Tim Grierson

The improvisational flair, unpredictable tonal shifts and overt emotional lurches that highlighted American Hustle and Silver Linings Playbook are here less consistently inspired and affecting, resulting in a heartfelt fairy tale that only soars in spurts.

This brutal survival tale is so powerfully engrossing that, despite the clear limitations of his monochromatic, showy approach, the film’s compelling construction tends to override the legitimate criticisms.

Director Lenny Abrahamson has made a deeply moving story about how adults try to explain the world to their children — even when they don’t always understand it themselves. And Brie Larson gives a tremendous performance as a mother who must be strong for her boy, until she suddenly can’t be anymore.

Alongside a sharp supporting cast that includes Dean Norris and Michael Kelly, Secret’s leads do what they can and never embarrass themselves. But the film’s so disposable, it vanishes right in front of your eyes.

Since so much of Creed’s emotional oomph comes from audience familiarity with the past films, the movie mostly shadowboxes with its past.

A so-so stoner film where the premise is almost always better than the execution.

It might be a given that Pixar’s movies are visually spectacular, but The Good Dinosaur may be the studio’s most purely cinematic, the richness of the design and the emotional power of the widescreen compositions stirring deep, almost primal feelings about childhood, the loss of innocence and the untamed ferocity of the natural world.

The Big Short means to infuriate its audience, but it’s smart enough to know that such an approach doesn’t preclude a film from being darkly, cathartically funny as well.

Landesman’s film may not be scintillating drama, but it aches with muted anger, and his cast makes sure to keep the proceedings at a consistent simmering boil.

Roland and Vanessa simply aren’t sufficiently compelling to provoke us to fill in the blanks. Pitt brings his usual weathered charm, and Jolie Pitt makes her character’s all-consuming melancholy occasionally ravishing, but there’s not enough depth underneath.

Mockingjay — Part 2 proves to be the most satisfying, gripping and emotional film in the franchise, resolving Katniss Everdeen’s odyssey with tense action sequences and a well-earned poignancy.

The Peanuts Movie isn’t so much an homage as it is an echo and a call-back, one that certainly has heart but also feels dispiritingly riskless.

The Ghost Dimension isn’t exactly frightening — the setup is so well-worn now that it’s hard to be particularly startled by what transpires — but it’s able to wring sufficient dread out of this franchise’s go-to fears.

Every thoughtful story beat and every well-observed character moment happens with such predictability and slick professionalism that the whole project seems smothered in bland sweetness.

A stunningly misjudged comedy, Rock The Kasbah stretches and strains Bill Murray’s deadpan nonchalance until it snaps, and what results is a singularly unfunny, often infuriating tale.

Del Toro’s predictably impeccable production design and tonal flourishes help bring the film to life, aided by strong performances from his leads, especially Jessica Chastain, who gives the otherwise reverent proceedings just the right amount of jolt.

Richards is such a fun interviewee that there’s no point kvetching about the film’s superficial treatment.

Jack Black’s mildly theatrical, knowingly hammy performance is but one of this horror-comedy’s overdone elements, and the film fails to rise above the level of perfunctory effects-driven spectacle.

What begins as a playful look at five young women’s rebellion against their strict upbringing soon becomes something far more stirring and emotional.

As a dreamy yet concrete evocation of lives beset by unseen anxieties and dwindling resources, Western has a mythic quality in keeping with its totemic title.

Julie Delpy’s latest directorial effort juggles some potentially delicious ideas, but Lolo proves to be an exasperating romantic comedy that flirts with darker terrain it never has the guts or wit to really explore.

All three leads get stronger as the movie goes along, in part because Miller’s full intention isn’t clear until about halfway through. These characters are foolish without being idiots, which produces a more sophisticated type of comedy.

Films about dysfunctional families are as common as families themselves. But for most of its running time, The Family Fang impressively negotiates around the familiar trappings, finding a relatively new way to discuss familiar themes.

