Allison Shoemaker

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.

In Andrew Bujalski and Regina Hall’s extremely capable hands, empathy becomes as active and compelling as any car chase, sword fight, or knock-down, drag-out fight. A simple thing, yes, but one well worth a valiant battle.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is one of the most batshit crazy pieces of outright nonsense this writer has ever had the pleasure of encountering, and while calling it an excellent film would be going way too far, I enjoyed every single goddamn second of it.

Clemons’ performance is a subtle, warm wonder.

An Ocean’s film should steal the breath from your body. Instead, it’ll draw some sighs, some smiles, and fervent hopes for a sequel more worthy of its cunning, charismatic thieves.

Vivid is a good word at large, here. There’s a freshness and energy to American Animals.

Restraint and simplicity are words that can be applied to every performance in The Tale, and nearly all of those performances are excellent.

The performances, like the film, are rich, layered things of tremendous feeling and complexity. The characters, like the film, are imperfect but well worthy of cherishing.

Shelton and Duplass may not stray very far from the path which, at the film’s outset, they seem likeliest to take, and not every moment along that path lands quite as well as it could. But like Bird’s score, Outside In knows how to take us from the outside and bring us, well, in.

Uprising plods around like the giant robots that occupy so much of its space, moving too quickly to let almost anything resonate emotionally, but not quickly enough to lend much of an adrenaline rush.

In making a light, easygoing, heartfelt teen rom-com with a gay kid at its center, Berlanti and company have made a top-tier example of a familiar form with one essential and very important difference.

This is Meg Murry’s movie, and while DuVernay’s visually stunning film may occasionally stumble, Reid does nothing less than soar.

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

Give or take one excellent joke about the practical applications of handcuffs — delivered with expert awkwardness by Dakota Johnson, who remains the only moderately charming element of the trilogy — the film is as devoid of wit as it is of subtlety, and that combined absence, courtesy of screenwriter Niall Leonard, leads to some of its biggest unintentional laughs.

There’s a good movie hidden somewhere inside 12 Strong, probably tucked between the many explosions and the endless exposition. Unfussily directed by Nicolai Fuglsig, this is a film that’s all business.

It’s not that the film doesn’t have an opinion on Lewan, it’s that the opinion seems to change every few scenes.

Robbie has been great in many films, including some pretty bad ones (what’s up, Suicide Squad), but she’s outstanding here.

It’s imperfect and gorgeous, and even if it is a dark movie, it’s one I can’t wait to see again. Being confronted with one’s own mortality is a small price to pay for something this good.

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.

Wonderstruck is full of ache and of loss, and each stings just a little differently. The ache of a movie-that-could-have-been stings less than the rest, but it’s there, and more’s the pity.

Boseman, wildly charismatic, captures Marshall as a magnetic figure, and his drive and fervor are intoxicating.

If Battle of the Sexes is more than a little slight in places, it more than makes up for its shortcomings through sheer entertainment value.

For the majority of its runtime, Stronger manages to escape the traps that populate such films. It’s worth seeing, and worth your investment. Let’s just hope that next time around, Pollono and Green find a way to stick the landing.

While the ride is often entertaining and the performances mostly satisfying, it’s a frustrating experience, like watching the journal of the least self-aware person you’ve ever met come to vivid, whining life.

Step may be a touch too glossy, and unusually, a bit too short, but its power is undeniable.

There’s grace to be found in The Beguiled, and delicacy, but what’s most interesting is the brutality and power that seethe beneath the surface.

This film is a goddamned blast. To merely call it the strongest entrant in the DC Entertainment Universe so far is to call Jaws the strongest entrant in the shark movie canon. Say what you will about Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, and Deep Blue Sea, but Wonder Woman is in another class altogether.

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