Shockingly un-cinematic and utterly devoid of dynamism, the film lacks anything resembling the well-researched insights or sharp-edged comedy that you have come to associate with the former host of The Daily Show.

That the film is a mediocre product doesn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that Disney+ now has a shiny new big-budget spectacle to dangle in front of its core audience.

What results is a messy, ambitious, deeply emotional film that sometimes falls victim to the tropes of the genres it attempts to remix but never loses its power to move us.

Instead, we just sort of soak in the despondency, like lukewarm water in a half-filled hot tub. While sometimes touching, the results of this noble experiment lack dynamism. Eventually whatever is fresh about the approach is undercut by a familiar will-the-man-child-finally-grow-up trope that has made some of Apatow’s lesser films feel insular and self-indulgent.

There is an immediacy to the film so rare in period biopics and such a tactile physicality to its intellectual gymnastics. By the time Shirley draws to a close, you end up feeling pleasingly spent, like you just stayed up all night drinking a bottle of Canadian Club while discussing literary theory with a dear old confidant you hadn’t seen in years. Some friends just tire you out like that, and they are almost always the best kind.

The result is a brutal and haunting meditation on violence and power in the music industry — and whose careers have been derailed in the aftermath.

The High Note is a wholly unexpected and utterly enchanting summer movie throwback.

It would be easy to put the blame here on the two stars; expect a lot of misguided chatter about Nanjiani and Rae’s lack of chemistry. But if they deserve blame, it is in their capacity as co-executive producers who approved production on the anemic and half-baked script.

Inheritance has not one iota of the thematic intensity of Bong’s film, nor any of the dynamic relationships that make Succession’s twists and turns impactful. Instead, there is nothing much on Inheritance’s mind, and the relationships end up as underdeveloped as the film’s cliché-ridden dialogue.

The series’ trademark blend of character comedy and absurdist sight gags is in full display, served up with just the proper amount of postmodern self-awareness that adds to the fun rather than detracts from it.

Overall, it is the performers that give the story life and allow Arkansas to rise above some of its shallower instincts, which include a garish costume design that seems to posit the idea that people from the South dress like rodeo clowns. Hemsworth in particular brings a truth and measured heartbreak to his portrayal of someone who has been forced to glimpse how the world works and deeply wished he hadn’t.

Cole’s overarching theme of time drifting, folding inward and ultimately dooming the fathers, sons, mothers and daughters of All Day and a Night is hugely aided by the manner in which he frames these ideas visually.

The movie shows that, true or not, in the right hands and with the right actors, this oft-told tale—like the Western genre itself—can course with the kind of venturesomeness that makes cinema so exciting no matter the circumstances under which we watch it.

The often-stilted dialogue of the teenage protagonists doesn’t fare much better. As a result, many of the performances from the seemingly talented cast come off as stiff and stagey.

A film about mental health issues needs a good script and a first-rate cast to sustain a viewer’s interest, and this one has neither.

After an hour of this tedium, you stop worrying about where this disaster is going — or if it’s going anywhere at all. In the end credits, 28 producers are listed for an 85-minute film that doesn’t appear to have even had one.

A lurid, tasteless crime procedural about a plague of serial slaughters by a pair of particularly demented maniacs roaming across Europe torturing and mutilating young newlyweds and leaving their victims nude and positioned to resemble famous works of art. It’s more gruesome than I dare to describe.

The plot may be formulaic, but there’s nothing predictable about Ben Affleck’s commitment to the role of Jack, or the subtlety and sincerity with which he plays it.

Hope Gap is pithy, engaging, and insightful — the kind of movie we desperately need more of.

This moronic parable inspired by Donald Trump’s treatment and attitude towards illegal immigrants is a disgrace, but so is almost everything else on the screen these days.

The Banker is a sadly facile and largely surface level rendering of a profoundly complex problem that deserves more attention.

When Whannell’s movie is at its best, the audience is not just a witness to the terror; we are part of the machinery that inflicts it. Which is not to say that — when it works — this remake of James Whale’s 1933 classic is a success born of camera placement, special effects, or even conceptual daring.

Despite its title, Onward is a regressive film, sometimes painfully so.

The entire enterprise is so muffled and dull you can’t believe what you’re watching.

For an alleged psychological thriller, The Night Clerk has no thrills, suspense or tension.

Buck is lovable forever. If you think he’s perfection on four legs, he is. If you think he’s the most human dog since Lassie, Benji and Rin Tin Tin, he isn’t. Because Buck, you see, is computer-generated. Never mind. I guarantee you will love him anyway.

Well-crafted, potently written and beautifully acted.

All of it combines into not only a profoundly romantic experience, but also an exploration of a number of different kinds of love and connection.