Andrew O'Hehir

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Salon
For 1,494 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 65% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 33% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 4.4 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Andrew O'Hehir's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 70
Highest review score: 100 Mother
Lowest review score: 0 The Water Diviner
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,045 out of 1494
  2. Mixed: 346 out of 1494
  3. Negative: 103 out of 1494
1494 movie reviews
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    • 39 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Gunman
    It’s clearly a directorial accomplishment to assemble this level of acting talent in one movie and come away with something so – well, “bad” is not sufficient to capture the idiot glory of this motion picture.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Cartel Land
    If the ambiguity of these stories may frustrate some viewers – we long to be clearly told which of these people are good, if any, and which bad – that is the ambiguity of the world, the ambiguity addressed by Heineman’s Michoacán friend with the bandana and the AK-47.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Interstellar
    So this is the greatest Shyamalan movie ever made by someone else, or maybe it’s Christopher Nolan’s best impression of what a Shyamalan movie ought to be like. No doubt that sounds like a backhanded compliment, but I don’t entirely mean it that way.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Ip Man 2
    Nearly as enjoyable as the original. Its not-so-secret weapon is the poised, calm performance of Yen, who somehow manages to play Ip as both character and archetype.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Trouble Every Day
    A haunting and terrifying film. It's also a film of wonderful spaces and silences.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Adult World
    This is a performance of great subtlety, not a caustic caricature: Rat (Cusack) still believes in something, probably still in some Platonic ideal of poetic possibility.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
    Director Michel Hazanavicius captures the jet-age atmosphere, form-fitting wardrobes, jazz-ethnic soundtrack and bouffant hairdos of JFK/de Gaulle-era espionage films in perfect detail, but it's Dujardin's performance as the suave, confident and utterly clueless Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath (to Francophones, a name that drips with phony aristocratic pretension) that gives "OSS 117" its edge.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Cedar Rapids
    Often hilarious, although I found it so amped-up and overly broad that I was exhausted before the movie was over.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    How Do You Know
    In essence, the movie is an ungainly but irresistible romantic-triangle comedy built around Rudd, Reese Witherspoon and Owen Wilson, with Nicholson rambling around its periphery like a demonic bear, part comic relief and part distraction.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Monumental: David Brower's Fight for Wild America
    An engaging, well-made docu that admirably captures the singular importance of its subject.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Puffy Chair
    While it would be accurate to call the film a comedy, the Duplasses are trying to wrestle something closer to Chekhov than to farce out of the lives of these semi-likable, highly recognizable people.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Avenue Montaigne
    Avenue Montaigne, is a delicious French pastry, tart and sweet, steeped in Parisian glamour.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Amazing Spider-Man
    Pretty good summer flick!
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Winter Passing
    Deschanel is great, with her feral eyes and Joey Ramone shag haircut, and Ferrell is fantastic. This one's worth the effort to find.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    A/k/a Tommy Chong
    This is a small film, but it moved me and made me angry. Both reactions, in this context, are worthwhile.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Ring
    A deviously engineered parasite that'll crawl under your skin and live in your nervous system for a while if you give it half a chance.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Backcountry
    Another way of reading a movie like this is that it channels our ancient hatred of nature while recognizing that it’s essentially nostalgic, and that the occasional hungry ursine cannot compete with the animal we really have reason to fear.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Detachment
    People will either love Detachment or hate it, and either way it provides powerful testimony to the unrivaled passion and undiminished craft of director Kaye, whose notoriety in the film industry is matched by his near-total invisibility to the general public.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Total Recall (2012)
    Total Recall is a doggone good time, with a bunch of nifty technical and visual flourishes, competently managed plot twists and elegant, Wachowski-esque action choreography that eventually becomes deadening because there's just too much of it and it's dialed up too high.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Eden
    Thrumming with anguish and erotic vitality, Eden paints a heartbreaking portrait of a newly affluent country (freed from dour priests, whiskey-soaked revolutionaries and shawl-clad women) afflicted with emotional growing pains.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Babel
    I hate to criticize anybody for artistic ambition, but the problem with Babel isn't that it's a bad movie. It's a good movie, or, more accurately, it's several pieces of good movie, chopped up in service of a pretentious, portentous and slightly silly artistic vision.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    CBGB
    CBGB has more of the original prankish punk spirit than it even recognizes.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Woman on the Beach
    Dry, wry, difficult-to-capture comedy.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Rubberneck
    Rubberneck immediately put me in mind of the classic slow burn of vintage thrillers like Fritz Lang’s “M” and Michael Powell’s “Peeping Tom,” although Karpovsky and co-writer Garth Donovan have cited all kinds of other things, from “Michael Clayton” to “Caché” to “Fatal Attraction.”
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Hot Tub Time Machine
    At its best the film is blissfully, anarchically funny, and director Steve Pink keeps the pace crackling.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Soldiers Pay
    Not among the most memorable works in this genre, but its deliberate lack of artifice and its stitched-together quality possess an undeniable power.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Free Zone
    Gitai's experimental technique in Free Zone is dizzying, sometimes thrilling.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    World War Z
    A genuinely exciting thrill ride that only occasionally feels bloated or painfully dumb.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
    Pedestrian but appealing.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Hanna
    Hanna is almost a terrific movie, or a partly terrific one, but all its giddy, improvised wonder resolves into nothing more than a ruthless, symmetrical story about a murderous monster.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Lady Chatterley
    If a film can be both lush and cold, both erotic and cautious, that film is Lady Chatterley. It's a picture to honor and appreciate, not necessarily to love.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Examined Life
    By conducting her conversations in public spaces, and removing her interlocutors from desks and offices and book-lined studies and other appurtenances of intellectual authority, Taylor introduces a degree of playfulness and unpredictability that becomes the movie's M.O.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Sir! No Sir!
