Jake Cole

The film, lacking in conflict and danger, is guided by the poignant belief that there’s no end to the world.

James Franco's The Disaster Artist perfectly conveys the surreal hell of what the production of Tommy Wiseau's The Room must have been like.

Petra Epperlein's personal ties to the subject matter provides the documentary with a necessary anchor point.

The structure of Wildfire’s narrative doesn’t emerge out of a simplistic progression from strife to reconciliation, as writer-director Cathy Brady has her characters follow a realistically erratic trajectory.

The actors’ hammy performances only compound the amusement of watching a dynasty propped up by largesse fall to pieces at the very thought of actually having to earn their way in life.

As much as the film seeks to understand how such major cultural figures navigated a political minefield, it nonetheless never takes its eyes off of its characters as people.

Of all the ’70s road movies, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot may be the only one in which the characters find themselves.

The film exemplifies Lois Patiño’s ongoing efforts to complicate docufiction approaches with otherworldly reveries meant to communicate states beyond our immediate reality.

In Alma Har’el’s film, Shia LaBeouf’s plays an avatar of his father as an expressionistic act of self-therapy.

As the film progresses, it consistently escalates the stakes and scale of its action, which doesn’t devolve into incomprehensible CG murk as it hurtles toward the climax.

The film is never more intense than when it’s finding parallels between its main character’s anomie and Korea’s dehumanizing expansion.

Ebulliently funny, visually inventive, and above all passionately committed to the idea that heroism isn't a burden but an uplifting realization of our best qualities.

The film is an unbroken chain of one-liners, sight gags, and pop-culture references, and the hit-to-miss ratio is high.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller put a comedic spin on Andy Weir’s more straightforward 2021 novel Project Hail Mary, recasting the author’s hopeful vision of productive communication with extraterrestrials as an unlikely buddy comedy.

Day Shift’s first half is an unexpectedly focused, consistent pleasure, while the second sags under the weight of recycled set pieces.

In its own way, the film is as suitable a final work as a culminating magnum opus.

As with Sicario, the broad strokes of the film's Southwestern stereotypes gradually sharpen into focus as the story pivots to a look at the systemic forces that shape the characters.

Half-assed mentions of the Avengers, as well as a few cameo appearances sprinkled both within the feature and in its credits stingers, exude less shame than a crowd-pandering politico.

The film is frustrating in the end for reaffirming the traditional blockbuster’s allegiance to human perseverance.

It’s at its best when showing how gangsters undermine their lofty notions of nobility with displays of narcissism.

For a spell, Melina Matsoukas’s film exudes the concision of an old B movie.

At its best, F9 delivers the most spatially coherent, dynamic car scenes in the series to date.

It's the first segment that feels the most fleshed out, for how well it presents characters with actual lives as compared to the thinly veiled talking points of the film's second half.

If the film sometimes feels too small in comparison to its predecessors, it manages to make the most of its quietest moments.

Battle Angel is by some distance the most entertaining of the recent crop of would-be franchise starters, exciting on its own merits while leaving just enough of its world tantalizingly unexplored to actually fuel our interest in wanting to see where its characters go from here.

It boasts such confident performances and choreography that it feels as much like a final draft of the 2008 film as a continuation of it.

The most thrilling and haunting details here are actively undermined by the chief technical gimmick of the film.

Shazam! sees DC combining the golden-age optimism espoused by Wonder Woman and the jubilant, self-aware silliness of Aquaman into a satisfying whole.