Ross McIndoe

As the plot progresses, the film appears increasingly adrift, discordantly sliding between farce, satire, and murder mystery.

Even as the shotgun shells start flying, it makes time for the quiet dramatic moments that carry its family drama forward amid the carnage.

This is an overtly political film that’s hesitant to express its own political views.

The camera, the cuts, the needle drops, and story twists all contribute to the feeling of a machine that’s spinning faster and faster until finally it careens right out of control.

The film is a witchy mall comedy that mostly keeps you under its spell.

Eli Craig’s film works precisely because it plays things straight.

The first film was divided against itself—half a typically broad Paul Feig comedy, half imitation Gone Girl—and the sequel doesn’t fare much better as a genuine thriller.

As Knox Goes Away motors steadily toward redemption and family reconciliation, it leaves all opportunity for real moral reckoning in its rearview mirror.

Like a well-executed heist, the film knows how to get in and get out with minimal fuss.

Benoît Delhomme’s 1960s-set directorial debut can’t decide whether it wants to be considered camp or not, awkwardly pitching itself between a somber drama and antic melodrama.

Once the film turns into a paranoid home-invasion thriller, there’s no ambiguity left to the tale.

John Travolta’s scenes are islands of tranquility in a jittery sea of rote crime-movie pyrotechnics.

The film is far from original, but it successfully translates game logic to the big screen.

Rather than grappling with the mind and soul of the man who birthed bizarre, fatalistically funny and existentially unsettling works like Waiting for Godot, James Marsh’s film seems content to merely adapt the “Personal Life” section of Samuel Beckett’s Wikipedia page.

The film stumbles sluggishly from one chapter in Foreman’s life to the next.

As a WWE superstar, Cena is a perfect casting choice for a larger-than-life character like the formerly imaginary Ricky. He rattles off jokes with the boundless energy of a man used to spending three nights a week catapulting himself across a ring, and he’s completely at ease as the absolute center of attention.

Ultimately, Richard LaGravenese’s rom-com is a little too packed with soul-searching speeches.

Without a compelling reason for us to care about the people inside the car, a reasonably diverting journey never accelerates into an outright thrill-ride.

The film presents Amy Winehouse’s demise with a sad shrug, as one of those tragic things that just sort of happens.

Swiped’s story sits right at the center of so many vital issues, and a smarter, braver rendition of it—that is, one interested in actually probing beneath the surface of things—might have yielded a film truly worthy of comparison to The Social Network. Instead, we get a piece of corporate hagiography that sweeps all those issues aside to celebrate another tech billionaire.

It seems unsure whether it wants to be a campy slice of macabre in the vein of Dexter and American Horror Story, where the religious imagery and bloodletting are played for both chills and thrills, or a genuine rumination on death, faith, and the morality of doing bad things to bad people.

The slower it moves, the more obvious One Spoon of Chocolate’s deficiencies become.

Atlas seems like a story that should have been experienced with a gamepad in hand.

Aside from the red stuff, the film is scarcely interested in what’s inside its characters.

Dick Fontaine and Pat Harley’s documentary makes the political personal at every turn.

McVeigh’s ominous atmosphere is omnipresent, clinging to Timothy like a dog to a bone.

Ed Harris and Jessica Lange electrifyingly bring so many of their characters’ emotions to the surface, even as they convey that James and Mary are burying so much more beneath it.