There is enough rich narrative potential in The Corrupted for an ambitious state-of-the-nation TV miniseries in the mold of The Wire. Unfortunately, Scalpello and screenwriter Nick Moorcroft take the lowest common denominator route, falling back on tired mob-movie clichés, stock characters and leaden dialogue so generic it could have been written by an algorithm.

The result is a film that sometimes feels as frenzied as the world it’s depicting, but one that benefits from being such a full-blown nosedive into a unique moment of collective creation.

In its favor, Amanda boasts subtle, sensitive lead performances from Lacoste and Multrier, who has a rare easy naturalism for such a young performer.

An undeniably demanding but cumulatively rewarding mood piece.

At its most powerful, the film movingly illustrates the myriad ways in which the past haunts the present and the healing power of communication.

A twist-heavy crime thriller spiced with horror and noir elements, I See You is such a finely crafted exercise in slow-burn suspense that its loopy plot contortions only seem absurd in retrospect.

A tender portrait of the man's highs and lows that sheds new light on the broken years that directly preceded his suicide at 37.

Quite funny for much of its running time, the film feels like it simply runs out of steam in its third act, settling for a lazy, pandering resolution and seeming happy to have made it to the 83-minute finish line.

This is a creature feature, whose gory jump-scares and icktastic critter design are the reason you're here. An ensemble led by Kristen Stewart brings credible camaraderie to the scenario without quite matching the vivid chemistry of Alien and its best descendants; with such a tightly packed survival tale ahead of them, though, few viewers will be calling out for more character development.

By turns intriguingly odd and frustratingly obscure, this is confidently quirky material that nonetheless boasts superior production values with style to spare.

Nearly devoid of scares for the casual horror consumer, it will likely elicit a respectful dismissal from genre connoisseurs: "We get what you're trying to do," they might gently say to the filmmakers. "It didn't work."

A pleasant, if in the end slightly inconsequential picture, perhaps primarily of interest to those currently experiencing Mullins-style sibling frictions and joys, those who have fresh memories of the same and ethnographers/anthropologists keen to see how some of the world's most economically fortunate minors currently make the ever-rocky transition from youth to adulthood.

At one point, Tsemel describes herself as a member of an occupying force and defines her mission in life as to somehow rectify the resultant power imbalance. The only way to get there, as the film's pointed final image suggests, is to keep on trudging.

While not as strong, or nuanced, an entry as any of the three that preceded it, Yen once again proves at 56 to be something of an ageless wonder.

The most likely reaction among all but the most undiscerning to Santa Fake will be "Bah, humbug!"

Michael and Thomas Matthews’ debut feature Lost Holiday gives the impression of an in-joke that never quite lands.

Featuring a stellar ensemble cast headed by Matthew McConaughey, Hugh Grant, Charlie Hunnam, Michelle Dockery and Colin Farrell, Ritchie's homecoming is a fairly familiar affair, but also refreshingly funny and deftly plotted, with more witty lines and less boorish machismo than his early work.

Sacrifices suspense and narrative coherence for moody atmospherics and hallucinatory visuals. Uninvolving to the extreme, She's Missing misses the mark entirely.

It's almost unfathomable that this one made it through all the preliminary production meetings without someone sensibly calling a halt to the process by saying, "Wait a minute, those kitties are damn creepy!"

The massive jumble of standoffs, near-misses, tense confrontations, narrow escapes and slick victories, while momentarily exciting, can lack plausible motivation and credibility. More often than not, one wonders not so much what just happened but why, and what was at stake.

Less audience-embracing than most surf documentaries that make it to the big screen, Michael Oblowitz's Heavy Water will play best to those familiar with its cast of characters.

Antic and frantic, Spies is very much a one-joke affair, which is fine for a short but woefully insufficient for a 101-minute feature.

Though this clearly isn't meant to be a lighthearted story, a glimmer of wit here and there would've helped keep viewers engaged in the action and endeared us to a cast that is competent but hardly charismatic.

Despite its serious subject matter, Mob Town assumes an oddly comic tone for much of its running time, coming across almost like a spoof at times. Unfortunately, nothing in it is particularly funny, and the deadly pacing makes the movie seem much longer than it is.

Unfortunately, despite his obvious passion for the genre, Luke doesn't yet have the cinematic chops (or clearly, the budget) to effectively put his vision onscreen.

What Kovgan's utterly transporting film does, through a thoughtful and dynamic combination of curated material and new performances, is radiate the rapturous power of dance.

Demanding attention, imagination and critical viewing from the audience, Chinese Portrait is nevertheless one for posterity.

Initially a sluggish stalker flick whose undergraduate moral debates are tiresome instead of provocative, it eventually transforms into a patriarchy metaphor as obvious as, well, all those Greek-lettered paddles that decorate both the frat's and the sorority's clubhouses.