Andrew Crump

Wolf Man grasps the sobriety of how easily men are acculturated to violence by other men, but loosens its hold around the start of its final act: the insularity of its world becomes a crutch rather than an asset, and the plot reassigns the task of solving male abandon to its female characters.

Gray and his leads ably demonstrate how quotidian encounters and minute actions speak volumes. What’s missing is space for those little details to fully speak.

Baghead is moody and atmospheric enough (if low on scares) for about the first hour.

Films like these can hew toward positivity without scrubbing the script of risk, but Glitter & Doom risks next to nothing, except perhaps the Indigo Girls’ dignity.

The film’s observations, as filtered through the duo, feel utterly simplistic, and gain gravity only by the enthusiasm in Goode and Hopkins’ performances.

In place of new, at least, we get to see Butler in his element as a man of compassion first and blazing guns second.

Unfortunately, The Tank’s take on the “creature” component of “creature feature” is so muscular in execution and performance that Walker’s slow-burn approach does his team’s efforts an unintended disservice.

Mustache does its job. It gives Ilyas catalysts for growth other than the cookie duster hanging out under his nose, and the writing invites us to laugh with him, not at him because it’s one thing to laugh and another thing to sneer.

There’s a way to find the humor in life with mental illness. The Year Between, with exceptions, isn’t it.

A remarkable real-life, low-artifice spy thriller becomes unremarkable fiction.

Life Upside Down is a clunky, graceless movie, but it’s utterly engrossing as a stage for letting Odenkirk, Mitchell, Huston and the rest vent their own stir craziness. If you think of the film as more of an outlet than a functioning narrative, it gains value. But that reflective detail isn’t enough to hold our attention, no matter how likable and gifted its authors.

A movie like this shouldn’t be so ambivalent, much less so harsh on the eye.

It’s impossible to watch Bruckner’s adaptation without comparing it to Barker’s. Barker tapped into the darkest locus of human desire and expressed it on screen as shocking carnal violence. Bruckner sands down that perverted, forbidden lust into an accessible blueprint: Setup, kill, exposition, repeat.

Ostensibly, this is a movie about best friends and the exorcism that comes between them. Only the second part of the title lands.

Farrelly’s too busy making a Big Important Movie instead of making a movie that matters.

Instead of exercising artistic liberties over the written word, Louhimies goes all-in on putting those words on screen, a task too great even for nearly two hours of runtime; maybe Attack on Finland would work better if fashioned into a miniseries. Even then, though, it wouldn’t work as the entertainment it aspires toward.

The film should read like an epic. Instead, it reads like a boilerplate sports doc; the kind kept on constant rotation in ski resort taverns where they might catch diners’ attention for a minute or two while they wait on chili and beers.

Huda’s Salon uses strong thread to sew its dual narratives together, but “together” is all they are. They don’t cohere or complement each other save for providing two distinct paths into Abu-Assad’s exploration of Palestinian identity and life, contextualized in women’s experiences as members of a patriarchal society.

No one can top Hooper or “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” or even match them. Garcia is smart enough not to put on airs. He just lets Leathersaw rip.

Edwin declines to make a choice between idiosyncrasy and action, and his work winds up feeling like a loosely related assembly of material instead of a finished film.

Headey’s in her element. Gillan is capable. But Papushado’s excesses hold them back from performing at their best.

Ultimately it’s very little about football. It’s about class. This is a theme worthy of a spotlight, too — but 12 Mighty Orphans isn’t the place for it, or it shouldn’t be.

Noyer needs to go back to the drawing board. Even Alexis’ disability comes in a distant second to buckets of guts. His talent for making a mess is obvious. The rest leaves a few too many notes to be desired.

The Killing of Two Lovers is remarkable to behold, but all the technique in the world can’t distract from the holes littering the production beyond cinematographer Oscar Ignacio Jiminez’s lens.

As an arrival, Undergods impresses, but what’s under the surface needs finessing.

Ultimately the film resembles cosplay with an expansive budget. It took 20 years and change for a new Mortal Kombat movie to get a green light. Maybe they should’ve waited a few years longer.

Chaos Walking feels like a condensement of Ness’ trilogy of books instead of a straightforward translation of the first, and consequently there’s too much that needs to happen in too slim a running time, which leaves little space for making the movie’s conflicts matter.

Frankly, Earwig and the Witch looks ghastly enough that storytelling merit doesn’t even matter. It’s a movie almost too ugly to consider beyond the surface.