Filled with feeling and led by heartfelt performances from Elle Fanning and Naomi Watts, the latest from director Gaby Dellal (Angels Crest) is a warm, rich film in many regards — and yet, there’s a nagging suspicion that, in the attempt to de-emphasise the hot-button topicality, About Ray isn’t ultimately about that much.

While Eye In The Sky is effective in building suspense and making a talk-y drama compelling, these techniques are in service to high-minded, heavy-handed filmmaking that buries troubling wartime questions in simplistic rhetoric.

Politics is a dirty business, but Our Brand Is Crisis doesn’t stick its hands into the muck sufficiently to be as entertaining or stinging as it could be.

Though it’s laudable that Vallée and his cast tried not to make just another story about someone wallowing in his grief, their alternative coddles Davis’s mourning with a rampant colourfulness that’s suffocating.

A polished, engrossing procedural, Spotlight offers plenty of old-fashioned pleasures — chiefly, the sight of smart, scrappy muckraking journalists stopping at nothing to uncover systematic corruption.

The first Transporter film in seven years is moderately entertaining and reliably ludicrous in all the predictable ways, but the film’s new sharp-dressed driver doesn’t possess the effortless stoic wit of the original trilogy’s Jason Statham, which ends up making all the difference.

While it’s impossible not to be somewhat caught up in these climbers’ life-or-death struggle, Everest is oddly uninvolving — it depicts a horrific scenario in an underwhelming, distancing way.

One wouldn’t expect A Walk In The Woods to be a rat-a-tat-tat 1930s comedy, but between the stars’ rusty comic timing and the script’s stale setups, the movie simply isn’t that funny, more likely to produce a smile than even a chuckle.

An engaging documentary that’s perhaps too enchanted by its own “stranger than fiction” oddness to delve deeply enough into the human drama on display.

The feature debut of director Max Joseph can occasionally be as entrancing and euphoric as the pulsating dance songs on the soundtrack. But even an empathetic performance from Zac Efron (and an impressive, nuanced turn from Wes Bentley) can’t distract from a movie that mistakes surface flash for probing, zeitgeist-y insights.

This is a moody comedy about unconscious marital discord, but it’s also about that ineffable discontent that envelops most of us. Digging For Fire is funny because it rings true — and because it stings a little.

Part stoner comedy, midnight movie, outsiders’ love story and ultraviolent B-movie, this intriguing film is given real soul by stars Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart, even if director Nima Nourizadeh’s ambitions end up being more laudable than the results.

This latest collaboration with star and co-writer Greta Gerwig radiates indomitable wit. And Gerwig is a hoot as a woman whose unflappable, unearned confidence lands somewhere between inspiring and horrifying.

The film is nothing but a sensuous rush of snappy period costumes, elegant beauties, dapper men, kinetic action and so-so quips, and because Ritchie seems even less concerned with story than usual, that blinkered approach very nearly works.

A good cast led by Miles Teller gets swallowed up in a narrative that grows progressively more muddled and tedious.

Z For Zachariah’s beauty is its simplicity, Zobel telling the story with a minimum of fuss and resisting easy explanations for his characters’ actions.

Despite a twisty, juicy and compelling story, there remains a staid conventionality that keeps the political and thematic undercurrents from being explored as satisfyingly as one might hope.

The action scenes are predictably magnificent, and an excellent supporting turn from fetching new cast member Rebecca Ferguson helps make this a sexy, propulsive, top-notch thriller.

Before it starts to lose steam in its third act, Trainwreck is a deft blend of laughs, romance and poignancy — not to mention one of Apatow’s most polished, mature works.

Jokey rather than funny, and a bit forced when it’s trying to be sincere, Ant-Man has plenty of enthusiasm but not a lot of inspiration.

This likeable, emotionally precise film has a big heart and a genre-shifting construction that keeps the proceedings from feeling like just another young-adult meander. But despite an agreeably earnest performance from rising star Nat Wolff, Paper Towns covers familiar coming-of-age terrain and suffers from an opaque turn by newcomer Cara Delevingne that’s not quite as captivating as the story requires.

