Glenn Heath Jr.

Coming 2 America takes too long a road to get to a simplistic lesson: be kind to the person who threatens you the most and everything will work out. Only in Hollywoodland (and their version of Zamunda) does this feel remotely possible.

The film gives seasoned actors like Foster and Cumberbatch just enough room to flex some scene-chomping muscle, while relegating poor Shailene Woodley to the background in nearly every scene as Hollander’s dopey inexperienced associate. Rahim, on the other hand, knows this is his film even when Macdonald doesn’t. As with his star-making turn in A Prophet, there’s something burning inside that always threatens to boil over.

All in all, Cowperthwaite (who directed the documentary Blackfish and made her narrative debut with Megan Leavey) has a difficult time giving the film any sense of style. Montages pop up exactly where one would expect, and nasty arguments are given the classic hand-held touch.

Can’t decide if it wants to be a countryside farce, magical realist parable, or eccentric romantic comedy. So it tries to be all three at once.

The film's interest in social themes remains background fodder within a far more generic good-versus-evil narrative.

The film ultimately fails to treat history as anything but a string of melodramatic reference points for moody characters haplessly trying to find love.

Never distinguishes itself as engaging cinema apart from the main character's vile charisma and a few dynamic dialogue sequences.

Nina Rosenblum's love letter never attains that essence of ambiguity that makes the best nonfiction films live on after the credits fade.

The bloat and heft of Marley's narrative scope leaves the viewer awash in a sea of historical "facts" with very little sense of the human experience behind the curtain of celebrity.

Unfortunately, like so many women have prophesized regarding the weaker gender's lack of commitment, there's just not enough follow through.

Animation, motion graphics, and slow motion all pop up at some point, further splintering Sidewalls into a pandering pastiche of better films.

The film's first act is wholly concerned with the juxtaposition of physical similarities and ideological opposites, and Tamahori spends entire sequences upending the balance between the two.

Daylight reaches an apex of terror that it never quite tops.

If Barkin and Grondin create a swamp's worth of deceptive intricacies in their moments together, the rest of the cast is regulated to expository mop-up duty.

While Reversion sets up a complex communication platform for a universe being slowly ripped apart, it doesn't know how to relate this idea in human terms.