Tom Russo

It’s clear To is striving to keep the action gripping and creative. Modestly inspired is more like it.

Hawke delivers a strong melancholy variation on his familiar emotional cool as Reverend Toller.

The movie may feel tonally consistent with the first, but it’s also overlong and thoroughly routine.

Director Tomm Moore (the 2009 Oscar contender “The Secret of Kells”) crafts a traditionally rendered feature whose doe-eyed characters faintly echo Miyazaki yet offer a beauty all their own.

This time the not-so-idle talk is about taking a socially conscious stand against gang violence. And while some of this territory is covered too tritely and safely to have all the impact intended by director Malcolm D. Lee (“The Best Man Holiday”), the movie’s entreaties are compelling enough.

Pattinson and Dafoe dig into their roles, all right, with both actors crazily, mesmerizingly toggling from workaday to recriminating to maniacal and on and on. Together with Eggers they deliver a masterful study of souls trapped on a rock alone, but also trapped together, with all the twisty complexities involved.

Go figure that the year’s most outrageously harrowing action movie turns out to be an arthouse doc from National Geographic.

After a long, long stretch in which the series’ attrition had come to feel like even more of a bummer than intended — no more Mickey, no Apollo, no Adrian — the franchise has welcome new life. But instead of going by Rocky, he goes by Creed.

Unless you’re familiar with the various particulars, you’ll likely find yourself experiencing the film in aptly wavelike fashion, cresting with optimism about the crew’s prospects before plunging into apprehension, again and again.

Snitch gets a decent amount of drama (and action, of course) out of the argument that there’s paying for a crime, and then there’s overpaying.

Still, not to put too fine — or juvenile — a point on it, a bigger problem is that there’s nothing but ’bot-on-’bot mayhem until the climax, when familiar ugly heads are reared over Tokyo.

This thoroughly stripped-down thriller simmers in a way that's still unsettling 25 years later. [24 Oct 2004]

If you’ve ever been fortunate enough to visit this corner of the world, you’ll instantly recognize the blissful natural grandeur that Moana captures, as well as the Pacific’s intimidating vastness.

Polished? Not exactly. Poignant? Definitely.

Far from contrived, the triangle that “Zachariah” sketches among the last three folks on earth is all too human.

The best moments come in seeing Galifianakis’s costars try to keep up with him as he finally, frantically lets loose.

Inspiring, or amusing? Appealingly, Eddie the Eagle invites both tags.

The best we get here are modest action diversions.

This is mythology that’s famously transportive in every sense, but the animators struggle to take us anywhere truly captivating, or even clearly defined.

Why can’t the film maintain its subtler shadings throughout? It’s a puzzle.

Despite the material’s fit, the story’s relentlessly downbeat tone is challenging. Strong performances by Logan Lerman (“Fury”) and Sarah Gadon (Hulu’s “11.22.63”) can’t keep the film from feeling like exhaustingly slow going.

The movie grows easier to like in the later, straighter going, as it stops pushing so aggressively to be naughty and lets its characters try on some introspection.

Judy and Nick’s unlikely-buddies routine is amusing, but their exploits and interplay occasionally neglect the youngest demographic.

The role of investment banker Naomi Bishop seems right for Gunn, no question, and it’s one that she approaches with conviction. So why is it so hard to root for her, or for any of the characters here?

Taking its title from the site where Christ was crucified, the controversy-courting film has a lot of Catholic church business (and doctrine) on its mind, and veers from poetically eloquent to jarringly blunt in hashing it all out.

This is less a throwback to cutely misunderstood Molly Ringwald than to “My So-Called Life” — but with our high-school heroine stuck in a spiral like Claire Danes never knew.

Jackman and Stewart’s fond, easy dynamic helps to balance some very provocative brutality, as the movie pushes Wolverine’s berserk nature to graphic new extremes.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 recaptures those lyrical highs. But returning writer-director Dean DeBlois also aims to layer on more poignancy for Baruchel and his castmates to play. At points, we’re left feeling a little detached.

The motley crew’s repartee makes for comedy that’s surprisingly consistent, yet freewheeling and sharp enough to pinball from Kevin Bacon to Jackson Pollock and back.

A Monster Calls is a portrait of coping that’s both fascinating and heartbreaking.

A characteristic early offering from horror icon David Cronenberg, rough production values and all. [30 May 2004]

An unexpected portrait of the legendary comedy duo on a mostly forgotten stage tour at the twilight of their careers.

The character is sweetly sympathetic — less “Tammy” than “Mike & Molly” — and the laughs and chaos are all the more infectious for it.

For audiences with an extremely high tolerance for brutally fetishized shootouts and bloodletting, this continuation of Reeves’s potential-filled reluctant hit man saga is electrifying, both visually and in its cracked narrative ambitions.

