Derek Smith

Ridley Scott’s tale of greed and revenge practically begs for melodramatic excess.

John Crowley’s film blunts the force of the naturalistic performances by Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield as it shifts around the timeline of the story with little rhyme, reason, or rhythm.

What ultimately sinks No Hard Feelings is its inability to convincingly meld its excessively bawdy humor and its Hallmark Channel-level drama of two opposites who help one another to embrace life.

Once the film shifts into a broader comedic register, it no longer capitalizes on Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae’s gift for gab.

On the Basis of Sex is too often busy revering Ruth Bader Ginsburg for her confidence and brilliance to bother with presenting her as a living, breathing human being.

Behind the violence and gore, Nobody 2 only offers the skeleton of a narrative.

The film is unable to reconcile a desire to ridicule its own artifice with constant attempts to foster genuine empathy and dramatic tension.

As The Accountant 2 drags out to over two hours, and its two storylines remain tonally at war with one another, it becomes increasingly clear that, two films in, this series still hasn’t figured out exactly what it wants to be.

So many grandiose tactics portend a grander revelation than the film’s otherwise low-key three-hander delivers.

The charitable representation of Bryan Cranston’s character greatly diminishes the emotional resonance of the film’s dramatic turns in the final act.

The only past that Dial of Destiny is interested in plundering is the glory of its predecessors.

Birds of Paradise lacks the nuance and finesse needed for its story to really take flight.

In the instances where it’s not going hard, Dicks is a surprisingly flaccid affair.

In the end, the film is all too ready to transform into just another shiny pop object indistinguishable from so many others before it.

The Quiet Ones is a reminder of the simple pleasures of a caper film with ice in its veins.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye mostly plays out as a showcase for Jessica Chastain to bring as much emotional sturm und drang to the woman as she lurches between various states of turmoil.

The film muddies its sense of moral righteousness by suggesting that violence and vengeance can only be defeated by more of the same.

The film gives palpable expression to the sense of hopelessness felt by those who fall under the control of cults.

The film often feels like one of the corpses in its story: cold, lifeless, and without a heart.

Even overlooking its fictionalized account of an inexplicable political resurgence, the film falters in its needlessly convoluted plotting.

To Ritchie’s credit, he keeps his film moving along at a consistently brisk clip, but that breeziness is also the cause of its weightlessness, rendering its vision of historical events as outright cartoonish, down to the often clownish portrayals of Nazis and the flawless execution of nearly every element of March-Phillips’s plans.

As the film goes on, it stretches its own internal logic and, following a genuinely shocking third-act twist, renders the world that it’s created virtually incoherent merely in a ploy to keep the audience on the edge of their seats.

Rarely have Michael Bay’s frenzied stylistic tics been so effectively intertwined with the substance of one of his films.

Ultimately, The Boogeyman is like so many other modern horror films that prioritize mood above all else.

Wendy veers awkwardly and aimlessly between tragedy and jubilance, never accruing any lasting emotional impact.

Ultimately, it’s the filmmakers’ insistence on both subverting the expectations of the family Christmas film and upholding them that leaves Violent Night feeling like it wants to have its Christmas cookies and eat them too.

The film seems almost content to have you forget about everything that inspired it in the first place.

Initially offbeat, Bitch awkwardly pivots toward a more inspirational story of regret and reconciliation.