Despite a lot of admirable aims, such as creating layered roles for the Latino acting community and spending production dollars in areas that could benefit from the economic boost, this grim bloodbath feels too routine to be of much interest.

Artistically, King is less persuasive as a coherent statement than "Lemonade." But Black Is King may live its ideals more successfully than it preaches them.

Director Nick Rowland couldn't ask for a more magnetically tormented character to anchor his low-key-to-a-fault feature debut.

Shorn of its New Age platitudes, the film works reasonably well as a mature, feel-good romance, especially since Holmes and Lucas are so engaging that you find yourselves rooting for their characters to get together.

This would be a very different movie in most other hands, and in many cases, a worse one. Still, there's something missing in this look at a happy life's destruction.

What makes The Big Ugly watchable are the authentic locations and the veteran actors who bring admirable conviction to their tough guy roles.

It’s consistently sharp-edged and even suspenseful.

The slow-burn film features superbly understated acting and astute visuals. This is Mariani's first fiction film after having made two documentaries and shorts, but its ambition and accomplishment are fully formed.

Without Crowe's brooding performance, Unhinged would just be another forgettable, formulaic, functional B-movie. With the burly Kiwi on board, it is transformed into a forgettable, formulaic, functional B-movie starring Russell Crowe.

It brings into focus not just the painful losses of loved ones and homes, but the sheer daunting scale of logistical planning, fundraising and negotiation with bureaucracies needed to rebuild the community.

Where the movie hits flat notes is in the way it spells out its points rather than letting friction percolate through the action.

Movies like this are why arthouses exist, and why we'll seek them out again as soon as it's safe to breathe near our fellow humans.

Although far from comprehensive, the entertaining cinematic biography should well please the singer's longtime fans, particularly those who have followed him through his career spanning six decades, and possibly make him some new ones.

Backed by a wealth of video footage, archival photographs and gig posters, Ellwood captures the determination with which the band thrust itself forward, neither glossing over nor digging too deep into the hint of ruthlessness with which early members — and later, original manager Ginger Canzoneri — were pushed aside as the band became big business.

As capable as the actors are, I can't say I cared much about any of the characters, which made the emotionally uplifting climax feel underpowered. The scope for which this handsome but bland film strives so hard is present mainly in the wide-open spaces of its picturesque locations.

Never intending to rationalize away the seedier aspects of Newton's work, the film hopes instead to make us recognize the humor and inventiveness lurking there as well — and to persuade us that an artist's unruly erotic imagination doesn't necessarily tell us much about what he thinks of women.

Quick and pretty constant cutting between different threads of this story keep Most Wanted from feeling as long as it actually is, but it also keeps us from committing fully to any one story, all of which feel slightly underwritten.

Retaliation doesn't provide easy viewing on any level, especially with its quietly shattering conclusion. But it does offer myriad rewards for those willing to endure its gut-wrenching emotionality.

As I might have said during my own high school days, The Kissing Booth 2 is "mad stupid," but it's still not as overtly slappable as Netflix's other low-budget teen comedies.

Though its running time is brief and a lot of the writing is sharp, the tug-of-war between a onetime literary lion and his wide-eyed No. 1 fan lacks the necessary tension to make the drama's outcome matter.

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.