    It will change your understanding of the Vietnam era, even if you were alive then.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Baader Meinhof Complex
    This is no art film, but Edel and Eichinger supply an action-packed, reasonably coherent account of youthful rock 'n' roll idealism run amok, and how it produced the craziest phenomenon of the crazy European far left.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Wassup Rockers
    Shifting his focus away from white kids seems to have done Clark good, because Wassup Rockers is the least sensationalistic, and hence the least moralistic, of his films. It's an enjoyable if haphazard picaresque.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Silent Light
    It's amazingly beautiful and it tests your patience; both things are par for the course with Reygadas, After that, you've either surrendered to his idiosyncratic sense of rhythm, or you're out of there.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Rise of the Planet of the Apes
    I kind of enjoyed Rise of the Planet of the Apes despite its evident silliness and the fact that nobody's likely to remember it three weeks from now.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Life of Crime
    With the genial pairing of Jennifer Aniston as a rich guy’s trophy wife and John Hawkes as a low-rent criminal at the center of a colorful cast and a pitch-perfect rendering of caste-divided Detroit, Life of Crime is a bittersweet end-of-summer surprise.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    City Island
    Pretty damned irresistible. What begins as a winning workout in a highly familiar genre -- the white-ethnic, big-city family comedy -- gradually gains both screwball momentum and emotional power, and delivers an unexpected punch by the time it reaches its climactic pileup of characters and revelations.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Great Water
    Despite his reliance on visual cliché, Trajkov mines a rich vein of morbid Slavic comedy, and his young characters have an appetite for adventure that's thoroughly unfake.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Jimmy Carter Man from Plains
    I'm still not quite sure why it's so compelling. I think this movie's appeal is overdetermined, as we used to say in sophomore Marxist-theory class, meaning that it derives from so many sources you can't keep track of them all.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Mister Foe
    May not be entirely original or entirely successful, but it's definitely fun to watch.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    New York Doll
    As sad stories go, this is a happy one.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    My Best Friend
    Terrifically acted, reassuringly formulaic, and moderately amusing.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story
    Abduction sheds light onto one of the strangest episodes in recent Asian history, but the murk that hangs over North Korea is still too deep for much light to penetrate.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Be Kind Rewind
    An achingly sweet, shambling creation that takes its time and wanders through slow-moving sight gags and odd supporting performances (like Mia Farrow's, as a dithery, lonely woman who is among the store's only customers) and ends up with a marvelously warm community-melding scene out of maybe 1924, with a bunch of people standing around on the street watching a black-and-white silent film.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Saint of 9/11
    The simplicity and profundity of that faith, and the unquestionable nobility of Judge's death, are well captured here.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Close to Home
    I won't argue for the cinematic virtues of this film; they don't exist. But as a pseudo-documentary portrait of real life behind the explosive headlines, it's absorbing.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Robin Hood
    Despite its abundant flaws and historical howlers and generally dimwitted tone, Robin Hood is a surprisingly enjoyable work of popcorn cinema, if you're willing to take it on its own terms.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Chronicles
    Despite all that South American sunshine, this lean and brilliantly constructed thriller is a dark realm of secrets and lies, illuminated by TV lighting and the glitter of John Leguizamo's eyes. Those in search of life-affirming family entertainment might want to stick with Ingmar Bergman.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    When the Sea Rises
    A delightfully off-kilter love story. I don't want to oversell this winsome little movie, but if you want a bittersweet but cheerful pick-me-up on a cold winter evening, it's just the ticket.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Intimate Stories
    This is a charming, low-key entry in the burgeoning tradition of travelog indies -- by which I mean feature films that take you to some godforsaken outback you're unlikely to visit personally.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    21 Grams
    Uprooted from their home soil, González Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga can't quite manage to make this gloomy, improbable stew of romance, film noir and pseudo-metaphysical speculation hang together.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Climates
    Contrary to what you may read elsewhere, Climates is not a masterpiece, a word that gets pompously thrown around a lot at pictures few paying customers actually want to see. It is, rather, a meticulous study of a crumbling relationship, marked by many luminous small moments and a startling interruption of violent eroticism.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Trumbo
    A clean and agreeable biopic that restores some vitality to a fascinating episode in 20th-century cultural and political history.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Game 6
    A modest but agreeable, and often very funny, movie.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    We're the Millers
    We’re the Millers has just the right stupid, humane vulgarity for the dog days of August.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Hello I Must Be Going
    If it's too subtle (and too similar to several other low-key indie romcoms) to make a big splash, it's got lovely performances and really builds strength as it goes along.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Tomorrowland
    The wonder of Tomorrowland – and with all its flaws and its hidebound Disney formula, it really is wonderful – is that Bird’s tale of nostalgia for the lost future manages to recapture some of that original, optimistic meaning without losing sight of the newer and darker one.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    We Are Wizards
    It's highly enjoyable even if (like me) you're not much of a Potterphile.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Dinosaur 13
    This is not one of those Eisenhower-Little Rock moments where you get to feel warm and fuzzy about the power of the state being on the right side of history.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    2 Days in Paris
    Delpy's writing is sharply observed and often hilarious, and her own performance as the perennially enraged Marion -- whom she says was inspired by Robert De Niro's Jake LaMotta in "Raging Bull" -- is one of her most memorable.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Che
    I was never bored, in four hours-plus. Whether or not it ends up becoming a great film (or films), this is miles and miles beyond anything I thought Soderbergh could create from this material.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    A Million Ways to Die in the West
    While the whole thing feels weirdly miscalculated to me, A Million Ways to Die in the West tweaks the formula just enough, delivers a few laughs and keeps the guest stars coming.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Late Bloomers
    An entertaining diversion, mostly because Rossellini and Hurt are a pair of seasoned and graceful pros who know how to work every line and every gesture, and it's great to see them playing characters who are exactly their age.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    God Grew Tired of Us
    This is an important film. It's amazing that it exists, and the events it recounts are still more amazing. Everybody should see it.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Other Guys
