Aaron Hillis

This thanklessly watchable film, recut since its mixed Sundance premiere, may not warrant Holden Caulfield’s trademark judgment of phoniness — but, like any clichéd writing, deserves rejection.

The footage relies more on idealistic testimonies than a cinematic experience showcasing DBA's vitality.

Dizzily entertaining when the knives, bullets, and feet are flying, and sometimes painfully melodramatic during the interim exposition.

Though it dodders engagingly at its antihero's pace, Remember is not subtle.

It's rare that a drama shows such specificity with respect to the experience of coping with autism, and that sensitivity goes a long way.

Rigorous and outrageous, Greenaway's defiant approach to narrative only offers insight into his character, not Eisenstein's.

Cohn is clearly on the right track toward making the kind of nuanced grown-up dramas that sadly are no longer in vogue.

The narrative strikes a mostly sensible (if overly earnest) ratio of inner-turmoil human theater to B-movie monster hunt, before ultimately tilting toward the classic drive-in with climactic siege action and old-school effects.

Appropriately hunky but neutered of the brute sexuality he exhibited in Bullhead and Rust and Bone, Schoenaerts and his lack of bodice-busting tension with Winslet mirrors the film's transparent, often anachronistic inauthenticity.

Criticism mutated long ago, after the internet's floodgates opened, and that outmoded disconnect between The Film Critic and today's film critics underscores how the persistent references to cinema and film writing are self-awarely mimicking clichés but not subverting them.

Director Teddy Chan's glossy thriller pays tribute to martial-arts cinema by casting enough Hong Kong industry legends to rival the cameo count of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. It's a pity, then, that it's an undeniably bland film in style and story, despite a few elaborately staged fight sequences.

The film is undeniably elevated by its exotic milieu. It's a shame, then, that it's stuck with such a familiar coming-of-age call to adventure.

The film is as shallow as its characters' oversexed conversations.

Jim Sturgess, Sam Worthington, and True Blood's Ryan Kwanten co-star in this glossy, lifelessly paced edition as three of the criminals, though their underwritten personas and motivations are fairly interchangeable.

Bernard Rose's elegantly staged but tonally flat biopic embraces the myth, even underscoring Paganini's rising fame, scandalous hedonism, and womanizing as an anachronistic form of rock-star fantasy.

This blatantly big-hearted product isn't half as vibrant as the original 2005 Wired article on which it's based, and myopically neglects to address Arizona's troubling anti-immigration legislation through even a splash of hindsight.

All the secrets, lies, and consequences feel as authentic as the Appalachian milieu, but the film lacks the memorable idiosyncrasy of a River's Edge, or more fittingly, the myth-making lyricism of Matewan.

Despite Wilson’s early control and aesthetic confidence, there isn’t a single scripted idea of weight or emotionality that pays off.

There are too many vaguely defined interpersonal dynamics and marginal characters (hi, Liv Tyler and Judy Greer!) that distract needlessly from the earnest tone of an outrageous set-up.

Mostly due to the assured polish of cinematographer Sean Stiegemeier, Chapman punches above its featherweight budget, but the punch is ultimately pulled as both strands of the narrative intersect with one last reveal of unresolved melodrama that feels coldly calculated in its cause and effect.

Equally lionizing but richer in detail than the recent Michael Peña-led biopic César Chávez, this occasionally stirring doc portrait of the late Latino labor organizer and civil rights icon frames his legacy around a single act of protest.

The film takes one entire act too long to shake its mopey fog and get crackling.

Gilsig's transformation is quietly convincing, but the film itself is flatter and less cinematically gratifying than most television dramas.

Vertigo this ain’t, but there’s some quasi-Gothic charm in the baroque premise and eccentric marginal details, including a mathematically gifted dwarf.

If the banality of life within the Bordeaux gentry is the point, then the ensuing oppressiveness is immaculately depicted through precise performances and camerawork—just don't call it emotionally engaging drama.

Jersey Girl may have come from his soul, but it contradicts the charm of a Kevin Smith movie.

Directed with little flair, a one-sided perspective and a questionable sense of moral responsibility by Dan Klores (his negligent lack of an editorial voice in the couple's lunacy reeks of train-wreck exploitation), Crazy Love is a disturbingly captivating tabloid horror, but that's not Klores' doing.

When he runs out of material to tickle with, Black dips into his musically tenacious "deedle-diddle-dee" for some sure-fire ridiculousness.

Spoiled by its own insatiable desire for envelope-pushing flair; it’s wider-scoped when it should be intimate, splashy instead of subtle, icky but not scary.

Are these iconic, antihero relics smartly satirized in a post-slasher, or is FVJ just more dated, third-wave trash? Disappointingly, it's the latter.

Technically, it rewards with nothing less than painterly cinematography and a seamless surge of organic soundscapes, but the story is entirely predicated on a weather metaphor so obvious that even an unplugged Doppler radar could detect it.

One-dimensional fluff piece.

When the secret is finally divulged, it’s such a letdown that it feels unfairly manipulative to have sat through such agonizing tedium.

Big and dumb and loud and entirely past its prime.

The Ten has one foot in "Monty Python's Meaning of Life" and another in their "Life of Brian," but ultimately we get the David Letterman School of Comedy: mediocre jokes continually repeated until they sometimes become uncomfortably funny.

What’s missing here is the amnesiac hook that made "The Bourne Identity" such a sleeper hit.

So stupendously funny at times that she (Streep) nearly salvages the whole thing.

The dubious whimsy, devoid of any directorial voice, plays more like a very special episode of Dawson’s Creek.

As a fan, it's upsetting to admit that Dumont's ideas and insights have narrowed with this picture, his relaxed pacing now lethargic, his physically and mentally thick characters too familiar, and his ice-water shocks a bit predictable. It would seem self-parodic if it weren't so damn tragic.

As the phrase turns, it's better when things come off WITHOUT a hitch.

With his latest, the sci-fi–action–adventure The Chronicles of Riddick, Vin Diesel has established himself as the new face of morally ambiguous anti-heroes.

If you subtracted from the story and style components recycled from landmark sci-fi films of Hollywood past, you’d be left with Will Smith wisecracking over a box of unformatted floppies. I, Unimpressed.