Matt Zoller Seitz

Frustratingly poised on the knife's-edge of "pretty good but not as good as you want it to be," the movie might've benefitted from a more leisurely but focused pace that would've allowed the characters to breathe more, and the legal and scientific concepts to be explained with greater clarity.

A lot of this is figuratively and literally standup material, with the interview subjects framed head-to-toe in front of bright, primary-colored backdrops, and keeping things as light as possible.

The movie never delivers on its considerable promise because it's always in such a hurry to get to the next action scene.

Once you're immersed, it's a powerful experience that lingers in the mind long after the film's many disappointments have started to fade.

What a singularly weird, gross tale this turned out to be.

It's a portrait of a hard-drinking, charismatic, obnoxious self-styled rebel who was his own worst enemy but whose brilliance and tenacity allowed him to thrive in an industry that wouldn't ordinarily have any use for someone like him.

Coming Home in the Dark settles into the memory as a mesmerizing missed opportunity at worst, a promise of future classics at best.

At its best, it plays like a wry critique of this unexpectedly lucrative period of Neeson's career, and a borderline-spoof of the genre as a whole.

Iron Man 3 builds on the first film's political cynicism by suggesting that politicians and arms dealers dream up foreign policy crises to consolidate power and make money, but it doesn't develop this notion in detail, because if it did, the audience would tune out.

Equals goes for the Vulcan solution, and while the movie feels a bit thin and padded as a feature, it believes in itself completely, and there are moments when the sincerity of the lead actors and the director's addiction to the narcotics of Kristen Stewart's eyes, lips, neck and hands puts the whole concept over the top.

The problem, though, is that American Underdog doesn't ever really connect the modest virtuousness of Kurt and Brenda to Kurt's ascension as a quarterback.

It takes its sweet time getting to the point, and generally speaking, the less interested it is in moving the plot along, the weirder and funnier it becomes.

This one is a mostly likable effort, but it doesn't quite feel like a self-contained movie with a shape and a discernible point; it's more of a collection of material arranged in a way that more or less makes sense.

Loud, trashy, sweet and weird, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers reboot Power Rangers is not merely an ideal film for rambunctious and undemanding 12-year olds, it actually sees the world through their eyes.

The film is good to excellent in every way except morally, and there it's questionable more often than it should be, not because it's an evil film, or because the filmmaker or actors are bad people, but because the interplay of means and ends have been under-thought or misjudged, to the point where the film becomes a catalog of obscenities.

There are two movies in Jackie, Pablo Larraín's film about Jackie Kennedy (Natalie Portman) immediately before, during and after the assassination of her husband, President John F. Kennedy. One of these movies is just OK. The other is exceptional. The first one keeps undermining the second.

The film’s clever editing (credited to Klinger and Geraldine Mangenot) jumps back and forth through time in intriguing, sometimes intoxicating ways, and even when the drama flags there’s always a stunning image to stare at.

What's missing is a sense of how Monroe, seemingly a law-abiding young man before his family's financial dark days, suddenly went from being a go-along-to-get-along type to a budding criminal mastermind.

The film's tight construction and prolific action scenes carry it, and Blunt and Johnson do the irresistible force/immovable object dynamic well enough, swapping energies as the story demands.

True to form, Hacksaw Ridge draws equally on Gibson's bottomless thirst for mayhem and his sincerely held religious beliefs — or some of them, anyway. It's a movie at war with itself.

Elton John: Never Too Late is an affecting movie that the musician's fans will likely appreciate, but it's the equivalent of those official oil portraits that the more intelligent and self-aware royals used to commission.

Table 19 also feels the need to be a romantic comedy in which all's well that ends well, and it's here that the movie fails most conspicuously.

The problem, though, is that we never get enough sense of Paz's interior life to judge this movie as anything other than a comeback story about a nice guy who got knocked out by the cosmos and hauled himself up.

An old-fashioned Biblical spectacular with fresh blood in its veins.

The film is worth seeing because, regardless of things that I wish had been done better or differently, it feels like the beginning of a major filmmaking career, and because Pettyfer and Freedson-Jackson are so strong.

Nothing about it makes a lot of sense, but then, nothing about classic old comedies starring people like W.C. Fields or Laurel and Hardy made much sense, because they about oddballs getting into trouble and then trying to get out of it.

