Andrew Crump

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.

More studio comedies should take chances on their principal cast members the way I Want You Back does. Even if little else here worked, at least Day and Slate do.

Fearsome and fearless at the same time, Palm Trees and Power Lines practically dares viewers to watch what’s happening on screen without flinching.

It’s an odd sort of travelogue Leon and Kirby curate here, but Italian Studies’ drifting, artsy peculiarities make 70 minutes fly by with a palliative affection—for Alina, for New York and for all the intersecting stories contained within its bounds.

As mired as it is in identity confusion, cheeseball sentimentality and jaundiced camera filters, The Tender Bar could’ve been something if it had a purpose.

Agnes should excite viewers who like their demonic possession films and nun content fresh; there are nuns, and there is demonic possession, but there’s also Reece’s stubborn commitment to picking a niche and sticking with his aesthetic, which can be summed up as “characters kibitzing in dingy spaces.”

To the Erwins’ credit, they make an effort at taking their movie somewhere interesting and, at least for a Jesus-y football picture, new.

It’s possible for cinema to weave this many themes and concerns together into one cohesive film. The Unforgivable simply doesn’t.

There’s a good movie baked into Being the Ricardos’ 131 minutes. It’s about 90 minutes long, maybe a little less. The remaining 41 minutes comprise an Aaron Sorkin movie, and like too much cream in a beautifully fried donut, they weigh down the total package with needless fat: Talking heads, flashbacks and archival footage.

Guided by Fabietto, the movie takes its time. It watches. It breathes. It captures life with a clarity even Sorrentino’s best efforts haven’t quite—which makes it his best effort to date.

There’s much to like about his work here. Just skip the canapes.

What Imbert has done here, some years down the line, may solidify The Summit of the Gods, a work of fiction, as one of the greatest Everest films ever made. If nothing else it’s the Everest film that respects the mountain best.

Julia, with all of its intimate, personal and professional accounts of her character and her rise to fame, is an interesting movie: Thoroughly enjoyable, brimming with things to say, constructed in a manner that ducks pretense for relatability.

Army of the Dead is a film full of pleasant surprises, but Matthias Schweighöfer, playing a German safecracker with a hair-trigger for impassioned speeches about locks and bolts, is perhaps the most pleasant surprise of them all.

What is a fishing community if restrictions deny their catch? The world continues to change no matter what anyone does. Camilleri understands that dilemma and puts it on film with humble clarity.

Saloum is tense and, when it kicks into high gear, scary as hell.

For a movie about government incompetence married to government malfeasance, Costa Brava, Lebanon is surprisingly funny.

Most of Best Sellers’ problems have to do with structure instead of performance, so there’s not much that Plaza and Caine can do. They’re stymied by the writing and constricted by the direction.

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.

Duplass and Morales play their parts with honesty and grace; they write those parts and the drama between them with straightforward understanding of the complications of remote associations, and the total package is then presented straightforwardly. There’s no other way for screenlife to present itself. But the film loses nothing in that straightforwardness, neither authenticity nor humanity nor Morales’ appeal as an actress-turned-multihyphenate.

[Campbell] and Radwanski pair well. Together, they make Anne at 13,000 Ft. into a work that may leave the audience gasping for air.

Wild Indian doesn’t have answers. There aren’t any. Instead, there are experiences, and Corbine Jr. captures his protagonists’ personal transformations with steeled honesty.

Mosquito State is a profoundly annoying film. Believe it or not, this is meant as the highest compliment.

The Last Matinee embraces the cat-and-mouse game between the killer and those to be killed as horror’s naughty pleasure. It’s central to the genre’s function in cinema.

No one should ask Sweet Girl to be something it isn’t, namely an affecting drama about pharmaceutical evils. For one, it’s self-serious enough as is. But there’s a vast difference between self-seriousness and taking the subject matter seriously.

The problem dogging the film from the start is the absence of insight. Nothing that Wein and Lister-Jones have to say about facing the past, making peace with yourself and with the people who psychologically and emotionally scarred you over the course of your life, or even their most central concern, death, turns out to be worth hearing.