Michael Snydel

Unfortunately, Pilon’s performance is by far the most engaging part of the film, a restless but ultimately familiar crossbreeding of coming-out experience, after school special, and sports achievement story.

In nearly everything other than its visuals, Early Man feels as ancient as its time period, a forgotten relic hibernating in development until its belated release. But coming from a studio and director who’ve repeatedly found new ways to reinvent the wheel, it’s extra disappointing to see them release something so primitive.

Morgan struggles to make even a single fight between two people not look like it was edited with a shredder.

While the first half meditates on the inconsistency of intimacy and the ways that small things (e.g. close ex-girlfriends) grow to be daggers, the second half adopts a psychological severity that makes My King feel imbalanced.

Jacquot’s Diary of a Chambermaid ultimately feels beholden to art-house dictates, especially with an ending that’s less confounding than poorly articulated.

In a Valley of Violence feigns to be a revisionist western, but it’s frustratingly stuck in a place of inevitability in the last half. It’s an excellently-made imitation, but coming from a director whose made a career of tilting the familiar, it’s a disappointing detour.

The Next Cut is a love letter to Chicago, and a plea for a better city, but it’s a sermon when it should have been a conversation.

First Monday in May gathers together some of the most influential and radical contemporary figures in fashion, offers a comprehensive view into the creation of a groundbreaking fashion exhibition, and profiles one of the most exclusive figures in the world. And yet, somehow it all feels incredibly familiar.

There’s no doubt Hockney deserves appreciation for his artistic influence, but this documentary is less a reflection of his singular presence than the result of haphazardly mashing together a fascinating life.

There’s a potentially good story to be mined here, probably most likely with the mother, but every time it starts to find fertile emotional ground, it can’t help but become distracted and search for another surface.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a galling, casually offensive, and deeply unsatisfying film.

While the film becomes a constant test to outdo itself, the raw ambition isn’t nearly enough to make up for the content of the actual film: an ungainly, ugly, nearly interminable monstrosity.

Even at its most transparently manipulative, Risen doesn’t feel punishing. It’s universally good-natured without feeling too conniving.

Race is the rare biopic that needs more of its own main character.

As a study of grief, it’s moving, featuring authentic performances and a keen understanding of the receding hibernation that comes with losing a cornerstone person in one’s life. As a romance, it’s slow-going but believable. And as a look at the unfair mythos attributed to the dead, it’s nuanced and incisive. But in attempting to balance these complementary parts, Tumbledown is buried by its own ambitions.