Jordan Hoffman

Unfortunately both Eisenberg and Stewart, both frequently brilliant, are on unsure footing here. The movie simply doesn't know if it wants to be Jason Bourne or Cheech and Chong.

[A] touching, insightful and, at the end of the day, extremely well-meaning film.

Ricki and the Flash’s emotional intensity creeps up on you, and it’s all due to the performances. Everyone’s sympathetic, everyone’s got depth.

The first half of Straight Outta Compton, F Gary Gray’s two-and-a-half hour opus about the birth of west coast gangsta rap, is bursting with energy, exuberance and inspiration. The second half is immobilised by bloat and sanctification.

One of the most fascinating, if inscrutable films of the year.

Helms, a funny performer, is just the face of a mining expedition for easy yuks out of a recognised title. What that says about our regurgitative culture is rather depressing. There’s so much nostalgia on our screens right now. I could really use a vacation.

What’s ultimately frustrating about Zipper is that it seems like it has something important to say about infidelity and the sex industry, but can’t decide what that should be.

The best parts of Paper Towns are also the best part of being young – just hanging out doing nothing with friends who know you too well to allow for any lies.

Bagaria’s personal journey has none of the gravitas on screen that the director wants it to have, especially when set against the backdrop of actual human rights crises in Damascus.

Howe’s film is drenched in empathy, where violent actions aren’t exactly excused, but at least framed with understanding.

Tangerine offers a warts-and-all depiction of a subculture seldom treated with respect by straight society. The movie handles it in a sincere way that’s entertaining, too.

Ryan Reynolds does the best he can with the material.... But any intelligence is tossed once we get mired in a series of dull chase scenes.

The Ted franchise is perhaps unstoppable if MacFarlane sets his sights a bit lower, finds a way to streamline the plot mechanics and just give moviegoers what they never knew they wanted: time hanging out with a foul-mouthed anthropomorphised soft toy.

Even without the current headlines, United Passions is a disgrace. It’s less a movie than preposterous self-hagiography, more appropriate for Scientology or the Rev Sun Myung Moon. As cinema it is excrement. As proof of corporate insanity it is a valuable case study.

This is detached, flat film-making at its most bare. You figure out which lines of dialogue deserve to be underlined.

Hunting Elephants has its requisite scenes of planning and setbacks, but it mostly settles for old-people jokes (now I know the Hebrew for Viagra: it’s Viagra) and making Patrick Stewart look like an imbecile.

I can’t believe just how dumb Hot Pursuit is. Moreover I can’t believe just how much I laughed.

More frightening (yet strangely entertaining) than most of today’s narrative horror films.

I give the odd, small film Maggie all the points in the world for experimenting with genre-blending and subverting audience expectations, but there’s just too much about it that fails to connect.

It’s a play shoehorned into a film. Sometimes that can work – LaBute’s managed it before – but it’s a steep hill to climb, and this one doesn’t quite make it.

Age of Adaline, which starts off looking like a frothy series of excuses to put Blake Lively in some fabulously timeless gowns, ends up an emotional and even bold chamber drama. Its ending is ludicrous, but also perfect, and I’d be lying if I didn’t get a little choked up.

There’s really not much going on with Roar storywise. But then you take a step back and think about what it is that you’re watching. My viewing of Roar was set to a soundtrack of “Oh my God!” and “Holy crap!”, all of my own making.

The three leads draw you in. The pace gives these actors time to breathe, show nuance and make their characters human.

About Elly is remarkable for both its universal observations about human nature and its specifics.

This is the film’s grossest crime. It’s dumb, it’s long, it’s dull, but it isn’t quite bad enough to be camp.

Ultimately, Experimenter finds a glimmer of hope by simply revealing itself. Maybe if more people are educated about the dangers of obedience, they’ll put up more resistance. It can’t hurt to hope.

You’ve seen this movie before with peppier actors, and not tethered to a visually uninteresting set that looks like a remainder from a 10-year-old episode of CSI.

Bluebird is undoubtedly a remarkable achievement, especially for a first-time filmmaker.

If there was just one extended sequence that crackled with originality you could at least say it has its moments, but, truly, there’s nothing besides repeated use of swear words in lieu of wit.

What’s terrific about The Duff is that Casey and Jessica may not have intentionally befriended the less attractive Bianca as a way to make themselves look better, but they don’t exactly deny that she serves that purpose.

