Dan Mecca

When Thompson and Kaling are playing off each other, Late Night sings. That so much of it is focused elsewhere feels like a miscalculation.

Strouse wants to explore the complexities of somebody who’s chasing their dreams, mostly blind to the wreckage they might make around them, and Williams finds the layers in the character. But the message remains far more muddled than her performance.

The story inside Official Secrets is one worth telling, but perhaps it would be better to read the book.

There’s honesty here and a swath of well-written, well-developed female characters, but not enough to justify laughing with a kidnapper.

Armed with two top-notch leads and a compelling premise, Joshua Marston‘s third feature, Complete Unknown, spends a lot of time hinting at which direction it will go, without going anywhere at all.

This film is so unabashedly, so unflinchingly evil that it is extremely impressive and extreme unlikeable.

Moss and McBaine do well to examine their subject from every angle. And yet, it’s not nearly enough.

There is an honest bleakness to Jarecki’s tale that certainly matches the tragedy of the real-life opioid crisis, though all of it feels surface level. Without a central rooting interest that’s engaging, all of the drama suffers. There’s plenty to admire in Crisis, just not enough to recommend.

High & Low: John Galliano feels like half a movie––plenty of questions, no answers. It’s the beginning of an intriguing conversation and not much else.

There is something admirable about the sheer hopelessness of this narrative. It’s not altogether surprising given Schrader’s imprint, but it lacks the nuances of something like First Reformed or The Card Counter.

Despite its brief runtime, the film runs out of steam well before its climax.

Glitter & Doom feels like a beautiful, energetic half-measure.

There are plenty of characters and there is plenty of New York City in writer/director Dustin Guy Defa‘s Person To Person, but the whole thing meanders all over without ever really settling somewhere that matters.

There’s a lot in The Incomer to be admired. Unfortunately, it lasts a bit too long and makes the same joke too many times.

The biting commentary on modern business never really makes an imprint.

Like so many too-late sequels, the film — directed by the first film’s action choreographer Yuen Woo-ping — rides on waves of nostalgia and little else.

Crowe is searching for something as a filmmaker. His first two features may not work as constructed, but it’s clear the themes and emotions within are important to him. There is ambition at the edges, here’s hoping the third time is the charm.

Despite a stacked cast and some impressive physical comedy, this film slips into ridiculousness without the laughs to back it up.

There’s a severe tonal problem this movie never reconciles. It wants to be a self-aware, R-rated comedy and a straightforward action picture. At any moment, it’s one or the other but never both.

Something happened here, and the full story of the making of this movie will surely be far more interesting than the movie itself.

A brutally cynical, largely unfunny film fueled by muddled social commentary.