fledged horror, nor complex or curious enough to pack much weight as psychological drama.

It’s a tough balancing act that the director, whose previous works dissected teen movies (Beyond Clueless) and horror flicks (Fear Itself), pulls off with a mix of earnestness and cheekiness.

The insights and artistic inclinations that populate Kramer’s work aren’t for everyone, and there’s a good chance By Design won’t connect with most viewers. But the alienating nature of the premise is what makes it fascinating, pushing us to question how we want to be seen and experienced as people in the world.

Bryn Chainey’s Rabbit Trap has a creepy sense of dread, striking images of invasive nature and an intriguing baseline about the otherworldly properties of sound, making it a somewhat promising debut feature.

That interplay between work and life gives the project its distinctive perspective and offers the most acute revelations. The lack of talking heads commenting on her enhances the intimate feel.

The drama does eventually come full circle, but it’s gone so far off the rails by that point that it’s hard to bring us back.

If Sunfish is a vacation, it’s the kind that’s less about escaping into a fantasy than about trying on a different reality: learning your way around the terrain, getting to know the locals, falling into their everyday rhythms.

Ricky struggles with underbaked narrative threads and breathless direction that can verge on unfocused.

First-time writer-director Carmen Emmi’s aesthetically overworked use of low-grade video and distorted sound is intrusive, but very fine performances from Tom Blyth and Russell Tovey keep you glued to this sexy, sad, authentically gritty drama.

The creatives’ obvious affinity for the genre comes through in every frame of the film, and to their credit Heart Eyes includes many clever touches.

Despite its narrative issues, there’s a lot to like about Oh, Hi! With its playful writing and game cast, the film is sure to attract young fans and find its audience. At its root, this is a surprisingly sensitive commentary on uniquely millennial romantic loneliness.

Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore does offer an engaging, exuberant portrait of the relentlessly likeable Matlin.

Magic Farm features a stupendous cast fully in sync with Ulman’s deadpan absurdity. The actors effortlessly entwine the droll and the ingenuous, but as Ulman juggles more characters and more plot angles than in her first movie, there isn’t necessarily more payoff.

The strengths of Love, Brooklyn make the weaknesses harder to shake. For every scene bursting with energy and texture, there are oddly vague moments that destabilize its hold on us.

Many viewers will no doubt feel initially disdainful of John’s recklessly dangerous pursuits, but the film presents his inner struggles so empathetically that by the end all you feel is sadness for a life tragically lost.

It’s Never Over might not be the Buckley bio everyone needs, but it’s a stirring tribute made with a lot of heart.

Folktales is an easily embraceable coming-of-age documentary that makes up for what it lacks in depth with its surplus of wise, vaguely anthropomorphized canine companions.

Bunnylovr‘s strengths are in its engaging character study of a languid young woman who came of age online. It’s not a novel portrait, but Zhu makes it wholly her own.

A kinetic blend of a fictional Afro-futurist narrative, archival research on decades of Black visual and multimedia work, and personal history.

Gates offers an incredibly compelling premise, shedding light on the scale of military propaganda in the United States, but in taking on so much, her film ends up not saying enough.

It’s refreshing to see a horror movie that relies less on shock tactics than good old-fashioned dread and revulsion.

The passage of time is somehow both fluid and jagged in Clint Bentley’s soulful film of the Denis Johnson novella, Train Dreams. It flows or ambles or bumps along, passing over moments of joy, shock, discovery, lonesomeness or devastating sadness, but just as often over seemingly mundane experiences that only later reveal their significance when we look back.

Whatever the movie lacks in surprise or sophistication, it makes up for in sly comic verve and a soulfulness that sticks with you.

Something more complex and rewarding than surface tension is at play here, and it builds to a conclusion of breathtaking openheartedness. Sometimes a blip on the road is magic in disguise, the root of a dazzling new constellation.