Scott Tobias

It’s a call to action in the form of an adoring profile, which is effective (and affecting) strategy, but narrow, propagandistic filmmaking.

Norte is the rare film where the characters seem simpler the longer we spend time with them. They’re humans that evolve into types.

22 Jump Street squeezes every last drop of comic inspiration it can get from Tatum and Hill, as well as the very notion of a sequel to such a superfluous enterprise.

There isn’t a bad scene in Borgman... But van Warmerdam just keeps on teasing and teasing, until the creeping suspicion sets in that teasing is all the film is going to do.

Willow Creek does everything a little bit better than others of its kind. It’s a little wittier, a little more insightful, a little more imaginative, a little scarier.

With just a couple of strong casting choices and a winsome tone, an old formula can still work, and The Grand Seduction comes out of the lab with a disarming readiness to please.

Night Moves is a film of deliberate, gnawing intensity and focus, built around a Jesse Eisenberg performance that doesn’t give much away, at least not easily.

Though it has the dramatic apparatus of fiction, the film unfolds with a documentary-like openness to the world around it.

That’s a lot of concept for a 90-minute horror-comedy, and All Cheerleaders Die handles it with a haphazard, catch-as-catch-can style that matches its tonal schizophrenia.

What really sets The Immigrant apart is how urgent it feels. Historical dramas often have a reserve that comes with perspective, but nearly a full century removed from this story, Gray seems, if anything, more emotionally invested here than in his contemporary dramas.

The only splash of cold water comes from Lake Bell as J.B.’s bohemian tenant, who pops his bubble of self-importance (and the film’s) whenever she gets the opportunity... her chemistry with Hamm, who gives his slickster all the dimension he can, offers a nice relief from the broad culture comedy and sentimental button-pushing.

The mimicry is so pronounced that it’s hard to locate a distinct, original sensibility beyond the film’s apparent influences. But talented young directors often need time to develop into singular ones, and there’s value in Coppola’s sensual, always-sympathetic feel for lost adolescents.

Its skillful execution of a bad idea doesn’t make the bad idea any better; in fact, the scrupulousness with which West and his crew evoke the past make the film that much more unsavory.

Brill’s point that there should be no such thing as a “walk of shame” is a good one, but he lacks the conviction to see it through honestly—or humorously.

Ida’s piercing intimacy makes the deepest impression, but its vision is deceptively wide-reaching despite a scale that’s deliberately pared-down and small.

The bigger The Protector 2 gets, the further it gets away from Jaa’s basic appeals.

The silver lining: Like its predecessor, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 offers its successor another fresh start, since no one will remember what happened in this movie, either.

Harris’ wondrous arrogance as Coupland nearly justifies The Quiet Ones, because he’s so absolutely certain of a methodology that’s so absolutely incoherent.

Next Goal Wins could stand to go deeper into game strategy, or local customs and living conditions, or any number of personal stories, but the victories it does achieve are enormously satisfying.

Like Blood Simple, Blue Ruin deals in crimes of passion, carried out by human beings who are flawed yet tragically relatable—one is about mopping up the blood, the other about the impossibility of stanching the flow.

Wolf Creek 2 does all it can to paper over the fact that it shouldn’t exist, but the film severely diminishes the integrity of the first Wolf Creek by turning Mick into a cartoon icon, more Outback legend than man.

Ozon tosses an abundance of twisted psychology into the stew, but he leaves the audience to sort it out for themselves. Young & Beautiful has the detached air of other Ozon productions, and Vacth gives so little away as Isabelle that she’s eternally an unsolved problem.

Like sunrise over a steaming pile of garbage, A Haunted House 2 offers another sharp whiff of its predecessor, a Scary Movie-style spoof of the Paranormal Activity movies that makes up in volume what it lacks in invention.

Transcendence wants to use this future panic to comment meaningfully on our current interconnectedness and inorganic lifestyle, but it’s screaming too much to have that conversation.

This ultimately isn’t a film about human fallibility, but about high-concept grotesquerie for its own sake.

The film falls apart once its mysteries dissipate. With them go all the dark ambiguities that colored the first hour.

Amid all the excess busyness, there are formulas within formulas.

Only Lovers Left Alive accomplishes the neat trick of reinventing a moribund genre as a distinctly Jarmuschian hangout movie.