Vadim Rizov

It’s looser, wilder, funnier, and almost euphorically uplifting, rocketing at increasing speed towards a new life for its main character and directorial proxy that makes the starting premise look almost irrelevant.

By this point, D’Souza is unconvincingly frothing on the soundtrack about how “the socialist left and the Democrats want to make us grovel” and “make us worms,” but the whole premise is, predictably, a radical, cynical misunderstanding of Orwell.

No Safe Spaces caters to its intended viewers’ least savory biases, making sure all student activists shown fit into particular categories—overweight, gay, or simply “angry and black”—that stoke the resentment of the target demographic.

There’s not a single scene that speaks to characters with lives outside their streamlined narrative function; they’re performers in a parable traced over a Chick tract, filmed with a bland competence at odds with the true perversity of the material. Old-school Pure Flix: Welcome back!

D’Souza fails, as ever, to make an argument that would resonate outside the QAnon echo chamber.

A Light In Darkness isn’t as offensive as the first film—it lacks the requisite misogyny and Islamophobia, and does a better job of looking like it’s almost a real movie—but it’s not far behind, an emblematic film for the foul moment.

Shot in widescreen in New Orleans, this new Benji looks burnished and luxe in comparison with the visibly threadbare original, to which it pays several nods for the fans.

The plot’s mechanics in tying the families together are often clumsy and contorted, in ways that are strange without being particularly interesting.

There was probably never going to be a version of this film that would prove even remotely plausible as a movie someone felt passionately about making for artistic reasons; as far as expanding on smartphone-related IP, this is an even weaker starting point than Sony Animation’s recent The Angry Birds Movie.

The Case For Christ is pretty slow going, tedious rather than offensive, with Strobel repeatedly whiteboarding out the evidence as callback voice-overs add up all the pieces until he’s convinced. “All right, God,” he finally says. “You win.”