Jason Bailey

'Trouble in Mind' barely feels like a movie at all. ... Absent any contemporary reflections by either the subject or outside observers, we’re left with no real idea how anyone feels about Jerry Lee Lewis and his exploits on either side of the camera.

Maya is full of the kind of tiny, keenly observed moments that make Løve such a special filmmaker.

Johnson and Penn’s connection is genuine, and there’s an awful lot to like here. Shame about that title.

One of those movies that starts off so well, that shows such promise, that its slow unraveling feels less like a disappointment than a betrayal.

Brie’s work is worth celebrating, and the ambition of the project is admirable. But a picture like this has to float on more than good intentions.

You can see the conflicts and dramatic beats coming from a mile away, and the corniness of the ending is absolutely immeasurable. It’s an inoffensive and even likable picture, but not a particularly compelling one.

Movies like “Earwig” defy criticism or even explanation. ... Lucile Hadžihalilović took a risk by making a movie this peculiar; it feels like the least we can do is take a risk by watching it.

If nothing else, Babylon is a giant swing, a three-plus hour orgy (sometimes literally) of sex, drugs, and cinema, a respected young artist reaching for a profound statement about art and commerce and America. He misses it by a country mile, but hey, he sure does take that swing.

“Walls” is more like a Wikipedia entry— the hyperlinked names appear, and the key events are noted, but there’s not much in the way of genuine insight.

Tatum and Carolin might have been capable of the light, personality-driven fluff the trailer promises, but not, ultimately, whatever the hell Dog is trying to deliver.

There’s little in Respect that one couldn’t glean from a Wikipedia scan, and in terms of her work, time would be better-spent re-watching “Amazing Grace” or revisiting her albums.

Stargirl was published twenty years ago, and its age occasionally shows in this adaptation; some of the story beats and character qualities (particularly those of the rather precious title character) have congealed into cliché. But Hart (who wrote the screenplay with Kristin Hahn and Jordan Horowitz) is such an enchanting filmmaker, her storytelling style so warm and welcoming, that those concerns fade.

Barthes’ screenplay is clean; for the most part, it’s brainy but not didactic, and thoughtful but not dull.

Comedy is all about timing, and the timing here is all off, so the laughs are disturbingly few. What a missed opportunity this is.

[Nyong’o is] so good, in fact, that the pleasure of her performance makes “Little Monsters” worth seeing. But just barely.

Some promising ideas and characters are introduced, but the narrative is so superfluous, the connecting segments so fleeting, that little is fleshed out.

There are moments in “My Zoe” that are hard to watch, unthinkable in their emotional brutality. That Delpy finds her way to the ending she does—and earns it is—no small accomplishment.

McDonagh is such a smart writer that one spends much of the movie waiting for his script to exhibit some awareness of the trope, and to comment on it, but that acknowledgment never arrives – and as a result, this is his thinnest screenplay to date, flimsy enough that, in a lesser actor’s hands, it could really fall apart.

Mary Harron is too good a director to make a drab, conventional biopic, so it’s disappointing to report that with Dalíland, she’s done just that. It’s not a complete waste, and she manages to insert a handful of distinctive flourishes and memorable characters. But the picture never escapes the box it’s been placed in or transcends a key, fundamental error in its conception.

I Love My Dad cannot overcome its off-putting premise. Nothing is out of bounds, of course (especially in comedy), but if there’s an approach to make the material palatable, either played straight or broad, it is left undiscovered here.

What the newbies can’t recreate is the coked-up, jet-fueled delirium of Bay’s efforts, particularly the second “Bad Boys,” which may be as pure a peek into a narcissist’s id as has ever been captured in a summer studio picture. It’s a loathsome, ugly movie, but fess up, it’s one you’re still thinking about. Bad Boys For Life is, by most standards, a “better” movie. And you’ll forget it by next week.

One can’t help coming away with the feeling that if the intelligence and originality of All My Puny Sorrows matched its earnestness, they could’ve really had something here.

It’s about as well-acted and enjoyable a version of this particular thing as you’re likely to find.

The longer There There goes, the more it meanders and never into the realm of anything particularly funny or compelling. Instead, it plays mostly like a series of exercises – in writing, acting, and covid-era production. It feels like a movie Bujalski made to make a movie. Which is fine for him but doesn’t offer much to the rest of us.

Tom Hanks is such an avatar for optimism and goodness that the qualities of this character – his heartbreak and vulnerability and resignation to a certain kind of hopelessness – land with greater impact, and he’s so good that when the filmmakers go for the big emotional wallop at the end, they almost pull it off.

This notion, of the supervillain antihero and the gibberish-spouting minions who serve him, remains an awfully thin premise to hang a movie on – much less five of them.

It’s genuinely thrilling to watch a filmmaker with a specific voice and oddball style taking genuine risks, and the way she successfully navigates these tonal transitions, how she cuts the cynicism with sincerity and vice versa – well, it’s kind of miracle.

There’s not much here for anyone over 10 to focus on, aside from how strange it is that the puppy Clifford looks so much more fake than the giant one.