Bilge Ebiri

On the evidence of the first half of Baskin alone, Evrenol seems to be a filmmaker who understands character, tension, and terror. Now all he needs is some follow-through.

Watching The Salesman, I can’t help but feel that this is the first time Farhadi’s mastery of the particular is undercut by the artificiality with which he’s treated the general. He remains one of the world’s foremost filmmakers, but this time around, his expertise and artistry are undone by phoniness.

There’s a lot to chew on here, but in the end, I wish Okja simply worked better as a movie.

After the Hunt might be confused, and it might even be unsatisfying — but it also refuses to coddle anyone, and that feels like some sort of victory.

It’s the rare actor who can make playing a character this messy look so effortless.

The Transformers franchise has made bloated, histrionic pandemonium such a thing that the modest Bumblebee, for all its derivativeness, feels like a breath of fresh air.

This is not the kind of material for a stately biopic or a political drama. This is nasty, strange business — perfect for Ferrara, whose work often hovers between art and exploitation, between angst and sleaze.

Deadpool & Wolverine isn’t a particularly good movie — I’m not even sure it is a movie — but it’s so determined to beat you down with its incessant irreverence that you might find yourself submitting to it.

Hercules has no right to be as entertaining as it is.

The descent into a tepid thriller of sexual jealousy slowly negates the abstract, almost metaphorical quality of this film — and it ultimately undoes the spell cast by that mesmerizing first half.

Despite the ticking clock of Finch’s rapidly progressing illness, the movie doesn’t build up much urgency or excitement. The script is pretty thin, almost all premise and little incident. But director Miguel Sapochnik has the eye to make this world compellingly hostile and bleak, and that counts for something.

By keeping things simple — by refusing to burden us with too many facts, or too much portent, or complicated characters — Eddie the Eagle channels that spirit well. It won’t win any medals, but it earns its place.

Amid all these narrative threads Fogel occasionally loses sight of what should be the beating heart of this film: Khashoggi himself, who often comes through as an ill-defined figure with relatively ill-defined politics and views.

It’s a genre-bending mash-up, a non-vampire vampire movie about class, race, love, and cruelty. It consciously seeks to marry its diverse influences in an attempt to present something between schlock and art house, between passionate gore and urbane chill. It contains multitudes, and not always all that well.

Look closely and you may see that this madame is alive in all sorts of ways. At least for its first half, this is a textured, haunted, remarkably empathetic film.

Earth to Echo resonates, despite itself.

Much of the bloat is still there, but The Desolation of Smaug, the second film in the Hobbit trilogy, is a real improvement – filled with inventive action set pieces and dramatic face-offs that we (finally, at long last, hallelujah!) care about.

The fifth entry in the popular dance-off franchise is, like the others, a fantasia that upends the usual rules of filmmaking. Here, the more threadbare the scenario, and the more unmotivated an action, the better. Character and story just get in the way of all the awesome dancing.

The Scorch Trials isn’t a particularly good movie, but it’s just fast and nutty enough to keep you entertained.

Hardy, it seems, is an ecosystem of love and hate and betrayal and madness unto himself. The rest of Legend just can’t keep up.

Thanks to that cast, and some savvy direction, you might very well enjoy Fist Fight. But don’t be surprised if it also leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

Suffragette is slick and efficient, but also diffuse and formless; it’ll pass the time but it fails to engage.

There’s probably a smart, chilling film to be made about the terrors of smothering and relentless adoration — one imagines what Rod Serling would have done with something like this — but this isn’t really that film.

Still, for a film that could have easily become bogged down in Sunday School reverence, or culture-war opportunism, Risen presents an intriguing, oblique approach to a Bible movie.

The most interesting part of Elstree 1976 comes when these actors express ambivalence about their odd celebrity.

The Invite is primarily a comedy, and it does have some solid laughs, though the character interactions can also feel so manufactured that our bullshit detectors start going off fairly early.

Too scattered narratively to cohere, and yet somehow still funny enough to justify its existence, The Secret Life of Pets 2 makes for an entertaining trifle.

The film itself is uneven, but it’s kind of awesome seeing Bateman act so vile.