There’s more to this movie than sweeping music and celebrating in slow motion. It all stems from Costner’s remarkable, taciturn performance as Coach White.

Johnson’s Ana squeezes believability out of one of the more silly romantic entanglements in recent popular culture. It’s all there in her face, which Taylor-Johnson frames in close-up. She’s fully aware this scenario is ridiculous, but can’t seem to turn away from its lunacy.

It isn’t just the sheer density of jokes that is impressive, but the diversity.

The on-stage moments of Entertainment are revelatory but, unfortunately, some of the in-between meat of the film doesn’t quite connect.

A smart and beautiful meditation of fathers and sons (and the Father and Son) that is slow but never boring.

Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez deserves all the praise in the world for the way he cranks up this pressure cooker script. The Stanford Prison Experiment begins with giggles but ends in full psychological break.

Mistress America eventually travels down roads of broken trust and acceptance of reality, but please don’t let those heavy themes suggest this movie is anything other than pure delight. The primacy of the joke rules the day.

No one in the film is particularly likeable, and while the global implications about epistemology are interesting, the specifics of this particular case, at least rendered here, are quite dull.

Clearly there is entertainment value in this documentary, but it’s very much of a “behind the music” calibre.

Not since Grey Gardens has a film invited us into such a strange, barely-functioning home and allowed us to gawk without reservation. This is a nosy movie, but it is altogether fascinating.

Writer-director team Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (It’s Kind of A Funny Story, Half Nelson) must be applauded for refusing to let their shaggy dog tale line up with any predictable storyline.

Despite the uncomfortable sexism and altogether predictable nature of the film, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t modestly entertaining.

Think about that one insufferable guy you knew in school who comments on everything you put on Facebook. Now try and imagine spending an entire movie’s run time with him.

This movie may be too slow and verbose to be the next breakout horror hit, but its focus on themes over plot is what elevates it to something near greatness.

What The End of the Tour tries to sell, and sells well, is that Wallace’s big heart was just not made for these times.

Blackhat can’t decide if it is a grim, realistic story from the trenches or cyberwarfare or a giddy, “who cares if that makes sense?” Bond film.

Despite the presence of grandfatherly Michael Caine, Kingsman’s tone is about as far from the Christopher Nolan-style superhero film as you can get. Verisimilitude is frequently traded in for a rich laugh. The action scenes delight with shock humour.

Certainly we care for Margaret and the way Walter has her trapped, but her character comes across as a cypher representing a great number of issues without being a real individual. This movie wants to be an oil painting, but ends up being more of a mass-produced, though good-quality print.

Both Rogen and Franco, who have marvellous chemistry and exude good cheer, continue to tweak their personas in this very amusing, very imbecilic film.

Despite the desultory nature of the film, it is sure to hammer home some key points.

Zero Motivation is a shot of honesty, in which short-term goals are far more important than larger geo-political ones. Perhaps because they are the only ones over which we have any control.

This spiral of self-imposed despair feels like part three of a trilogy of American financial darkness after Killing Them Softly and The Counsellor. The Gambler isn’t quite so audience-unfriendly, but those looking for a typical Wahlberg thriller might come away disappointed. Others looking for a less sure bet might reap the rewards.

I’d be lying if I said this movie didn’t crack me up on more than a few occasions.

There’s slow cinema and there is boring cinema, and this is an unfortunate example of the latter.

For family entertainment, you could do a lot worse.

It’s a great story that lends itself to some striking scenes. Yet the film in total – if I may paraphrase Webb’s critics – has a number of holes.

It is a rather sly affair, slipping in some genuine food for thought amongst its snickering.

The Maze Runner is not a good movie, but it wins points for omitting much of what makes typical teen films excruciating.

The Duke of Burgundy will have its detractors. But this is not just a filthy movie. It's a considerable work of art, and one that touches on a rarely discussed side of human sexuality completely free of judgement.

“Expendables 3” has fewer nauseating clichés than The Judge.

A fantastic, sleek and fun satire.

Tina Fey is in the film, for heaven’s sake, and I love her to pieces, but by now we know to expect something humdrum when she’s on a movie screen.

Put bluntly, Tim Story's film wears you down until you relent and say, yes, I like these people and it's fun to watch them all have such a good time.

Embarrassing for everyone involved not because of any squeamish subject matter – quite the contrary, seeing retirement-age characters are refreshing – but because the story structure is so fake and so plodding.

