Genevieve Koski

Rudderless’ biggest flaw is that it’s overly committed to its trajectory, creating obvious cause-and-effect scenarios rather than letting its characters simply live and act within the situation the story places them in.

Rough Night floats on the strength of its performances and its anything-for-a-laugh sensibility.

More of a fawning love letter than a nuanced profile of a woman who surely must be more fascinating than she comes off here.

It’s neither consistently funny nor poignant enough to make the most of its impressive cast, all of whom are capable of delivering better than what A.C.O.D. asks of them.

Even with all the SFX overlays, it’s questionable whether any of this is entertaining enough to sustain even a svelte 92-minute runtime, but Spurlock and the boys can’t be faulted for holding back.

Where Ted managed a respectable ratio of clever (or at least transcendently dumb) gags to lazy/offensive ones, Ted 2 is a repetitive, self-congratulatory slog, dragged down by a haphazard plot and the same third-act problems that ultimately sunk the first film.

At 140 minutes, Divergent is too bloated to be consistently exciting, but it’s relatively agile between its many exposition-dumps, at times resembling an actual action movie more than a pro-forma adaptation.

The True Cost’s aim is to make it impossible to ignore fashion’s impact on the world, and it takes an admirably thorough approach to its unwieldy subject. It’s not a particularly cinematic approach, however.

Delivery Man has sentiment and affability embedded in its DNA, but Scott and Vaughn don’t do enough to nurture the film to its full potential.

A decent-enough inroad to one of film history’s most respected parodists.

While the setups are often laughably forced—two words: “weed baby”—the script navigates its way out of them relatively gracefully, and sometimes hilariously.

It doesn’t make any sense, but Insurgent demands its audience play along anyway. The problem is, the film doesn’t do enough to earn viewers’ trust, or reward it once it’s given.

Need For Speed modifies its outlaw antihero with all sorts of unnecessary pain and backstory, and the film is slow to leave the starting gate because of it. But once it does, Need For Speed becomes a much fleeter vehicle, powered by impressive practical stuntwork, eye-popping cross-country landscapes, and the sparking chemistry between Paul and Poots.

First-time writer-director Tom Gormican fills his script with jabs at romantic convention, but his story doesn’t attempt to subvert those conventions in any meaningful way.

When Annie isn’t functioning as a showcase for Wallis’ tiny preternatural charm, it’s tonally varied to the point of discombobulation.

There’s a germ of something interesting and different within the film’s narrative tangle, but it’s unfortunately been subsumed by Hollywood’s dedication to replicating previous successes.