Allison Shoemaker

When Lawrence plays to the cheap seats, the film comes to life. When she’s the blank slate expected of a spy thriller, it falters, because it doesn’t play as though she’s concealing or deceiving. It plays as though she’s empty

Ghost in the Shell is a visually arresting film, even occasionally an entertaining one, but profound it ain’t. That’s no crime, but dressed up as it is in the trappings of a much smarter film, its significant shortcomings stand out every bit as much as a pair of pert breasts on a supposedly utilitarian body.

Good actors can’t make up for narrative inconsistency. Beasts can’t erase the frustration of seeing characters you love behave in ways that make no sense. One can forgive retconning backstory where it doesn’t belong if it feels true to the fictional world you love. That doesn’t happen here.

Everything, Everything is a film that achieves its ends in appealing fashion.

It’s great when a film leaves you wanting more, but not when you weren’t given much to begin with.

It’s all too calculated to really have an impact, to grant audiences an honest chance for catharsis.

The film’s flaws aside (those will come later), Blunt’s performance is a hell of a thing, wholly lacking in vanity and brimming with honest, ugly feeling.

It is neither disaster nor dream, landing firmly somewhere in the disappointing middle.

Unfortunately, the reverence Howard and screenwriter Charles Leavitt seem to feel for the material ultimately dooms it to—if you’ll pardon the seafaring reference—float along in the doldrums, doomed to a driftless existence enlivened only by the occasional giant whale.

It’s better than you may expect, a mostly tolerable movie made occasionally enjoyable by a few lively performances, one good fight sequence, and a solid punchline or two.

Because it’s Claire Foy’s turn, The Girl in the Spider’s Web cannot honestly be called a colossal waste of time. It’s merely a moderate waste.

What we really get is a film made of utter nonsense that’s even less interested in its characters than it is in telling a story.

In attempting to tell the story of this young woman’s death — not her life, no time for that either — I Still Believe cheapens it.

Serenity is often stylish. It is never, ever dull. It is also deeply stupid.

Together, Weaver and Keaton sometimes manage to tease out the movie inside the movie, the one drawn to the connections between death and joy, youthfulness and mortality.

The film has spent so much time telegraphing its own depth that it forgets to create any, and thus when that wig arrives, we have no reason to view it as anything other than ridiculous.

Blakeson and screenwriters Susannah Grant, Akiva Goldsman, and Jeff Pinkner don’t seem to care much about telling the story. They’re just checking off the boxes.

It’s a shame, because Garner’s herculean efforts throw the film’s sloppiness into even sharper relief. Like Keanu Reeves, Garner has a gift for making every kick, punch, bullet, and desk dropped on someone’s head feel like a spontaneous decision.