    It's a mixed bag with plenty of gags that fall flat, not a comic masterpiece. But it's got tremendous zing, a sense of mischief and a big heart, more than enough to mark it as a delicious shot of caffeinated ice cream, and the summer season's funniest comedy.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Mr. Popper's Penguins
    There's no story beyond the utterly formulaic and not the slightest semblance of realism, but your kids will enjoy it if they're young enough and pretty easy to please.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Middle Men
    Even as this film unravels into incoherent, self-justifying moral instruction, it never becomes boring to watch.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Arlington Road
    A movie where style and craft are fatally confused with substance, and where almost no effort is made to make the characters seem like believable people.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Paradise Now
    Paradise Now isn't a comfortable viewing experience, but it isn't meant to be. Inevitably, people's reactions to this subject matter -- and this filmmaker's handling of it -- are all over the map. All I can say is that I found it a tremendously compelling existential thriller that kept me up late the night I saw it, and it has resonated in my brain ever since.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Lower City
    Despite the lurid content, this is a beautifully made film that reaches for moral seriousness and resists facile judgments.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Attack the Block
    Attack the Block hovers in that uneasy zone between eager-beaver likability and trying way too hard to be cool, but it captures its gritty setting with unusual affection. Science-fiction buffs seeking a change of pace and fans of British pop culture shouldn't miss it.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Haiku Tunnel
    The charm and the shoddiness of Haiku Tunnel stem from the same source. It's basically a San Francisco underground theater production that somehow escaped onto the movie screen without losing any of its eccentric, insular qualities.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Thorn in the Heart
    A quiet, unglamorous film that sneaks up on you slowly. I found it had a lovely, peculiar emotional resonance by the time it was over, but it's likely to appeal more to documentary buffs and obsessive Gondry fans than ordinary moviegoers.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Thor
    Branagh's completely at home in this kind of inflated family drama, of course, and the three guys yell, sulk and brood in their ridiculous costumes to fine effect.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Star Trek: Insurrection
    Outsiders will find this schtick-laden, mildly exciting adventure yarn an inoffensive triviality, while fans will savor one more encounter with Picard, Riker, Data, Worf and the gang, replete with all the well-worn character tics and platitudinous parables about the contemporary world they expect.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie
    Watching a movie about the late trash-TV pioneer turns out to be fascinating, even when his story is told as messily as it is here.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Primo Levi's Journey
    Primo Levi's Journey is a profound meditation on the unevenness of history, reminding us -- as Faulkner once remarked -- that the past not only isn't dead, it isn't really past at all.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Instinct
    Although Instinct is strictly a Hollywood formula picture, it's such an efficiently executed one, built around two such outstanding actors, that for the most part you won't mind.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Lustre
    But if the storytelling is murky, the filmmaking is stunning and, more important, the passion for this city -- its people and landscape -- is pure.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    RED
    All those guys are a blast, and the dark-hearted idiocy of Red is mostly quite enjoyable.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    39 Pounds of Love
    Sloppy but cheerful documentary.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Adventures of Tintin
    Although I personally still find the rubber-faced, pseudo-human figures produced by this technique unsettling, the work done by Spielberg and Jackson's animation teams here is exquisite.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Manderlay
    To state the obvious, Manderlay is often patently offensive in its racial politics, and it surely isn't for everyone. It is, however, very funny, very dark and very skillfully played.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
    It’s a diverting ride, played out against spectacular locations, that repackages a whole bunch of familiar elements and attitudes: A little latter-day Bond, a little Jason Bourne, a little John le Carré, a little 1950s Hitchcock.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Five Minutes of Heaven
    Captures the awful intimacy and the grimy, second-rate quality of the Northern Ireland conflict in resonant fashion.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Amira & Sam
    Amira & Sam came along and swept me off my feet, like Fabio riding a stallion. It largely works thanks to Starr and Shihabi, a pair of likable and restrained actors who build slowly from tangible discomfort toward an unexpected passionate chemistry.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
    There's definitely some empty-calories, summer-movie fun to be found in this ludicrous genre mashup, most of it courtesy of maniacal Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, who stages hilarious, imaginative, almost free-form action sequences like nobody in the business.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Man Who Wasn't There
    What makes me respect The Man Who Wasn't There despite myself is the sense that the Coens want it to be about something that can't be described or defined.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Thor: The Dark World
    It’s a highly capable sequel that drinks long and deep from the established Marvel legendarium and brings back all the key players from Kenneth Branagh’s 2011 hit “Thor.”
    • 42 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Home of the Brave
    Home of the Brave isn't exactly a subtle or a delicate picture -- it's an old-fashioned Hollywood movie, at least in tone, that's being released like an indie -- but it has some terrific acting and comes straight from the heart.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Turn Me On, Dammit!
    This yarn about an innocent-looking but desperately horny teenage girl might not have that much commercial upside, but its bittersweet, faintly depressed brand of Nordic humor is definitely enjoyable.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Avengers: Age of Ultron
    I enjoyed Age of Ultron more than its predecessor, despite the fact that it’s almost exactly the same thing. This was probably a result of adjusting my expectations: I wasn’t sitting there waiting for Whedon to revolutionize the genre, or to turn an overdetermined comic-book movie into a Noel Coward comedy. He delivers a clean and capable entertainment, with a handful of distinctive flourishes stuck to the margins.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Autumn
    Autumn is actually pretty damn good. It's a defiantly odd work, a movie-movie set more in the crime-film Paris of Jean-Pierre Melville or Jacques Becker or early Godard than in the real 21st century city.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Next Three Days
    A ponderous but mesmerizing tick-tock thriller.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Our Brand Is Crisis
    What makes Boynton's film stand out amid the current crop of political documentaries is its rigorous reportorial fairness, and its refusal to simplify material in order to score facile ideological points.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Aurora Borealis
    Juliette Lewis makes Aurora Borealis into a funnier, richer, more powerful film than it has any reason to be.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Star Trek Into Darkness
    There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Star Trek Into Darkness – once you understand it as a generic comic-book-style summer flick faintly inspired by some half-forgotten boomer culture thing. (Here’s something to appreciate about Abrams: This is a classic PG-13 picture, with little or no sex or swearing, but one that never condescends.)
