Daniel Schindel

If I go on about how Gleason’s convention-bound filmmaking and drawn-out running time dampened my reaction to Steve Gleason’s journey, am I being a good critic, or just a dick?

The film can easily coast on sentimentality and nostalgia for emotion, and does so frequently and unabashed. Which is frustrating, since there are glimpses of a more complex human being throughout the film, one who would have made for a much better subject.

The film insists upon its own relevance, but has none.

It certainly is dramatic material, but The Founder presents it as a generic “rise to the top” story without even the decency to suggest Kroc lost his soul along the way.

While The Conjuring 2 smoothly goes through the motions of setup, building anticipation, and payoff in myriad ways, the slickness of the production interferes with any proper sense of dread.

The Oslo Accords represent one of the most frustrating missed opportunities in recent world politics, though The Oslo Diaries is more frustrating for how it both simplifies the political complexities of the situation and dilutes the drama of the story.

The more you interrogate the premises underlying The Post’s themes, the more they disintegrate. The daunting fact is that only mass movements truly change society for the better. But that’s a messy process with a lot of depressing history built in, and not ideal for narratives catering to prim liberal sensibilities.

Greenfield’s earlier documentaries, such as Thin and The Queen of Versailles, serve as better explorations of the topics this somewhat shapeless movie presents.

The scenes of millions of things happening at once are skillfully made, to be sure, but they’re still visually busy to the point of numbness instead of energization. The action has verve but no soul.

It is vital to bring stories like this to wider attention, but it cannot be said for certain whether the movie does so at the cost of furthering Marish’s suffering and thus also exploiting her.

Taking a straightforward approach isn’t necessarily a negative, but the sedate camerawork and editing make the movie’s progression staid. Even the musical moments are invigorating due to the music itself, and not by how it’s presented.

Over two shapeless hours, it walks through sequences that announce their emotional gravitas while only sporadically earning it.

The film is more of a clip show, awkwardly cutting together elements once presented in a drastically different manner. In doing so, it obfuscates the power of a manifesto, allegedly what it means to pay tribute to.

It looks and feels less like a film and more like a feature-length pilot for a new TV series which happens to have a stacked cast.

It’s always frustrating when a documentary is so intent on one story that it plainly misses a more interesting one that’s, just… right there.

Despite the intriguing subject matter, this documentary can’t stay in the air.

Watching The Book of Henry feels like being gaslit.

Hits a decent count of guffaws and chortles, enough to make for a solid rental or something you settle on while channel surfing on an idle afternoon.

The most frustrating aspect of The Lovers and the Despot is its refusal to do more than simply recite its tale, ignoring the interesting concepts lurking within it.

As wartime thrillers go, Anthropoid is disappointingly limp.

Demolition might just be this year’s poster child for disaffected faux-indie insincerity.

As a thinkpiece generator, it is absolutely spectacular – by every other metric, it’s a failure.

The Boss can at least be appreciated for trying to lead its main character on an honest-to-god arc, which is more than many loosey-goosey movies of its ilk can say.

This is Marvel imitation at its most tedious. It’s particularly disappointing given how, in her original Harry Potter books, screenwriter J.K. Rowling demonstrated a deft ability to put in subtle foreshadowing and use characters and elements that would later take on new significance.

Sadly, as has consistently been the case with his recent film work, The Infiltrator gives Cranston basically nothing to do.

Come Sunday makes an admirable effort to delve into religious conviction and changes in faith, but comes up feeling too normal and disconnected from those matters.

This is electric material for a story, but Fogel just gets shocked instead of channeling it into something great.

It is an odd story, mixing haute couture, small-town gossipry, romance, dark secrets, an old murder mystery, and multiple random deaths. And yet it’s also not nearly odd enough, delivering all of this with a disappointingly straight-laced sensibility.