Coup! **1/2
I gotta be straight: There’s something so slippery about this dark satire from writer/directors Austin Stark and Joseph Schuman that I’m not sure whether it’s profoundly progressive or weirdly reactionary. It’s set in 1918, as the Spanish Flu epidemic rages in the U.S., and scion of privilege/muckraking journalist J. C. Horton (Billy Magnusson) has fled with his wife Julie (Sarah Gadon) and children to the isolated family estate. A new chef arrives going by the name of Floyd Monk (Peter Sarsgaard), but the fellow has some secrets, and a plan for tearing Horton down. The class warfare drama takes some intriguing turns, with Magnusson offering a unique twist on his usual frat-boy energy and Sarsgaard exuding real menace. The challenge comes from figuring out what the filmmakers intend by pointedly setting the narrative during a pandemic, and focusing less on the policy decisions that might have exacerbated it than on the idea that an ostensibly leftist journalist outlet might be opportunistically self-serving in its coverage. There’s interesting material to be mined from the disconnect between “liberal elites” and the actual working class, but it also feels a bit disconnected from reality to suggest that what common folk really have to be angry about are public-health measures. Maybe it’s all-too-real to focus on the left eating its own; it’s also more than slightly a case of burying the lede. Available Aug. 2 in theaters. (NR)

The Firing Squad *
It would be a sloppy inference of intent for me to say that the makers of this faith-based drama cared only about being inspirational, and not about making a good movie—but if they did care about making a good movie, they failed miserably. Inspired by true events, the narrative deals with a British-born drug smuggler named Peter Lone (James Barrington) who receives the death penalty after he’s arrested in notoriously zero-tolerance Indonesia. While in prison, he undergoes a Christian conversion, which has plenty of ripple effects, as the movie’s postscript is happy to share. But virtually everything about the production is profoundly amateurish, from the performances—particularly by Tupupa Ainu’u as the prison’s theoretically sadistic warden, who can’t manage cruel taunts more creative than “four-eyes”—to a script that repeatedly pulls the “saying the same thing multiple times, because we don’t trust our viewers not to be idiots” trick. And director Tim Chey’s visual style ranges from trite living-the-high-life montages to a ridiculously overwrought shot panning around Peter driving his Ferrari pre-arrest. Familiar faces like Kevin Sorbo, Eric Roberts and Cuba Gooding Jr. try to bring some cachet to the proceedings, but after 90 minutes, it’s hard not to conclude that the only goal here is having viewers be born again, without concern for whether they’re bored again. Available Aug. 2 in theaters. (PG-13)

Harold and the Purple Crayon *1/2
If Crockett Johnson’s beloved children’s picture book seems like an improbable source for a feature film in its brief simplicity, that’s only because it is—and the creators of this movie respond by cobbling together a bunch of spare parts from other, more interesting film fantasies. Its internal logic bounces all over the place, as the Harold from the book inexplicably has grown up to Zachary Levi size, then experiences an existential crisis which sends him on a quest into the real world—where his purple crayon still has magical creative power—with his friends Moose (Lil Rel Howrey) and Porcupine (Tanya Reynolds), who turn into humans because of reasons. The subsequent narrative becomes a mix of Enchanted (hand-drawn character comes to the real world and helps a widowed single parent), Elf (refugee from a fantasy realm goes searching for his dad and finds Zooey Deschanel) and Shazam! (Zachary Levi plays an enthusiastic kid in the body of an adult), only without any of the genuine fun any of those movies offered. Animation veteran Carlos Saldanha (Ice Age: The Meltdown, Rio) turns his first live-action feature into a series of chaotic action sequences—one of those movies where a character shouting “This is awesome!” feels like a desperate cry for you to believe it, too—with only Jemaine Clement’s creepy librarian providing real spark. For a story that is ostensibly a celebration of the power of imagination, this one sure doesn’t have much to spare. Available Aug. 2 in theaters. (PG)

Kneecap **1/2
Writer/director Rich Peppiatt brings a punky, anarchic energy to this fictionalized biography of the Belfast-based hip-hop trio Kneecap, but the fun gets tangled up in the political framework and too many subplots to really keep them all humming. It’s set during a contentious battle over legalizing the Irish language in the British-controlled North, as trouble-making, drug-dealing youth Liam (Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh) and Naoise (Naoise Ó Cairealláin) connect with Irish language/music teacher JJ (JJ Ó Dochartaigh) to begin recording and performing rap music in their native tongue. Trainspotting certainly provides the most obvious point of comparison, as Peppiatt seasons his visual filmmaking with animations, funky angles and bits of silliness like an “inside the nostril-cam” during a drug binge. The three leads are all fairly solid for non-professionals, but the liberating nature of their creative work ends up bumping hard against each one’s personal conflict: Naoise dealing with the legacy of his activist father (Michael Fassbender); JJ trying to keep his identity secret from his employer and his girlfriend; Liam trying to navigate a romance. Perhaps Peppiatt deserves kudos for trying to bring a weird comic sensibility—including a buffoonish group of anti-drug Irish Republicans—to something that’s also dead serious about its anti-colonial message. There’s only so far you can take the idea of this music as a “bullet fired for freedom” when it’s juxtaposed with an inside-the-nostril-cam.” Available Aug. 2 in theaters. (R)

Trap **1/2
The high-concept premise that’s being marketed for the latest from writer/director M. Night Shyamalan actually takes up a surprisingly small percentage of its running time—which is fortunate, because it only gets interesting once that stuff is done. That premise sends a guy named Cooper (Josh Hartnett) and his tween daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a concert by pop megastar Lady Raven (Shyamalan’s daughter, Saleka), which has been set as a sting operation to catch a serial killer who [spoiler alert] is Cooper. It feels like a bold gambit by Shyamalan to present the concert sequence entirely from Cooper’s POV—and a weirdly effective performance by Hartnett—but the filmmaker doesn’t really know what to do with the absence of a protagonist, and the plot-plot-plot structure doesn’t play to his directorial strengths composing shots. Eventually, the setting shifts, and it’s only then that Shyamalan starts finding some real tension—and potentially compelling ideas, like the power of a celebrity’s social-media presence when it’s used for good—though it’s not his wisest decision to lean on Saleka’s limited acting chops. Then the potential protagonist shifts again, and Trap ends up feeling like an extremely bumpy ride through a handful of different notions for building a narrative around a sociopathic central character, none of which work well enough on their own and which eventually add up to a frustrating collection of bits and pieces. Available Aug. 2 in theaters. (PG-13)