Jesse Hassenger

The sequel is another indication that Sandler is still undertaking his longtime mission of making silly comfort-food comedies with the stealth seriousness of older age.

Kandahar gets the straight face right, but seems woefully convinced that it’s a serious drama, right down to the wailing-woman soundtrack that so many Hollywood and Hollywood-adjacent movies about the Middle East bust out to show they’re down with the anguish.

On one level, Shyamalan feels more comfortable than ever; Trap may cook more purely and entertainingly than anything in his last decade of self-styled pop hits. But it also suggests that there are discordant notes that he can’t, and probably shouldn’t, ever get out of his system.

It’s not that The Amateur explores moral gray areas; it just swirls generic and weirdly apolitical spy-movie elements around until all that’s left is a watery blur, accidentally paying faithful tribute to studio mediocrities past.

It’s Ritchie in fun-workhorse mode, more businesslike than Operation Fortune but fleeter than Fountain Of Youth.

After The Hunt does eventually add up to something greater than its flood of but-what-about details.

Some of the movie’s cartoon mayhem is fun enough. The rest feels like, well, work.

There are any number of metaphorical applications for A’s condition, some implied more strongly than others, including trans struggles, gender fluidity...teenage desire to fit in, even accidental catfishing.... Every Day is sweet and sincere enough to remain open to these interpretations, but too gentle to assert itself into anything of real consequence.

Rudderless accumulates puzzling details and goodwill in near-equal measure.

JUNG_E has plenty of spare parts, and occasionally janky green-screen effects. But both the robots and humans it assembles move with unexpected grace.

The lack of comic goals allows Meyers to write and write; a key emotional scene between De Niro and Hathaway late in the movie rambles on like a first draft, and the movie swells to the two-hour mark.

For a movie that emulates literature, The Age Of Adaline never fits comfortably into a particular form — literary or cinematic.

The dead air in the movie’s opening section is intentional, yet there are moments where Final Cut, the movie you’re actually watching, feels off – not through outright incompetence, but the eerie, imitative quality of a too-soon-too-little remake. Call it undead air.

There is visual wit in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and some invention, too.

The movie isn’t easy to dismiss. Its awkward comedy is often funny, and its shadowy mystery is compelling, because Abilene’s death does become more of an enigma to Ben as he learns more about her. Performers as eclectic as Holbrook, J. Smith-Cameron, Isabella Amara, and Ashton Kutcher all do their best to bring these potentially elusive characters to life.

Breathe seems to want nothing more than to be "The Theory Of Everything" for a slightly newer generation.

Those who already admire the director may not find a stunning level of insight, and the curious but unindoctrinated would be better served by starting with one his actual films rather than a rundown of them. But there’s a certain satisfaction in a rundown of a career as rich and varied as Linklater’s, not unlike the pleasure of watching a well-edited Oscar tribute reel.

Of course, a single documentary can’t cover everything, but this one’s slim but entertaining 80 minutes suggests that Nguyen erred on the side of brevity.

Directors Kief Davidson and Daniel Junge drive home the company’s grown-up fan base by logging an amusingly eclectic array of celebrity testimonials: Ed Sheeran, Trey Parker, and NBA star Dwight Howard.

There are plenty of little chuckles throughout, but the movie doesn’t incorporate seemingly throwaway gags into its narrative like an expertly timed Harold-style improv. More often, it feels like the Broken Lizard boys are trying to salvage what works and re-use as much of it as possible.

Rodriguez’s kid movies are always sweet-natured, and do an admirable job of speaking directly to their target audience. But while he can generate countless environments from his Austin studio, the camerawork on these projects, constrained and uninspired, hints at their single-room origins.

Throughout its slim but slow 83 minutes, Umma piles up missed-opportunity scenes that cry out for a ghoulish sense of humor or an audience-rattling jump.

If anything, this is a more meager, timid iteration of Seuss’ story, starting with the characterization of its famous antihero.

Well into his late period, Campbell still knows his way around a crisp cut, but sometimes that’s most noticeable in Cleaner when he’s not directing action at all – which is a surprising amount of the time.

For a Brit-inflected talking-animal picture in the wake of the "Paddington" series, it’s not good enough.

To his credit, it probably would have been easy to turn this particular book into a quasi-satirical parade of withering takedowns. Turning it into a flavorless, center-less journey of self-discovery was likely a lot more work. That doesn’t make it any easier to watch.

These are not good performances, exactly. Clarke is endearing, but verges on mugging. Claflin is at his best when Will gives in to his competitive urges, which happens exactly once.

On its terms, and especially with an ending I read as ambiguous, The Woman in the Yard is also unflinching enough to maybe count as daring, and maybe Sollet-Cerra’s most viscerally moving film. It’s also among his least playful, least comforting. Your anxieties can’t follow you around if you can barely make it out of bed.