Sheila O'Malley

Co-directors Sam and Andy Zuchero also wrote the script, and while there are a lot of vibrant ideas at play, there are about ten ideas too many. The film ponders existential questions but keeps them at a remove.

Amber Alert sometimes works as a thriller, but it has serious aspirations. It wants to “say” something. These two things don’t come together.

Bad Behaviour is a frustrating watch. Englert doesn't wrestle the material into a manageable form, and struggles to find a consistent tone.

The film is well-made and well-acted, but it merely suggests depth rather than actually having it.

If you already are a fan of the Indigo Girls (and this writer is), then you know what their music means and the impact it's had on you. But if you don't know, if you want to learn more, “It’s Only Life After All" doesn't get the job done, even at 2 hours long.

Music can bypass your defenses. Music can imagine a better world, but it can also mourn the world or a love you've lost. Sometimes music does both at the same time. The Indigo Girls are like that. "Glitter & Doom" understands this dynamic, but the architecture of the film is so rickety there's nothing to hold onto. Just sit back and ride the waves of the music.

Players, written by Whit Anderson and directed by Trish Sie, struggles with the inherent artificiality of its setup. The tropes are so front and center that real life barely has any room to breathe.

The film captures a little bit of the flame of the original, particularly when it allows itself to be funny. It works really well as a comedy, almost of "manners," although manners aren't really in sight.

This "lack" of a serious critique makes Between Two Worlds the story of a pampered journalist confronted with how "these people live," plus the fallout when her lie is discovered, rather than a real shot fired at an unfair system.

Good scripts make you forget they are scripts. The script for Prisoner's Daughter is quite talky and never takes wing. You can almost see the words on the page, despite the strong efforts of Beckinsale and Cox.

When You Finish Saving the World floats uncertainly on the edge of satire. This is a big problem. Satire can't be uncertain. Satire needs a sharp bite. When You Finish Saving the World is toothless by comparison.

There There doesn't come to life, even as an intellectual or artistic exercise.

The family trauma is so clotted-thick, a faster pace and tightened-up editing might have eradicated the slow-motion underwater feel of the whole.

All My Puny Sorrows has all the elements to pack a devastating punch, but there's no real sense of urgency. It's like people are just marking time, like the end has already been determined, it's just a matter of resigning oneself to the inevitable.

Even with the excellent central performance by Karen Gillan, playing a "dual" role—herself and her own copy—Dual makes for a strangely tepid viewing experience. Deeper exploration is not on the table.

Borrego, an awkward thriller pasted onto a moody strangers-forging-a-connection drama, doesn't allow itself to be what it so clearly wants to be.

The script is often very witty, peppered with sharp observations and two very entertaining performances, but there are underlying problems the movie cannot overcome.

Eventually, the documentary turns into a more traditional investigative narrative, as genealogists and wolf experts and Holocaust historians put different pieces together in an attempt to determine what was and was not true about Misha's tale.

It's been some years since Jolie did an action movie, and she carries the center of Those Who Wish Me Dead. Unfortunately, it's a film with no real center.

With such powerhouses as McCarthy and Spencer at the helm, it's a surprise that so much of the film is inert, rote, conventional.

The Unholy is not designed to be deep, but since glimmers of depth are present, the lack of follow-up makes this a disappointing watch.

I admire the intentions behind Cherry. I even admire the Russos' desire to "do one for themselves" after directing so many films in a corporate-driven context. But Cherry warrants a simpler down-and-dirty approach.

There are flashes of interest, and even some welcome screwball elements, but PVT Chat doesn't coalesce in a meaningful way.

Because the "witchcraft" part is treated mostly as a fun thing to do at slumber parties, there are very few frightening sequences (as compared to the often-unnerving original). The result is a confused movie.

There's a lot of interesting things here and yet Flannery feels incomplete, and — worse — a little bit scared to go in for a much deeper dive.

The best thing about Stargirl is that Big Star's yearning ode to adolescence "Thirteen" is played in its entirety not once, but twice. If Stargirl introduces a new generation to the wonder that is Big Star, it will have done more than enough.

Semper Fi is best when it sticks with the journeys of the individual characters, each with their own backstory and struggles. These men have always known each other. But something goes wrong along the way, and Semper Fi suddenly decides it wants to be another kind of movie. The transition doesn't work.

As Danica, the head witch, draped in a bright-red gown with matching lipstick, Rebecca Romjin gives a very perverse and funny performance, all icy intimidation and glamorous power.

It's a disappointment when so much goes unexplored, when the film bows to the demands of a cliched plot driving the story forward.

The Quiet One is Wyman's journey, and because of that the documentary is intimate and personal, but by the same token it is also highly selective in what it shows and acknowledges.

With a script by Eric C. Charmelo, Nicole Snyder and Shepard, The Perfection has a gory grindhouse sleaze overlaid with the tony gleam of the upper-crust, a very sick combo.

The film plods at points, trudging along, and there are a few misguided narrative "devices" tacked on, but still, Trial by Fire bristles with anger.

