Kudos to Darren Aronofsky for having the courage to make this film. Kudos to Paramount Pictures for having the guts to open this wide rather than burying it or hiding it as a VOD release. It’s too bad it doesn’t work.

The film offers little more depth about the writer than his Wikipedia article and considerably less than one would get from reading the semi-autobiographical The Catcher in the Rye.

A delightfully loopy comedy about the hijinks that occur when families collide.

Its video-on-demand availability makes Anti Matter easily accessible and it will reward those who seek it out.

Whatever small pleasures it may offer are wiped out by the frustrating sense of incompleteness that accompanies the arrival of the end credits.

I’m not predisposed to like movies focused on hollow characters floating in their own bubble of self-absorption, whether they’re men (Entourage) or women (Sex and the City), and as soon as I realized that’s what Home Again was offering, I knew I was in for a long 97 minutes. Unfortunately, I was right.

An atmospheric period-piece murder mystery, The Limehouse Golem combines elements of Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper into a Victorian-era gothic stew that, although perhaps not as ultimately satisfying as it might have been, nevertheless provides for an unsettling two hours.

One reason why It works is that it doesn’t rely solely on jump-scares and gore to startle audiences. Yes, there are some of both, but It is more about building tension than cheap gimmicks.

Nearly every role is miscast, which is rather amazing. Christoph Waltz and Judi Dench (as an abbess) are perhaps the exceptions.

The comedy is embarrassingly unfunny, the attempts at drama are badly acted and sometimes cringe-worthy, and the copious amounts of blood during the fight sequences fall short of being amusing while sabotaging any hope of taking them seriously.

The Layover is an appalling movie.

Temple shows a better path for horror films to follow but the screenplay is too threadbare and the characters too poorly developed for it to really work. This is about 2/3 of a solid effort – unfortunately, the other 1/3 was never made.

Connie (Robert Pattinson) is one of those individuals who constantly seems to be on the edge of a violent explosion and that potential makes watching Good Time a frequently exhausting experience.

It’s competently made and sporadically compelling but not likely to pique the interest of anyone unfamiliar with the main character.

Despite being sold and marketed as a thriller, the most interesting aspects of Shot Caller are the dramatic ones.

Unfortunately, because of a variety of missteps, Bushwick never achieves what it sets out to do. It’s undone by a litany of bad decisions and the underlying weakness of the core material.

This is as pure a narrative-based film as one is likely to find; the men and women populating 6 Days exist primarily to move the story along.

Ingrid Goes West is part comedy, part tragedy, part horror/thriller, and part social commentary. Although it is primarily satirical, director/co-writer Matt Spicer never loses sight of the characters.

Ghost House is a generally well-made but ultimately unsurprising excursion into the supernatural.

For me, The Hitman’s Bodyguard is the epitome of what a summer movie should be. There’s sufficient spectacle to satisfy the “wow!” factor, some hammy performances by actors in their wheelhouses, a half-dozen solid laughs, and a script that, if not likely to be called “clever” or “smart”, doesn’t demand a frontal lobotomy to be enjoyed.

Although Logan Lucky works as a heist film, it neither amazes with its narrative contortions nor keeps the audience waiting with baited breath for the unveiling of some big twist.

Links between climate change, population growth, and a potentially catastrophic worldwide famine are reduced to background plot points. The moral/ethical conundrums of the “solution” are paid lip service but not aggressively integrated into the story.

This is a feel-good tale through-and-through yet, because of the aesthetic and setting, it doesn’t feel cloying and artificial. And, perhaps most importantly, it earns the modest ending.

By laminating Walls’ story with a Hollywood sheen, the narrative climaxes in an artificial and contrived manner. The penultimate scene is so obviously scripted that its inclusion is damaging. That’s too bad, because there are some effective individual scenes earlier in the proceedings.

Lambert’s three-dimensionality elevates Wind River above the norms of the traditional crime movie so that, in addition to delivering the expected tropes, it provides a richer, more fulfilling experience.

The story is engaging and McCary provokes an emotional response with his careful and nuanced handling of the main character’s mindset and situation.

For an American/international audience, perhaps the most important contribution provided by In This Corner of the World is one of perspective.

Unfortunately, although there’s an opportunity here to do something compelling, that opportunity is largely wasted. Perfunctory characterization, lackluster acting, an inability to sustain tension, and an incoherent ending waste most of the goodwill resulting from the premise.