Nick Schager

If the doc’s ultimate argument is less than wholly persuasive, A Good American nonetheless paints a fascinating picture of Binney’s mind, and the way in which he first envisioned ThinThread as a giant neural network-like globe filled with graphically linked nodes.

They Called Him Mostly Harmless proves most interesting as a story about the various ways in which people both come together and go it alone in order to fill (or at least cope with) the holes in their lives.

Never more than skin-deep and ultimately overstays its welcome but which comes alive when—especially in its latter half—it indulges in its most wildly deviant impulses.

Shining an intimate light on an individual in order to reveal greater truths about life and the world, Raw Faith focuses on progressive-minded Portland, Oregon, Unitarian minister Marilyn Sewell.

The film strikes a fine balance between hilarity and heartbreak.

Director Jaume Balagueró's film is nothing if not a well-executed bit of escalating craziness.

If you can get on its wacko wavelength, it's a uniquely crazed, compelling midnight-movie whatsit.

A portrait of life’s impermanence, it’s a bittersweet small-scale saga whose occasional sluggishness is offset by its sensitivity.

Doesn’t ultimately put its star through the slam-bang paces often enough, but as a human weapon pushed to the limit, the actor proves ideally fit for such rugged genre environs.

With the survivors' physical presence amongst Nazi slaughterhouses as its own powerful statement, Buried Prayers is a nonfiction work that confronts Holocaust atrocities from a piercing ground-level view.

At once a disturbing vision of escape, a cautious portrait of liberation, and an exploration of authenticity and artificiality.

Confirms that Washington is rarely more alive than when in front of Lee’s lens. Eighteen years after their last collaboration, the two continue to bring out the best in each other—no matter that, in this case, Lee perhaps goes a tad overboard on his end.

Despite its scattered frenzy, Hop-thanks to its fondness for smushing together seemingly incongruous elements and Marsden's goofy, bug-eyed mugging-is just demented enough to deliver a fleeting sugar rush.

What ultimately lingers more, however, is its portrait of the grit, determination, and sacrifice exhibited by these individuals—a stirring reminder that there’s nothing more noble than having your fellow man’s back.

It doesn’t totally work, but it has a lot of fun trying.

It’s a singularly off-kilter vision of repurposed invention, though even at 72 minutes, the film struggles to keep itself afloat, its central conceit too slender to maintain its sense of mirth or wonder.

Most useful to the ongoing dialogue about domestic terrorism is Against All Enemies’ investigation into the present and historical ties between American hate groups and armed servicemen and women.

Often too clunky for its own good, and (ahem) doggedly apolitical throughout, this earnest feel-good tale nonetheless manages to pull on the heartstrings with sufficient gentleness.

It's a film that paints a potent portrait of an artist of righteous, controlled fury.

Foreign Parts engages in sociological inquiry without narration or contextual handholding, utilizing incisive, striking aesthetics (a panorama of hanging side mirrors, worn shoes trudging through grimy puddles) to elicit potent subcultural immersion.

Although Angèle's religious faith and Frédéric's belief in luck seem like strained attempts at adding heft to the material, the film nevertheless works up a potent dramatic restlessness, derived from the push-pull between an entitled, obsessive Frédéric and Bellucci's quietly chaotic Angèle.

What it reveals is an exclusionary environment that views beauty, wealth, privilege, and conformity as the highest of ideals—and which seems, in some cases, to exacerbate the very problems these young women believe it will solve.

Prospects are dim no matter where these people choose to reside, and A River Changes Course captures their struggle with an ethnographic gaze that generally maintains enough detachment to avoid excessive, judgmental handwringing and heartstring-tugging.

Emphasizing action over the spoken word, The Salvation doesn't break new ground, yet its murderous twists of fate are consistently compelling.

Taking the macro view, [Fulton and Pepe] seem to miss out on the types of thorny micro details — about McGee’s relationship with his mother, or about Viland’s own history preceding her tenure at Black Rock — that would have provided additional complexity.

The film is buoyed by its sharp, witty lead performances, with Spall’s holier-than-thou imperiousness clashing suitably with Meaney’s more affable obstinacy.

A somewhat slight homage with a strong voice and gentle twist rather than a wholly original work of terror.

It’s espionage executed with cheeky flair and playful sexiness, and it’s enlivened by Aubrey Plaza, who runs away with the show.

Even when the film’s eccentricities feel too choreographed, it manages to deliver its preordained uplift with good-humored charm.

The film’s finely crafted serenity is in keeping with its main character’s secluded state of affairs, and mind.

With an insightfulness born from firsthand experience, Rocks in My Pockets posits depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia as conditions that, though potentially lethal, remain manageable, if only through persistent battle.

Yadav pinpoints the various ways in which institutional and personal prejudices keep people enslaved, crafting a sharp portrait of gender inequality.

The film exhibits a contemplative quiet and attentiveness to detail that enhances its issues of regret, bitterness, and confusion, many of which are rooted in thorny parent-child relations.

Aided by Steven Price’s enthusiastic score, Mendoza’s vigorous direction keeps things speeding along, and Momoa is such a charismatic presence — whether sensitively interacting with Rachel (skillfully embodied by Merced) or inventively snapping an adversary’s neck — that the proceedings’ lack of realism works to its advantage.

