Ed Gonzalez

The plot, geared as much for comedy as horror, is wound with efficient build-up, and its revolving-door atmosphere is consistent enough to paper over some iffy acting, baggy dialogue, and more than a few minutes of wasted real estate.

Bobcat Goldthwait exposes the characteristic male pursuit of power to which females are often made subservient.

Remarkably dull Hud more or less plays out as a home-on-the-range knock-off of Nicholas Ray’s brilliant Rebel Without a Cause.

Eugenio Mira thrills in watching his main character attempt to worm his way out of a most unusual hostage situation, synching his indulgences of style to the pianist's wily physical maneuvering.

This sexy, often funny comedy about AIDS is missing one important thing: a crucial sense of danger.

Through a mini-triumph of montage, what begins as run-of-the-mill backstory vomit is thrillingly repackaged as an almost-Lynchian duet between warring states of consciousness.

Unjustifiably compared to the original film upon its release, Schrader’s Cat People is more of an erotic reinvention of the Bodeen story. Though Schrader keeps the Fangoria crowd at bay with a series of grisly tableaus, he remains less concerned with the body-horrific than he does with the rituals of sex—mandatory and otherwise.

Cheap effects and gratuitous displays of nudity only heighten the film’s delirious demeanor.

The filmmaker looks to American modes of visual and aural expression to give Happy, Happy its soul, but all her fetish accomplishes is depersonalizing her story, making a sitcom of her character's lives.

There’s something undeniably ballsy about a children’s film that’s so insistent about pushing young viewers to think bigger, to be open to new ideas and question culturally coded notions of good and evil.

The film's weird mix of dollhouse dread and fashion-magazine chic can be fetching, but it's nothing if not vacuous, a series of disjointed, improvisatory riffs that recall the brazen aesthetic overload of Amer.

These fantastical He-Man epics were common in the early ’80s (Legend, Conan the Barbarian, and The Beastmaster were all variations of the same theme), and while Clash of the Titans remains one of the genre’s homelier entries, there’s no faulting a film this lovingly and aptly arcane.

Throughout To the Wonder, the new and old are incessantly twinned, blurred into a package that suggests an experimental dance piece.

Writer-director Charles Martin Smith's tin ear for dialogue and contrived symbolism is as unmistakable as his enormous heart.

Olivier Assayas’s knack for fostering insight through irony is nowhere to be found in the film.

This spirited enough yarn is sincere and heartening in its belief that our devotion to these youthful myths is healthy for our sense of wonderment.

Seriously, watching Angela (and to a lesser extent Ricky) being targeted throughout the film is like watching a group of shrill brats shooting rocks at a baby bird—if it wasn’t so obvious that everyone’s non-stop cruelty was in service of some big-reveal, or if the performances weren’t so damn preening, the film would be completely intolerable.

The film, still only clearing its throat, hints at a wellspring of emotional riches to come.

Hotel Artemis quickly reveals its future setting as an empty pretext for a banally convoluted and sentimentalized show of emotional rehabilitation.

The film abounds in excruciatingly obvious, often precious, articulations of grief, where armchair philosophizing volleys back and forth with punishing abandon.

Powaqqatsi is every bit as viscerally engaging though less provocative than its predecessor.

Tim Burton's direction reminds us of the distinct, peculiar coyness that was always at the heart of his best films.

The whole of Phenomena is less than the sum of its parts, but the parts are often terrifying and exhilarating.

Since Bart's bloodlust is never matched in tenor by his righteousness, the story remains rife with unfulfilled moral inquiry.

As feminist fantasy, the film is non-committal, and as a reimagining of the fairy tale, it's at best expensive-looking without seeming wantonly so.

The premise isn't even worthy of executive producer Guillermo del Toro, who will apparently lend his name to any film as long as it fulfills its quota of moths and vulvic openings.

The collection of clever quips on parade here are both tiresome and predictable.

Does Katie Holmes's hubby get script-doctoring rights even on her own film projects? That would explain why Troy Nixey's inane Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, co-written and produced by Guillermo del Toro, at times suggests an anti-Rx PSA.