Crawl has no pretense and not very much range; it’s “Jaws” set in an old dark house.

"American Heretics" is eye-opening, but it's never explosive.

Favreau’s most important responsibility in overseeing the remake was simply not to mess it up. Which he doesn’t. Then again, nor does he bring the kind of visionary new take to the material that Julie Taymor added when staging the Broadway musical. That makes Favreau’s “The Lion King” an undeniably impressive, but incredibly safe entry to the catalog — one whose greatest accomplishment may not be technical (which is not to diminish the incredible work required to make talking animals look believable), but in perfecting the performances.

While the film may feel at times like it was made under the auspices of an Asbury Park tourism board, it’s at least a theoretical tourism board that has a good awareness that a dystopia doesn’t shift back to utopia overnight, or even over a neat 50 years.

Hari Sama’s fourth feature as writer-director is something special, and one of the best of its particular subgenre.

Cities of Last Things has a puzzle-box structure that makes it seem complex and that tasks us with teasing out allusions and associations that a straighter telling would miss, but emotionally it is also simple: Nestled in the middle of this loop-the-loop enigma, skewering the slippery narrative to its timeline like a pin through the heart, it’s a love story.

The result falls short of being especially credible, let alone memorable. Still, this is a polished genre exercise that provides a decent night’s home entertainment.

“I’m going to fake it till I make it!” vows Austyn. At first, “Jawline” also feels committed to his rise. Mandelup changes her intention so gradually that the third act of the film feels a little aimless. Still, she’s smart to momentarily give the mic to the female fans to explain their devotion, though the uniformity of their answers is depressing.

Rojo is a witheringly provocative examination of temporary moral eclipse becoming permanent moral apocalypse.

This first feature from “Walking Dead” thesp-turned-writer/director Pollyanna McIntosh (who played the feral captive in “The Woman”) proves an increasingly wobbly mix of comedy, horror and social critique, its heavy-handed indictment of stereotypical religious hypocrisy finally dragging the enterprise into caricature.

Malheiros’ terrific turn makes this protagonist credibly tough by necessity, and mature beyond his years. Ordakji is also excellent as the not-much-older new friend whose reluctance to be more helpful is, like other backstory elements here, only partly explained later on. Despite the film’s raw realist air, these two actors aren’t amateur discoveries, but rather theater studies graduates making their screen debuts — at no doubt the beginning of long careers.

Jean Reno, whose reputation will only suffer the slightest ding after this lackluster outing quickly fades from memory, should ponder and deliberate a little harder the next time he’s asked to play an aging hitman.

Phil is a trifle, and there’s no harm in that, but it’s an unconvincing trifle. The words “coy” and “whimsical” scarcely do justice to its coy whimsicality.

Mixing archival photos and TV footage with straightforward to-the-camera remembrances, Greenfield-Sanders’ deft structural approach isn’t as daring as those found in Morrison’s own work.

It’s both funny and familiar to see these two incredibly different personalities thrust together for what’s meant to be a short ride. [SXSW work-in-progress review]

The final scenes stop far short of providing the cheap thrill of a feel-good wrap-up, and are all the more effective for that.

As tedious as rush-hour traffic and as bland as a communion wafer.

It doesn’t strike an assertively comic tone either, resulting in a superficially colorful but hollow pile of contrivances that are neither clever nor convincing enough to achieve more than time-passing diversion.

Director Lila Avilés has designed her debut feature, The Chambermaid, to give audiences the opposite opportunity, inviting us to step into the shoes of an invisible woman for two hours, and as such, her film is a rare and special thing.

Without proselytizing, and without distracting from the main thrust of her gripping, intelligent psychodrama, Kreutzer and her predominately female team have created a story both knottily specific and usefully general in its understanding that for many women, an ultimately untenable level of watchful self-control is the price of ambition.

The key to the new movie’s appeal, apart from the fact that Tom Holland acts with far greater confidence and verve in the title role, is that the entire film is a bit of a fake-out, and I mean that in a very positive way.

Name your fear trigger, and it’s probably there, somewhere, in Annabelle Comes Home. It looks like a horror film, but it’s really the horror equivalent of speed dating.

The screenplay, co-written by Nesher and psychology professor Noam Shpancer, feels well-researched, poignantly highlighting the little things parents do that unintentionally traumatize their children. It also brims with the snappy dialogue that Nesher’s films are known for.

The Specials, in the end, is not a very compelling movie. It’s arduous and rambling and repetitive; it skitters across the surface of the story it’s telling. The film lacks a vibrant structure, but more than that, it never brings us close to the people it shows us.

Shattering a glass ceiling has rarely been more engrossing — or grueling — than it is in Maiden.

The catharsis feels fake and unearned. Moreover, the film lacks the warmth and respect for all of of its characters displayed in Langseth’s previous work.

It’s nowhere near the embarrassment of Brian De Palma’s “Domino,” or any number of recent studio tentpoles. Nor is it fresh enough to pretend that audiences had missed out on something special if it had been buried altogether — except perhaps for Luss, who’s bound to get another shot.

If there are no outright duds, there’s no real triumph either. But the whole is certainly diverse, lively and reference-packed enough to please horror fans attracted to this kind of enterprise.