I was excited to catch “Peninsula,” writer-director Yeon Sang-ho’s follow-up to “Train to Busan,” his zombies-on-a-bullet-train movie from 2016. In this sequel, lazily retitled “Train to Busan Presents Peninsula” for American audiences, the zombies are back again to wreak havoc on a South Korean family. The end result is disappointing, as returning director Yeon Sang-ho’s sequel lacks the freshness and originality of its predecessor, replacing the exciting set-pieces in favor of bigger-budgeted spectacle.

Rebecca Zlotowski’s 2016 World War II film, “Planetarium,” starring Lily Rose and Natalie Portman, may not be a fully successful “genre” film, but it does announce the arrival of a new and vibrant talent. Zlotowski’s “An Easy Girl” had its debut at last year’s Cannes Film Festival where it was crowned Best French Film of the Director’s Fortnight sidebar. And yet, it’s taken a whole year for it to finally get released in the U.S, and via Netflix, no less.

Under normal circumstances, this outrageous B-movie would come and go — without making much noise. However, Russell Crowe’s new endeavor, “Unhinged,” an exploitation film if there ever was one, has taken full advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic by promoting itself as the first feature film to be shown exclusively in movie theaters since the shutdown of theaters began in early March.

You liked David Ayer’s “Bright”? Well, Netflix’s “Project Power” might just be the street-based superhero flick for you. This anti-drug parable deals with an American government intent on medically experimenting on -shock- black people.

Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” started it and now “Spree,” another film about a socially-isolated loner gone haywire, tries to expand on that formula by tackling a social media-obsessed millennial. If anything, director Eugene Kotlyarenko’s social commentary is all about our amoral age, where people try to “get noticed” online for the most inane and artificial reasons. It may be over-the-top in its murderous assumptions, but the message is heard loud and clear.

A24 and Apple are joining forces to win that documentary Oscar with “Boys State,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this past January. The critics fell hard for directors Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine’s feel-good politico doc which tackles the annual mock gubernatorial race in Austin involving 1,100 boys.

Seth Rogen plays dual roles in “American Pickle” an HBO Max comedy that fizzles out in its latter half. That’s too bad, really, because Rogen, at first, grabs your attention playing Herschel Greenbaum, a ditch-digger from a 1919 Eastern European shtetl — donning a Tevye beard straight out of “Fiddler on the Roof,” Herschel falls hard for Sarah (Sarah Snook). However, their wedding is a disaster, everyone except them gets killed by the evil Cossacks, which leads them to immigrate to Ellis Island. Herschel gets a job at a pickle factory, to support a pregnant Sarah, only to fall into a barrel of brine and get pickled for a century.

I’m noticing early reviews for Amy Seimetz’s “She Dies Tomorrow” are overwhelmingly positive. These raves seem to be another byproduct of the times we live in because, quite frankly, Seimetz’s film, which I saw via SXSW digital, is an underwhelming dud.

Michael Polish’s pulpy B-movie “Force Of Nature” stars Mel Gibson — now, whether or not that’s a deal-breaker will depend on your perception of Gibson. I personally couldn’t care less about what the 64-year-old actor did or has done publicly. All I know is that he still has the chops to lead a movie. Ever since attempting a comeback, after being caught on tape slurring anti-semitic and just plain racist remarks, Gibson has starred in three down-and-dirty, but immensely watchable, B-movies (“Get the Gringo,” “Blood Father” and, especially “Dragged Across Concrete.”)

Actor-turned-director Dave Franco and mumblecore trailblazer Joe Swanberg have given us a horror movie that builds its suspense slowly, delving deeply into the psychological dynamics between its four main characters, in the tightly-knit 88-minute indie “The Rental.”

It’s 2001, and Catholic high schooler Alice (Natalia Dyer) discovers internet porn in writer/director Karen Maine’s debut feature, “Yes, God, Yes.”

Who wants to watch a dryly enacted biopic of Madame Marie Curie? It’s not as if Curie, a Polish immigrant born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, had a dull life. No siree, after all, she’s still the only woman to win two Nobel prizes thanks to her work in discovering radium and polonium at the turn of the 20th century.

I’ve been holding off on reviewing “Hamilton” because, quite frankly, I couldn’t care less about it. Director Thomas Kali’s filmed stage play isn’t really cinema, it’s more like a filmed 160-minute document of the critically-acclaimed Broadway show. To call this a movie would do the entire art form a disservice, hell, it’s not even a documentary, it’s more like a digital video recording of a 2016 stage performance.

Here is another horror movie that refuses to show the demons threatening its main characters in every frame. “Relic,” is all about atmosphere, and has a possessed house dissected as a metaphor for, wait for it, dementia.

“I’m just so tired of it,” says an exasperated Charlize Theron in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Old Guard,” Can you blame her? Theron plays the oldest member of the Old Guard, a group of immortal mercenaries who have been fighting the good fight for thousands of years. Immortality can be exhausting and this `Netflix-produced “superhero” movie, based on Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernandez’s 2017 comic book, makes a good case against it.

If any movie from this past January’s Sundance Film Festival could have become a major hit, pre-pandemic, of course, it would have been “Palm Springs,” a “Groundhog Day”-esque comedy starring Andy Samberg. Notice, my usage of the past tense to describe this film’s potential theatrical success, mostly because, “Palm Springs,” due to the ongoing pandemic, has now been relegated to a straight-to-HULU streaming release. NEON and Hulu teamed up to buy the film for a whopping $15 million at Sundance, the original deal was to include a theatrical release. The film is now set to debut on HULU this Friday. Don’t miss this compulsively entertaining

The pandemic-inflicted movie year hasn’t had a short supply of great docs: Sasha Neulinger’s “Rewind,” Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk’s “Athlete A,” James Lebrecht and Nicole Newnham “Crip Camp,” Benjamin Ree’s “The Painter and the Thief,” and Spike Jonze’s “Beastie Boys Story” — all well worth a look, if you haven’t already checked them out.

Do I even need to review this misbegotten Jon Stewart-directed bomb? Everything about Stewart’s irrelevant and tone-deaf “Irresistible” turns out to be out-of-touch with the current political zeitgeist. The former late-night show host commits an almost unredeemable act, he manages to make himself look completely out-of-touch with today’s political spectrum.

In “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga,” Will Ferrell, for the first time in his career, plays a musician, and no, his angelic vocal performance in “Step Brothers” does not count. Directed by David Dobkin (“Wedding Crashers”), this zany comedy is the kind of sentimental feel-goodery I can accept in these locked-up days of COVID, to a certain extent, of course.