Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

Simply put, it lacks its predecessor’s curiosity about its world—its fascination with colorful backdrops and machines.

Most of the thrills here come from watching one of our canniest directors perform rattling wheelchair dollies on a waxed hospital floor while over-punctuating video-noisy close-ups and cheesy music cues.

Lacking both the exploitation-movie claustrophobic urgency of Golan’s "Operation Thunderbolt" and the Irwin Allen-disaster-film factor of the Irvin Kershner-directed NBC version, "Raid On Entebbe," 7 Days instead goes for businesslike professionalism.

A workmanlike cross between a disaster movie and a caper-chase flick...the film never rises to the promise of its awesomely literal title.

Just as the movie seems to have exhausted its supply of generic guilty pleasures, it ascends to some more operatic and mordant plane of slasher-dom in a wacko sequence that involves the aforementioned “Total Eclipse Of The Heart,” a swimming pool, and a perfectly timed smash zoom.

The situational humor is more varied than in In The Loop, even if it still largely comes down to a lot of people badgering each other in hallways, offices, and banquet halls. But the dialogue lacks the earlier film’s vicious, creative, lighting-fast profanity.

For someone so gloomily aware of his own privilege, Wilkerson spends a lot of the film playing dumb and speculating—a writer’s trick for giving shape to a piece with a thesis and no conclusion. He doesn’t have the footage to make Did You Wonder Who Fired The Gun? come together as an investigation narrative, and his insistence on a quasi-chronological structure means that it doesn’t work as an essay, either.

The film ignores all the potential commentary and conflict in its pulpy, hyperbolic premise (tradition technology, urban contradictions, etc.), offering only trivialities, superficialities, and contempt. It has as little to say as its protagonist. Possibly less, even

From its lifelessly anachronistic English dialogue to its Masterpiece Theatre lighting and production design, The Young Karl Marx tries to filter radical thought through the pace and aesthetics of a middlebrow drama.

A bargain-bin biblical epic that delivers the requisite mass-murder-by-ass-jaw as a cheapjack approximation of Zack Snyder-esque pomp, but is for the most part clinically dull.

There are hiccups in its ambition, but it’s hard not to get swept up in all the technologies, characters, and politics crammed into the movie’s compelling dramatic conflict, which casts the charismatic Michael B. Jordan—the star of Creed and Coogler’s debut, Fruitvale Station—as the most complex villain in the post-Dark Knight cycle of superhero blockbusters.

Early Man can’t overcome the limitations of its premise—one of Park’s less fruitful genre mashups.

A failed experiment in stunt casting.

In the case of The Cloverfield Paradox, it’s just a fancy word for “junk drawer.”

By reducing teachings to vague platitudes and inspirational truisms, Bilal robs its religious story of any sense of grace, leaving only those components of early Islamic history generally not considered off-limits for visual interpretation—that is, a lot of early medieval warfare and violence.

Regardless of its high aims, most of what The Insult offers—unlikely last-minute reveals, argumentative lawyers, stone-faced judges—is the stuff of a diverting, junky courtroom drama.

Liu is clearly inspired by live-action filmmakers (the Coen brothers and the Japanese actor-director Takeshi Kitano are acknowledged influences), but his casual side trips into the fantastic—say, an extended daydream sequence that’s part parody of Cultural Revolution propaganda, part karaoke video—can only work in drawing.

The result is busy, murky, and remote. It doesn’t have the leftie political clarity of Ken Loach, the purposeful intensity of the Dardenne brothers, or even the character development of Ramin Bahrani’s early features.

It’s derivative and drowning in stagnant machismo, but stark enough to work.

Surprisingly stolid and barren for a Bruckheimer production, 12 Strong skates by on the virtues of an old-fashioned programmer: technical competence, an above-average cast, and well-written dialogue, the latter courtesy of screenwriters Ted Tally (The Silence Of The Lambs) and Peter Craig (Blood Father).

Fluorescents’ showy camera moves and full-jazz-hands theater-kid dorkiness are a tonic against the excessively muted naturalism that has come to define indie style.

The Commuter’s script may not be an exercise in fool-proof logic (the actual plot makes almost no sense in retrospect), but its politics are consistent — a rare quality for a contemporary thriller.

Though the formulaic treasure-hunting plot sometimes gets out of hand, it doesn’t muddle the intended message.

Before I Wake has its imperfections and moments of narrative lag, but its thoughtful touches and attention to character load Cody’s abilities and the threat of the Canker Man with a dramatic weight that often outbalances the generically spooky imagery.

A clumsy and internally confused sequel to Insidious: Chapter 3 (which was, uh, a prequel to the first film) that offers strictly mechanical jolts.

Like Cooper’s Rust Belt faux-noir "Out Of The Furnace," it’s an exercise in strained seriousness, the potential ironies and dramatic tensions lost in a repetitive, episodic, and politically vapid narrative.

The Ballad Of Lefty Brown’s lack of flash keeps it from sinking comfortably into pastiche, but it doesn’t make for thrilling viewing.

Dramatically and comically impotent.