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Double Dare
    It's a classic gal-pal movie, perfect for daughters, sisters, moms and the guys whose asses they kick.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
    Some of the knife-twisting later scenes in "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" feel almost campy, like winks at the audience or studious self-referentiality. None of this is quite enough to ruin a gripping, gruesome fable, which of course del Toro's fans and other genre buffs will rush out to see, but it does render the movie a minor muddle rather than a horror masterwork.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Beauty Remains
    Hu, a Chinese-American immigrant who made a mid-career switch from business to filmmaking, approaches these characters with genuine passion and compassion, and her evident talent shines through the timeworn material. Acting by all three principals is tremendous.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Cats of Mirikitani
    An irresistible fable of reconciliation and forgiveness.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Turin Horse
    I left the theater oddly exhilarated - to see daylight again was so great! - and, odder still, eager to see it again (although perhaps not today). Tarr's films can be arduous, even wrenching, but they're not boring. Watching them is something like visiting the world's most fantastic art museum and taking an ice-cold shower, both at the same time.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Janie Jones
    A compelling and unpretentious indie built around two wonderfully layered performances and straightforward storytelling. Give it a listen.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Tickled
    It seems like it’s more about what happens after the tickling stops, which is also when Tickled stops being hilarious.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    On the Outs
    A scared-straight after-school special, but actually good.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    2 Guns
    2 Guns is both enjoyable trash and a fascinating snapshot of Hollywood’s current mentality when it comes to the United States government.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Been Rich All My Life
    Been Rich All My Life is something like the "Ballets Russes" of tap dancing. I'm delighted to report that the similarities include the fact that the Belles are transmitting their improvisatory "rhythm tap" style to generations of younger dancers.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Elegy
    While excellent in many technical respects, is a muted, pretty, anesthetic concoction that's never fully satisfying.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Friends with Benefits
    On the whole, Friends With Benefits is a rewarding summer diversion, albeit one that's fatally torn between what it wants to be -- riotous, anarchic and anti-moralistic -- and the disappointing wet-blanket formula it reverts to in the end.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Only Human
    A movie that is never elegant but is often hysterically funny, and maintains a rabbit-on-speed pace that Hollywood comedy long ago abandoned.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Descent
    It's a lot like a '70s exploitation movie, with its determination to seduce and shock the viewer with alternating currents of electrical stimulus, and its weird combination of arty arch-decadence and neo-Victorian moralizing.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Brave
    Moms and girls everywhere deserve this movie, absolutely, and I hope they have a great time. But they also deserve much more, and much better.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
    However you respond to it, the fraught sexual and investigative chemistry between Mikael and Lisbeth is the most powerful ingredient of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The movie's second half is a capably executed but mostly by-the-numbers procedural.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Side Effects
    It’s masterfully shot and edited, with a brooding soundtrack and a mysterious, dreamlike undertow – and, when all is revealed, it’s not even half as interesting as it seems to be.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Revisionaries
    One of the great things about Scott Thurman's film - a low-budget but thoroughly watchable documentary, largely funded on Kickstarter – is that it helped me see the world from McLeroy's point of view, which I might previously have considered impossible.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Water Lilies
    Dismissed in some quarters as trash because it depicts a sexual act (of sorts) between two teenage girls, Water Lilies struck me instead as a hypnotic and wholly convincing look at teen culture from the inside, with all its courage, cruelty and unspoken codes of silence intact.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Good Will Hunting
    It isn't surprising that the film was originally based on actors' improvisations, since it creates a universe of tremendously enjoyable characters and allows them plenty of room to roam, but has only the most predictable notion of plot and nothing whatever to say beyond be-yourself pieties.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
    Occasionally thrilling, sometimes hilarious and mostly absolute claptrap. Think of it as a lot like drinking a fourth cup of holiday eggnog: Not really a good idea at all, but you might have fun.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    My Week with Marilyn
    My Week With Marilyn is the kind of shtick-laden movie in the British TV mode that delivers all its laughs, and all its grand, declamatory moments, right on schedule. I'm delighted to recommend it, as long as you know what you're in for: "The King's Speech" has the subtlety of Chekhov in comparison.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Order of Myths
    Moving and surprising documentary.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Sorry, Haters
    A well-acted little thriller of the sort sometimes called a "twisty" -- I wouldn't call it a great movie, but it'll keep you guessing about its characters and it has an intriguing mean streak.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Eye in the Sky
    The conscientious precision and painstaking identification in Eye in the Sky is presented as morally murky; Mirren’s character leans hard on a subordinate to give her an acceptable estimate of collateral damage, so the politicians will say yes. Even so it may be an overly reassuring picture.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Stephanie Daley
    Despite an overly abrupt and oblique conclusion, this is a major American film, announcing the arrival of an independent director who deserves all the hype.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Germans & Jews
    The truly remarkable thing about this modest little movie is the revelation of how much change is possible within a relatively short time.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Yes Men Are Revolting
    The great strength and great weakness of the Yes Men, not to put too fine a point on it, is that they’re a couple of dorks. Their props, costumes and supporting materials are invariably crude – but they are sincere and unafraid, or at least unafraid enough to brazen it out.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Caramel
    It's a reassuring and delicious film, but in no sense an adventurous one.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    An Unreasonable Man
    May indeed induce dizziness, sweating and hot-and-cold flashes among politically minded leftists.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Steal a Pencil for Me
    There have been dozens of Holocaust documentaries, and one could well argue that the world doesn't need another. But Michèle Ohayon's Steal a Pencil for Me offers a simple human story of dignity, levity and romance.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    X-Men: Days of Future Past
    I basically really enjoyed this movie, even while lamenting that I was enjoying it under mendacious premises and that there was something fundamentally cynical about its elegiac, retrospective tone.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    American Hardcore
    Some of American Hardcore is amusing -- many of the aging punks Rachman and Blush track down have turned into highly ordinary middle-aged Americans -- and some is profoundly disturbing.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Deep End of the Ocean
    So finely crafted, so alive with wonderful acting and an extraordinary commitment to realism that most audiences will be happy to surrender themselves to its improbable ride.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Horrible Bosses
    As inconsequential and virtually indistinguishable sub-Judd Apatow white-boy comedies fueled by prison-rape gags and pants-pissing anxiety around black people go, Horrible Bosses is pretty solid entertainment.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Two Faces of January
    A subtle, underplayed psychological drama with terrific work by all three actors.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Fahrenheit 9/11
    Fahrenheit 9/11 is more like a drug experience than a political documentary. It's a mind-bending, half-digested mass of video clips, interviews, statistics, rampant speculation and the cheap gags Moore has never been able to resist.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    SherryBaby
    The wonder of Sherrybaby is that we can admire Sherry's exuberance and evident love of life -- and the extraordinary actress who portrays her -- without really being sure where she's going.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The 11th Hour
