Jordan Hoffman

Perfect Sisters may stand accused of being rife with tone-deaf stylistic choices, but the more positive spin is to call it a marginal film elevated, however inadvertently, by the strange specificity of its scenes.

Raimi manages to keep things engaging, which is a very real act of wizardry in and of itself.

All of the action is shot cleanly, and I could always tell where everyone was in relation to one another during the setpieces — which may not sound like much of a win, but if you think that, you clearly haven't watched too many direct-to-streaming movies. If you want something done efficiently, hire a union man.

The Legend of Tarzan ends up being a garbled, clunky production that tries to please everyone and ends up pleasing no one.

The first half of Pacific Rim Uprising is about as fun as a trip to the dentist. The second half, however, is a dizzying and delightful foray into enjoyable pandemonium. It’s like the laughing gas really kicks in.

By the end of this 89-minute film, I was absolutely on the edge of my seat. Not due to suspense, but due to my utter disdain for the infantile plotting.

It’s a film tremendously out of step with current tastes, and while I doubt that was its goal, this peculiarity makes it strangely watchable – even enjoyable.

In the spaces between the hackneyed dialogue, ham-handed score, and poor acting, Walking With The Enemy eventually wins its sole victory: a desire to look the story up on Wikipedia later that day. That may be a small triumph, but it’s hardly the mark of fine cinema.

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.

The first act of the film wins some laughs on surrealist shock humour, but at the expense of ever accepting this character and her world as real.

What we have on our hands is a dud, but there are a few grace notes that save it from being an unmitigated disaster.

Despite the numerous patchy moments The Brass Teapot by and large squeaks by as an enjoyable entertainment.

For young people looking for something to do besides doomscrolling, you could do far worse. For those old enough to have seen the first one in theaters, this'll be a decent one to stream later in the year.

Despite a lead performance by the always welcome Julianne Moore it is rudderless in its presentation and outright stupid in its central conceits.

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

This movie sure means well, and it’s just entertaining enough to (slightly) slip off the shackles of the great cultural conformity factory it ultimately represents.

Trash Fire is too quick to burn through its ideas.

Songwriter sells the “nice boy” bit well, but if you aren’t already a fan, it eventually becomes tiresome. There are occasional glimmers of a real person (wishing to topple Adele, laying down a “no Snapchat” rule at his house, etc.) but rarely is a feature film so bluntly just marketing.

Unfortunately, there is an uncanny lack of urgency in the film. The characterizations are flat, the would-be quippy dialogue rarely elicits laughs, and the action sequences seldom rise above the level of satisfactory.

The action is the real star here, and it’s all good enough. It isn’t great – the aerial special effects are distractingly cheap – but at least there’s lots of it on display.

The first sixty minutes of Pompeii are awful, bordering on unwatchable... The final forty-five minutes of the movie however are, by sheer force of will, irrefutably entertaining. At least there’s raining death in the form of fireballs smashing up the place.

Does this mean that Sabotage is a rich, morally complex story about the gray zone between good and evil? Hell, no. It just means it is a bungle.

After the unnatural way it plops this gruesome group in their social Siberia, it goes from (alleged) comedy to serious drama with all the subtlety of a 10-year-old playing Mario Kart.

Many of The Boss’s troubles stem from its constant, unpredictable shifts in tone.

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.

There is something so authentic in this film that once you get past the annoying voice and some of the dreadfully unfunny side characters, it is disarmingly sweet and even occasionally clever.

Only completists need check in with Homefront. The rest of us can just stay home.

While we open with dazed individuals in a crashed limousine as it begins to take on water, Submerged’s frequent flashbacks eventually reveal a tiresome crime plot rife with soporific acting and unremarkable dialogue.