Peter Sobczynski

The one major problem with Into the Forest, the one that keeps it from making that final leap of good movie to a potentially great one, is that the final third is just not quite as strong as the stuff that precedes it.

Lights Out has been made with a certain degree of style—enough to make you want to see what Sandberg might be capable of with a better screenplay—and it does contain one great moment that pays sly homage to the most famous moment from the classic thriller “Wait Until Dark.”

Little more than an extended version of the kind of political screeds that can be found online with only a minimum of effort, this is just a terrible movie.

The film as a whole just never quite overcomes the inherent familiarity of its premise to become its own unique thing. Those looking for a story equal to Cranston’s contributions to it are liable to come away from it feeling slightly disappointed.

The latest film to attempt to find the lighter side of bloodsuckers and it even adds a reasonably inspired idea into the mix. Alas, the result is a thoroughly mediocre movie that is never as amusing as it should be.

One of the essential documentaries on Hollywood.

The Darkness is pretty much a total bust—it isn’t scary, it isn’t exciting and it plods along at such a snails pace that even though it clocks in at just over 90 minutes, it plays like it runs at least twice that.

None of the actors are able to find a way to rise above the material, instead just plowing through in the broadest manner possible while trying not to look too obviously embarrassed.

You will be hard-pressed to remember anything about it even only a few minutes after watching it, which should come as a relief to everyone involved with its production.

The Measure of a Man may be a hard film to watch at times, but with Lindon's great performance at its center, it is one from which you cannot look away.

Criminal is the kind of dunderheaded enterprise that leaves viewers reeling from the idiocies they have just endured, wondering how something like that could possibly get made in the first place.

A horrible and wildly unnecessary follow-up that might actually be worse than its predecessor.

Nina Forever subverts audience expectations at every turn and develops the kind of genuine emotional power that keeps it from being just another gory goof.

Jane Got a Gun has its good points and less demanding fans of the Western genre may find some value in it, especially considering how few films of its type actually get made these days.

For the most part, it is a solid film that bolsters its innately compelling narrative with effectively low-key performances, some genuinely thrilling sequences and only a few moments here and there that lean towards hokeyness.

Depressingly universal and even more depressingly contemporary more than two centuries down the line.

As an action movie and as a historical document, it is a bombastic and wholly inauthentic mess that displays precious little interest in the men whose actions and sacrifices it purports to honor.

Although nowhere near as obnoxious as such recent faith-based offerings as “God’s Not Dead” and “Do You Believe?,” The Masked Saint is still kind of a chore to sit through, even for those predisposed to like anything that brings together Christian faith and sleeper holds.

The idea of remaking "Point Break" was not necessarily a bad idea, I suppose, but whatever charms that film might have had, they are utterly lost on the people behind this embarrassment.

Despite the occasional rough patches, there are still some things about Krampus that I did like quite a bit. Although the humor is not always successful, I liked the fact that Dougherty played the material in a relatively straight manner and resisted the urge to go for a more campy approach throughout.

A film that has some promising elements and which often seems as if it is on the verge of evolving into something wonderful but never quite manages to turn that particular corner.

Not that anyone watching #Horror is likely to care in the slightest about who is doing the killing and who will survive.

It is baffling to discover that for her third directorial effort, By the Sea, she has produced a film that is such a borderline unendurable exercise in vapid self-indulgence that it almost feels like an exceptionally straight-faced parody of empty-headed star vehicles.

Loud, repellent, badly written, indifferently directed and almost completely devoid of any genuine laughs, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse is essentially a film for 12-year-old boys who can still derive some kind of basic entertainment for the mere sight of spurting blood or a bare breast, all the better if they can appear at the same time

The sixth time is not the charm with this load of hooey that tries to make up for its lack of legitimate scares or basic narrative clarity by adding the alleged miracle of 3-D into the mix.

Conventional and easy-to-follow narratives can be found anywhere, but very few of them occur in films that are as visually ravishing and formally graceful as what Hou has cooked up here.

Even by Maddin's standards, it is a pretty wild ride in all aspects, starting with its very concept.

The film is constantly undercutting its own ability to generate any real suspense because whenever one of the stories begins to generate any real head of steam, viewers are jerked into another one and the whole process starts over again.