In The Desert of Forbidden Art, documentarians Amanda Pope and Tchavdar Georgiev offer some background on the late Savitsky, a painter who initially collected ethnic folk art quashed by the Stalin regime.

For all Kendrick's stolidity, he delivers a couple of wrenchingly tender scenes.

A story steeped in emotional remoteness manages to command our attention in Thoroughbreds, first-time filmmaker Cory Finley’s darkly satirical portrait of the young and disconnected in old-money Connecticut.

The movie is sufficiently in touch with current comic books that it’s keen to explore Batman’s psychology — breezily, but still.

Frozen could also leave its mark as the next step in the Disney Princess feminist revisionism championed by last year’s “Brave.” Where that film staunchly pushed a men-don’t-define-me theme throughout, here it’s the requisite fairy tale ending that gets tweaked.

Zooey Deschanel shows off her singing on a couple of generically pleasant soundtrack ditties.

As tiresome as the relentless, indulgent inscrutability and lack of story momentum can be, it says something for the movie’s visceral power that there isn’t an urge to quit on it.

A rousing movie that’s satisfyingly infused with traditional Disney sentiment.

Thor’s bloodsport detour diverts an inordinate amount of the filmmakers’ attention, and ours, from the whole end-of-days buildup. Hopkins gets short shrift, as does Idris Elba’s returning interdimensional gatekeeper, Heimdall.

Hirschbiegel and Friedel win credibility points for painting Elser as noble without painting him as a saint.

Compared to a second installment that expanded the established Keanuscape in ways the “Matrix” sequels only wish they had, “Wick 3” fumbles for compelling, organically incorporated territory to explore.

Unfortunately, as the story builds toward tenderness, it’s undercut with slathering tongues and bare-chested stud-muffin shots.

The movie could also teach something to the makers of "Pirates of the Caribbean" about delivering a story quirky enough to actually stick with you.

Credit Bowers and company, finally, for making some good calls about where to follow the leads furnished to them by the book and the first movie, and where to get creative.

Not that there’s all manner of comedy craftsmanship demanding study here, but the movie does seem to be a funny jumble of contradictory impulses.

The dialogue also reflects the material’s stage origins in ways that don’t always translate well.

After all the mesmerizingly illicit buildup, the film’s willful lack of a payoff is almost as strange as one of those essays.

The film concerns itself more with beauty shots of the region’s rugged, intimidating vastness than with “Backdraft”-rivaling imagery of combustion as art.

Has a pleasantly freewheeling, European art film feel to it, a welcome reminder of the New Hollywood of the '70s. [04 Sep 2005]

As a combat action spectacle, the movie takes a straightforward, gritty approach that makes for mostly solid viewing.

The upshot: The movie develops a distinctively trippy identity.

Green and his cast deliver a wonderful surprise. Echo himself, a generically precious alien, is the least of it. The funny, moving, authentic bond among the kids in the movie is the unadvertised draw.

Chappie boasts so many entertaining elements, particularly the lead motion-capture performance by Blomkamp’s go-to guy Sharlto Copley, its shortcomings don’t sink the movie.

The film was technically astonishing and yet brazenly simple.

Lowery’s update turns out to be one of the summer’s best surprises, a gorgeous, magical reworking that deftly strikes that once-elusive balance between contemporary and quaint.

The imaginative, touching, and dizzyingly animated Ralph Breaks the Internet is a sequel with a rich, broad vision that addresses all of these issues faster than you can say Fix-It Felix.

An original thriller about a home-invasion robbery gone wrong. To clarify, that would be “wrong” as in “not according to plan” – but also “wrong” as in “so dementedly repugnant, it just isn’t right.”

What the filmmakers come up with is a modestly likable mix of zany and gently warmhearted, even if they overdo both elements at times.

Finnish filmmaker Jalmari Helander's dark-comic expansion on his cult Internet shorts, in which he crafts a back story for Santa that's as black as stocking coal.

Shazam! is pretty entertaining. It’s a lark that aims to distinguish itself from too-familiar DC dourness a bit like “Guardians of the Galaxy” playfully tweaked Marvel’s formula.

A narrative feature can do what the documentary couldn’t: re-create the tightrope act in full, glorious motion, rather than editing together surreptitiously snapped photos. These dizzying IMAX 3-D visuals truly are big-screen magic.

Tucci can be so focused on Giacometti’s artistic process that he gives short shrift to the art itself.

Disappointingly, this scruffy indie doesn’t live up to its promise either, despite a few flashes of subversive inspiration.

It’s fast, it’s funny, it’s superficial, it’s full of likable stars and scientific mumbo-jumbo, and, above all, it taps into the human urge to see big things become little and little things get big. It’s as close to lizard-brain entertainment as superhero blockbusters get, and as the mercury pushes toward 100, I’ll take it.