The script is very sparse. It feels like an outline, a general idea rather than an actual filled-out story. Because of this, there's a slightly belabored quality to the film. We see where it's going. We see how it's going to go.

Touch Me Not is definitely abstract and intellectualized, although I didn't find it exploitative. But so much of the film left me cold, even bored.

This is a pretty rote story, and many of the plot points beggar belief, but Kusama's flourishes help somewhat to elevate the material into something more meditative, a character study of a woman in ruins.

A gentle low-key comedy.

There are some interesting things going on, and some insight into New York's economic hierarchy, but the film veers off into a hard-to-believe crime heist, and, ultimately, none of it really hangs together.

The film is best when it doesn't take itself too seriously. Unfortunately, for the most part it takes itself very seriously.

The frustration with Lizzie is that a lot of it works, but the style - elegant, hushed, and period-appropriate - acts as a damper on all the fraught possibilities. Lizzie is at war with its own impulses. You can sense there's a sexy overheated melodrama in there, yearning to burst free of its corset stays.

Writer-director Sebastian Gutierrez is the latest to tackle the rich implications of Bluebeard in his film Elizabeth Harvest, bringing a modern horror-sci-fi sensibility to the story. The horror is already implicit. Gutierrez makes it explicit.

The film is beautiful in spots, and features a believably tormented performance by Vincent Cassel as Gauguin, but unfortunately it has only a hazy idea of what it wants to be about.

A lot of grappling happens. The community grapples. The characters grapple. People grapple alone, people grapple together. Grappling is more interesting to watch than certainty, any day of the week.

The dialogue creates an arch and artificial mood, never sounding like real talk despite the clearly talented actors (Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Michiel Huisman) playing the roles. The film itself seems to be in denial about its own story.

The film has a good comedic rhythm, and there's a rambunctious bickering energy in every scene. It's often quite funny. But Permanent feels like a short film stretched to feature length. It never quite rises above the level of its premise.

There's a flatness in the end-result. The quirky is utterly predictable.

Austin Found features a great ensemble cast, but never manages to explore unique territory.

The Commune, featuring a great ensemble cast (many Vinterberg regulars), doesn't really focus all that much on what happens when you put a bunch of charismatic individuals into one house.

Small Crimes works in part but is strangely murky in others. There's a lot of dead air. It's the pettiness, the small-ness of the characters that makes the greatest impression.

As Antonina, though, Chastain seems bound up as an actress, held back in creating a character mainly by the demands of doing a Polish accent.

There's a lot of inadvertently hilarious stuff in Fifty Shades Darker.

The adaptation (by Josh Boone and Jill Killington) lacks any inference, mystery, or discovery: it is all text. Any complexity that there may be is all on the surface. Problems are easily solved, since there's nothing left unsaid, or if something is left unsaid that Ruthie says it for us in the voiceover. This makes for predictable viewing.

The scenes of wretched debauchery pile up, and in a film only 88 minutes long it's a tough slog. It's difficult to perceive what story is actually being told. There's a lot to look at, colors, light, drugs and nudity, and much of it looks really good. But there's nothing else to latch onto.

The fun of the film (and it is often fun) is in the complexities of interconnections, and the sheer number of criminals raging through this tiny area, outnumbering the upstanding citizens by the looks of it.

Sorvino is great in the small role of Clark's tear-stained, checked-out mother.

Suffragette feels like a documentary in its visuals, but at the same time drowns in subjectivity (Maud's face in repeated closeup).

It's more of an affectionate spoof on 1980's "summer camp" slasher films.

A family-tennis drama with a plot that could be described as "conflict-lite." All problems are telegraphed from the get-go, giving the film's opening scenes that weird vibe where characters spout exposition at one another.

While much of it is quite funny, the film ends up feeling like a good comedy sketch stretched out unnecessarily to a feature-length.

Despite a truly pained performance from Jeff Bridges and a beautifully imagined, three-dimensional futuristic world, The Giver, in wanting to connect itself to more recent YA franchises, sacrifices subtlety, inference and power.

The Single Moms Club is almost good.

Despite some game acting (and one truly superb moment from David Strathairn), Maladies remains on too low a boil to communicate any sense of stakes for the various characters. It seems to be trying to say something about creativity, and living one's life on one's own terms, but it's a muddle.

These are tantalizing glimpses, hinting at the deeper psychological abysses at play here, but they are left unexplored.

Son of God's earnest-ness is not necessarily a strike against it; it was made by earnest people who want to spread the word. But it's a tough draught to swallow if you're not in the mood for a sermon.

Thankfully, the entertaining chemistry between the two young leads in Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (Andrew Jacobs and Jorge Diaz), almost saves it.

It's not the most original of concepts, and writer-director Liz W. Garcia struggles with the tone throughout, but The Lifeguard is often saved by Kristen Bell's sensitive and complex performance.

The cast is terrific, and there are a couple of sequences that made me laugh out loud, but the movie as a whole is baffling.