Drew Hunt

Its virtues as throwback don't elide the foolhardly decision to imprint an ancient mythology on a contemporary superhero framework.

It spends a lot of time considering the fear of knowing, which may explain why Alejandro Amenábar didn’t seem to know what kind of film he was making.

The characters' marginalized social standing is less indicative of a real-life epidemic and more akin to window dressing.

It takes place entirely at night, and the dingy color palette, washed-out and intentionally drab, presents Russia as an almost alien landscape.

Commingling industry shoptalk with introspective insights and wrangling testimonials, the film casts an incredibly wide net, but doesn't reveal much of anything.

The film's tired sentimentality aside, its general lack of empathy is most damning.

The filmmakers largely stand out of Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart's way, but they also refuse to modulate the story's racial humor with any sense of subversion.

The cogent character study nestled inside all the bombast remains crafty for its rare commingling of artful storytelling and genre nonsensicality.

The characters shout themselves hoarse, but they don't really say anything, and it isn't long before we feel like hostages ourselves, bound by the filmmakers' strained moral outrage.

This big, brash, occasionally clever, but mostly dumb comedy is so gallingly derivative that watching it feels like playing a game of basic-cable bingo.

This third and supposedly final edition in the franchise is nothing more than an uncomfortably transparent contractual obligation.

Florian Habicht unwisely shifts his focus from Sheffield and its unique denizens to the band's personal history, effectively turning the film into an episode of Behind the Music.

It's easy to see how Daniel Simpson's desire to return the found-footage genre to its roots resulted in cheap imitation.

Reclaim's highly mechanized plot ensures that the film is over before it even ends.

The filmmakers are content to idealize everyone's unchecked narcissism and idle privilege--an inquiry-free recipe for disaster in an age when the American wealth gap is wider and more detrimental than ever.

More than just a thorough examination of hardcore pornography, Christina Voros's doc is also a sort of chronicle of the filmmaking process.

Robin Williams once again proves he can insufferably crank the energy to 11 without batting an eye, only this time his frenzied comic demeanor is replaced with equally harried contempt.

The film benefits greatly from this bait-and-switch narrative design, as Hoss-Desmarais dials down or otherwise forgoes exposition, backstory, and character development in favor of an ambiguous, almost ethereal dramaturgical approach.

Heaven Is for Real is by Christians, for Christians, and deliberately, if subtly, antagonistic toward everyone else.

Aside from being another rote addition to the revenge-film canon, John Stockwell's In The Blood is also a supreme waste of Gina Carano's talent.

The film exhibits strong character interplay and resides in an unconventional milieu, in effect turning rote material into something that feels decidedly eccentric.

The film's dialogue is knowing and the action sequences are elaborate, but not only in ways that advance the shady story toward its hokey denouement.

Its blind reverence toward the Russian mythos is so grandiose that it becomes impossible to rescue it from self-importance, and as such President Putin would likely give it two big thumbs up.

The film's various references to other stylistic touchstones, while thematically apt, rarely carry any sort of critical inquiry.

In the end, considering the numerous ways the film goes limp, it seems credibility still eludes the found-footage genre.

Strands of Simon Pegg's amiable persona are found in the film's more tolerable bits, but even this seasoned vet's unique voice is lost amid the glut of references to other work.

Taylor Guterson's film offers thoughtful, if familiar, comments on friendship, self-doubt, and romantic angst.

Because it actively defies and outright ridicules all notions of aesthetic intent, proper form, and moral propriety, this lazy Z-film pastiche is essentially impervious to standard critical evaluation.