**

Iranian fashion designer (Sahar Biniaz) in Canada struggles, mildly, with marriage, morality, and a lesbian boss (Heather Doerksen) who wants more from her than her sketches.  With characters who lack any meaningful motivation for their behavior, a why-bother conclusion, and distinctly passionless prurience.  A slow-mover that is too shallow and literal to be hypnotic and too tepid to be entertaining.

**

Worst sleepover ever. Cyberbullying turns to murder for a group of 12-year-old girls at an isolated country house. Generates exactly zero sympathy for the kids as these "friends" seem to hate each other and constantly bully themselves. (The real horror in the film is what it says not about bullies, but about friendship.) A plotless affair featuring characters with all the depth of emoticons, this is ostensibly a condemnation of the dark side of social networking, but really is all about redefining the murderable age of young girls. In a weird and inexplicable supernatural twist, one of the girls sees visions of blood and death.

**

​The third and final volume in Collins' thematic trilogy of comics controversies:  who really owned Superman, the Al Capp/Hal Fisher fued, and now this, Dr. Fredric Wertham's 1950's crusade against comic books that ultimately resulted in the creation of the self-censoring Comics Code Authority.  A roman à clef, the book turns Dr. Wertham into Werner Frederick, Bill Gaines into Bob Price, Mad magazine into Craze, and so on.  And it's all about what happens when one of the players in this comic imbroglio gets murdered.  It's a lightly written, occasionally amusing mystery aimed at undiscriminating fans of comic book history, people who won't mind that the heroes (Jack and Maggie Starr) may inhabit the 1950s but think and behave like people from our own 20-teens, nor that Collins takes the path of least resistance (and highest personal resonance) by casting Wertham as evil, misguided, and foolish for daring to question the suitability of some comic stories and artwork for young readers.  Takes its title from Wertham's own book, unintentionally preserving its warning to the unwary.

**

​Mishmash of crime and horror as disgruntled former employee participates in the kidnapping of boss's daughter, coincidentally running afoul of crazy farmer and his pet monster, who feeds on the blood (and heads) of young women in exchange for a successful harvest.  Senseless, if not incoherent.  Adds nothing to either genre, but does include one evocative shot of Reynolds' version of He Who Walks Behind the Rows.

**

​Dr. Zarkov (Chaim Topol) blasts off with quarterback Flash Gordon (Sam J. Jones) and travel writer Dale Arden (Melody Anderson) to the planet Mongo to do battle with Earth's would-be destroyer Ming the Merciless (Max von Sydow).  Laudably based on an actual storyline from the Flash Gordon comic strip (the very first storyline, as a matter of fact), but misguided in every other respect, this film features a Playgirl centerfold as Flash and a script that vacillates randomly between action-adventure and farce, only rarely succeeding at either.  Tries hard to look like a comic strip without bothering to treat this particular strip with any respect.  With Ornella Muti as a pretty Princess Aura, Timothy Dalton as the dashing Prince Barin, and Brian Blessed as the yells-every-line-of-dialogue leader of the Hawkmen, Prince Vultan.  Music by Queen.