    Arguably a more important movie, which more clearly lays out what must be done to save the world, and how we can begin.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Descent
    While the women's battle with the cave creatures has fine jump-from-your-seat moments, it gradually becomes the same chase flick horror fans have seen dozens of times. OK, it's a darn good one in most respects.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    In Search of a Midnight Kiss
    Profane, hilarious and ultimately heartbreaking, Alex Holdridge's black-and-white feature In Search of a Midnight Kiss has a gutter purity that makes you root for it all the way and forgive its patches of ultra-indie awkwardness.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Final Destination 2
    Essentially dumb and sadistic, but it's not like that's something new for pop culture. What we've got here is a solid, grade-B genre sequel, not as scary as the original but a bit funnier, and with a nasty little sting in its tail.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Just Another Love Story
    You could call Just Another Love Story nothing more than an exercise in style, but A) Bornedal's got style to burn and B) that's not quite fair. Beneath all the dazzling cinematography, propulsive score and overcommitted acting, I found this movie an affecting, mordant comedy about male midlife crisis in its most extreme form.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Super
    Super is occasionally brilliant, sometimes awful and terribly confusing overall.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Magic Mike XXL
    This isn’t a perfect movie, but it might be the perfect summer movie for 2015.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    A League of Ordinary Gentlemen
    Following four players through the first season of Miller's regime, Browne captures not just a high-energy sports spectacle played out in the bowling megaplexes of outer suburbia but, even more interestingly, a clash of cultures between bowling's hallowed past and its possible future.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Wall
    An important human and artistic testament -- a calm meditation on something no one can consider calmly.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Irrational Man
    Let’s give Allen full credit, by the way, for casting Posey as this wounded, sexy and emotionally rich middle-aged woman, a character enormously more interesting than Jill.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!
    After this movie, the Beasties and their fans, camera-totin' or not, are left drenched, exhausted, delighted.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Informant!
    Not for the first time in his career, Soderbergh has made a mainstream film that is simultaneously a thought experiment.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Death of a President
    Range has a marvelous feel for the clichés and conventions of TV-news documentary, and the tone of mournful elegy he strikes here is both convincing and -- believe me, I'm shocked to be writing this -- moving.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Kandahar
    A stark and beautiful film traces a Afghan woman's journey across a landscape we may never understand.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Hotel
    If you're ready to roll with Hotel and take what it gives you, there's some rich entertainment here.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Antiviral
    Brandon Cronenberg clearly understands that he has to deal with the legacy of his last name, and Antiviral feels to me like a perverse act of exorcism, half tribute and half cleansing ritual.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Hostel
    I admired the humor, the tremendous craftsmanship and even the shock value of Hostel, but found the Grand Guignol torture scenes excessive. (Unless you're a hardcore fan of Italian, Spanish and Japanese gore flicks, you've never seen anything like this.)
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Lawless
    Lawless offers a compelling, gruesome and instructive time-travel exercise.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Happy Here and Now
    It's perhaps most remarkable as a sweet, mysterious portrait of pre-flood New Orleans, which Almereyda not incorrectly portrays as a land of wandering, uncertain souls.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Unbroken
    A rousing old-fashioned yarn with numerous exciting set-pieces and an uncomplicated hero you root for all the way through. It’s entertaining throughout and made with a high level of technical skill. If made 40 years ago, it would have been a leading Oscar contender and a huge hit, whereas today it’s a bit “meh” in both categories
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Offside
    There's a commitment to half-improvised, ground-level realism that lends the picture news value and an obvious urgency.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.
    A strange piece of work, perhaps closer to an imaginative portrait or an experimental fiction that borrows elements from real life than a traditional documentary.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Black Gold
    Black Gold is more an Al Gore-style message of hope than a total downer.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Thing
    I'm delighted to tell you that the new Thing was made by people who understand what the horror audience wants and don't treat it like a bunch of brain-dead children. Mirabile freakin' dictu.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Trapped by the Mormons
    Director Ian Allen (a longtime playwright and stage director) has lovingly re-created the look and indeed narrative style of silent film -- and he's from Salt Lake City, so if he says Mormons are vampires with hypnotic powers, who am I to argue? I suppose this is a one-note joke, more in the style of '70s avant-garde camp than anything else. But, hey, at least it's a funny joke.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Cote d'Azur
    A finely balanced piece of comedic machinery.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Killer Inside Me
    Winterbottom's adaptation of the novel is spellbinding cinema, with all the atmosphere, technical excellence and expert pacing the British director is known for.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Kung Fu Hustle
    Chow depends way too much on jokey computer graphics that make the whole thing feel like a superhero comic, instead of athleticism or charisma or good storytelling, and that Kung Fu Hustle wears itself out long before it's over.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Inside Out
    It’s a lovely film that requires a little patience and a friendly disposition, and may be too low-impact to thrive amid a summer of grotesquely overengineered sequels.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The To Do List
    This is definitely a formula movie, lovingly and even obsessively so, made by someone who obviously enjoyed “American Pie” and numerous other raunchy-sweet teen sex comedies of the ’90s, and wished they existed for girls.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Shining
    Stephen King reportedly loathed the liberties Kubrick and co-writer Diane Johnson took with his story, but King's ur-villain, the emasculated husband from hell, has never been more clearly presented on-screen.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Wackness
    Nothing is surprising, that is, except the fact that the film has a big heart, a core of sweetness and tremendous cinematic ambition.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Overnight
    It takes discipline in this age of bloat to bring your movie in under 80 minutes, closing credits included, and still make the audience feel we’ve been taken on a genuine journey with these people, a few big laughs and jagged left turns included.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Tyson
    Tyson does succeed in humanizing a deeply troubled individual who has been depicted as an almost animalistic stereotype of African-American manhood.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Bridesmaid
    A prickly, twisted, mean-spirited, borderline crazy and highly seductive picture.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Choke
    A fantastical sex farce, and a highly amusing one at that, without being the least bit momentous or memorable.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Sleeping Beauty
    I found it gorgeous, opaque and disturbing in roughly equal portions, but it was a riveting experience all the way through.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Matador
    Undeniably clever.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Pusher III: I'm the Angel of Death
    Pusher III is also, far more clearly than the earlier films, a chronicle of life in the rapidly changing ethnic mix of western Europe.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Devil's Rejects
    Much of Devil's Rejects is absolutely hilarious, especially the brief appearance by a Gene Shalit-like film critic who explicates all the Groucho Marx references. Zombie's eye for the faux-'70s detail is perfect.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Standard Operating Procedure
    While this does not strike me as the most urgent element of Standard Operating Procedure, Morris makes a persuasive case that many of the Abu Ghraib photos don't show us what we think they do, and that some of the episodes depicted were staged specifically to be photographed (and might not otherwise have occurred).