This sequel to the unlikely 2012 male-stripper sensation has an agreeably ramshackle spirit and another winning turn from star and producer Channing Tatum. As for the dancing, it’s as deliciously spirited as ever.

A rambunctious, sexy, funny, irreverent whirlwind of a movie, Dope doesn’t seem like it has much discipline or focus, but its frantic forward momentum and haphazard mixture of styles, although demonstratively entertaining, shouldn’t distract from a rather pointed political message about race in America.

Terminator Genisys is a reasonably entertaining and niftily executed sci-fi action-thriller, and yet its ingenuity and craftsmanship are all in service of justifying its existence, resulting in a sequel that can be appreciated for its cleverness but otherwise regarded with a certain amount of ambivalence.

Jake Gyllenhaal brings likeability and commitment to a raw role, but despite a strong supporting cast director Antoine Fuqua never quite transcends the proceedings’ gritty, melodramatic blandness. A lot of care, heart and craft have been thrown at awfully familiar material.

While Jurassic World boasts a few efficient sequences...mostly it’s a grim affair that’s not leavened by adequate humour or a palpable romantic spark between Pratt and Howard.

Overly precious but undeniably affecting, Me And Earl And The Dying Girl travels into familiar dramatic terrain — the offbeat coming-of-age story, as well as the terminal-cancer drama — to deliver something that feels handmade and also heartfelt.

Trying to wring laughs from the nauseating sex-and-stardom exploits of fictional Tinseltown A-lister Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) and his buddies, Entourage consistently comes across as sour, shallow and misogynistic.

Tim Roth gives a meticulously withdrawn performance that speaks volumes, and although filmmaker Michel Franco can be too fussy in his starkly somber design, Chronic is nonetheless a captivating work.

A paean to the importance of retaining one’s childlike enthusiasm, the animated The Little Prince is itself a charmingly innocent film, lacking some of the storytelling and design sophistication of its Pixar and Dreamworks competitors but nonetheless delivering a sweet, likeable tale.

An overly self-conscious somberness infuses the film, keeping this heartrending tale from being as poignant as it could be.

There may not be a lot of depth to Green Room, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t sufficient thought and care.

It’s such stately, evocative, confident filmmaking, the only reservation being that it’s also a bit chilly.

George Clooney and newcomer Britt Robertson are solidly compelling, but Tomorrowland remains only a moderate success, its ingenuity, wit and enormous heart too often at odds with a ho-hum story and tentpole conventionality that the film tries so hard to transcend.

For a while, Fury Road’s complete disinterest in screenwriting fundamentals feels liberating, as the director keeps upping the ante on this desperate chase through the desert. But what feels liberating at first can become monotonous, and Fury Road starts to drag once the frenetic sameness of Miller’s strategy takes hold.

Although Reese Witherspoon and Sofía Vergara do have their fleetingly amusing moments, this road-trip buddy comedy feels like it rolled off the cliché assembly line, offering wan laughs and familiar setups.

The directorial debut of Australian filmmaker Kim Farrant is undone by a series of overwrought, miscalculated scenes that can’t be redeemed by an expert cast that’s fully committed to the heavy-handedness.

Whedon and his large, capable cast (even larger for this follow-up) deliver enough adventure, laughs and flat-out spectacle to ensure that audiences will feel as if they have gotten their money’s worth, especially when Ultron zeroes in on the quiet humanity beneath the special effects.

Hits all the expected emotional beats but doesn’t take many risks or glean sufficient insights about our fascination with the double-edged sword of eternal youth.

Though suitably moving in parts, Desert Dancer is more dutiful than inspired, reducing a worthy message to lukewarm sermonising.

The Longest Ride plays like cynical fan service to Sparks’ readers, who, it is assumed, will be content to sit back and enjoy a cheap tearjerker, no matter how mouldy its execution is.

A drearily sincere movie about faith and tolerance, Little Boy boasts plenty of good intentions but very little else.