The film is anchored and greatly bolstered by Bloom, who delivers a performance of quietly escalating madness.

Fully Realized Humans solidifies its central dynamic through alternately jokey and heartfelt dialogue that rings true, and via its leads’ sure-footed performances as committed partners grappling with a crazed stew of issues involving control, doubt and masculinity.

No matter its hopeful closing notes, it’s a downer of epic proportions, its action encased in a shroud of loss, loneliness, and depression that’s at once bracing and taxing.

Far better than anticipated (or has any right to be), thanks in large part to Murphy recapturing some of the wisecracking magic that originally made Axel a sensation.

Prescient about the dangers posed by AI and, more pressingly, the cutthroat, avaricious, and egotistical madmen who wield it, the film is an incisive portrait of 21st-century villainy, if ultimately a satire that can’t quite locate the funny in the horror.”

A film about a police culture that doesn’t seem to take rape charges seriously—or, at the very least, doesn’t think that thoroughly examining accusations is worth the hassle when intimidation and humiliation will facilitate their jobs.

A reasonably faithful and effective thriller, light on legitimate frights but polished and unnerving.

Though its real-life story ultimately proves a little too one-note, it makes up for its thinness with a powerhouse lead turn from Sydney Sweeney as a woman caught in a nerve-wracking mess of her own making.

If this truly is the pair’s big-screen goodbye, at least it ends on a fittingly wacko note of pure, unadulterated sentimentality.

An old-fashioned tale of heroism in the face of insurmountable odds, The Finest Hours is never less than aggressively hokey and manipulatively sentimental — and, in the end, better off for it.

A film whose each subsequent plot turn makes less sense than the last, Passenger 57 is just about the epitome of clichéd 1990s action nonsense—and as such, it’s the perfect vehicle for Wesley Snipes and his particular brand of over-the-top, don’t-tread-on-me heroism.

Opting to leave somewhat open the question of whether its subject was a traitor to her Jewish people or a conscientious scholar determined to conduct rational analysis free of public and peer pressure, it remains a mildly intriguing drama of the often unavoidable and contentious intersection of intellectual analysis and personal prejudices.

A Whale of a Tale only skims the surface of the many matters it raises, be it cultural imperialism, tradition, animal rights and socioeconomic necessities. Still, its objective approach, and subtle plea for middle-ground compromise, makes it a worthwhile addendum to Psihoyos’ celebrated predecessor.

If it’s all more than a bit silly, not to mention derivative, Krull manages to cast a fantastical spell courtesy of Peter Yates’ direction.

Not particularly complicated, and sometimes as confused as it is concise, 1972’s Joe Kidd is nonetheless a lean, reasonably satisfying slice of Clint Eastwood outlaw badassery.

Identifying the method behind the Coens’ madness takes some work, as the film moves at such a rat-a-tat-tat screwball speed that following along often feels like clinging for dear life to the side of a speeding train.

Brash, brutal, and simplistic in equal measure, it’s a retrograde work that, for better and worse, delivers its old-school mayhem with punishing precision and unrepentant glee.

Entertainingly goofy.

Lian Lunson’s camera allows the music to take center stage via straightforward, graceful compositions—close-ups and medium shots dominate, and edits are kept to a relative minimum—that allow for long, unbroken views of the artists at forceful, mournful work.

Waters’ comedy — like its forerunner — comes impressively close to elevating cursing to an art form, especially when wielded by Thornton and Cox, who spit and sneer vulgar invectives at each other like gutter-trash virtuosos.

It’s a stagy setup whose theatrical roots are always front and center, yet it’s one that’s handled with aplomb by director Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum), whose latest has enough visual panache to compensate for the static, conversational nature of the work.

Includes enough critical voices and material to complicate Johnson’s view about his actions and ethos—in the process undercutting the material’s superficial optimism.

The film is moment-to-moment lively, sharp, and funny. Too bad that, like a dream, its pleasures are all over the place, and dissipate almost as quickly as they arrive.

Infused with bounding energy but little meaningful invention, it climbs to only modest heights, weighed down by its inability to add much to the iconic legend.

Flails in trying to cast itself as a heartening story about seizing happiness, but as a snapshot of the foolhardy acts that amour can drive sane individuals to commit, it plays as an eye-opening cautionary tale.

As self-contained as any episode of the television show upon which it’s based. It’s also as efficient and straightforward as that predecessor, if not quite as disposable, thanks to its peerless star.

It’s no novel reinvention, but it’s cute enough to at least partially overcome its strained and uneven structure and performances.

Its lack of originality is at least partially offset by its gripping depiction of intolerance and exclusion as impediments to survival.

Fine performances abound, including from Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow, but the film is ultimately at odds with itself, its handsome appearance and severe attitude clashing with its pulpy impulses.

[An] overly dramatic and revelation-lite feature-length documentary, whose main purpose seems to be rehashing that which has already been exhaustively covered by the media and, also, underscoring the sociopathic dishonesty of Joran van der Sloot.

If its fondness for stock formulas and scares means that it’s not shocking, it also knows how to play the hits—and, of course, to deliver on its promise of killer clowns in cornfields.

