Simon Abrams

American Made may be superficially a condemnation of the hypocritical American impulse to take drug suppliers' money with one hand and chastise users with the other. But it's mostly a sensational, sub-"Wolf of Wall Street"-style true crime story that attempts to seduce you, then abandon you.

A visually impressive mix of hand-drawn and CGI animation with basic action-adventure elements that are always viscerally satisfying thanks to Hosoda's apparent warts-and-all love for humanity.

The scattershot new media satire Vengeance might have been merely a toothless provocation replete with both-sides false equivalences were it not so well-scripted and well-directed on a scene-to-scene basis.

If you want to see cats chasing people in packs, falling over themselves to descend stairwells, and jump up trees to swipe at disposable human protagonists--you will probably enjoy Roar.

Unexpected isn't about, but rather a product of, class-based condescension in America.

While this new “Dragon Ball” spinoff may not be all things to all viewers, it’s also a thrilling showcase for Toriyama’s beloved characters.

Canadian filmmaker Denis Côté holds up a shallow mirror to the world of bodybuilding in the underwhelming experimental documentary A Skin So Soft.

Unlike most costume dramas, Sunset — a moving Hungarian character study set in Budapest during 1913 — isn't a movie you can easily get lost in. The movie's disorienting and visually austere style takes some getting used to.

Recreated footage of the rovers flying to, landing on, and carefully exploring the red planet tend to be the most engrossing material in White’s scattershot documentary, which too often tries to humanize the rovers’ handlers by playing up their emotions instead of their accomplishments.

It’s “Avatar” meets “Fantastic Voyage,” and it also looks really good on a big screen thanks to Disney’s many, many talented animators. With their help, “Strange World” breezes through a checklist of formulaic plot points and canned emotional revelations with enough style and sensitivity to make it work.

Any movie is improved at least 10 percent by the presence of Scottish actor Brian Cox, even mushy sports drama Believe.

Derrickson and Cargill successfully tailor their focused and mostly compelling narrative to a Steven Spielberg/Amblin Entertainment–esque bit of Stephen King–sploitation.

Yen continues charging ahead in “The Prosecutor,” which frequently goes hard enough to fly through its corniest lulls.

The brutality of Tyrannosaur isn't so over the top as to make director Paddy Considine's sympathy for his flawed characters look like a sham. But it does frequently bring his film's seesawing exploration of blue-collar existence to the brink of collapse.

Ride Your Wave moves without a great sense of urgency, but only because Hinako’s emotional turmoil isn’t a great conflict or a tragedy. It is, however, as real as the private heartaches that we self-consciously wear on our sleeves.

The Hallow also de-emphasizes human drama to the point where it often feels like a Jenga tower of set pieces, a disappointing fact that's most apparent during the film's first 40 minutes.

If you’re watching Leo, it should be to see Vijay show off in between animal attacks, car flips, and celebrity cameos. And even if you don’t expect much from Leo, it still might give you exactly what you need.

Point and Shoot consequently feels like a film made by a storyteller — not a journalist — who doesn't know he can ask follow-up questions.

Instead of relishing the specific details of this story, you wind up enjoying its familiar pleasures and then maybe its creators’ proficient execution.

Assassination is a blast whenever the director doesn't take his melodramatic plot too seriously.

Director Joshua Erkman shows promise throughout “A Desert,” his first feature, but his movie’s unyielding scenario, co-written with Bossi Baker, makes it hard to want to hang around while thinly drawn characters vaguely establish the movie’s themes.

And when the movie’s over, nothing is resolved that the filmmakers didn’t side-step or reduce to a few unconvincing symbols of hope for a more equitable future. You might like Enforcement if that’s a line you already want to buy; there’s otherwise not much here to change your mind.

An average scene in Confess, Fletch features several different kinds of humor, including callbacks, running jokes, physical comedy, and character-driven wordplay, all of which either flatter the individual actors or show off how well they work with their co-stars.

Meet Me in the Bathroom is an impressionistic blur, more about what it felt like to be at the head of a scene than the actual scene’s character or identity.

Aat some point, every character in Youth falls out of love with the way of seeing the world. That kind of anti-epiphany is major—not on a universal, but rather a personal scale.

It's an unsettling, and sometimes high-concept doodle, but it's awfully hard to resist a film that marries Atomic Age paranoia and optimism with Kurosawa's signature post-modern, atmosphere-intensive style.

Vivarium isn’t a fun watch, and not just because it’s generally claustrophobic and insistently bleak.

What’s mostly lacking is a matter of character-enhancing detail, the kind that would better integrate the movie’s high-concept thrills with its heartstring-tugging melodrama. Soapy’s not bad, but “This is Not a Test” lacks the sensationalism or sensitivity to make it more than a wan misfire.