Oktay Ege Kozak

Unfocused and unpolished, “Le Concours” might’ve been fared better if one of the prospective students picked up the camera instead.

I can imagine and understand it receiving all kinds of passionate feedback, from intensely negative to downright infuriated, but I doubt anyone will claim it is boring.

With its giddy and hypnotic mix of oil painting backgrounds and digital animation in service of a wonderfully inventive story surrounded by kooky, immediately lovable characters, Tito and the Birds is also one of the most original animated works of the year.

The Kid Who Would Be Kid hits the family classic trifecta: Spectacular fun for kids and adults, full of important themes, and a rebellious attitude in regard to the wide range of things grownups are messing up.

It’s endearing to see Burger change his typically harsh tone to create a story awash with such positivity. And just like its French original, The Upside is fairly superficial, but warm enough for the studio dumping ground known as January. One could do a lot worse.

Considering Ferrell and Reilly’s immense talents, Holmes & Watson is an even more unsettlingly unfunny experience.

It’s hard enough to have a fully CG character as your co-star, and it’s even tougher when an actor is tasked with creating a deep emotional bond with something she can’t even see during production. Steinfeld is up to the challenge, making us believe in Bumblebee’s existence almost as much as the animators who worked on bringing him to life.

There are some individual moments and elements to like here, but taken as a whole, Bohemian Rhapsody is mostly a flatline with occasional blips of life here and there—and not nearly enough to bring the whole body back from the dead.

Casting Amandla Stenberg to carry the project was an inspirational choice: She’s luminous and always captivating in the part, delivering a natural performance that allows easy access to Starr’s soul.

This is the most engaging and emotionally effective Moore doc since Bowling for Columbine.

It’s occasionally delightful, frequently funny, and good enough to make me look forward to what Greer will do next behind the camera.

Abrahamson can transition seamlessly between static James Ivory-type long shots of the soothing English countryside, easing the audience into a sense of comfort that comes with the high-class beauty of the period drama, and uncomfortable close-ups of faces, weaning in and out of focus, daring us to confront the neuroses of the characters head on. Underneath the veneer of uber-polite socializing is a vast inner turmoil.

As messy and predictable as its plot can get, A Simple Favor is an engaging throwback to the aforementioned tongue-in-cheek mysteries, drawing much of its energy from the chemistry between Kendrick and Lively. It need not be any more than that.

Gus Van Sant’s film certainly captures how Callahan used whimsy as a defense mechanism against seemingly insurmountable real-life conflict, but Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot captures little of how Callahan’s art was such a vital part of that whimsy.

All of the plot developments, including the third act twist, are predictable for aficionados of the genre, but the many successful standalone comedy and action sequences, as well as the natural chemistry between Kunis and McKinnon, keep us going.

This is one of those rare occasions in which a movie uses the dusty trope of turning a group of oddball misfits into a “family” and actually pulls it off in an emotionally satisfying way.

Tag is a bit of a mess, the well-paced runtime not allowing gag-based physical comedy and dramedy to exist equally on the same plain, just barely fun enough to keep an otherwise one-joke premise elevated.

Such a thin plot from some of the Jackass guys would have been completely forgiven, or even blissfully ignored, if the stunts were on par, or at least close to, what we expect from these guys.

How to Talk to Girls at Parties is a deliciously bizarre and refreshingly unique experience that not only manages to successfully meld two completely opposite tones—punk and whimsy—but to wrap them up into an exhilarating narrative that infuses a familiar sci-fi/comedy/romance structure with a host of surprises that even the most hardened genre scholar will appreciate.

Carrey commits one hundred and ten percent, fluctuating accent notwithstanding. It’s only a matter of time before his newfound artistic intensity will be matched to suitable material to create something special.

The natural chemistry between the four leads is what gives this material the energy it needs. They all bring their A-game here.

There doesn’t seem to be any insidious motivation behind writer/director Deon Taylor’s vision for his film, no purposeful undermining of the real impact of sex slavery by coating it in a veneer similar to what can modestly be described as a highly eroticized, run-off-the-mill basic cable home invasion thriller. It’s misguided, not nefarious.

It bears an overall feeling that we’re watching a work in progress.

Truth or Dare commits the cardinal sin of a film with such a stupid premise; it tries to explain the spiritual source of the game.

With its unflinching and painstaking execution of such grim subject matter, Foxtrot is certainly not an easy watch, but an ultimately rewarding one.

The reason such a colorful mainstream family time-waster should exist is to string together a bunch of zippy PG-rated action set-pieces. In that sense, the film succeeds at the basest level, thanks primarily to the beautifully crisp animation, a big step-up from the first film’s overtly plastic CG look.

With a deft docudrama approach (that doesn’t overdo the usual extra-shaky handheld camera and overtly grainy visual tone), Padilha shows a commendable technical control over that rare movie that could have benefitted from being much longer.

In many ways, The Hurricane Heist’s lack of self-awareness regarding just how dated it feels plays to its advantage. If you’re looking for that 1997 big-budget CG showcase experience without the wink-wink self deprecating irony of The Lonely Island or Deadpool, then you should be fairly satisfied with this cinematic time capsule.