Too often rehashing its myriad predecessors’ ideas, conflicts, and images, it’s a competent if unexceptional blockbuster game of monkey see, monkey do.

It may be messy, but then, what child’s story isn’t?

What [Waugh] delivers is precisely what fans are likely looking for, albeit in a package that’s more politically muddled than is necessary.

It might not deliver hilariously fatal blows, but it’s smart and spikey enough to leave a pleasurably painful mark.

If its melodrama is unabashedly manipulative, it’s not altogether ineffective at eliciting waterworks.

What’s conspicuously missing from this non-fiction inquiry—much to its detriment—is an attendant discussion of what came next, and how McVeigh’s actions directly and indirectly led us to our precarious present moment.

Cares less about saying something significant than about imparting quirky vibes.

Thanks to a couple of novel twists, it manages to outpace its predecessor in tension and originality—if not quite reinvigorate the franchise.

Tommy Lee Jones provides wisecracking levity as Rogers's commanding officer, Hayley Atwell supplies the aforementioned buxom chest and accompanying tough-girl grit as Rogers's British love interest, and Johnson directs with flair, his set pieces defined by both muscularity and clarity.

At its best, Magic Trip evokes the freewheeling, idealistic, psychedelic vibe of an era's origins; at worst, it's a film in which people narrate their own druggie home movies.

Bolstered by deft editing that keeps the proceedings moving at a light, graceful clip, this behind-the-runway look at one of fashion's legendary brands has a sleek, efficient stylishness in keeping with its subject.

Wholly uninterested in puffing up his subjects into an iconic rock outfit on a par with their idols Led Zeppelin and the Who, Crowe instead merely tells their story free from the constraints of rise-fall-rise clichés.

An outrageous based-on-real-life tale that's perfectly suited to director Michael Bay's insanely overblown stylistic and thematic temperament.

From a purely suspenseful vantage point, Big Bad Wolves is an efficient and effective beast.

Raze leaves the background particulars about this competition oblique, partly because it adds a layer of ominous mystery, but primarily because it doesn't matter; witnessing women-on-women violence is the thing here, regardless of any narrative context.

Its performances are resourceful and affecting, with Chastain and Worthington in the past sequences, and Mirren and Wilkinson in the later chapters, exuding a complicated mess of responsibility, guilt, sacrifice, revenge, and regret.

If its plotting can be slight, the film's restraint and earnestness help prevent it from ever tipping over into outright mawkishness, and its performances similarly avoid over-the-top histrionics.

Zaldana is such a sultry and surprisingly heartfelt executioner that she often finds a way to make this by-the-numbers genre retread feel, if not fresh, then at least sporadically electric.

The script leaps forward with an absurdity almost as great as Lincoln's own strength.

Better than mid90s’ treatment of adults is its evocation of the euphoria that comes from discovering one’s place in the world, and confidence—highlighted by Stevie’s nerve-wracked first sexual experience—as well as the way skating provides a liberating release, and a surrogate family, for these unruly teens.

Pablo Larraín employs ultra-widescreen cinematography for constricting close-ups and inhospitably alienating compositions that generate a nasty chill, the director keeping the army's brutality off screen to amplify a sense of oppressive malevolence.

Though his film's feel is pure Iraq and Afghanistan, Fiennes doesn't push those parallels unduly, and his central performances prove clear, nuanced, and incisive.

Safe's primary contribution to the burgeoning Jason-Statham-kicks-everyone's-ass subgenre is setting three of its set pieces in crowded New York City venues (a subway car, a hotel dining room, and a Chinatown nightclub) where shootouts lead to believable mass-exodus pandemonium.

Luc Besson's producing career has been so geared toward lean, tough genre films that it's somewhat apt that he'd ape--or, if we're being kind, pay homage to--John Carpenter's preeminent sci-fi actioner Escape from New York with his latest, Lockout.

For all its heavy-handed gloom and stylistic unevenness, Fear and Desire has a certain fierceness that's hard to shake.

While the Nitro Circus's many achievements are impressive, they pale in comparison to those of Knoxville and company's.

Despite its often-overwhelming nonsensicality, there’s ultimately something irresistibly fiendish about Silent Hill, which not only condemns holier-than-thou religious zealots, but also—if I understand its gruesome finale—seems to be firmly on the side of the Devil.

The film strikes a poignant chord with its chilling portrayal of a state-sponsored euthanasia program that utilizes movie-watching as a narcotic designed to help the sick and elderly die peacefully.

Whereas the film is a marvel to look at, it’s unfortunately not much in the song or story department, as Danny Elfman’s musical numbers are—save for the opening’s boisterous “This Is Halloween”—generally banal and unmemorable, and the plot, despite only having to fill out a paltry 76 minutes, ultimately as emaciated and insubstantial as its leading bags of bones.

Shallow to its core and as propulsive as a runaway locomotive, it's the most blatantly summer movie-ish of the Mission Impossibles. And also, surprisingly, the most viscerally entertaining.

The film shrewdly opts not to proffer its own hypothesis about the true reasons behind the Gibson family buying Frédéric Bourdin's story.

