Film Review: ‘The Flood’

As a grieving cop, Mary J. Blige serves and protects a tricky storyline in this socially-engaged supernatural thriller.

"I didn't have any goals; I just went where the winds of curiosity blew me." So says Diana Kennedy, a groundbreaking authority on Mexican cooking, in Elizabeth Carroll's intimate portrait. On the superficial face of it, those words might sound disingenuous, but they go to the heart of Kennedy's unconventionality and lifelong pursuit of authenticity.

An intriguing and well-executed attempt to supply something Americans were denied in 2014, Roee Messinger's American Trial: The Eric Garner Story uses non-actors and real community members to imagine a trial that Staten Island grand jurors inexplicably refused to hold: In this conjured reality, unlike our own, NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo is indicted for reckless manslaughter and first-degree strangulation in the killing of unarmed New Yorker Eric Garner.

Set aside the fact that present circumstances may make viewers resentful of a film motivated by its makers' urge to see exotic tourist destinations and eat in expensive restaurants that are closed now. The format of Michael Winterbottom's Trip series, in which Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon take luxurious foodie vacations together, has served up various pleasures for moviegoers in the past, and there was no way of knowing how tone-deaf it might appear upon its mid-lockdown release.

Dea Gjinovci’s empathetic documentary on an asylum-seeking family's plight is touching despite some mishandled priorities.

Has it really been 10 years? The fourth 'Trip' film — and maybe the last — finds Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon retracing the path of Odysseus as they continue to eat, drink, and be quippy.

Film critic and filmmaker Dan Sallitt's fourth feature tracks the ebb and flow of young female friendship with exquisite specificity and grace.

Proximitywears its old-school sci-fi heart on its sleeve, beginning with the Close Encounters-quoting pow of an opening and flipping through a catalog of movie references. The homage, however endearing, proves limiting too for this tale of alien abduction, wide-eyed innocents and covert government baddies.

Just over 50 years after their debut on Saturday morning TV in Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, the four teen sleuths of Mystery Inc. and their talking Great Dane sidekick return for another action-packed crime-busting mission.

A naive housewife takes surprising steps to reclaim her independence after discovering that her husband blew their savings on escorts in this well-acted French-language drama.

Debuting on demand, rather than in theaters, this attractive but calculated attempt to connect 'Scooby-Doo' to other Hanna-Barbera characters abandons the show's fun teen-detective format.

An inventive parable, Cristóbal León & Joaquín Cociña's breathtaking animation continuously redefines reality in startlingly timely ways.

A snowbound bag-of-cash thriller set in the vast North Maine Woods, John Barr's Blood and Money casts Tom Berenger as an ailing hunter trying to escape from bank robbers who want their money back. A solid B movie whose pleasures aren't diminished much by the screenplay's dicey dialogue — plenty of the film has no dialogue at all — it's a welcome vehicle for its star, who has been underused by filmmakers for decades.

Brian Levin's debut feature is being billed as a Southern Gothic thriller, but only the first part of the description applies for this effort that gives new meaning to the expression "slow burn." Heavy on foreboding atmosphere but light on narrative momentum, character development and thematic coherence, Union Bridge requires considerable patience to cross.

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.