Daniel Schindel

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.

This doc may actually benefit more from a viewing outside any contemporary hype vortex.

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.

Despite these sharp moments, there’s a frustrating looseness to Lafosse’s narrative, feeling as though many of After Love’s scenes could be rearranged without changing the film’s flow. In turn, a slackness undercuts the tension the film is otherwise trying to build.

When it works, the movie strongly evokes the feeling of sorting through a loved one’s possessions after their death.

[Schoenaerts] and Kruger can’t sell the low-key attraction that develops between their characters, which turns a lot of the stakes — and the story’s resolution — into absolute shrugs. This is what Disorder ultimately adds up to.

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.

Action is Rogue One’s strongest suit, and what makes all the faffing about bearable.

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.

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.

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.

Where it could do more to work inside its characters’ heads, it pulls back.

Despite its worthy plot and the wealth of great footage with which it had to work, Holy Hell is a mess.

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.

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.

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.

This film is especially good at making courtroom scenes engaging, where many would hurry through the choicest soundbites before moving on to the next part.

The problem with its mystery setup is that, since we’re simply waiting for The Beast to show up, the revelations are less driving plot progression than they are filling time, and that “ticking clock” is arbitrary

It’s an energetic, frequently hilarious, always visually riveting ride.

The Raid star Iko Uwais deserves to silat his way through a million hapless evil men, but here’s hoping that, going forward, he picks better cinematic vehicles for his frighteningly fast feet and fists.

Even if the conceit is faulty, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for this film to rework this material into an intelligent riff on the play. Unfortunately, it still doesn’t.

As wartime thrillers go, Anthropoid is disappointingly limp.

The movie shifts gears with each section.... This hodgepodge encourages some variety in the world-building, but, to the littlest detail, it’s derivative — and, worse, not scary.

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

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 15:17 to Paris is a long stretch of boredom culminating in one jolt of interest.

This iteration of Ghost in the Shell remixes elements from the various comics, films, and TV series that have come before, but offers nothing new or interesting in doing so.