Intimacy doesn't completely give rise to insight in this loving, if largely for-fans-only, posthumous portrait of Memphis-bred punk rocker Jay Reatard.

As its titular tyrants, Spacey, Aniston, and Farrell all revel in their over-the-top noxiousness, though the latter is mysteriously given short shrift even though his performance is far and way the most novel and gonzo.

J.C. Chandor creates an austere snapshot of human struggle, ingenuity, and perseverance, one that's predicated on Robert Redford's fantastic performance.

A portrait of the eve of 2008's financial crisis that plays out with funereal inevitability, Margin Call loves speechifying, but the film is far more assured when lingering in the silence of its morally compromised characters.

The ubiquitously involved star’s charisma can’t completely overshadow a sluggish plot... Nonetheless, its hard-charging chase sequences make it a vintage Dukes of Hazzard-flavored noir.

Makes a compelling case for games as not only clever hand-eye coordination exercises, but also as manifestations of their creators' emotional and philosophical viewpoints.

Love is both a many-splendored and painful thing according to Love Etc., a multi-subject documentary about the various states of amour that, while never succumbing to glibness, also fails to rise above superficial geniality.

If familiarity is endemic to this feel-good drama, there's nonetheless also something to be said for competent amalgamation and regurgitation of tired genre tropes.

Though a bit overstuffed with long-winded speeches, Chayefsky’s scabrously funny script brims with snappy, crackling dialogue.

Flip-flopping traditional genre dynamics in a manner more cute than uproarious, Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil charts the Three's Company-style shenanigans that ensue when two West Virginia bumpkins cross paths with a group of camping college kids.

Long Shot confirms that achieving one's goals is rarely possible without the staunch support of others.

Despite occasional lapses into showy expressionistic slo-mo, Guerrero's direction demonstrates a patience and attention to emotional detail that allows the two young leads' performances to develop naturally.

With both hostility and compassion, the damaged duo slowly come to understand themselves and their respective pain-a familiar path that's energized by subtle lead performances, a tactile sense of place and surprising insight into the way people connect as they help each other heal.

The film would be a routine affair if not for its baroque aesthetic gestures and a captivating turn from star Abbie Cornish.

A young boy's nonchalant attitude toward having a friend stick a loaded gun in his mouth as well as a man's numerous knife scars courtesy of his beloved wife definitely cut through the clichés about "thug life" to capture how violence is an integral, corrosive part of inner-city life.

By consigning its most interesting character to a supporting role, this amiable slice of fictionalized history loses a good deal of its heft. Nonetheless, solid direction and a charming Berkeley turn help it stave off insubstantiality.

For all its avenues of inquiry, however, it never quite gels into more than a collection of tantalizing but unfounded theories.

To his credit, even as his material begins spiraling into less amusing territory, Lund alleviates the growing gloom with goofball levity.

A stately affair that’s never particularly intellectually incisive or revealing, and its stolid execution fails to transcend the material’s inherent staginess.

Set to Tom Holkenborg’s bombastic score, Gregorian chanting, and endless pew-pew-pews, Rebel Moon—Part Two: The Scargiver roars and rampages, yet its drama can’t match its aesthetic pomposity.

Hits many of the right feel-good notes. Unfortunately, it also strikes a lot of discordant ones, neutering most of its attempts at rousing inspiration.

Crowther’s courage and sacrifice deserves lionization, and comes shining through in Man with Red Bandana, but there’s no shaking the feeling that he also merits a more elegant cinematic celebration.

Cassel is never less than transfixing as a savior with a semi-sinister smile, but Partisan's lack of interest in providing necessary context — especially about the ill-defined larger society that Gregori rejects — leaves it operating on a hazy psychological level.

The cautionary tale is a familiar one. But it’s told with enough flashy verve and humor, along with a gossipy bombshell audio recording, to play as a breezy non-fiction look back at a phenom that had its 15 minutes—or, at least, enough time to get through an evening’s worth of quiz questions—in the smartphone spotlight.

The fictional filmmaker's rejection of "quirkiness" ends up, ironically, being embraced by the movie itself, but even at its most sitcomish, Karpovsky and Lowe's banter has a contentious authenticity that recognizes these industry grunts as vital and three-dimensional-no matter their nominal supporting status.

A cinematic doodle whose lack of ambition is both its most charming characteristic and its most limiting one, Pictures Of Superheroes operates in an absurdist universe where everything is abstracted in the silliest ways possible.

McConkey is simultaneously engaging and frustratingly superficial.

The film is formally beautiful almost to a fault, giving it a schematic quality that’s at odds with its roiling emotions.

It builds to revelations that speak emphatically to social shallowness, pressures and prejudices—even if, in the end, its bombshells resonate as less surprising than inevitable.

Rehashing clichés with formal polish but little novelty, this oater is a dour affair made all the grimmer by the fact that there isn’t a second of its 139 minutes that isn’t colored, in some way, by the on-set shooting that made it notable, and notorious, in the first place.

Detailing the eight-month build-up to the show’s debut, First Monday in May is most compelling when simply taking up residence alongside Bolton, Wintour and Wong as they oversee the myriad aspects of their production.

Modest and affecting, it’s a portrait of the possibility of finding peace, contentment and self through both music and spirituality.

