If for one second you forget the diverging script, the weak direction, and Efron’s limitations, there’s something to be amused by with De Niro’s flagrantly foul-mouthed, horned-up grandfather figure.

This is a film about sisters, yes, but also the identity we all must forge independent of our families, and the pain that comes with outgrowing the innocence that once defined our sibling bonds.

The execution of this story is almost uniformly perfect. Haigh’s script and direction are a clinic in careful and measured storytelling, favoring a delicate and devastating slow burn of a narrative over big dramatic moments and outbursts.

Leave it to writer, director, and professional expectation-defier Charlie Kaufman to make existential angst so completely delightful.

While Plummer tries his damnedest to anchor Remember in the high drama to which it aspires, Egoyan’s latest is best forgotten.

Shots are short, oddly made, and shoddily smashed together. There’s no spatial continuity, let alone consistency in time of day, or even a care for any kind of visual coherence. 13 Hours is just chaos. It’s unwatchable, unlikable, and unworthy of respect.

Hart, the firecracker that he is, has a fitting comedic (and crime-fighting) partner out there somewhere. But it’s not in the Ride Along series.

Phoenix is a death-defying melodrama of rare emotional obsession.

There are a couple hiccups that prevent the movie from elevating to the classic status of your Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fictions.

Concussion tries to “tell the truth!” but its filmmaker feels compelled to surround the truth with tales of a man whose life is just not that interesting.

At times, László Nemes’ film induces the sensation of drowning, slowly. Not the kind where you’re pulled under by the riptide, but the kind where you’ve been treading water for so long that the body starts to betray you in tiny increments, and any life preserver must be met with utter desperation.

There’s a laziness to The Road Chip, what with its mostly stale or needy jokes and cutesy plotting.

Sisters is made of pure, frenzied comic momentum.

Poekel and Audley keep exposition to a minimum, allowing the truth behind Noel’s breakup to emerge organically, in the weight of an object or his reaction to a beaming couple. It’s elegant filmmaking, seamless in its storytelling.

Abrams and Kasdan’s respective humor and pathos push the characters beyond some of the more rote and redundant storytelling. So while it’s not always compelling, it’s always fun.

Don Verdean is the sort of comedy which presumes its own hilarity long before it gets around to telling any actual jokes, or staging anything that might otherwise be considered funny.

It’s a fierce, visceral vision with a superb cast, that one suspects was more focused on pumping up Macbeth than reminding people why it’s such a lasting cautionary tale.

Unlike in some of the filmmaker’s past work, however, Youth foregrounds the performance over the spectacle; Keitel turns in some of his finest work in years as the aging, fiery Mick, and Caine delivers a performance composed of untold multitudes.

Unfortunately, the reverence Howard and screenwriter Charles Leavitt seem to feel for the material ultimately dooms it to—if you’ll pardon the seafaring reference—float along in the doldrums, doomed to a driftless existence enlivened only by the occasional giant whale.

For a film where not much ultimately happens, per se, Cronies is a thoughtful reflection on nostalgia and how the sins of the past affect the present.

Here’s a film with all the right ingredients and a few too many wrong moves, yet one that’s admirable for trying as hard as it does.

Whatever you think about Adam Sandler right now, The Ridiculous 6 won’t change your mind. If you love him, you’ll love this; if you hate him, you’ll get plenty of ammo here.

A cold, visceral, and overwhelming piece of cinema.

Saint Maud is a fantastic and gripping debut from an exciting new talent in the genre. Hoisted by a tight script and dynamic performances, it’s a standout title that deserves its heaps of praise.

While Lean on Pete risks turning gratuitous in terms of narrative flourishes and excess, it’s never gratuitous in its characterizations. Each individual encounter is rendered with compassion and respect.

A Haneke who’s treading water is still a bizarrely entertaining filmmaker, but the fun is tinged with a hint of disappointment and a certain feeling of lost opportunity.

However handsomely and efficiently staged, the actual action in this action movie feels immaterial. It’s a foregone conclusion that Mills is going to get his daughter back, no matter what obstacles are thrown in his way.

Watching Twilight, I was floored by how earnest all of this was, how seriously everyone involved took what is clearly a horrible, unhealthy, doomed relationship. And is there anything more teenage than that?

It may exhaust you, it may offend you; it may guide you through Hell into something more revelatory. And how you receive the film may depend greatly on how you feel about the man who made it.

There’s a lot of depth to Rushmore, but lingering in those depths for too long does a disservice to how consistently funny it also is.

The film is less effective, unfortunately, at trusting its audience to remain invested in Cedar Creek’s drama, which results in two grating subplots that become the A-plot in the draggy third act.

It’s an aesthetically addicting experience that capitalizes on these seasonal feelings, offering an unlikely escape with the press of a button.

Ostensibly, it’s a vehicle for Michael Biehn, whom no one else but James Cameron seems to know how to use properly, but everything else about the movie is forgettable.

Like so much of Linklater’s best work, the film is profound through its being deliberately unassuming. It’s sincere without being dopey, honest without being mean, optimistic without being oblivious of how hard the future can be.

True Romance is for the most part a delightful relic of its era.

The terrors put forth by the film are at once specific to the era of its production and timeless in their direct connection to the American experience.

Like Prince’s music, perhaps this film is best taken in for its sensation and not its literal output. That, and the dialogue is just ridiculous. But Prince looks cool, owns his story’s loose ideology of churlish change, and stages some marvelously ornate shots.

The empty promise of the American dream is the implicit subject of most of his films, but in Lost in America, they’re the most exquisitely drawn. Failure and pettiness haunt David and Linda, and Brooks finds compelling ways to frame them.

It’s not that funny, and feels like a ripoff of Animal House. Either way, The Wild Life is like the contractually obligated Crowe script that time forgot, his undisciplined id, playing with cheap thrills before he got a chance to express himself like a human storyteller in 1989.

This is Spinal Tap is hilarious to everyone who’s not a musician. Because for as ridiculous and perverse as Rob Reiner’s heavy metal mockumentary gets, the slim, 82-minute comedy gnaws at more truths than any other rock ‘n’ roll biopic ever put to celluloid.

The Warriors is a gangland fantasia, cut tighter than a snare drum, made for maximum impact.

Carpenter is patient in pulling away our warm blankets by slowly easing into the horror, simply by allowing the horror to slowly stalk us.

The result is that this film isn’t necessarily for the Pink Floyd newbie, as they’ll be hopelessly confused as to who is who — however, they may still be able to take in the incredible music. And Pink Floyd at Pompeii captures a Golden Age just beginning — a whole lot of spectacular music was soon to come from Waters, Gilmour, Wright, and Mason. You could see it coming, clear as an eruption from the grounds of Pompeii.

Thomas Andrews in Titanic and Spy Daddy Jack Bristow in Alias, sings so sweetly and wears his suspenders, goofy face paint, and guileless enthusiasm so well in the film that it’s easy to see both why he was plucked from the Canadian theatrical cast for the role. And why a bunch of similarly-minded hippies would want to follow him around an empty New York City and sing about love for a hundred minutes.

Get Back is the history. Let It Be is a poem. [2024 Restored Version]

Yellow Submarine is a journey to the very brightest spots of our imagination, and it’s a vibrant reminder of how joyful, inventive, and freeing animation can be.

This is the great American nightmare, in which neither families, friends, neighbors, nor lovers can save you, and no matter what you try and no matter where you go, it won’t stop until you do. There is nothing more terrifying than that.

As fascinating as it is to peek in and eavesdrop on what appears to be an authentic Bob Dylan, Dont Look Back captures something that’s perhaps even more indicative of the songwriter’s nature: Dylan in transition.