Joshua Rothkopf

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the most part, you’re in the hands of a capable lunatic who has a tale to tell.

Damon and Bale are unfailingly enjoyable company to be among, steering the psychology away from alpha-male dominance to something more complex and occasionally mystical.

The navel-gazing artist class that gave Williamsburg its character (now more of a marketable “brand”) has in Friedrich both a vigorous defender and, it must be said, something close to an angry parody of itself.

Berlinger is fully invested here, but a little distance might have helped.

Redemptively, the cast goes a long way: Jean Desailly is perfect as a jowly literary celeb deep in midlife crisis, while the aloof Françoise Dorléac is magnetic as his airline stewardess and all-too-scrutable love object.

As with 1999’s deceptively deep South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut and, more recently, The Lego Movie, the script works hard to invest its scenario with an existential and political dimension, crudely but effectively expressed.

The dueling dirty tricks zing half the time.... But subplots involving naive volunteers getting their hearts broken feel like strands from a less ambitious movie.

The metafriction between these classic dupes and today's idiots chafes uneasily.

You sense the Demme-esque working-class comedy that might have been.

Heroically, Double Tap’s new actors, rare though they are, save it from being completely brain-dead.

Dree Hemingway, daughter of Mariel, commits to some unnecessary nudity, but also impresses with her subtlety.

There's lots of volume in these tunes--the soundtrack is killer--and at least everyone gets their rocks off.

Unfortunately for us, Dern — only seen in flashback — isn’t the main character.

As games go, this one’s a little too easy to outfox, but it’s worth playing if you need a quick diversion, or if the chess moves of The Favourite felt overly vicious—Ready or Not is pure checkers.

Swaddled with a lacquer of nostalgia that passes for cultural insight, this one-night-in-sweatpants drama will make you yearn for a moratorium on teen movies-at least ones so aggressively dewy-eyed.

Clangorous and nonsensical, the fifth installment of the toys-to-world-saviors franchise still has a spark of grandeur that could only come from one director.

No exchanges flare into true weirdness; rather, the mood is lingering and tentative. Undoubtedly, this is the movie's intent, but it's a fairly banal comment on foreign estrangement (or love) that could have used some roughing up.

No one is going to explain any of this for you — and the slightly snobby implication of Upstream Color is that explanations are for suckers.

The film doesn’t know how innocent it wants to be. Establishing shots of Manhattan’s 1998 skyline arrive in the cutesy form of a colorful diorama, just like Mr. Rogers’s show, but that gesture feels utopian and unearned, not to mention a little boring.

Of course we all hate insidious environmental destruction; it’s valuable to have movies about that. This one works fine enough. But let the other less-talented filmmakers make them.

It all comes down to the Big Birthday Party and a furious bike ride, which he's clearly done before, in "The 40 Year Old Virgin."

When Sarah's Key leans into the horror (as it should), it's harrowing. Alas, that's only half the time.

West holds your interest with material that should feel like a rip-off of The Shining. If this is mere placeholding until something more ambitious comes along for the rising director, it'll do.

The movie isn’t adventurous, but I’m sure glad it exists.

St. Vincent has nothing on Rushmore, an obvious forebearer, even though it strains for the same egalitarian spirit of thrown-together family, one that includes a pregnant Russian stripper (Naomi Watts) and a sympathetic but firm Catholic schoolteacher (Chris O’Dowd).

The oddest thing about the movie - and perhaps the asset that will tip it over into the plus column for you - is that it's a bona fide scuzz-Western.

Alas, it all comes off as hit and myth, mainly due to our leaden, buzz-cut hero, Perseus (Avatar’s Worthington, no Harry Hamlin), and zero sparks of heavenly-body chemistry or humor.

Seeing as how Kill the Messenger comes down firmly on the side of Webb’s truth, it’s unfortunate that his discoveries are only confirmed via the end credits. Missing from the action, too, is the merest hint of our hero’s demise by suicide in 2004. These aspects should have been better showcased; as is, it’s not the whole story.