Setting out to show the range of expression found in a field of craft it feels is too often dismissed as a trivial women's pastime, Una Lorenzen's Yarn showcases four artists doing things with crochet your spinster great-aunt probably never imagined.

The Love Witch is an expertly executed homage that works brilliantly on its own original terms.

Rollins' villain is a deliciously deranged, compelling character, but the problem is that there's not enough of him in this otherwise routine B-movie clearly shot on the cheap, with low-grade CGI effects making the shootouts and gore mostly laughable.

Though it's better than its "dump this thing" theatrical release would suggest, Cell is far from excellent.

There are plenty of fisticuffs and shootouts to be found in The Duel, but precious little of interest.

It's all about as dreary as the constant rainfall featured as part of the Portland, Ore., setting, and the director, when he's not leeringly photographing his leading lady's naked body in the shower, vainly tries to up the scare ante by periodically raising the soundtrack volume to intolerable levels.

Shallow is a mild word for it. Others would be silly, miscalculated, unconvincing, artless, pandering, hokey, ridiculous. Or just plain awful.

Aside from a supporting turn by Hannibal Buress as a king-of-the-geeks character, the film's most diverting ingredients are its aggressively crude character design and its sickly color palette.

Slow and talky but suffused with insight and intelligence, the film is another noteworthy effort from the writer/director of such intriguing if unfortunately little-seen dramas as Glass Chin and Sparrows Dance.

The main thing consumers will be looking for from Resurgence is bang-for-buck entertainment, and that it delivers reasonably successfully.

A compelling and little-known story of the Civil War period is studiously reduced to a dry and cautious history lesson in Free State of Jones.

It’s as if co-directors Michael Thurmeier and Galen Tan Chu, both veterans of the Ice Age franchise, sensed that there was essentially nowhere left to go with the concept and opted to instead overstuff the production with too many characters breathlessly doing tired, pop culture-heavy “bits” like it was open mic night at the Paleolithic Punch Line.

As much as Don't Think Twice focuses on professional envy, though, it remains a love letter to this weirdo art form called improv.

There’s a carefree spirit about everything that happens, including all the talk about girls and masturbation, that makes the story as breezy as the summer air,

Although engaging enough to hold interest, the just slightly off casting of Ewan McGregor and Stellan Skarsgard...dampens plausibility.

The taut pacing of the original is a distant memory here. On a positive note, Peter Kam’s fine, ever-present musical comment effectively pumps up the tension even when the screenplay fails, all the way to its final crescendo.

A compelling gateway documentary that should absorb both fans and novices alike.

Variety and depth of character are badly lacking on the female front, weakening the whole film.

The dynamic ski chases are the most exciting, not to mention novel, element of this medieval epic, although there's plenty of fighting with swords, axes, crossbows, and bows and arrows as well.

The film is a documentary gem.

There's not a scary moment in the movie, and its characters are neither likable enough to root for nor so repulsive we eagerly await their deaths.

It’s not a problem there’s a hole, as it were, in the common-sense logic of the film’s world; it’s that there’s a big, gaping hole where the illogic should be, a whole lot of nothing where there should be metaphor, playfulness, all that juicy, enigmatic, magical-realism stuff that helps films like Being John Malkovich and its many knockoffs become fodder for film-studies essays.

With all farces, timing and rhythms are absolutely crucial and Zulawski — working with editor Julia Gregory — maintains a disarming brio from the very first seconds.

Like the professional dogwalker who can’t exactly keep count of Max and his cohorts, it feels like the filmmakers are juggling too many chatty creatures at once, while trying to maintain a plot that tends to grow more outlandish as the story progresses.

Yadav’s concerns about discrimination and violence against women are evident in nearly every scene of the film, as her script positions each of the principal characters to undergo an experience of self-actualization in defiance of prevailing patriarchal norms.

Given the dearth of docs about the heyday of circus arts, one wishes for more of that spotlight showmanship on the screen.

Fascinating on personal, political and cinematic levels, the film resourcefully plumbs all sorts of resources, including secret tape recordings of Kim himself, but also omits certain aspects of the tale that would merely have added to its intrigue.

Central Intelligence demonstrates an above-average interest in story and character, and tries, if not always successfully, to craft real comic situations and action sequences. It's been made with a certain level of polish and professionalism. And it capitalizes on the chemistry between Hart and Johnson.