Ross Bonaime

Yates makes Pain Hustlers part-rowdy dramedy, part-half-assed takedown, and entirely an underwhelming film that attempts to make apparent and bland points.

Especially compared to the 2015 adaptation, A Man Called Otto is a clunky update that often feels like it's full of cartoonish characters, with poor music choices, and cloying sentimentality. But when Forster and Magee pull away from these eccentricities, the story of Otto and Marisol is often a thing of beauty, and wonderful friendship that is lovely to watch grow.

Cameos and fan service are fine to have, but the story has to be there to back them up, and it’s not quite there with The Flash.

Chumbawamba was clearly a band that wanted to do great things and fell short of that goal, and similarly, I Get Knocked Down is a curious concept to explore, but gets bogged down in its apparent attempts to be weird for the sake of being weird.

Stanton has done truly incredible, groundbreaking things in animation, and he’s almost certainly got a great live-action film in him, but In the Blink of an Eye makes one wonder if Stanton should go a bit smaller and work his way up to such grandiose concepts like this.

An intriguing formal experiment from Steven Soderbergh, focused on two solid performances by Sir Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel.

Rosaline's shows its strengths when it focuses on the parallel story of Rosaline and Dario, but when the narrative crosses paths directly with Shakespeare’s story, Rosaline starts to fall apart, becoming a muddled mess of modern references, unusual characterizations, and ideas that don’t mix as well as they should.

Disenchanted posits that happily ever after isn’t always the ending of the story, but Disenchanted also proves that sometimes, maybe it should be.

Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band is a straightforward yet enjoyable trip with one of the best live bands ever to exist. Yet considering the story that this tour has told so far, it's a bit of a shame that Zimny's documentary doesn't explore the entirety of what this road diary had to offer.

After a decade away, Jeunet has returned to embrace all of his worst eccentricities to create an absurd mess.

Empire of Light ultimately becomes a confusing mixture of ideas that never congeal into one solid narrative. Yet Mendes’ film does have the tiniest slivers of magic poking through the seams, proving his thesis about the beauty of film, even when he’s too distracted to focus on that idea himself.

DuVernay took a big swing with Origin, and that’s certainly to be commended, but the film sadly doesn’t work more often than it does. The impact of the end makes the journey worthwhile, but it’s a rocky road to that conclusion.

A House of Dynamite begins explosively, but unfortunately, it ends up fizzling out.

Emergency is ambitious and daring in what it’s trying to say and do, but a mishandling of pacing, serious issues, and pseudo-parody hurt what is a truly intriguing concept.

Like the title character himself, Jay Kelly is a film that has good intentions, but doesn’t have the follow-through to make good on those promises.

Granted, the footage itself and the intense quest to save these eight still make Hanging by a Wire a documentary worth seeking out. It’s just one that doesn’t have as much depth as one would hope.

Berg’s documentary is at its strongest when it focuses on the musical legacy that Buckley was so concerned about that he would leave behind, and less so when it tries to delve deeper into who Buckley was as a person.

Metal Lords ends just when it feels like it’s finding its footing, with its characters taking too much time to address their flaws, leaving the music and the bonds that have been formed via the music, on the back burner for too long.

Watchmen: Chapter 1 is a compelling curiosity, but never matches the power of its source material, and, if anything, should make people turn to the graphic novel instead of checking out yet another adaptation.

The Survivor is too frequently going through the motions of tried-and-true biopic stories that we’ve seen countless times before, or making choices that seem daring, but ultimately hold back the power of Harry’s story.

As Ibsen’s play has shown, even a century after its writing, this is still a story with life in it, and DaCosta’s take modernizes it in deft ways. However, the questionable way DaCosta's film goes about it doesn’t do the story justice, making this a party that fizzles out long before the last guest has left.

The Friend's heart is in the right place, but it can't get out of its own way.

It's a deliberately-paced drama with some decent performances and a gorgeously dark aesthetic, but lacks the time or effort to give these stories what they need.

The Greatest Night in Pop is a worthy story in its own right, but a bit more of the director's touch could've done justice to this gigantic achievement of pop music history.

Einbinder, Reynolds, Gluck, and Theroux are appealing as a team, but Strouse doesn’t give them any weight on their own, which leaves this story feeling fairly one-dimensional. Seekers of Infinite Love will, unfortunately, leave you searching for more.

The Luckiest Man in America is a strong story when it sticks to the facts, and Hauser is undeniably an excellent choice for this role, but the film really presses its luck by taking such huge liberties with the facts.

Cronenberg certainly still knows how to create arresting imagery and craft stories that can make the audience squirm, but the story that isn’t being told with Crimes of the Future is far more interesting than the one he has decided to focus on, which often feels like regurgitating concepts he’s already handled before.

A Private Life is worth exploring simply for the performance by Foster, which keeps this story moving the best she can, despite the screenplay’s constant starts and stops. If anything, the real mystery of A Private Life is why we don’t get to see Foster on our screens more these days.