Tasha Robinson

As Unmade In China gets more personal and less professional, it stops being a primer on filmmaking in a foreign environment with unfamiliar challenges, and becomes an onsite mouthpiece for a pouting, passive-aggressive filmmaker who desperately needs an outlet.

It’s frustratingly good at first, and then just frustrating, because it veers away from the things that make it unique, intelligent, and exciting.

All of Mirror Mirror is visually striking, even when it works on no other levels. But the humor is erratic, the heroism isn't necessarily compelling, and the whole thing feels like a grab bag of bits that don't entirely cohere.

On some level, the latest DreamWorks CGI project isn't a movie so much as a gag-delivery system wrapped in special effects. The story is crammed with incident, yet completely trifling; there are a ton of personalities, but no real characters.

The problem is that so little about Hooper's Les Misérables feels integrated. The cast feels like a grab bag of talented stage vets and garish stunt-casting choices, particularly Baron Cohen and Bonham Carter, who perform the fan-favorite comic number "Master Of The House" as a jerky, staccato series of show-off moves and attempted but inadequate scene-stealing.

It’s a Dada daydream of a movie, but no one who sits through it can complain that they weren’t warned up front.

Taylor makes the most of his tiny budget with creative editing and shooting, though his New York City is anemic, narrow, and underpopulated, and his constant repetition of the same damn 60 seconds of music becomes excruciating.

The cast is generally excellent, but Hartnett in particular comes across as convincingly complicated, alternately reprehensible and sympathetic.

Essentially, The Way starts out as "Eat Pray Love" and takes a long, surprising trip toward becoming David Lynch's "The Straight Story." And that's a longer trip than a mere monthlong trek across Spain.

Ocelot's 2005 semi-sequel, Kirikou And The Wild Beast, retains the gorgeously detailed visuals and that hilarious tonal bluntness, but loses much of the compelling mystery, and the urgency of life-and-death situations.

Take This Waltz is simultaneously a coming-of-age film, a love story, a breakup story, and an indie quirkfest, and it tries to do so many things at once that it can't hit many of its marks cleanly. But at least it's never boring, and rarely predictable.

The film's pieces don't always fit together, but even in isolation, some of those pieces are well worth watching.

There’s a lot of fantasy in the usual end-of-the-world scenarios, but there’s a lot of horror there as well. Bokeh asks which of those reactions is more appropriate, and how they both play out. It’s a gentle story, as apocalypses go, but even without monsters, it becomes a painful, emotional question of strength and survival.

As mythic spectacles go, it beats "Clash Of The Titans," particularly in the areas of intimidating villainy and actual Titan-clashing. Nonetheless, it isn't any smarter than its inspirations, just prettier.

Dennis Quaid could stand in for Jeff Daniels' similarly toxic snob in "The Squid And The Whale," if only he were a little smarter and a little better-dressed.

House Of Sand is a gorgeous piece of cinema, but by the end, it just dries up and blows away.

It's pleasant and often touching, and the well-chosen cast sells what little drama they get, but there's no depth and little affect, and every would-be conflict peters out noncommittally.

Velvet Buzzsaw is a messy movie, and not just in the sense that Gilroy ends up painting a room with blood at one point.

While The Beaver starts with Gibson in "What Women Want" slapstick mode, it eventually goes to such exaggerated, extreme places that it becomes as much of a must-watch train-wreck as Gibson's own real-life situation.

It’s a curiously specific movie, a gag aimed at fans of joyously culty, messy nonsense like Guns Akimbo or Crank — at least, until that final fight suddenly starts taking the narrative seriously. Even then, though, it’s best to watch Boy Kills World with the same snarky detachment the rest of its run time encourages.

As a Captain America movie, Brave New World is batting strongly below average. The filmmakers try to dodge the political commentary that’s always marked the MCU’s Captain America movies, and focus on personal stakes instead, but those plotlines don’t land with any force or focus.

While several of the characters seem to be making obvious choices for obvious reasons, as the story unfolds, the script gets progressively deeper into their psyches.

The heavy threat of sexual assault, physical consumption, and predatory control hangs over the film's treacherous first hour, but once the threat resolves, Neon Demon loses its tension and its power, and then just keeps going.

The film doesn’t come across as ironic, satirical, or like a thoughtful analysis or commentary. It’s the first of the three that could actually be considered a new entry in the genre it’s referencing.

Edgar Wright has built his reputation on steering his movies into unlikely, exciting places. In The Running Man, it rarely feels like anyone’s hand is on the wheel.

The script glosses over everything that's important to the characters, which makes them vague and poreless. Some sense of specificity, about virtually anything, would be helpful for making them seem less like bare story functions and gag-delivery systems.

It's a knock-down, drag-out fight between storytelling, franchise-making, and fan service, and some casualties were inevitable. But even a messy fight for nuance is better than an apathetic sell-out.

This isn't just an action film; it's a multi-pronged assault on the heartstrings, with plenty of wide-eyed, apple-cheeked Norman Rockwell Americana saturating the pounding digital waves.