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Lila Says
    Unsurprisingly, the camerawork in Lila Says is spectacular.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Cocaine Cowboys
    An exhaustive, exciting and ultimately exhausting history of how that white powder, and the Colombian crime lords who imported it by the hundreds of kilos, transformed the culture and economy of Miami, for good and for ill.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Page Turner
    It's a fine example of the excellence of French genre film right now: A dark tale of revenge with an inscrutable heart, ice in its veins and an electric undercurrent of eroticism, it also might be the best-photographed picture I've seen so far this year.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Dinner for Schmucks
    Carell's performance as Barry, is nothing short of magnificent.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Great World of Sound
    Morally ambiguous, subtly crafted, resolutely free of cliché and made with almost no money, The Great World of Sound is under-the-radar independent filmmaking in the Jarmusch-Cassavetes mode, both noble and ruthless in spirit.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Lone Survivor
    Lone Survivor has no politics in the sense that it presents a more or less factual story about Luttrell and his comrades trying to fight their way out against overwhelming odds, and tells the truth that most of them didn’t make it. But the visual symbolism and the iconography of this movie are not apolitical or ideologically neutral at all.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Eye
    Although I have mixed feelings about The Eye, there's no question the Pangs have a natural talent for cinema. They create bright, unfussy images and work terrifically with actors.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    ...So Goes the Nation
    This is a conventional political documentary with a conventional view of what happened in the Buckeye State and why, but it's no less fascinating for all that.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Extra Man
    You'll either find The Extra Man utterly charming or thoroughly mystifying, but either way Kevin Kline, playing a community-theater version of himself, with all the foppishness and Shakespearean pretension but half the talent and none of the luck, inhabits its peculiar soul.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Carnage
    Seeing these four actors launching Reza's zingers at each other at high speed is pretty much worth the price of admission all by itself, and one thing you always know about Polanski is that he won't waste your time.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The U.S. vs. John Lennon
    Sheds some unexpected light on the uneven and still undigested career of one of the most paradoxical artists pop culture has yet produced.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Bad Turn Worse
    Any thriller from first-time directors that starts out with a couple of teenagers in a Texas diner talking about legendary pulp novelist Jim Thompson has a super-steep hill to climb. Here’s what I can say for Bad Turn Worse... It may not make it all the way up that steep slope, but the effort is pretty doggone entertaining.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Love Is All You Need
    It’s an enormous relief to have a lightweight but non-insulting date movie to recommend in this arid season. This isn’t a movie that requires your full attention at every second – although when Dyrholm and Brosnan are on-screen, you won’t be able to look away – but it’s a nifty entertainment that’s always easy on the eyes and gains just a bit of dramatic weight as it moves forward.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Mean Machine
    I'm not sure Mean Machine is any worse than "The Longest Yard," but it lacks the nihilistic '70s background that lent the latter's combination of humor and brutality an air of (arguably bogus) social commentary.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Possession
    Moody and a little slow, with muted colors and a half-empty, alien-feeling suburban setting, Danish director Ole Bornedal's The Possession is a nifty end-of-summer gift for horror buffs.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Memphis
    Can I tell you exactly what happens in Memphis, or what it’s “about”? Absolutely not. But it worked its magic on me, and its meaning is something I take on faith.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
    Maybe Joan Rivers is a high-powered engine of self-debasement who will go lower than anyone else for a laugh and a dollar, and maybe she's a skilled actress who has spent her whole life playing one. Either way, yes, she's quite something. And I'd rather appreciate her from a distance.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Ted 2
    In its better, non-jizz-related moments, Ted 2 is a loosey-goosey stoner road trip with an irrelevant, appealing blend of innocence and sweetness: John and Sam doing a “Walk Like an Egyptian” dance number in the law library, for no particular reason, or the “Law & Order” theme-song lyrics, a bit of brilliant standup material stuck in the middle of a movie.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Maleficent
    Whatever its flaws, Maleficent is a family-friendly Disney adventure that offers a relaunched and thoroughly delightful Angelina Jolie.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience
    Operation Homecoming at first seems like a modest enterprise, a document of a few guys' paths to personal catharsis. But the sense of damaged intensity found in all these men's writing -- and found in war lit since the classical age -- builds to a powerful crescendo, and the haunting poem that ends the film, in which the ghosts of American and Iraqi dead confront each other on the banks of the Tigris, is a showstopper.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Noah
    There’s so much delusion and so much delight in Noah that I have trouble distinguishing one from the other, or determining whether its most outlandish flourishes qualify as mistakes or as strokes of genius.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Battle for Brooklyn
    Tells the story of a love affair and a new family, and reminds us that even billionaires are not omnipotent.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Texas Killing Fields
    It's an intriguingly murky B-movie that should satisfy genre buffs.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    In Time
    So, yeah - even if In Time descends from its gripping and thought-provoking premise into a mediocre chase thriller before it's over, it's still pretty damn satisfying to watch in the current climate.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Until the Light Takes Us
    As crafty and compelling as Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell's Until the Light Takes Us is, it may go too far in its understandable desire to correct the bias and prejudice of mainstream journalism.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Only Lovers Left Alive
    It’s shot through with sadness and beauty, with dry humor, with the certainty that even things meant to last forever actually don’t.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Business of Being Born
    Lake and Epstein are not in fact trying to stigmatize other women's choices about how and where to give birth. Instead, they're trying to introduce an entire universe of history and information that should inform those choices, and that the medical establishment has virtually erased from American memory.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Amazing Spider-Man 2
    Honestly, one can only wish that Hollywood made movies for non-teenagers and non-comics fans with this much care and reverence. Are superhero movies dying? Well sure, but you and I and the planet may die first.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Lazer Team
    Lazer Team is a pastiche based on a beloved pattern; it understands its own limitations but seeks to maximize its potential. All the characters are presented with immense affection and offered the chance to grow and develop, by which I mean to be gifted with inexplicable superpowers, to be repeatedly struck in the groin area by projectiles and to be mocked by others for their moments of vulnerability.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Company Men
    A lot of this is compelling, after its didactic and heavily thematic fashion, but if you strip most of it away, along with Roger Deakins' handsome cinematography, you're left with the conflict between Jack and Bobby and something like "Shop Class as Soulcraft: The Movie."
