J. Kim Murphy

Writer-director John-Michael Powell maintains a likably low-key interest in the local flavor of his home state, but it’s small potatoes in terms of personality. His self-serious approach proves a terminal match for his crime yarn’s familiar, simplistic plotting.

The movie devolves into something inexact and thoughtless, without anything distinct to recenter it. It’s hardly a sin for cruelty to be the point, especially in horror. But you have to at least land your punches.

That this highly derivative horror series bottoms out by over-investing in the Warrens — its most reliable creation, the only one that’s undeniably its own — is a sure sign that it is well past its utility.

The feature is awkwardly compressed in its portrait of heartache and easily overwhelmed by the political portent of its subject.

Speaking to viewers who are cognizant of what films can and cannot be made, Zodiac Killer Project is a biting statement on how many artists have been funneled into a creative dead-end by a trend-chasing market.

William Tell is most confident when Bang is allowed to commit to pulpy bravado, with long bellows of “No!” and “Go!” and an impressive 6’4’’ frame. He’s the tallest man in all the Alps; in a movie as silly and simple-minded as this one, of course that makes him the hero.

McAvoy’s big grin full of knives quickly dissolves any semblance of social credibility. But the film matches Paddy’s boorishness and commits to being a comedy about a bad marriage crumbling under the fist of a freak-of-nature vacation host.

As a standalone, Incoming hits its marks, but its cast amounts to a collection of tics, while its appetite for raunch seems unfulfilled.

[Mountains] carries an undeniable veracity and compassion. Its narrative proves less insightful, however: too wary to crack into its protagonist’s troubled psyche, softening the film’s worthwhile political anxieties into sympathetic messaging that seems ho-hum and predetermined.

Despite the film’s confident naturalism, it seems less intimate as it goes on, with Max somehow growing more distant and generic as he becomes more comfortable in his own skin.