Annlee Ellingson

Writer-director M. Blash's sophomore film is ethereal and trippy, told less in scenes than in oblique snatches, not unlike the experience of emotional paralysis. This approach grows wearying.

Enemies Closer suffers from wincingly bad dialogue delivered as if by jocks in a high-school play and action choreographed as if for a gymnasium stage.

Freezer is a snappy action flick that makes good use of its close confines.

A focused, if at times melodramatic, take on the play's beating heart.

The Nut Job features decent CG animation, especially of animals, but the writing isn't particularly clever, relying on obvious puns and slapstick humor.

Writer-director Francesca Gregorini builds unbearable tension into scenes that otherwise risk tilting toward melodrama and brings the eye of a fashion photographer to the film's hallucinatory dream sequences.

The juxtaposition of such country-music icons with the story's cringe-worthy treacle has one siding with Michael's bah-humbug attitude.

The Selfish Giant is devastating social realism in the mode of Ken Loach's "Kes."

Writer-director Joe Eddy's debut is sincere but relies on obvious tropes.

Zea gives a natural performance amid a neighborhood of painful stereotypes (including a nosy Asian shopkeeper), but she doesn't adjust her cadence, let alone accent, for the historical flashbacks, bringing a modern sensibility that limits the effectiveness of these scenes.