Kevin Jagernauth

Manufactured and manicured to appeal to the teenage fans of Green's book, Paper Towns is so polished and edgeless, that even Margo herself would look at the finished product, and question its authenticity.

Though blessed with a strong lead performance by Pettersen, “Disco” is quick to knock the empty spectacle that undoubtedly accounts for significant portions of contemporary Christianity without entertaining the notion that, for some, faith does hold real value in their lives. It’s not particularly challenging to make a punching bag out of any organized religion, but it takes a far more clever piece of filmmaking to acknowledge its shortcomings and benefits while still maintaining a critical tone. Unfortunately, Disco isn’t that picture.

Director Ari Sandel, working with a script by Josh A. Cagan, doesn't have the deftness to really convey how Bianca's personality turns conventional wisdom into her own unique, attractive qualities.

There’s a more rewarding film in here had The Boys From County Hell pushed the humor a bit further, and pitched the scares a touch higher.

Winter's detail oriented approach does at least give the best recounting of Napster you're going to get, even if it's a biased one. And while some contrasting opinions would've been appreciated, Downloaded is still worth a click.

While there's no doubt that Shepard's film is frequently laugh-out-loud funny and impressively, wittily written, with a finely tuned ear for the perfect bit of foul language, it stumbles slightly on the story side.

Portman wants to articulate something beyond the ordinary, and while she hasn’t found it in this picture, perhaps there are lessons here to be learned before she mounts her next effort.

It's exactly the oddball and crooked tale you'd want and expect from a Cronenberg with all the gratuitous blood, pus, bone and multiple closeups of needles piercing skin you could ask for. Dad would be proud.

Too long by at least a half hour, and both dull and repetitive as it goes on, Cloud Atlas reaches for envelope-pushing storytelling but never delivers on its promise.

Perhaps the array of characters read better on the page, but it all feels slight in execution, particularly when half of the running time is spent on Tommy’s past and what unfolded between himself and Shelley. Combine all that with a particularly lackluster sense of urgency and pacing, and you have film that offers few reasons for investment.

Never quite as deep or probing as it thinks it is, Thanks For Sharing is an unsatisfying tease.

All The Wilderness may ultimately be hindered by a narrow scope, but within that view, Johnson gets pretty much every detail right.

It would be too easy to say The Magnificent Seven isn’t magnificent. It’s definitely not, but the film has an even more egregious quality: it’s uninspired. There’s no risk, no real attempts to subvert expectations, and no desire to truly give the audience something, if not entirely new, then at least surprising.

Inert from the start, and presented with little emotional depth or weight, Small Time gets the car started but doesn't go anywhere interesting.

The Book Thief covers a large span of time, but the film's episodic nature, often moving from one incident to the next with little time to pause or reflect, often obscures that fact and hinders an evocation of the cumulative effect the war has on the psyche of not just the Hubermanns, but their neighbors, too.

Broken simply can't get it together on any level, delivering a tedious drama, that for all the characters and over-emoting, doesn't have much to say.

For filmmakers Angus Macqueen and Guillermo Galdos, they've undoubtedly chosen a great subject for a compelling documentary. Unfortunately, they squander the opportunity with Drug Lord: The Legend of Shorty, and it's due to the common problem of contemporary documentaries, where the directors get so far in the way of their own story, that any context or objectivity is lost.

When the end comes, and the suggestion of a sequel is left faintly lingering (though not in the way you’re expecting), weariness descends on just how unimaginative Carrie is and how easily it settles for the expected, rather than striving to be excitingly refreshing.

White House Down wants to riff on the stirring action crowd-pleasers of old. But instead of playing on those motifs, White House Down becomes a slave to them, turning into the very kind of rote, brainless, poorly choreographed and leaden action movie it wants to lighten up.

Though Horovitz's directing is workmanlike solid, and while the movie has a certain charm that makes it easy to walk in the door, it gives you little reason to stay.

For those who didn't know how flawed and manipulated the act of casting a ballot has become, Citizen Koch is a decent enough primer, but for everyone else long past the tipping point, this is just more evidence for a problem that currently has no solution.

Magnus is gifted with a tremendous opportunity and mostly squanders it, creating a profile that certainly admires Carlsen, but does little to uncover the methodology or magic behind the dazzling display he demonstrates on the board.

Self/less is brain/less entertainment, but if there’s any consolation, the impression it leaves is so fleeting that you can soon replace it with better movie memories.

Any time the duo build up a significant amount of energy, the messy mechanics of the story come barreling in, shifting the narrative attention to the tedious developments involving encryption keys, which is nothing more than a Macguffin to begin with.

Lethargic and not particularly invigorating or fresh, you can skip Wasteland and wait for the next Brit crime flick that will be following before long.

The movie is basically The Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Mad Man, but don't be shocked if you find yourself asking just what art he was practicing in the first place.

A thriller of divided ambitions, that earnestly wants to Say Something Important about the mistreatment of combat veterans by the very government that sends them to war, while also flirting with the opportunity for franchise potential, resulting in a film distinctly cleaved in two, unsatisfying halves.

Felony isn't a federal case of a bad film, but it's certainly a serious misdemeanor, one whose crime is running away from the challenge the story sets up, to settle on something cheap and conventional.