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Sessions
    The Sessions should be taken for what it is, a sweet but minor fictional parable about the strange possibilities of love. You may find it significant, moving and even profound, but it has a limited connection to the real world and the real life of Mark O'Brien.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Meduzot
    I appreciated and admired the craftsmanship of Jellyfish more than I loved it, and I found its whimsical, magic-realist touches a bit cloying. Just as I began to appreciate that it had depths I hadn't perceived, it was over.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    I Touched All Your Stuff
    What emerges in the end actually is surprisingly consistent and coherent, if you pay close attention to the most important passages of Kirk’s self-serving narrative and steer through all the denials and reversals and irrelevant tangents.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Somersault
    I'm sure some people will be driven mad by the deliberate ambiguities of Somersault, and by its characters' near-total inability to understand themselves or express themselves. But to me, that makes it uncannily true to life.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Informant
    [An] evenhanded and carefully crafted documentary.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Art of War
    Grade-B blockbuster.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Friends with Money
    This is a dense and sophisticated work about mortality, materialism, madness, jealousy and pity.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Iluminados por el fuego
    The morbid and gripping war film Blessed by Fire, from the Argentine filmmaker Tristán Bauer, is well worth a look.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Don Jon
    This is a sweet, lively and funny movie rather than a fully realized one, but it makes clear that Gordon-Levitt has a natural feeling for cinema and should do more of it.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Road
    Laranas does cultivate a mood of distinctive menace and mystery, not to mention a convoluted and ambitious chronology.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Wild Canaries
    The 21st-century combo of screwball comedy and half-baked thriller in Wild Canaries isn’t exactly like anything you’ve seen before, and it offers an unpredictable ride that’s kind of fun, or at least sporadically simulates fun.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Cars 2
    A fun, silly, kid-friendly summer popcorn entertainment.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    As Good as It Gets
    Appreciate it instead as an exceedingly well-crafted fairy tale, alive with eccentric, overdrawn Dickensian characters and irresistibly wholehearted sentiment, and you'll enjoy perhaps the most accomplished and satisfying work of Brooks' career as a middlebrow entertainer.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Beeswax
    This warm, graceful and fundamentally optimistic movie snuck up on me, in the best possible way.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Bluebird
    A delicate and affecting drama with grace notes of mystery and redemption.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Lynch
    Lynch offers a fascinating view of Lynch's irascible personality (and insatiable appetite for coffee and cigarettes), and captures him discussing his formative years in Idaho and Philadelphia, as well as his 30-year involvement with Transcendental Meditation.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
    There’s a freshness and an unjaded quality to almost every scene that makes you want to keep watching.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Ender's Game
    Straightforward, a bit literal-minded, very faithful to the book and largely compelling.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Wristcutters: A Love Story
    Simultaneously dark and sweet, always a difficult combination to pull off. It views its characters with both archness and affection, and even as it lovingly recalls films of another era it insists that the painful awkwardness of youth is perennial.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Fitzgerald Family Christmas
    It's entirely sincere and genuinely not terrible. Burns knows the milieu of his suburbanized New York Irish-American characters at a bone-deep level (enough to induce powerful flashbacks in someone of my background), and the tone of regretful, tragicomic, low-key melodrama he strikes is just right.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    House of Sand
    It's an impressive film, beautifully photographed and marvelously acted. But is it more than a set of undeniably gorgeous affectations?
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Change of Plans (Le code a changé)
    Change of Plans may not be earth-shattering cinema, but it's masterfully structured and edited (by Sylvie Landra) with a first-rate cast.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Much Ado About Nothing
    Homemade as it clearly is, and first-drafty as it often feels, Whedon’s Much Ado will reward repeat viewings, for the adroitly paced dialogue, the debauched humor of the extended party scenes and the offbeat visual jokes.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    King Corn
    Thankfully, this information arrives via a graceful and frequently humorous film that captures the idiosyncrasies of its characters and never hectors.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Philomena
    Philomena turns out to be a subtly told tale of tragedy and redemption, with much of the sentimental payoff you’re expecting but several intriguing plot twists along the way.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew O'Hehir
    Quinceañera
    It's an engaging, sweet-yet-sad neighborhood slice of life, anchored by pretty cinematography and a couple of nice performances.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Battle in Heaven
    Reygadas is an undeniably important artist hewing his own path, but who is also self-consciously playing to the tastes of a tiny elite audience that craves obscurantism, confrontation and heavy-handed symbolism. Still, I really want you to see this. Then I'll have somebody to talk about it with.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Paperboy
    While the portrayal of Southern race relations in the '60s is less central here than in "The Help," it's also less labored and earnest, and one could argue that it's subtler, more intimate and more honest.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
    To my taste, savvy Hollywood veteran Bill Condon debuts as director of the two-part "Twilight" conclusion in satisfying fashion, delivering a voluptuous if often inert spectacle that splits the difference between high camp and decadent romance.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    LUV
    Both for good and for ill, LUV has a film-school feeling about it, and channels a legacy of fatalistic American crime cinema that includes "Mean Streets" and "Treasure of the Sierra Madre."
