Director Ava DuVernay's version of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (pictured) overcomes sluggishness to deliver its empowering message with unsettling visual imagination. The darkly comic thriller Gringo features some bumpy storytelling but one terrific Charlize Theron performance. More dark humor and some ace technical credits elevate the tale of homicidal high-schoolers in Thoroughbreds. The story of an alien invasion gets a unique but uneven approach in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Before We Vanish. Zombie horror gets a fresh socio-political subtext in The Cured, but some needed detail is lacking.
Eric D. Snider finds The Strangers: Prey at Night a motive-less step down from the 2008 original.
Also opening this week, but not screened for press: Thieves use a massive storm as cover for robbing the U.S. Treasury in The Hurricane Heist.
In this week's feature review, a second look at the Oscar-winning A Fantastic Woman reveals something a bit less stunning than it appears at first glance.