Never coherently articulates (or draws connections between) its various concerns, proving a handsomely horrific vampire bloodbath that, ahem, bites off more than it can chew.

The underwhelming result is similar to its signature beasts: a handsome clone that serves no purpose except to line its creators’ pockets.

The Devil on Trial still allows David and others to argue that demonic possession did take place, but given the evidence on display, many will likely find that up for considerable debate.

A cautionary tale about…making “a pact with the devil.” However, Milli Vanilli doesn’t have much to reveal that isn’t by now well-known pop lore.

Though two late plot developments are borderline-contrived, Green's direction is marked by mature dramatic and aesthetic understatement.

Overwhelms via length and monotony, employing a challenging form that’s both its greatest strength and, ultimately, its most frustrating weakness.

After establishing a central parent-child relationship rife with wacko biblical undertones, the director finds nowhere to take his story except into standard vengeance territory.

Director Prachya Pinkaew's hectic editing and breakneck pacing turns the action spastic, and his lack of interest in anything approaching coherent drama renders the proceedings one long showcase for its lead's Muay Thai combat skills. Luckily, those are considerable.

Beautiful slo-mo, up-close-and-personal cinematography abounds, as does an aggravating desire to turn its many subjects (and their plights to survive) into reflections of mankind.

Cribbing from countless Tinseltown efforts, this music-video-cum-perfume-ad is awash in excessively melodramatic flashbacks, car chases and references to the domestic illegal-immigration debate.

Etziony and Hanuka's on-the-fly footage suggests that DIRT's desire to help in Haiti was noble, but that its success in making a difference was minimal at best — thus leaving the film feeling primarily like a critical snapshot of how dysfunctional Western humanitarians often use overseas crises for their own ends.

Anderson utilizes slow-motion 3-D to hyperbolic effect while again casting Jovovich as the epitome of badass sexiness.

A lively saga about a young coding wizard who’s charged with saving his family’s gaming business, this celebration of old- and new-school creativity doesn’t break novel ground in any respect. Fortunately, though, its good humor, spry pacing and likable performances should appeal to its pre-high-school target audience.

A rehash that—in the interest of staving off franchise death for a little while longer—could stand to learn a few new tricks.

Waltrip’s earnest and forthright narration lends Blink of an Eye its intimacy and insight.

While The God Committee routinely resides on the precipice of preachiness, Stark’s script (via St. Germain’s source material) avoids one-note sermonizing and characterizations at most turns, instead maturely investigating the messy intersection of medicine, morality and commerce.

The film thrives thanks to its superb lead performances, with Sparks exuding an endearingly off-kilter earnestness that nicely contrasts with Ireland’s internalized phobic fears and self-doubt.

An aggressively fine intergalactic adventure whose earnest optimism and sweetness flirts—faithfully and dully—with hokiness.

The result is a work that radiates a boozy, Bukowski-esque downward spiral, all alcohol-fueled anger and aimless sadness.

A narratively and emotionally disjointed journey, its fine lead performances, moving details, and racial commentary never cohering into an affecting spectacular.

Such tension ultimately unravels during a latter half that rushes through too many underwhelming revelations, but that’s not enough to completely offset the film’s beguiling air of despondency.

The burgeoning relationship between both the athletes, bonding over a kindred "otherness," is handled tastefully by director Kaspar Heidelbach, though the lack of new insights on the subject of National Socialism's wickedness ultimately reduces a well-staged film to a historical footnote.

Unfortunately, as with so many social-survey documentaries, the film’s macro view comes at the expense of any microcosmic depth.

It won’t revolutionize the genre, and in fact would have benefited from considerable additional polish, but it’s just cute enough to warrant two hours of Netflix subscribers’ time.

A documentary saga of heartbreaking concentration-camp horrors, Inside Hana's Suitcase attempts to preserve Holocaust memories through frustratingly fractured means.

A beat-‘em-up whose competent fight sequences are ultimately overshadowed by its unintentional humor.

A pleasant and well-acted curio, and little more.

Bluff's portrait of street life has a grungy off-the-cuff realism that's only compromised by some obviously staged incidents.

Her documentary sporadically locates profound truth amid its myriad musings about the momentous and the everyday. Often, however, Anderson's hushed-tone articulations of her thoughts on these subjects prove affected, and her stream-of-consciousness style, though acutely constructed, is more alienating than inviting.

Intriguing without ever proving insightful, the film nonetheless has a formal patience and meticulousness that sets it apart from its jump-scare-loving mainstream-horror brethren.

When it comes to its central legal struggle, though, it leaves out so many crucial details that it cuts itself off at the knees.

No matter its cinematic derivativeness, Stink!’s outcry against continuing to use the American citizenry as chemistry experiment guinea pigs carries with it the unassailable whiff of common sense.

Goes heavy on convincing musical performances to make up for the fact that it has nothing astute to say about its subject—in large part because it doesn’t seem to really know him.

Alterman's camerawork, panning and zooming about Christiaan's ants, rabbits, birds, and other assorted mecha creatures, conveys a sense of ominous religious awe.

Despite a strong sense of its characters, however, Kelly rarely generates much melodramatic or amusing momentum.

The proceedings, no matter how logical their contentions, come off as merely one side of the debate.

