Sheila O'Malley

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The Kings of Summer flirts with profundity, seeming to yearn for it and fear the honest expression of it at the same time. There is much here to admire, but the overall impression is of a film that does not have the courage of its convictions.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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