Lead performances from Jonah Hill and James Franco are plenty impressive. But at the same time, True Story is almost too polished and clever for its own good, sacrificing complexity for a surface-y examination of the issues at play.

Last Knights is little more than a dutifully compiled collection of genre conventions, its tale of a group of brave knights seeking vengeance for their fallen leader so undemanding that it’s almost charmingly pedestrian.

This is a generous, consistently pleasurable comedy.

What proves irritating throughout the movie is the sense that Fogelman has chosen the easiest, least interesting execution of a rich premise.

Chappie is a bucket of bolts, Blomkamp’s desire to say meaningful things outdistancing his ability to say them compellingly.

As led by Daveed Diggs’ impassioned, tormented performance, Blindspotting is hard to shake, despite its on-the-nose plot points and melodramatic flourishes.

The movie’s arresting visual conceit has enough flexibility to sustain interest, even if the story’s twists and turns sometimes feel excessively fiendish.

The Unknown Girl isn’t just about guilt but also racism, the folly of pride and our collective need to be absolved for the bad things we’ve done—even if the penance doesn’t fit the infraction. All of this is done masterfully, but I confess it was masterful in just the way I expected. As a result, The Unknown Girl filled me with guilt as well—for not loving it more than I did.

Indulgent and meandering, but also very funny and thought-provoking, this film is ultimately about how little we understand about others — as well as ourselves.

Rose Byrne is appealing as a sympathetic, patient person finally sensing she deserves more from her life. But for a film that critiques men’s inability to let go of childish things, this cutesy adaptation of the Nick Hornby novel feels a bit like a fantasy version of how adulthood really is.

The film lets Nicolas Cage’s gonzo performance be its guide, mixing mocking self-parody and giddy enthusiasm for an utterly disposable, demented genre diversion.

Throwing darts at genre conventions while honouring what is eternally mythic about the milieu, this comedy-drama draws off-kilter performances from Robert Pattinson and Mia Wasikowska that subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) reframe archetypes and consistently set us back on our heels.

As a director, Dano prefers static camera setups and uncluttered frames, emphasising the mundane nature of the drama, which only allows the increasing darkness of this tale to become more upsetting.

Grief, guilt and family dysfunction prove to be overwhelming forces in Hereditary, a supremely elegant and tonally assured horror movie that trusts its audience will acquiesce to its measured, absorbing storytelling style.

Writer-director Sara Colangelo’s intimate, slender drama withholds much about its main character, which allows Gyllenhaal to sketch the outline of a fractured soul.

Brilliantly constructed and heartrendingly performed, The Tale feels as cathartic and cleansing as a primal scream.

Silent Night works best as a grim chamber piece that subverts the season’s usual good cheer — or, depending on one’s temperament, serves as a tart distillation of the nagging gloom those who hate the holidays often feel.

The novelty of his volcanically vulgar, deeply cynical tone may have worn off some, but Iannucci has nonetheless crafted another poisonous cocktail of naked ambition and blustery bravado with a decidedly bitter aftertaste.

The filmmakers’ handling of the surprises has a narrative deftness and visual cleverness that is legitimately unbalancing. It also adds a blast of dark comedy to the proceedings.

It’s a film that never overwhelms but it lingers, leaving its mark on the viewer.

Although director Wash Westmoreland tackles several serious subjects — sexual liberation, the repression of women’s voices, the power of art to change society — the movie has such a playful spirit that the talking points go down smoothly.

Miseducation has a funny, breezy surface — even though tragedy predictably intervenes at one point — but Cameron’s wry sense of humour doesn’t diminish how warping these conversion centres are, slowly instilling in people the sense that they’re faulty.

Many small things happen in Killer of Sheep, nothing of much consequence. But the enlargement of life itself is profound.

Giamatti gives one of his surest, simplest performances in quite a while, playing a supportive husband who, we suspect, may not be quite as gung-ho about conceiving as his wife is. And while Carter is very good as a young woman trying to find herself—full of youthful enthusiasm but also provocation—Private Life is mostly a glorious showcase for Hahn.