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Lonely Hearts
    A handsome and well-acted film -- if you like that bitten-off, half-Hemingway style -- but also a grim, emotionally strangled one with a strong sadistic current, no genuinely likable characters and almost no humor.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Slumdog Millionaire
    The real star of the film is not a person but a city, the vertiginous, exciting, massively overcrowded "maximum city" of Mumbai. On one hand, this environment of Dickensian, almost hallucinatory contrasts between rich and poor, good and evil feels perfect for Danny Boyle.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Tea with Mussolini
    The 76-year-old Zeffirelli will make many more movies, but Tea With Mussolini has the unmistakable feeling of a personal testament. Its sunny disposition and modest wit are well-suited to the genial temper of this born entertainer.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Shrink
    Shrink offers a roster of wonderfully eccentric characterizations, shoehorned into a dramatic structure that's just a little too formulaic.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Ant-Man
    A discombobulated summer movie that’s kind of fun but doesn’t have nearly enough story to fill up two hours.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Gambler
    Some fragments of that Dostoevskian romance linger on here: Just enough so that Wyatt and Wahlberg nail the climactic scene, when Jim is literally playing for his life, and make it momentarily seem to mean something. But not quite enough that you’ll remember what that something might be the next day.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    X-Men: Apocalypse
    For deeply steeped Marvel Comics aficionados it will probably be fairly satisfying, and there’s no reason on earth why anyone else should even bother.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Rocky Balboa
    Even as Sylvester Stallone's long goodbye to the heroic underdog who made him famous descends from pathos into silliness, and from fairy tale into hallucination, you can't help liking the big galoot.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Ghosts of Mars
    It might be nice if Ghosts of Mars had more to offer than snappy repartee and shameless gore, or if it could borrow a little narrative tension from its Alien Chain Saw forebears.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    21
    Spacey's engaging for a while in one of his patented double-edged, sharky roles.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Hannah Takes the Stairs
    The film's intimacy never feels fake, it's sporadically and unpredictably funny (I didn't exactly enjoy the cacophonous trumpet duet of the "1812 Overture," but I won't soon forget it), and the nonprofessional cast is surprisingly good.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Captain America: Civil War
    I personally find the Russo brothers’ lightning-fast action scenes difficult to process — it’s as if cinema editing now exceeds the speed of human brain functions — but they’re undoubtedly exciting and skillfully constructed.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Truth About Charlie
    As utterly disastrous movies go, this one's really got something.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    End of Days
    For the most part it's a blast.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    I Am a Sex Addict
    This film is an inevitable product of our age, and enjoyable, right up to whatever your ickiness threshold is.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Clay Pigeons
    I wanted to take these two characters somewhere else and make a real movie about them...But Vaughn provides so many spooky, hilarious, unhinged moments, you won't mind sitting through it.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Good Girl
    Never quite establishes its own identity, and when you remember it in two years it's likely to be that movie you saw that you kind of liked with that girl in it, what's her name, from TV.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Scream 4
    It's almost really cool, without quite being really cool.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Circumstance
    As to the question of whether Circumstance is actually a good film, or just one with an important story to tell, a high degree of difficulty and some hot all-girl action, I think the verdict is mixed.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Medicine for Melancholy
    So subtle and subdued that it nearly undercuts itself. I'd describe it, in fact, as a film that doesn't quite work -- but the way it doesn't work is so distinctive and so interesting that it marks Jenkins as an exciting new face on the American indie scene.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Nutty Professor II: The Klumps
    This is a parlor trick, but it's a hell of a good one.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Writer of O
    An elegant but muddled affair, worth seeing despite (and maybe because of) its own split personality.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Citizen Koch
    Citizen Koch is kind of a mess. But it’s a mess well worth discovering for yourself.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Broken English
    Despite its schizophrenic nature and often disagreeable characteristics, Broken English has flashes of something. You might say it has an integrity of purpose, if not of execution.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Silence
    In the end The Silence is more like an intriguing work of misdirection than a great crime film, but it has a dreamlike and disturbing undertow you won’t soon forget, and Odar is unquestionably a director to watch.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    22 Jump Street
    22 Jump Street is the good-natured, sloppily rendered pile of balderdash for that moment, a movie that’s immune to all criticism and not worth bothering to dislike.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Breaking Upwards
    That whole meta-biographical aspect doesn't bug me much because everybody who's ever written or directed a romantic comedy is drawing on their own emotional experience; this one's just a little more obvious about it.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    The Green Hornet
    Entirely watchable and often pretty fun, in a mishmashed, patchy kind of way.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Sidewalks of New York
    Isn't much more than a student film made by a talented amateur who's in over his head. Burns has a decent eye and a breezy sense of pace, and he'll make better movies if he remembers where he came from.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Interview
    Whatever we may make of van Gogh's life and death, Buscemi's talky, stagey Interview -- the first of three van Gogh adaptations planned by American actor-directors -- doesn't make much of a case for him as an important or original artist.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Paranoid Park
    If Paranoid Park is mainly an accumulation of the signs and symbols and images inside Van Sant's own head, that's artistically legitimate. When he makes a feeble effort to connect Alex's plight to the Iraq war and the cultural climate of Bush-era America, I just don't buy it.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
    This movie isn’t nearly as terrible as I was expecting, largely due to Snyder’s OCD-level attention to the visual details. And, yes, due to Wonder Woman (played by Israeli actress Gal Gadot), who brings in a badly needed dose of “Dragon Tattoo”-style female energy.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Andrew O'Hehir
    Child 44
    Ultimately I’m going to vote with my heart and say you should see it, largely for the brooding, physical performance of Tom Hardy, an actor still a shade too peculiar for Hollywood stardom, along with the ominous evocation of Stalin’s Russia on the cusp of change. But that recommendation comes with many asterisks, and in various respects Child 44 is a lost opportunity or, as they teach us to say in film-critic academy, an “interesting failure.”
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