Tasha Robinson

It's a smart movie for grownups, an increasingly rare commodity.

The hypnotic, clicky soundtrack, Bergès-Frisbey’s playful yet sad performance, and a few significant script moments laying out the film’s philosophy all aim toward a sleepy trance that helps put the biggest flaws into soft focus.

This movie is its own kind of Frankenstein’s monster, stitched together from a thousand different parts and lurching into disturbing life. The Bride! seems like it was meant to be discussed, analyzed, and unpacked at length, with different fans seizing on different elements as the key to the whole shambling creature. But like so many of the Frankensteinian creatures that preceded it onto the screen, it’s a bit of an unwieldy monster.

It's all very clever and thought-through, but all the allusions don't much bolster the bland central romance or the paper-thin treatment of '60s social issues.

While Broom largely isn't a broad comedy, it still rarely goes for restraint in anything but tone.

Race is exactly the kind of film the Academy loves to honor: bland, uplifting, respectable, engaged with historical social issues, but not too controversial or directly tied to the present.

For all its ridiculousness, its enthusiastic comic excess, and its fart/booger/gross-out jokes, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid's heart is firmly in the right place.

There's no great art to Fried Worms' simple, family-friendly style and obvious clichés, but there's a refreshing lack of x-treme attitude, slapstick violence, and all the other things that make most kids' movies feel like they were generated by a marketing committee.

The moody tone and carefully balanced drama turn a grubby premise into something unexpectedly elegant.

Maleficent is out of balance in all sorts of ways. The effective silent sequences conflict with the frustratingly talky ones. The new material fits poorly with moments that directly quote the classic.

Trouble is, it's too rambling and digressive to feel focused, yet too calculating to feel as observational and natural as a good Altman flick.

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.

Joy has neither comedy nor nuance going for it. Every character feels like a half-sketched first draft, awaiting development that never comes.

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.

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.

Tamala 2010 feels like either a singularly detail-organized dream, or an exceptionally formal drug trip.

Westfeldt has a tendency to go over the top, and Friends With Kids in particular has a shrill, smug edge that kills the comedy and the drama alike.

The film's life-affirming fable offers a richer metaphorical subtext than Vision's intricate coming-of-age soap opera. Unfortunately, clumsy dialogue, characterization, and exposition interfere with that subtext.

The movie’s strongest moments come when the action gets so ridiculous that the audience almost has to laugh, even as they’re wondering who’s going to die next.

Like Potter's "Orlando" and "The Tango Lesson," Yes showcases a craft and a hushed, vibrant intensity that prove compelling even when the story loses its focus.

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