Too much of Realm of Satan comes off as unreasonably poe-faced, which not only neuters the proceedings’ sense of giddy transgression but feels at odds with these characters’ comical bizarreness.

Little more than a creaky lark that fails to generate consistent laughs, even if it proves that John Cena is a charming goof-off who’s game for anything.

The Best and the Brightest's sharp one-liners and strong cast, especially McDonald's gleefully lecherous performance as an unabashed Republican pervert, help make it a sturdy bit of subculture-tweaking silliness.

An overall lack of adventurousness negates any genuine sense of surprise, but credit this Indian-themed indie for spicing up a familiar and routine dish with reasonably tasty flavor.

Boasts the idiosyncratic anxiety, depression, and angst of its author’s work and the bouncy tone and matching visual style of every other recent cinematic kid’s fable—two flavors that, it turns out, don’t really go well together.

Director Leanne Pooley's documentary on the sisters and their "anarchist variety act" is definitely a formulaic bit of portraiture, but given its engaging, pioneering subjects, gimmickry is hardly needed to spice things up.

The film’s lack of a traditional narrative will no doubt alienate many, but for the more adventurous, it offers a uniquely weird take on loneliness and lunacy.

Has its heart in the right place but little else, starting out competently and then slowly falling apart with each clumsy step along its "Game of Thrones"-lite path.

The director's righteous anger is less restrained than his conventional vérité aesthetics and less off-putting than his one-sided approach to the issues at hand - an advocacy for alternative wind-turbine energy is suspiciously sketchy - yet he smartly allows coal-exploiting bigwigs plenty of screen time to properly hang themselves.

Despite winning the Best Actress (for its female ensemble) and Jury Prize awards at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, it’s a bold gamble that doesn’t quite pay off.

A surface-level portrait about a scientific advancement that could change the world for the better or the worse, and a man who knows how to wield it but can’t necessarily be trusted to do so.

The aesthetic devices used by the directors to embellish their material — including educational and archival videos, split-screens, slow-motion, time-lapse footage, and lingering close-ups of needles and money — are a bit too self-consciously stylish for their own good. Nonetheless, their film captures the recurring nightmare of substance abuse.

Though stirringly headlined by Kate Winslet, it’s a by-the-books affair in almost every respect.

A gonzo, if somewhat gimmicky, approach to advocating healthy living; it's like Super Size Me in reverse.

Thompson assembles his footage with an expert's touch, but what his film lacks is its own perspective on these atrocities.

Despite attractive aesthetics, its fights grow wearisome, especially as the material crosses the two-hour mark and, in the process, zooms past multiple potential endings.

Don Cheadle flails about trying to channel the spirit of late jazz-trumpeting legend Miles Davis in Miles Ahead, a biopic that rejects typical genre conventions to the point of chasing itself down lame, tangential paths.

No matter a committed performance (two, actually) from Robert Pattinson, it’s an original that plays like a rehash—and an underwhelmingly unfunny one at that.

While that mood is ultimately a bit too monotonous to be completely persuasive, a strong cast convincingly captures the many ways in which adulthood proves far more complicated than what's imagined at 18.

The director's DV cinematography can be rough and ungainly, but it provides sterling glimpses of both family intimacy and its larger social context.

Even at 78 minutes, White Wash pads its material through repetition but remains a proficient portrait of how increased social, economic, and geographic opportunity fosters diversity - in life and out on the waves.

A colorful and cheery fantasy that duplicates its series predecessors’ cutesy humor and feel-good message making.

You can cut-and-paste all your adolescent obsessions into a giant collage (and recruit Pedro Pascal and Ben Mendelsohn to participate in the madness), but that doesn’t mean it’ll amount to more than a messy, insubstantial grab bag of your favorite things.

A rather obvious and pedestrian lesson, if one that’s embellished with a few memorably macabre sights.

The horror film of 2017 is AlphaGo, a documentary about an artificial intelligence program designed to play Go – the oldest and most complex board game in the world – that feels like it’s sounding the alarm for the human race’s impending extinction.

Park's methodical but tonally uneven direction too often eschews luridness; it's as if he can't decide exactly how far to push his material into the loopy. Still, his assured and evocative camerawork intimates that peril lurks everywhere, and there's an alien quality to its performances and dialogue that suggests a world slightly unhinged.

Overflowing with super-slow motion, color filters and the clunkiest of flashbacks, The Last Lions frequently amplifies the melodrama to borderline-excessive proportions.

The film risks self-importance, but when Peralta admits through tears just how much he loves his skater charges, it imparts what every parent knows: that even better than achieving one's own success is shepherding the success of others.

Telegraphs its bombshells from the outset and dutifully shuffles toward a conclusion that tethers this saga to Donner’s The Omen.

Cohen’s willingness to do, or say, anything in order to elicit a chuckle at least somewhat salvages The Brothers Grimsby — right up to a riotously nasty climactic gag shoved down the throat of Donald Trump.

Blame for this sports drama’s shallow leadenness can’t be similarly pinned on the supernatural; instead, its shortcomings are attributable to a one-dimensional script and resultant performances that are far less nuanced than its headliners’ ripped bodies.

