Andrew Lapin

The film’s brevity really does work against it, giving Nicholson cover to fly by the history of gang warfare without having to dwell on anything for too long.

Revolting plays with interesting ideas about how different generations of activists inspire and feed off of one another, but that theme plays out as blindly congratulatory.

The majority of the cast are non-actors, and act it, judging by their stilted, wooden performances and robotic attempts at simple human interactions. This seems to be the point, since they’re playing non-characters, but such indifference in a film is only tolerable for so long.

Director Richard Loncraine (Wimbledon) and screenwriter Charlie Peters are able to carry this material to some unexpected places. It helps to have two of the most effortlessly charming actors in Hollywood as leads.

The film creates a kind of romantic view of the minutiae of running a museum, yet it’s barely concerned with the actual artwork housed within. Maybe this won’t matter to the audience, if they find the mere idea of a museum fascinating on its own.

More attention paid to the narrative of some of these pieces, rather than simply their craft, could have been more enlightening.

Smith and Kravitz, both tremendously likable, simply don’t have enough to do together.

The film doesn’t ask its stars for much, and they deliver.

Once the Heavies arrive back on the scene, Raisani uses their presence—and the way the military dispatches them—to dodge complexity in favor of shooting stuff for freedom’s last stand. It’s Starship Troopers without the irony. But it looks nice.

Writer-director Jefferson Moneo, tackling his first feature, has a good handle on storytelling economy, and gives his unique setting—the badlands of Saskatchewan, where the movie was filmed and where Moneo calls home—ample time to shine.

Against The Sun, like its rudderless seacraft, goes with the path of least resistance: a talkfest where the men reiterate every obstacle they face out loud (all the better to show off period-friendly dialect), engage in some temporary breakdown of friendly bonds, and pray. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, but there’s also nothing special about it.

Even with a strong first half lampooning the vapidity of American news media, The Interview is the worst thing Rogen has ever done.

There are small attempts at narrative, but the primary lure of Pelican Dreams (for people who like this kind of stuff) is the copious footage of the birds doing goofy pelican things.

A thin but pleasant documentary.

Ultimately, the Tickells cram so much into their 90-minute cause machine that nothing really sticks, and seemingly crucial interviews soon become distant memories.

Director Thomas Allen Harris, who has a background in transmedia art, has made an earnest, though often sloppy, documentary on the essential role imagery plays in shaping the narrative of a people.

Before the hokey third act, there’s much to like about Michael Berry’s border-crossing drama Frontera.

The film is fitfully amusing but a bit too shapeless, even for a story about slackers.

It needs to be emphasized again for the record that The Purge: Anarchy is a tremendously stupid film... But there’s an almost-camp quality to how DeMonaco takes this stupidity to greater heights, building a complex mythology around the plot like a giant moat around a pillow fort.

Cohen’s goal—to bring music to every nursing home—is modest, and the film is smart to follow his lead by keeping bombastic rhetoric to a minimum. Strangely, though, the movie lacks any discussion of professional music therapists, who have been doing this kind of work for decades.

It’s a brutal argument to make: that the most relevant information to convey about the life of an influential writer is the fact that she struggled early and often. This approach may seem philosophically appropriate for a movie about existentialists, but dramatically, it makes the film a bit of a slog.

The filmmakers don’t bother to dig into the psychology of their subjects, or even get to know them as anything more than symbols.

Filth is bolstered by a gonzo performance from McAvoy, who seems determined to out-Bad Lieutenant the American Bad Lieutenants.

The Machine is small science fiction. In a genre that openly invites invention, it barely bothers.

Panning across still photos and scouring island maps like Ken Burns hunting for treasure, Geller and Goldfine (Ballets Russes) whittle a truly insane murder mystery into a competent artifact for Weird History buffs.

Date And Switch is a plucky step in the right direction for diversity in teen comedies, but it lacks the extra oomph to stand on its own merits.

Through all the ham-fisted lunacy, writer-director John Huddles displays an infectious love of philosophy, coupled with an exhilarating, anything-goes filmmaking style.

The chief problem is that no matter what the nameless dude is up to, it hardly seems to matter.