James Adams

Don’t Blink is a friendly film by a friend – honest and historically aware, but almost unfailingly affectionate and attuned to the “spontaneous intuition” that, 92 years after his birth, still seems the governing principle of Frank’s life.

What hurts Miles Ahead, though, is a lack of imagination.

Like a Chinese Balzac, Jia expertly balances the micro and the macro, the onrush of the new and the tug of tradition here, blanketing the proceedings with a pall of melancholy as palpable as the smog over Beijing.

The wide swerve of Anderson’s associations, their “hypnotic splattered mist,” don’t make for an easy film. But it is a very good one and only the hardest heart will leave the theatre unmoved.

The Great Invisible is a dense, disturbing look at the effects (personal, political, economic, ecological, macro, micro) of the disaster.

As is often the case in these caper flicks, there’s too much plot for insufficient dramatic effect, and alert viewers will suss out where it’s all heading in the first five minutes.

Johannes Vermeer is still a genius at documentary’s end but a fathomable genius, as much scientist as artist, a driven, resourceful creator whose conceptual and compositional brilliance remains undiminished by whatever techniques Jenison, Hockney and crew ascribe to him.

Inside Llewyn Davis only really kicks into gear at its 55-minute mark. Unsurprisingly, this occurs with the arrival of Coen venerable John Goodman, playing an acerbic jazz hipster who has little truck with the folk idiom but a large appetite for heroin.

Évocateur is never less than watchable. At the same time, you have to wonder who’s going to watch it. In an era when fame seems measured in increments even shorter than Warhol’s 15 minutes, a 91-minute documentary about a bug-eyed, chain-smoking sociopath who soared high and fell fast so long ago smacks of folly and misdirected energy, like trying to make a biography out of a footnote.

While The Hunt strives mightily to provoke outrage, get the blood boiling, pluck the heartstrings and open the tear ducts, it never quite succeeds – a function of a narrative whose failures of credibility, finally, prevent a viewer from wholeheartedly embracing what director Thomas Vinterberg wants us to feel.

Unfortunately, The East is not a very good movie, hobbled by an excess of plot, a lack of believability and big gaps of logic.

Upside Down is no more than one big-budget, gussied-up fairy tale – a topsy-turvy Romeo and Juliet.

The Ambassador may be an important, even necessary film; just don't expect to find it enjoyable.

The premise (and the promise) here, of course, is that, as the miles pass, the two will be as chalk is to cheese, oil to vinegar, an apple to an orange. And indeed this is what happens. Unfortunately, it's about the only thing that happens.

Skyfall is one of the best Bonds in the 50-year history of moviedom's most successful franchise.

Trishna, in short, seems to occur at too much of a remove; it's too fate-filled.

Union Square's biggest flaw is its predictability.

Over all, Neil Young Journeys is a pretty solemn affair, kinda like the man himself.

Two things do redeem the film somewhat. One is the near-uniform excellence of the cast, led by Tatum, who has a compelling, eminently watchable aw-shucks charisma, and newcomer Horn as the cute, concerned sister. The other is the easy, naturalistic flow and ebb of Reid Carolin's dialogue, which gives none of his characters a vocabulary or insights above his or her station.

The biggest high comes from the images evoked by the title alone, or the title in tandem with the movie poster, doesn't it?

This little movie – it's only 83 minutes – seems so determined to if not avoid, then only caress the tropes of slacker films that it commits the worst sin for a comedy: It's boring.

Admittedly, it's been a long time since Kelly McGillis was being hyped as "the next Grace Kelly." But of all the films in all the world for whom the former Top Gun lust object could have done a walk-on, this lacklustre haunted-house feature is the one she chooses?

Virtue aside, however, Red Tails is a lousy film. Not wincingly bad, mind you, just mediocre.

Killer Elite's major problem: motion at the expense of emotion.

Yes, it's all quite mad, Max, with a shaggy-dog ending to boot. But this giddiness, its go-for-broke/what-the-hellness, also is the film's strength.

Equal parts biopic, concert film and pep rally, the movie's 105 minutes do a good job of conveying the pleasures of pop, courtesy of the very real talents of Justin Bieber.

Winkler is a singularly boring director, forever telegraphing his scenes by tracking the camera behind a rustling bush or pulling the lens up close on his villain's eyes or gun. As a result, the film feels enervated and predictable when it should be energetic and surprising. It's a testimony to the abilities of the perky Bullock that she's entirely believable, but even she can't paper over the movie's many holes of logic. [28 July 1995]