By minimizing its predecessor’s goofiness in favor of vacuous character drama, winds up only sporadically kicking into gale-force gear.

Too bad, then, that Team Rwanda’s inspiring rise to prominence and eventual course triumphs are so thinly sketched that the film leaves the audience wanting more, in the most frustrating way possible.

Throughout, Una Noche’s details — an old man singing as he staggers down the street, young boys wasting away their days playfully leaping into the water — feel authentic.

Cromwell delivers his defiantly gruff dialogue with amusing relish, while still grounding his protagonist’s actions in desperation and desolation. And his nostalgic conversations with Bujold while the two lay in bed have a naturalness that almost overshadows the creakiness of the surrounding material.

Follows the same basic pattern as the work of her dad M. Night Shyamalan—namely, it starts strong and then slowly falls apart under the weight of its obligations to clarify its baffling scenario.

The film's lack of terror might be more forgivable had it embraced its more humorous inclinations, but the script’s pedestrian liberals-vs.-conservatives, boors-vs.-yuppies conflicts rarely result in anything laugh-out-loud funny.

By weighing everything so heavily, and obviously, in one direction, it eventually comes off as a thinly disguised sermon about ugly oppression and noble suffering and defiance.

Lawrence is never less than commanding in her last outing as the fiery dystopian heroine, but the most heartening liberation proffered by Part 2 is its star’s escape from this one-note fantasy series.

The Animal Kingdom is what an X-Men movie would look like if it doubled-down on its tolerance-for-outsiders metaphor and did away with any exciting superpowered spectacle.

Spike Lee’s documentary on this formative period in Michael Jackson’s career derives its electric, enlivening energy from these fantastic clips. Alas, they’re not enough to alter the fact that this non-fiction effort . . . is merely a nostalgic promotional puff piece meant to look back fondly, and uncritically, at an artist transitioning from a youth-oriented pop fad to the biggest star in the world.

In its portrait of a strong, independent woman learning to embrace her own ambition, desires, and future via the aid of an older male mentor-cum-father-figure, it colors its triumphant fantasy of female empowerment in a distinctly conservative, paternalistic shade.

May have things to say, but doesn’t have a clue how to say them.

A mediocre remix that, for all its familiar elements, fails to improve upon a single aspect of its trailblazing predecessor.

Unfortunately, while the documentary’s points are clear, its desire to articulate them primarily through contrasts neuters some of its persuasiveness.

To say that it’s a fourth-generation knock-off of myriad similar YA sagas that have come before it would be an understatement.

As an authorized project primarily designed to celebrate rather than investigate, that hatred goes largely unexamined in this non-fiction affair.

As sumptuous and vapid as a commercial for Dior or Chanel’s latest fragrance.

A typical provincial British tale about everyday Englishmen and women banding together to accomplish a controversial task against long odds, it’s akin to a warm glass of milk.

A work that proves hopelessly at odds with itself all the way to a conclusion that fizzles at the moment it should explode.

It takes its time—quite frankly, too long—to deliver the gruesome goods/

What’s missing, however, is a payoff worthy of his set-up, resulting in a diverting thriller that drags its way to an underwhelming finale.

As a showcase for the inimitable Dafoe it has its minor freaky-deaky pleasures. Ultimately, though, it goes nowhere—literally and figuratively.

There’s nothing very unsettling about its eventual horrors, in large part because the film is too infatuated with its sleek style to get its hands dirty.

Just as there’s no reference to the many falsehoods Diana has apparently told about her past, there’s zero overt mention of the controversy surrounding her signature triumph—thereby proving that the film cares more about rah-rah uplift than thorny inquiry or messy reality.

It all resembles a lot of cosplaying, although its central failing is foregrounding cacophonous mayhem and middling melodrama over the drollness that defined the first two Ghostbusters movies.

A hot-blooded crime story whose affectations outweigh its subversions.

Part Die Hard, part wish-fulfillment saga for a post-2024 present that didn’t come to pass, it’s a fantasy of feminist and U.S. might that’s chockablock with implausibilities.

It's content to be childishly silly rather than legitimately weird, veering between gags concerning age-old products and Jan. 6 with a mildness that keeps things pleasantly pedestrian.

Its formal showmanship unconvincing and off-putting, the film is a case study in the hazards of prizing style over substance.

There’s not much to latch onto here except the faint flickers of the better film this one, with more care and attention to detail, might have been.

Unlike its unique and fantastical title creature, it’s a commonplace monster mash which serves up only frenzied commotion and tired social commentary.

Undone by storytelling that, however well-intentioned, coats its real-life tale in a corny Hollywood sheen.

While its humor often sticks, its mayhem fails to land.

Love Machina’s scattershot structure does its subjects no favors, with the film taking a variety of meandering detours until its overarching purpose grows hazy.

In trying to have it both ways, it succeeds in neither, in the process stranding its charming leading man in a saga that needed to be either goofier or more gruesome.

Without greater context, though, Missing: The Lucie Blackman Case comes across as slight, and that notion is reinforced by a finale that draws no meaningful lessons from its tragic saga.

The epitome of a knock-off B-movie—and one that’s only mildly entertaining when it shows its cards and goes full-on gonzo.

