Todd Gilchrist

Peppermint ultimately possesses the stale predictability of an unwrapped candy discovered at the bottom of a purse.

It never feels complete or thought through enough, either as a story or more crucially, an emotional experience — which is exactly what audiences would need in order to want to see more.

What ultimately works most profoundly for the film is that its intimacy, its specificity, feels less like the culmination of Joan’s life experiences and more like an epiphany, or maybe an origin story, for what’s yet to come from her.

Ultimately this intimate, affectionate biography underscores an essential truth about the fashion industry, Talley’s work, and the life that he built out of what might seem like the unlikeliest circumstances: “Fashion is fleeting. Style remains.”

Even as a welcome offering to audiences from a broad variety of ethnic and economic backgrounds, Overboard ultimately feels like one of the dinners that Kate assigns Leo to cook for his newfound family — a good effort with a few new surprises to spice up a familiar dish, but nothing special enough to truly transform it into more than a routine meal.

If there’s anything that Active Measures does most effectively, it’s to demonstrate the depths and the breadth of the corruption, the criminality, the immorality operating in contemporary politics.

It’s kind of hard to know where to begin with what’s wrong in Traffik, a movie where every scene takes about twice as long as it feels like it should, and the characters far too often make an escalating series of implausible and/or stupid decisions.

Ultimately, The Miracle Season mistakes an inspiring true story for one that needs or deserves to be told cinematically; it isn’t awful, but it’s not a film, it’s a tribute, and unfortunately, one to the memory of a young woman who would be better honored by people actually “living like Line” than watching a formulaic, fictionalized retelling of her community learning what that means.

Whether shot on an iPhone or just screened on one, Unsane effortlessly flexes Soderbergh’s skill as a storyteller and a technician, injecting the atmosphere and mechanics of a creepy scenario with a substance that deepens and elevates it to the stuff of a harrowing, intimate reality.

Audiences get a collection of great performances, led by a truly exceptional one, in search of a script that’s worthy of them in a movie with so much to offer that disappointingly, but bafflingly, seems determined to add up to less than the sum of its parts.

Peter Rabbit feels obligated to point out all of the clichés that it’s rehashing, in the mistaken belief that doing so absolves itself from coming up with anything better to replace them.

Even if the casting choices in portraying some of iconic talents in Kenney’s orbit are occasionally questionable — a detail the film gleefully acknowledges — there’s something delightful about watching actors known for comedy now try to capture the sound or energy of the performers who inspired them.

Ultimately, Den of Thieves falls short of its goal, but it gets points for aiming high; there are worse things than trying to be the next Michael Mann when few others would dare try, especially if they lack the enthusiasm oozing out of every frame of your imitation.

There may be no more unexpected (or damning) faint praise for David Ayer’s new movie Bright than this: It made me wish I was watching “Suicide Squad” instead.

Bustling with manic energy, I, Tonya attempts to cobble together a variety of perspectives — including that of the filmmakers — to create a portrait of, and perhaps rejoinder to, history’s assessment of the record-breaking athlete as little more than a ’90s tabloid footnote.

Ultimately, Murder on the Orient Express isn’t necessarily awful; it’s just inert, a prestige pic that’s too busy looking handsome and respectable to evoke any real intrigue or emotional involvement.

People who wake up each morning dreading what President Trump has said or done the previous night may not want to revisit the emotional rollercoaster of Election Day 2016, but 11/8/16 nevertheless provides a fascinating portrait of the country’s mood, filtered through the real-time reactions of a cross-section of Americans with various political affiliations.

Volpe’s specificity with each characterization, including many of the men, humanizes what would otherwise be an issue-driven movie, and lends it an immediacy and resonance that fuels audience sympathies, not to mention understanding.

Leatherface is second only to Rob Zombie’s “Halloween” remake in horror’s pantheon of terrible origin stories.

Landon, who wrote four of the “Paranormal Activity” films, knows a lot about reverse engineering scary scenarios from mundane situations, but as with later installments of that series, he overcomplicates the logistics and mythology of the premise, aiming for something more raucous (and fun) in tone but lacking the intensity — or inevitability — to make its repetition feel truly chilling.

Cortlund and Halperin (“Now, Forager”) demonstrate a gift for not only creating beautiful images in unexpected moments, but also avoiding narrative shortcuts or tonal clichés to tell a story that covers familiar territory while ultimately defying easy categorization.

Zak Hilditch’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novella of the same name feels overlong or maybe underfed, fleshing out the character’s mental deterioration in handsome but unsurprising detail.

Jolie can’t decide whether she wants to be a poet or a field reporter, and the combination results in an important story that’s frequently, breathtakingly beautiful but ultimately more admirable than affecting.

For those without strong feelings for the Harrison Ford-era Clancy adaptations, which were polished but largely unmemorable, American Assassin works best as a little-league version of one of those or, in more contemporary terms, as an unsurprising origin story for what the filmmakers obviously hope is the beginning of a franchise.