Despite Lang and Fisher’s exemplary teamwork, “The Optimist” never overcomes its clunky plot or its inclination to teach rather than dramatize.

The problem is, for all its surface intelligence, "Mockingjay, Part 1" has little depth, and that sometimes makes it much more frustrating than a more knowingly shallow and silly movie might have been.

It's hard to tell if Kevin Pollak's documentary Misery Loves Comedy is too much of a good thing or not enough.

A strange and memorable but not entirely successful film, "Sweet Dreams" turns colonialism into a source of pitch-black slapstick comedy.

An American Pickle is charming and moving whenever it is content to be a two-man play. That's where the dramatic and thematic action happens. And it happens mainly through Rogen's dual performance.

It's better than OK, and a few elements sing; but overall it frustrates. Its delights come from its willingness to depart from formula, but formula still rules it.

The movie has a clearly defined aesthetic and a consistent tone and a good heart, and there are moments where it wanders into the sublime.

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey illustrates a principle endorsed by many legendary directors: Casting the right leads will get you ninety percent of the way to success.

Despite its lack of originality, as well as its lackadaisical storytelling and world building, it satisfies in that amiably weird way that only a "Cars" film can.

It mostly feels like a very long pilot for a Netflix show that would go to series, build a modest but loyal following, then get canceled after two seasons so the streamer doesn’t have to give everyone a raise for going to three. But there's loads of talent in it.

No Stone Unturned at times veers close to a rant. It's clear that Gibney is going for something along the lines of Errol Morris' "The Thin Blue Line," which also used stylized re-creations, but the pieces don't fit together as neatly here.

There are too many major characters and too many points of emphasis. As elegantly directed as it sometimes is, it feels disjointed, scattered.

Chomet’s gift for deftly caricatured faces, expressive movement, and clever compositions hasn’t deserted him, and there are many flat-out beautiful bits scattered throughout, but this is altogether a work that’s best appreciated with the sound off, while blasting a playlist of Django Reinhardt’s greatest hits.

The Last Republican also mostly elides Kinzinger's positions on various issues, seemingly to make him more palatable here as a Capra-esque hero who is exclusively defined by standing up to corruption, and against a politician that the filmmaker also opposes.

First Love is an earnest but unremarkable romance wrapped around an intelligent and sometimes powerful story of the destruction that capitalism inflicts on middle-class American families.

Considering that the entire movie is about pushing boundaries — for art, profit or both — it’s disappointing that director Danny Wolf tells the story in such a tediously prosaic way — though this, too, might be a crafty strategic move, as the many copyright owners being shrugged at here might have gotten a lot angrier had “Skin” been an exciting, innovative work, as opposed to a merely informative one.

So what are you looking at, really? Is the movie a bait-and-switch? Probably. The film has fun with the idea that nobody would have gotten involved were it not for the chance to work with James Franco and perhaps perform in a sex scene with James Franco (there are no sex scenes involving James Franco, if you were wondering).

The movie is so relentless in its desire to pull everything together and not leave any threads dangling that it sprints through scenes where you might’ve wanted it to linger, rushes through the final tournament, and rarely gives any character or subplot its full attention.

Unfortunately, early hints that the the actor-filmmaker's latest will be a brilliant, bloody, sustained workplace satire don't pan out. This is an intelligently composed, crisply edited, sometimes amusing, but otherwise unremarkable cross/double cross gangster picture.

Back on the Strip is qualitatively somewhere between a mid-level "Saturday Night Live" cash-in movie and a '90s indie comedy where the cast greatly outclasses the screenplay.

A jumbled, fitfully amusing, occasionally fascinating effort, but one that shows promise even when it's stumbling over its ambition and falling prey to some of the same stereotypes about "red" and "blue" (or reactionary and progressive) America that it keeps intimating that Americans need to get beyond.

Is it a must-see? No—the middle hour is fun, in that patented easygoing "Ant-Man" way.

Empire of Light never entirely coheres, but it's worth seeing for the power of Colman's lead performance and the expertly judged backup acting.

Although Robin's Wish is ultimately unwilling or unable to really grapple with the emotions of the people left behind after suicide, it is a compassionate film that will bring information about Williams' condition to a wide audience.

