'Braking for Whales': Film Review

A mediocre Hawaii-set comedy targeted at the limited demographic of middle-aged white guys who dig wish-fulfillment rom-coms, Tyler Spindel's The Wrong Missy finds David Spade juggling the attentions of three attractive women, one of whom is psychotically bent on either fulfilling his every need or killing him in the attempt.

"We're in beautiful downtown Mossville," says Stacey Ryan, the central figure in the documentary Mossville: When Great Trees Fall, as he waves his arm toward the supremely ugly petrochemical plants and construction projects surrounding him. "Population of one," he adds bitterly, essentially summing up the central theme of Alex Glustrom's powerful film concerning the environmental ravaging of a once-thriving community.

Lauren Lapkus, cast as David Spade's date from hell, provides the anarchic spark plug for an otherwise functional slob-vs.-the-corporate-snobs rom-com.

A grieving youth turns to drugs and an addict neighbor for ill-advised solace in Joey Klein's well-acted but uneven drama.

A shaky narrative is given ballast by two vivid and well-matched leads in Sabrina Doyle’s exasperating, sporadically touching feature debut, the blue-collar melodrama Lorelei. As former high school sweethearts reconnecting amid dire socioeconomic circumstances, Pablo Schreiber and Jena Malone hustle to overcome movie-ish dialogue and clichéd story dynamics, investing their life-bruised characters with authentic feeling.

The generous view of 2015's Fantastic Four might be that studio interference was at least partly responsible for that lumbering dirge of a superhero reboot going so badly wrong. So with Josh Trank taking a more independent detour and seizing greater control as writer, director and editor on his return feature, it seemed reasonable to hope he might recapture some of the spark and invention of his 2012 debut, Chronicle.

Some films are uniquely unsuited for pandemic lockdown viewing. Take for instance Castle in the Ground, a moderately affecting grief drama that builds a compelling intimacy and then allows it to evaporate as it lurches unpersuasively into a claustrophobic quasi-thriller set against the backdrop of the opioid crisis in Sudbury, Ontario.

Playing the infamous Al Capone in his ailing last days, Tom Hardy gives a mumbly Method showboat performance that's authentic on the surface, but there isn't enough beneath the mob mannerisms.

"If you're doing drugs the right way, you can't tell an orderly story." So says the inimitable Carrie Fisher, interviewed in her Hollywood home for Donick Cary's Have a Good Trip. And yet the writer-director's primer on the do's and don'ts of psychedelics is filled with orderly, well-told anecdotes about doing drugs.

Clementine

Celebrities recall their trippy times in Donick Cary's lightweight look at hallucinogenic drug use.

A documentary built around previously unheard audiotaped interviews with Stanley Kubrick captures a director who didn't like to talk about his films...talking about his films.

A kitschy cover version of the early-’80s teen movie romance gets bogged down in nostalgia, losing the edge — of new music and Nicolas Cage’s performance — that made it a generational favorite.

In her atmospheric debut, Lara Jean Gallagher sends her jilted protagonist into the woods to unnerving effect.

You really can't trust movie posters these days. The one for the new adventure drama The Legion features Mickey Rourke and Bai Ling prominently above the title, but, as is all too typical of internationally geared productions these days, their presence is designed to fool global audiences.

Through a trippy circumstance, a young woman learns to cherish the yearly gifts from her deceased mom in this Italian sobfest.

A memoir of molestation whose convoluted structure mirrors the shocking web of abuse its protagonists suffered, Sasha Joseph Neulinger's Rewind allows viewers to watch as a bright, loving child is utterly transformed by a family member's sexual assault.

Befitting a documentary executive produced by Errol Morris, Enemies of the State is polished, assured and chilling. But as director Sonia Kennebeck traces a tale of hacker culture, government surveillance and extreme family loyalty, the smooth surface buckles.

Director Alex Lee Moyers addresses the incel phenomenon as a question of loneliness, giving five incendiary attention seekers exactly what they want in this challenging but essential doc.

[Note: In the wake ofthe Tribeca festival's postponement this year,The Hollywood Reporteris reviewing select fest entries that elected to premiere digitally for critics.] In the hard-hitting and heartbreaking documentary Jacinta, a young mother suffers the effects of heroin addiction that plagued her own mother as well, prolonging a cycle of abuse and incarceration that repeats itself across a generation. Stories of drugs, jail and recidivism are, alas, nothing new in America.