Where “In A World…” felt intimate and focused, delightfully dysfunctional but relentlessly hopeful, “I Do” is noisy and meandering.

Ultimately, Ross hasn’t just successfully mounted an adaptation of a hot literary property, or even launched a film series that earns the right to be a franchise. He’s produced an engaging, thoughtful, populist piece of entertainment that transcends gender, genre or source material.

Ghost Protocol is a fun but mostly empty adventure story that operates with the rote predictability of a middling ‘90s James Bond movie rather than a benchmark-setting actioner or even seasonal “event movie.”

Ultimately as harrowing as any backwoods horror story but enhanced by a humanity those stories will almost never have, We Gotta Get Out Of Here is a terrific film, precisely because it takes the components of a traditional thriller, approaches them from a less-frequently explored perspective, makes them feel relatable and then elevates them with the right amount of style.

It's a film that takes its characters and their crises seriously, allowing them to fully explore their situation before providing them (and the audience) a genuine roadmap for finding their way through.

Although the film's ultimate payoff feels a little too big, and too insufficiently explained, to justify all of the obfuscation that led up to it, the script keeps the audience engaged and guessing right up to the end.

For a movie that insists that sequels are never better than their predecessors, Muppets Most Wanted at least suggests it’s possible for them to be equal – well, almost.

Because there’s some genuinely great ideas in the film, and some terrific character work, but it’s given such uneven attention, alternately languished upon and glossed over, that the portrait Burger creates feels complete without, well, making us feel a whole lot else.

The Art of the Steal won’t trick audiences into thinking they’ve seen anything new, but it’s just clever enough to keep them distracted from realizing that they haven’t.

An expertly timed, painstakingly assembled and endlessly engaging game of cat and mouse, Grand Piano succeeds as a whole for the same reasons that Selznick does—namely, because Mira brings all of its elements to work together in concert, and then executes them like a virtuoso.

Although movies like “Goodfellas” are indisputable forebears for Russell’s decadent tale of crime and punishment, the filmmaker distinguishes himself by creating a complex and compelling web of manipulation between the characters that eventually supersedes any of their scheming or con artistry.

Catching Fire is a monumental achievement, a massively entertaining crowd-pleaser that is thought-provoking and personally inspiring in all of the ways that it aspires to be.

As a film whose central theme emphasizes the dangers of living in the past, Wright, Pegg and Frost become fatally distracted by nostalgia, eventually paying too much homage to previous classics—especially their own—to create another film that deserves to stand alongside them.

Retaliation is no masterpiece, but it’s a movie whose fun doesn’t feel like a four-letter word -- popcorn entertainment that not only rivals what you see during summer, but surpasses what you see from Sommers.

As prophetic as it is provocative, exploring dysfunction, in a recognizable but no less satisfying way.

The Words fails to surpass dramatically the bland lack of specificity in its title while still offering a solid roundup of performances from its talented ensemble cast.

As a film that even passingly acknowledges the disposability of stars in a genre whose artistic merits are considered negligible (if they're considered at all), The Expendables 2 is indispensable entertainment.

A pastiche of almost too many movies to count as a remake of just one, Total Recall is mindless, middling fare that fails to utilize – much less expand – the provocative concepts at the core of its iconic 1990 predecessor.

Overall, it's not that Neil's directorial debut is boring or even disappointing, it's that it's just unexceptional – almost exactly the sort of dime-a-dozen growing-up story that's become a Sundance/ independent film world cliché.

Ultimately, Lee's clarity of vision hasn't been this sharp or unique since before "Crooklyn," and it's thrilling with Red Hook Summer to witness a return to the technique – and most of all, emotional wallop – that even today continues to give his films an enduring life as both entertainment, and enlightenment.

Overall, Chandrasekhar's first tentative venture towards something slightly more sincere is undermined by, quite frankly, his irresistible urge to take the piss out of every sequence that might have been played even remotely seriously.

Compliance is as much a meta-textual gauntlet as it is a movie; its subject matter not only deserves, but demands to be discussed and argued about, rather than being simply accepted at face value.

The Imposter is a great commentary on the subjectivity of any event, and one that probes deeply into the motivations of its subjects.

Dredd is a video game procedural tied to great visuals, but one without deeper substance to make its experience remotely meaningful.

A cinematic, cultural and personal triumph, The Dark Knight Rises is emotionally inspiring, aesthetically significant and critically important for America itself – as a mirror of both sober reflection and resilient hope.

Overall the biggest problem with What Just Happened is that its character studies and conflicts are so far inside the eye of Hollywood's celebrity-clad storm that its melancholy calm completely fails to interest anyone.

What Nolan and Co. have created doesn't just function as a thrill ride or even a terrific movie, but rather as a substantive and philosophical examination of why we need heroes, and then when we need them, what they mean.

Even if it doesn't quite stand with the 36th Chambers and King Boxers, Last Hurrah for Chivalry is a very good movie, both because it features a great many well-executed fight scenes and explores the early days of Woo's cinematic style.