It's often painful, and not in a good way; it's painful because of the roads it doesn't explore, the shortcuts it takes, and the special pleading it can't stop itself from indulging in.

The film's hazing scenes evoke the boot camp sequences in "Full Metal Jacket" but without the merciless coldness, because the film's hero, Brad (newcomer Ben Schnetzer, in a career-making star turn) desperately wants to belong to the organization.

In the end Foxcatcher proves impossible to embrace because of fundamental miscalculations in performance, direction and makeup, along with a certain clumsiness in the way that it tries to use its profoundly sad story to make some kind of grand statement about American values, or the lack thereof.

The first Malick film I’ve watched where the dots never came together to form a legible image.

No matter how feverishly Gilliam directs and no matter how enthusiastically his actors act, the whole thing remains too, er, theoretical.

As unnecessary prequels go, Solo: A Star Wars Story isn't bad. It's not great, either, though—and despite spirited performances, knockabout humor, and a few surprising or rousing bits, there's something a bit too programmed about the whole thing.

There's a lot here that feels insufficiently shaped or fitfully realized, but at the same time, there's a lot to like. It's the Platonic ideal of a mixed bag. The newness of the new parts counterbalances the ineffectiveness of the stuff that seemingly every fantasy blockbuster does, and that this one doesn't do well.

Is it a compliment or a slam to say that "Sundown" could be the saddest "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode ever?

Turbo is just strange and lively enough to make you wish it were better.

This is a good movie. But it seems to be at odds with itself. And if you think back over how the story was set up and how it built towards its final section, you may conclude that it doesn’t quite play fair.

The picture begins vanishing from the memory the instant that its final credits roll, and its laid back attitude suggest it's fine with that.

Clare Lewins' new documentary I Am Ali is a great introduction to the boxer, activist and super-celebrity if you don't know much about him. It doesn't break any new ground, not does it claim to, but it's likable and reasonably thorough.

If the action and espionage elements were executed at the same level as the dramatic and comedic exchanges and the observations about the types of people drawn to this life, Ava might've been a cult classic.

Bullet Train is at its best when it's a comedy about self-styled badasses who think they're free agents but are really all just passengers on a train rocketing from one station to another, oblivious to the desires of any individual riding on it. The abstractness and "it's all a lark" humor ultimately undo any aspect that might otherwise sink its roots into the viewer's mind.

It's filled with big sets, big stunts, and what ought to be big moments, but few of them land.

Everyone in this cast does their best to strike the right balance between seeming in on the joke and acting like all of this bloody absurdity is normal.

All told, “Man on the Run” feels like an extra-long podcast episode featuring a celebrity promoting the latest project, coupled with a 90+ minute montage cut together so there’s something to look at on YouTube.

The film is most satisfying when it's just giving us details of Kilmer's philosophy of acting, which is uncompromising to the point of being exasperating, but lively, and ultimately preferable to the default attitude of so many straight male actors who denigrate their profession as trivial, or somehow unbecoming of an adult.

The movie is a lot of fun and masters a pleasingly detached yet sardonic tone early on, but unfortunately, it doesn’t have a lot more to offer after that, aside from a growing human menagerie of admittedly lively characters and a philosophical through line that’s pretty worn out—something like, “Humans are the real monsters.”

Despicable Me 4 won't win any prizes, but if you like this kind of thing, you'll like this thing. I laughed. The dumber and more random the jokes, the harder I laughed. The kids I saw it with laughed harder.

The movie expects you to just roll with all this stuff. Or slither. Sometimes you can’t. But when the film escapes the confinement tank of its numerous hand-me-down cliches, you’re happy to follow the water trail to see where it leads.

Even if you have a high tolerance for whimsy, Mood Indigo may still be too much.

An action film, a spy thriller, a meditation on revenge, and a story about mentors and pupils, but mostly it's a movie that loves to maim and kill people and is very good at it.

As focused and controlled as every scene in "Close" is, it feels, in a way, calculated and almost cruel.

In fairness, Maron doesn’t provide Feinartz with the raw material to make the kind of movie it seems he wanted to make. We get the feeling that, over the course of participating in the project, Maron realized that he and the filmmaker were not an ideal match.