Mike D'Angelo

Like Bozon’s other films, Mrs. Hyde just comes across as randomly odd, throwing together a bunch of disparate, individually intriguing elements and hoping they’ll add up to something cohesive and satisfying. As usual, they don’t.

The movie’s period spookiness and its #MeToo outrage have virtually nothing to do with each other, diminishing the efficacy of both and making it feel like a tract.

Enabling and mocking paranoid obsession at the same time might sound incoherent. In this hilariously demented spin on L.A. noir, it’s simply honest.

This particular character is so thinly written, and so aggressively nondescript, that it’s just a terrible fit for her(Wiig), resulting in a preposterous wish-fulfillment fantasy with an enormous void at its center.

A non-professional making his screen debut, Paradot serves up plenty of volatility, but he never quite succeeds in making Malony seem like a kid with real potential that’s being squandered.

Dramatically, it’s not much of a movie, but if you just want to know how things went down, it’s certainly a more exciting précis than Wikipedia’s.

The problem with Heli is that “hard to watch” is its sole characteristic.

Marquardt hasn’t thought of a unique take on this predictable scenario, she’s merely done an expert job of disguising it. Still, the first half does function as a impressive showcase for her formal chops, as well as for Bloom’s gorgeously empathetic performance.

For every element that doesn’t work...there’s a moment that crackles with electricity and conviction.

Best of all is Merritt, a remarkable find who makes an indelible impression in his very first onscreen role. Giving Rick just the right mix of bravado and awkwardness, he’s like an improbable gene splice of a young Matt Dillon with a young Seth Rogen. Don’t expect him to disappear for 30 years.

Indeed, there are stretches of Into The Forest during which one could momentarily forget that it’s a survivalist tale at all… or even that it’s taking place in the middle of nowhere, for that matter. The essential becomes irrelevant.

Despite strenuous efforts, 24 Days fails to make the case that Halimi would be alive now had the anti-Semitism of his abductors been properly recognized. And since that’s the film’s sole reason for existence, there’s not much else to say.

The ideas are admirably heady, and Phang, making just her second feature (after 2008’s little-seen Half-Life), demonstrates a sure hand with both her imaginative milieu and her cast.

Solid, creative melodrama is nothing to sneeze at, but it can’t compete with enduring genius.

Schroeder was reportedly inspired to make Amnesia as a tribute to his mother, who left Germany not long after the Nazis came to power and never wanted to return; he even shot the film in the house where she lived for many years (which was also a major location in his 1969 debut, More). But neither he nor his co-writers managed to prevent their ostensible subtext from swamping the text.

The first Dead Snow included a salute to the classic Sam Raimi gearing-up montage, with its quick cuts and abrupt zooms; it was a cute nod, but nothing more. Red Vs. Dead does the same thing, but concludes the montage with a long, static shot of the Zombie Squad watching as the cash register at the hardware store churns out an endless receipt for all the tools they’ve purchased. That’s an actual joke, which is what the first movie lacked.

In the end, it’s Salvo itself that’s murky and obscure.

Valley Of Love is at its best when it wanders away from its ostensible premise and just lets two old pros connect, riffing lightly on our knowledge of their real-life histories.

There are enough giddy highs that it’s had a strong cult following ever since its release in 1963.

A mid-film montage of nipples squirting milk high into the air like the Bellagio fountains shows Ben-Ari has a sense of style and humor, but her general approach is tediously earnest, resulting in a documentary with such niche appeal (just parents with breastfeeding problems, basically) that it belongs on a library’s self-help shelf.

It’s as if a first-rate Roman Polanski movie suddenly metamorphosed (ohhh, frogs, duh) into a third-rate Michael Crichton adaptation.

Operation Finale means to embody the banality of evil, but it’s mostly mired in plain old banality.

Viewed as any sort of follow-up to "Beasts," Troop Zero looks like a sellout. By the standards of mainstream live-action children’s fare, however, it’s more mature and thoughtful than average. Just don’t expect any Oscar nominations, even for recent winners like Davis and Janney.

The 100-Year-Old Man surely won’t conquer the U.S. box office, but it’s a nice change of pace to see a foreign film that isn’t deadly serious. We could use more subtitled belly laughs.

The only way to enjoy this movie is to concentrate on its frequently stunning compositions and ignore the fact that none of it makes even a tiny lick of sense.

With no compelling characters in sight, and a director whose formal acumen begins and ends with forbidding locations (in this case, underwater), Pioneer has to lean on its drab story.

Dean turns out to be quite touching, in retrospect. If only it were funny, clever, or in any other way particularly inspired from moment to moment.

A duly serious and ambitious fall movie that, despite the best efforts of its formidable director and cast, can’t remotely match the excitement of real life.