Finding Fela does an exemplary job of explaining, in musical terms, what made Fela standout, a simple enough step that most music documentaries ignore.

Young kids will find the second, more action-heavy half of the film entertaining, but everyone else will want to crawl into their shell.

Life After Beth, a frustrating affair due to its waste of resources, feels rushed and under-rehearsed. It is a style of film-making that hopes it can glide its way into your good graces on ad-hoc performance flourishes, a wall-to-wall audio mix and editing patches. One soon recognizes this all a cover for one key issue: a lack of original ideas.

By the end of the movie few won’t be rolling their eyes or checking their watch, but there’s enough that’s fundamentally good in the meat of film not to wholly reject what The Giver is giving us.

There’s no way around this: The November Man is asinine. It is not without its pleasures – if you like seeing people get hit in the face with shovels, that is – but it might be the most irresponsibly dumb spy thriller I’ve seen in some time.

The corn in The Identical is as tall as an elephant’s eye – but there’s nothing that says the story of a man torn between his religious upbringing and his desire to be a musician can’t make for a good movie. In fact, considering a little movie called "The Jazz Singer," there’s ample proof that it can be groundbreaking.

One of the world's top disturbing tourist attractions is now finally getting the spooky film it deserves

It has a nose for what's cool, but is completely inept at execution.

In this 75-minute straight shot of Discovery Channel cinema, no emotional crests are peaked, but viewers will come away informed.

Cripplingly lifeless.

[A] blend of classic sci-fi fare and current pop-culture irony is what rockets “Guardians” into the stratosphere.

The end of the movie goes completely off the rails, but in a way that is charming in its stupidity.

This picture isn’t as showy or obvious as one of his (many) masterpieces, but it is quite good and deserves your time and respect.

Despite being clever and crafty it can’t break out of the curiosity shop. It’s the finest diorama in there, but something to admire, linger over then move past.

Serkis’ Caesar gets more than his fair share of rip-snortin’ badass moments. He’s arguably the finest leader of men we’ve seen on screen since “Lincoln.”

This is television-level moviemaking top to bottom, from its preposterous premise, scenery-chomping performances, idiotic sound cues and force-fed jump-scares. Deliver Us From Evil delivers formula, and in a formulaic fashion.

Basically a drama-in-disguise. Unfortunately, it’s a formulaic and extremely uneven one, albeit with a number of sympathetic performances.

Either I’m getting dumber or the “Transformers” sequels are getting more coherent.

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus isn't entirely successful – and certainly offers few new insights into the nature of addiction – but it remains a welcome change of pace.

his bleak and somewhat sadistic picture is the type of movie that unfolds like a slow car wreck. You know something bad is going to happen, you just aren’t sure what, or how, and when it eventually happens it is repulsive and yet you still can’t turn away.

Eastwood, who once upon a time was a flavorful director, is working in movie-of-the-week mode here. Cheesy, direct, bland.

Burning Bush is a rare accomplishment. It’s a political film with clear heroes and villains, and true to its HBO roots, it works as a fleet-of-foot juicy plot-delivery system.

22 Jump Street is a success, as there is a little good ol’ fashioned “heart” beneath its post-modern veneer.

A dark, dreary and dull “Mad Max in Neutral” from director David Michôd (“Animal Kingdom”) that tries to pass off its blunt narrative and repetitiveness as some sort of style.

Bonello's decision to show rather than tell keeps the audience on its toes.

The Homesman certainly wins a few points for trying a different type of Western. There are no greedy land barons and no gunslingers drawin’ at high noon. But being unique isn’t enough if the story remains uneven and the characters don’t feel real.

Cronenberg’s map doesn’t lead to a satisfying destination in a typical story sense, but it is a remarkable quest. For a movie that has so many problems, it is one of the more watchable ones.

Nothing short of fascinating.

Ryan Gosling wanted to make an art film and, despite some dull patches, pretty much succeeded.

What's unfortunate is that Toothless is starring in a toothless story.

The specifics of the journey get all the attention, while the fundamental conflicts remain not just unoriginal, but alarmingly nonexistent.

You’ll laugh if you’re young, you’ll laugh if you’re old.

Teerink’s reserved, spare form mirrors LeWitt’s work, which gives it tremendous impact.

Far-fetched, absurd and hopelessly schticky, but if you can get past its boring initial set-up, it’s actually quite funny.