But, oh, the action. Tommila and Jackson have a couple of escape sequences that are exhilaratingly choreographed, never mind that one employs a meat freezer as its key prop. Kids should dig these bits. After all, off-kilter as Helander’s sensibility continues to be, he’s got a passion for popcorn-movie energy that can be contagious — especially when he’s not trashing Santa.

For all her “Clueless” comedy cred, Silverstone just might be at her best conveying a mother’s special knack for witheringly guilting her boys.

For all of its engaging performances, this thoughtful yarn from the filmmaking tandem of Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz is limited by a quaintly straightforward story line. Every choice the characters opt for, every bit of self-discovery they make, is as scripted as a rasslin’ baddie’s folding-chair cheap shot.

Ultimately, cast and crew conjure up horror that’s more efficient than terrifying.

As nifty as any of it is a witty, touching story thread about Adlon’s trepidatious geek wrestling with her sexual orientation even as she wrestles with peer pressure to hop into bed. And guess what? She and the movie make the smart call.

The film's indefatigable holiday spirit is infectious.

In short, the film owns its immaturity. And the argument it appealingly offers in defense is that it’s healthy, even vital, to be able to laugh at scatological silliness, adults included.

It’s the mark of many a standout sports movie that you don’t necessarily have to be a fan to enjoy the story. The real-life pro wrestling portrait Fighting With My Family is a hugely entertaining case in point.

Best, probably, to appreciate the movie for what Slattery, Hoffman, and the cast do most effectively: craft a pervasive atmosphere of tired people trudging through tired circumstances that only seem to grow more, well, tiring.

The film’s casting in general is a strength, however deep the resonance of what the actors are playing. Schreiber’s ex-girlfriend, Naomi Watts, is a brassy, savvy presence as Wepner’s bartender soulmate.

The drama palpably, potently conveys the group’s misgivings, their jangling nerves, the foolhardy resignation pushing them on despite themselves.

As with all of Disneynature’s features, there’s astonishing documentary work on display in Bears — but a leaner, less conspicuously structured view of the wild might have had even greater impact.

What’s most compelling is the near-documentary quality of Teller, Koale, and Bennett’s characters playing against a VA backdrop of prosthetic limbs and catheter bags, of desensitized clerks and overwhelmed therapists.

The movie’s one big pitfall, really, is that Reeves’s character is so intently focused, he takes care of business a bit too quickly. Some final skirmishing and a tonally false sign-off feel like unconvincing bids to stretch the story to a more legit feature length.

One quibble: For such a legendarily elusive spot, the snowmen’s Himalayan hideaway seems awfully well trodden these days. If you thought the similarity between, say, “Coco” and “The Book of Life” was a case of animators not looking resourcefully enough for inspiration, how about the trifecta of “Smallfoot,” “Missing Link,” and DreamWorks’s upcoming “Abominable”?

The idea that documentarian Jeffrey Radice would make the episode both the hook and the opener for his film is to be expected — it’s an attention-grabbing story. But a hook is all it is.

After a point, we’re left wondering whether we’re watching a character study or caricature. Either way, the portrait gradually morphs from intriguing to tedious.

Sincerity turns out to be the default tone for Brigsby Bear, making this indie’s odd concept of an accidental man-child wrapped up in a Teddy Ruxpin fantasy world feel odder still in the execution.

Instead of all-seeing, it’s more like seen it all before.

Finally, a movie with at least some coherence despite its sadly challenging circumstances.

Even with his glossy new look, Charlie Brown remains the Charlie Browniest.

It makes you wonder if the series' animators, who took time out for "Rio" just before this, aren't so secretly yearning to sail different creative waters.

Kendrick’s interplay with Lively crackles, whether they’re going for laughs or something darker. Both are big selling points — as is their director, even if it’s not as advertised.

A story that builds toward Po training an army of his panda brethren fails to deliver exponentially greater fun.

How funny that Pryce, a tweedy Brit playing a bad guy, should be the one person doing anything remotely heroic for this dud.

At its best moments, Creed II manages a feat nearly as striking as anything that Michael B. Jordan’s Rocky Balboa protégé pulls off in the boxing ring: It doesn’t play all that much like a sequel.

Our advice: Forgive any conflicting elements and just drink them right down. They might be a peculiar blend, but they’re well crafted, just as you’d expect from Loach.

For all the energy that Rachel McAdams, Jason Bateman, and their castmates pour into their gimmicky comedy, there’s too often a feeling that they’re straining to pump up flat material.

The result is a story that’s awfully scattered thematically, but one with such inventive wit and screwball-quick pacing that issues like spongy motivation hardly seem to matter.

It’s as if Hill took his familiar sly humor and sneaked it into a segment from Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood.”