Marya E. Gates

Ultimately, “Roofman” is a slick but incurious film that is so preoccupied with showing the what of Manchester’s story that it doesn’t bother to examine the why.

Highly ambitious, dark as midnight, and often hilarious, Griffin’s debut film Silent Night doesn’t always work, but her insightful look at the inherent selfishness of humanity and our absurd need to cling to hope no matter what is spot on.

There is surely an audience for this kind of feel-good quote-un-quote feminism. But a book of such richness, with a heroine as complex as Birdy, deserves much more than this genial Renn Faire romp.

The directors never quite find the right symmetry between scenes of life and art with those that uncritically glorify violence.

Lasse Hallström‘s latest film, The Map That Leads to You, has the makings of a Gen Z “Before Sunset” meets “Eat Pray Love,” but unfortunately, it also has the depth of a mediocre beach read weepy. That is to say, I enjoyed it as I watched, but it has had no lasting effect on my memory or, even worse, my heart.

While the filmmakers certainly have their heart in the right place, aside from maybe a plea for more compassionate medical professionals, nothing about Peaceful is very original or even entertaining.

There’s no denying the weight of The Persian Version’s final sequence. Yet, it’s an ending that feels rushed, both because of the sequence’s continual tonal shifts between heartfelt drama and slapstick comedy but also because Leila’s final bout of emotional maturity feels unearned.

Although it's gorgeous to look at (especially Joan Bergin’s costumes), Disenchanted fails to truly rekindle the magic, or the biting wit of its predecessor.

Two decades and half a dozen films later, everything that made his debut film feel fresh has now curdled like bad milk with his latest pitch black comedy Riff Raff.

Ultimately Spin Me Round is like a bad vacation where even the gorgeous Italian seaside isn’t enough to make the time spent feel worth it.

Bloated at nearly 140 minutes with Cooper clearly miscast in the lead, it struggles to maintain urgency. Dreary and overly saturated with a CGI patina, this new take on Nightmare Alley adds more gore and f-bombs to the source material but ultimately remains emotionally inert and unclear exactly what it wants to say about these characters and the world they inhabit.

Unfortunately, aside from the always reliable Hawke and Okonedo, there isn’t much to praise about this deadpan dark comedy, which is miscalculated on almost every level.

What the script thinks is unique about itself is all surface level, resulting in a film that feels like a copy of a copy of something that maybe once had been original but now feels as fake as a wax figurine.

By keeping the film’s emotional core at a distance for most of the film, the only catharsis the audience feels during its denouement is from the relief that this bleak, miserable slog is finally over.

It’s nice to see McCarthy and O’Dowd in roles that showcase their emotional range; one just wishes it were in a project worthy of their talents.

Mildly diverting from time to time due to its beautiful production design, The School for Good and Evil is mostly an unmitigated slog, filled with underdeveloped characters, absolutely terrible dialogue, and a world that feels both completely ripped off from better things and unnecessarily complex.

Common Ground is a well-meaning PSA that waters down the complex history, practices, and systems of American industrial agriculture into something palatable for audiences looking to feel good about the bleak future of this dying planet without actually having to do any hard learning, thinking, or direct action.

Though millions of Jewish people were imprisoned and killed in concentration camps during this time, this misguided drama, written by Ilya Tsofin, isn’t interested in the truth of their stories. Instead, it’s a contrived triumph of the human spirit-style narrative where the Jewish character at the center is rendered a cipher for suffering while his Nazi tormentors are unconsciously humanized.

Ultimately, To Catch a Killer blames all of the gruesome violence it depicts on the perpetrator’s mental health and offers only a surface-level exploration of the system that failed him.

Imagine a J-horror plot involving a child possessed by a swamp demon told through the aesthetics of the screenlife found footage subgenre, and you can pretty much imagine how writer-director Pablo Absento‘s new film, “Bloat,” will play out.

Mafia Mamma lives in the uncanny valley between incompetent and unwatchable.

Despite claiming otherwise in its marketing, this doc still wants to uphold her as the rock n’ roll goddess of the headlines rather than as a person on her own terms.

The nostalgia of Ponsoldt's film is curdled and rotten underneath its summery sheen.

It’s all just really bizarre, limp copies of better films.

While the script from John Gatins, who wrote "Flight," is mostly decent (there is some laughable dialogue peppered throughout), Dean Israelite's direction is so fussy, frenetic, and disjointed that it renders moot any charm the story may have once contained.

Ultimately, “La Dolce Villa” is about as authentic an Italian experience as a night at the Olive Garden.

That this catastrophe is director Wanuri Kahiu’s follow-up after her sublime debut “Rafiki” makes it all the more disappointing. Where that film has rich characterization, this has generalities. Where that film has vibrant cinematography, this has dreadful, bland compositions. Where that film has a detailed sense of place, this film has a disjointed, geographically murky portrait of L.A. and what appears to be a sponsored by SXSW and Whataburger view of Texas.

Like its lazy title, Murder Mystery 2 settles for the lowest version of itself.