It isn’t a debacle, but it also won’t have genre aficionados howling for more.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare would seem to be an almost ideal project for Ritchie—which is why its lethargy comes as such a dispiriting surprise.

An uninspired cover song in desperate need of its forerunner’s fire and flair.

So expansive and incomplete that it resembles a modern television series awkwardly edited into feature form.

Exhibits a superficial interest in ribald revelry and yet, in most respects, neuters its wilder impulses.

Only receiving a multiplex release because Warner Bros had to do so in order to maintain the franchise’s theatrical rights, it’s inconsequential and hackneyed to the point of being forgettable.

This rote affair would deserve the designation “for fans only,” if not for the sneaking suspicion that even they won’t be wowed by this return trip to Panem.

So rote that even an A.I. wouldn’t dare try to pass it off as original.

It’s as big a swing as any in Besson’s career, and consequently, when it wholly and embarrassingly misses, the blow back is borderline overpowering.

A sluggish and monotonous country-ified neo-noir that fails to innovate and, worse, to utilize its magnetic leading lady and her capable co-stars.

A shallow and slender tale of lousy dreams, worse decisions, and painful regrets, all of it predicated on a lead turn that’s too one-note to wow.

Stylized to the hilt but empty inside, it faithfully echoes the harried shallowness of its protagonist, whose desperate search for one big score to reverse his fortunes is all surface, no substance—the cinematic equivalent of a knock-off Rolex.

A Compassionate Spy takes a far more rose-tinted, one-note view of Hall—a tack that requires skirting past major conflicting particulars and eschewing the very uncertainty that Hall himself exhibits in numerous archival interviews.

It’s consistently engaging, but also not much more revealing than a quick perusal of Jennifer’s Wikipedia page, and the fact that its real-life saga may not be over only amplifies the impression that it’s less than the full story.

Affords Julia Roberts with her best part in years as a professor whose role in a burgeoning scandal threatens to expose her deep, dark (related) secrets. She’s not enough, however, to make this wannabe-conversation starter coherent, much less insightful.

Devolves into such a morass of shrill chaos and affected symbolism that it’s difficult to feel anything other than exasperation with its central maternal crisis.

Burdened by a hazy and mannered style that drains it of urgency and feeling, it’s a self-conscious curio that’s less dreamy than dreary.

Considering Rogen’s participation as both a writer and actor, it’s surprising that Mutant Mayhem plays it so safe, not merely in terms of plot but with regards to its comedy.

A daring saga that boasts far more moments that stumble than soar. It’s a mess that can be admired—but a mess, nonetheless.

Largely faithful but unwilling to pick a funny or nasty lane, it’s the most impersonal film of its writer/director’s career, and a revolutionary thriller that too often falls back on establishment conventions.

The amusing thrills intermittently appear, but the novelty is gone.

Yanking unashamedly at the heartstrings, however, it’s a manipulative and uneven tune that strains to elicit the sniffles it so hungrily seeks.

Those with a hankering for willfully pretentious absurdity may find this festival entry right up their alley.

A would-be franchise re-starter that resembles a Saturday morning cartoon come to overstuffed, helter-skelter life.

Although handsomely mounted and occasionally chilling, it’s the cinematic equivalent of a one-note tweet.

A sci-fi story that spirals about in circles on its way to a predictable and underwhelming twist and an even less satisfying conclusion.

Despite looking great, it comes off as a humdrum knockoff of yesterday’s fashion.

Its commentary on our fascination with law-breakers is virtually nonexistent, except to the extent that the film itself revels in the doomed romanticism of its own protagonist.

Long on hopefulness but short on sobering realities, Elevate proves a compelling if superficial look at the arduous path traveled by Senegalese teens hoping to make it to America for a higher education and an NBA career.

Boogie is most assured when focusing on specific Chinese American routines, rituals and mindsets, yet it falters when crafting its larger portrait of Boogie’s predicament. Huang’s script routinely indulges in leaden exposition to get its message, as well as character details and dynamics, across.

A coherent characterization of Robert Pattinson's striving schemer is nowhere to be found in this pedestrian period piece.

A socially conscious romantic comedy, and if those two modes don’t sound compatible, [writer/director] Libii does nothing to alter that impression.

Unfortunately, the film has nothing much to say other than that the enterprise is inherently complicated — which isn’t point enough for 111 minutes of screen time.

It’s well-intentioned, but it’s all diagnosis, no prescription.

Style can't fully compensate for a tale that, underneath its gorgeous affectations, proves undercooked, especially during a third act that provides duly titillating answers to its initially beguiling mysteries.

Stallone yearns to investigate the loneliness of a man who can’t get over the past, an endeavor which entails unwieldy speeches (delivered by the actor in his patented “yews guys” patois) and reflective shots of the city’s skyline.

A deranged pseudo-feminist fable, Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter takes its tedious time getting to its unrewarding destination.

There’s no mystery to Speak No Evil, and even less disquieting creepiness; instead, it’s a bludgeoning beast, epitomized by McAvoy’s Paddy.

Cursed with a vague, rambling script and an equally indistinct lead performance, the film is a scattershot series of vignettes about self-definition that, ultimately, never coheres into a lucid whole.