'Hooking Up': Film Review

A documentary featuring Steven Greer, apostle of the alien-visitation disclosure movement, has tantalizing "sightings," but reveals that ET obsession is now the mother ship of conspiracy theory.

Movies about inner city schoolteachers attempting to connect with their unruly students have long been a cinematic staple, dating at least as far back as 1955's The Blackboard Jungle. But few have approached the subject with the impressive realism and naturalism as Hanan Harchol's semi-autobiographical feature directorial debut.

'Stranger Things' actor Noah Schnapp plays a young chef of mixed Israeli and Palestinian heritage looking for a fusion-food solution to his family troubles.

An experimental feature whose opening scenes will have many unprepared viewers searching for the exit, She's Allergic to Cats is not nearly as unfriendly as it initially seems.

It would seem we're in a moment of unusual openness to the idea that Earth-dwellers aren't alone in the universe. Mainstream news outlets reveal that some government entities take the idea seriously; tantalizing (and seemingly not-doctored) videos capture aerial phenomena that, while vaguely photographed, are hard to explain.

The makers of Same Boat clearly knew they had a nearly unclassifiable mashup on their hands. Hence their tagline on the film's advertising: "A Classic Cruise Ship Time Travel Assassination Love Story." The description well serves this entertaining microbudgeted feature that plays like an unlikely romantic comedy variation of The Terminator.

[Note: In the wake of SXSW's cancellation this year,The Hollywood Reporteris reviewing select fest entries that elected to premiere digitally.] Shiva Babykicks off with an unpersuasive orgasm. "Yeah, Daddy," Danielle (Rachel Sennott) intones, the lack of conviction in her voice telegraphing the transactional nature of the coupling.

"You know who's sexy? Judd Nelson," Maddie Hasson observes randomly as the deliciously trashy Val, one of three badass young women headed to a heavy metal concert in middle-of-nowhere Indiana in We Summon the Darkness. Similar notes of tongue-in-cheek nostalgia and '80s slasher throwback fun help patch over some pacing issues in Marc Meyers' horror thriller.

The sequel to the 2016 glitter-pop animated hit is the first Hollywood movie of this moment to go directly to home viewing. For all its buzzy touches, it's rote enough to feel right at home...at home.

[Note: In the wake of SXSW's cancellation this year, The Hollywood Reporter is reviewing select fest entries that elected to premiere digitally.] The winner of this year's Documentary Feature award at the virtual version of SXSW, Katrine Philp's An Elephant in the Room spends time with participants in a New Jersey program called Good Grief, whose probably inadvertent invocation of Charlie Brown hints at its focus: The Morristown group is built around children who have lost parents, placing them

[Note: In the wake of SXSW's cancellation this year, The Hollywood Reporter is reviewing select fest entries that elected to premiere digitally.] A narrative feature debut informed by its maker's previous documentaries about the oil industry, Noah Hutton's Lapsis takes a sci-fi look at another kind of resource-extraction boom and the workers being exploited in it.

Krisha Fairchild's second lead role in a feature is no less perfect for her than the first. As in 2015's Krisha (which put the retired, little-known performer on the indie map at age 65), she inhabits the central character of Freeland with a riveting emotional power.

This Icelandic psychological thriller about a grieving widower's search for revenge reveals director Hlynur Palmason to be a major talent.

Jacqueline Wilson's 2012 kids' book cleverly remixed a century-old classic; this mostly flavorless adaptation retains the least distinctive elements of both.

Brian Cox gives one of his finest performances in this familiar but affecting drama about a cantankerous Scotsman facing his journey’s end.

Starring Sean Hayes as the sad-sack heroine, this tepid comedy is a drag in more ways than one.

A drama about the drug scourge that's ravaging the heartland — a bit of sociology with a touch of vigilante — feels like a rough indie sketch for the powerful contempo drug movie we have yet to see.

A tone-deaf attempt to recreate the nasty comic vibe people associate with certain '80s buddy cop films, Michael Dowse's Coffee & Kareem names a key character for director Walter Hill, just to make sure we know what it's going for. Then it tweaks the Eddie Murphy-era format by pairing a white cop with a distractingly foul-mouthed black 12-year old.

Can bullying be defeated by self-bullying, or public threats of self-harm? That's the premise of Paul A. Kaufman's Butter, in which a lonely, obese teen tries to shock classmates into silence by threatening to eat himself to death.

Sure, the premise is puerile, but the humor is decidedly inappropriate for young viewers in this Netflix action comedy pairing Ed Helms with a 12-year-old.