Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

Striking in the way it evokes fears of abandonment—children’s worries blown up to grown-up scale—and completely unlike any film Stallone has put his name on since.

It’s a film of ephemeral pleasures, adorned in a rich variety of voices, non-verbal gestures, and speech patterns: unfussy, unrushed, at times very funny.

Though Irrational Man’s existentialist moral crisis is mostly hokum, the movie still has a whiff of charm, thanks to a handful of good one-liners, a little misdirection, and Phoenix’s off-kilter performance, which completely ignores the rhythm of Allen’s speech in favor of naturalistic mojo.

Buried underneath the movie’s many layers of pulp fluff and knucklehead comedy is a compelling take on why people are drawn to familiar, generic pleasures—self-aware caper comedies, for instance. Perhaps it’s buried too deeply for its own good.

It’s revealed that the evidence against Salahi, who admits only to training with the formerly CIA-backed Afghan mujahideen in an al-Qaeda camp back in the early ’90s, consists of summaries of reports and confessions, which neither side is supposed to see. But instead of rising to the challenge of such potentially abstract subject matter, the film opts for clichés: file boxes, lawyer talk over fast food, the classic confrontation in a poorly lit parking lot.

Ricthie’s Aladdin feels sluggish in comparison to the fast-paced original. Even the songs suffer; the direction of the musical numbers is surprisingly unimaginative and turgid, to the point that even surefire showstoppers like “Prince Ali” and the mighty “A Whole New World” end up succumbing to lackluster staging and uncomfortable performances.

A vapid exercise in narrative kitsch that spans two languages and multiple decades and love stories.

The best thing that can be said about Palmer is that it’s innocuous: overlong and sentimental, but rarely annoying.

Frenetic and frequently funny, Penguins Of Madagascar represents the DreamWorks Animation franchise style — which boils down to self-aware, but naïve, talking animals who learn kid-friendly life lessons — at its most palatable.

Despite its welcome breezy and surreal qualities, On A Magical Night has more psychological shortcuts than insights.

Of all the great actor/directors, Kitano has probably come the closest to creating a style that parallels his approach to acting.

Though Sandel relies less on exasperating, rubbery digital effects than Rob Letterman, the DreamWorks Animation vet who helmed the original, his direction of the monsters and mayhem is never more than workmanlike, racing joylessly through a shaky plot that barely holds attention.

Pitched to the weekday-matinee crowd, the insipid British retirement-age comedy Finding Your Feet doesn’t have much to recommend it apart from its grossly overqualified cast, led by Imelda Staunton and Timothy Spall.

An exercise in gratuitousness that’s fitful by design, Paul Schrader’s Dog Eat Dog avoids any relationship between character psychology and visual style; they jab against each other, angrily vying for attention, as a nihilistic commentary on crime movies and genre stories.

The most derivative movie of the summer, Earth To Echo, is also the most visually unpredictable, chock-full of degraded digital textures that seem ready to boil off the screen, picture-boxed within Mac desktops and overlaid with extraterrestrial interface trees.

Big Game fails to live up to the kookiness of this set-up. Instead, it opts for ’90s action movie clichés and generic coming-of-age-isms. Helander’s inelegant, exposition-heavy English-language dialogue doesn’t help matters.

Rigor Mortis functions best as an above-average fright flick, distinguished by its sense of supernatural folklore—scads more imaginative than its Western counterparts—and Mak’s eye for bizarre close-ups.

Too high-minded to ever stoop to suspense or fun, Approaching The Unknown is almost completely interiorized, unspooling in voice-over narration that sounds like a writing exercise that got out of control.

While White House Down isn’t going to score points for originality, seriousness, or subtlety (Emmerich likes his political messages blunt and loud), it is a lot of fun; if nothing else, Emmerich is a great widescreen showman who knows how to stage mayhem on a grand scale.

For fans of wushu flicks — or action movies in general — Man Of Tai Chi presents a rare appreciation for the art of conveying movement on screen, while also serving as an impressive physical showcase for its star, stuntman Tiger Chen.

The presence of Kingsley — as well as all the ornate cabinetry and shadowy atmosphere — might suggest "Shutter Island," but the real referent appears to be Tod Browning’s "Freaks," with its complicated mixture of fear and sympathy.

The familiarity is, of course, the point: Anyone going to a new Kevin Smith movie in 2024 is either already well-versed in the comfort food of the View Askewniverse, or is being dragged on a date by someone who is. The result evokes a kind of bittersweet nostalgia—not for the much-mythologized pop-cultural ‘80s, but for a younger, fresher writer-director who was able to do a lot more with a lot less.

There are, in trademark Sorrentino style, moments of Catholic-Church-baiting blasphemy and playful surrealism (a gigantic bloated toddler makes an appearance), but for all of its eccentricities and ruminations, Parthenope can’t overcome the very prosaic problem of a main character who isn’t really much of a character at all.

A failed experiment in stunt casting.

Mann’s first feature in nearly six years, the hacking thriller Blackhat is rough even by the standards of its director’s current creative period.

Day, who’s very good, moves through it with comfort and charisma. Her Billie Holiday is as much a star in the green room as she is onstage, faced with applause or the harsh bathroom-mirror reflection of abuse and addiction. But many of the other characters might as well be reading off of cue cards.

Suspense remains a foreign concept for actor-director Kenneth Branagh. His erratic direction — more interested in cut glass and overhead shots than in suspicions and uncertainties — bungles both the perfect puzzle logic of the crime and its devious solution.

It probably shouldn’t star Ryan Reynolds, who is generally likable, but frequently miscast. Only Kingsley’s bizarre, severely mannered performance seems to be following the undercurrents of the material.