Seen today, The King And The Mockingbird doesn’t have the tight pacing or propulsive narrative of modern animated stories, or the consistency of a film made to a specific house style. It’s recognizably the work of an idiosyncratic artist dealing in bizarre caricature, and exploring weird ideas... But its visual design and movement are striking, and its story beats are intriguingly unpredictable.

No matter how much this story has been streamlined for accessibility’s sake, its import remains potent. In spite of numerous missteps, Pride gets that across.

Even though the film’s overall impact is blunted by Wheatley’s frequently inscrutable plotting (co-written with Amy Jump), Rose’s images...speak louder than words.

The film is hyper-aware of the ridiculousness of the patriarchal obsession with masculinity-as-penis-size—and yet, in the end, and rather helplessly, it’s still mired in a banal narrative of masculine self-actualization.

The film captures its lush, leafy settings with an understated evocativeness that fully immerses the audience in its sense of place. The problem is that the movie ultimately leans too heavily on that sense of understatement, failing to let genuine, unexpected emotion fully break through to the surface.

Fury lives up to its title with its great ferocity, but at a certain point, it begins to feel like a macho fantasy.

As contemporary romantic comedies go, it’s by no means an embarrassment, ranging from politely bland at its worst to very nearly inspired at its best. It could have been so much more, though, had its makers been prepared to grapple with the genuinely thorny, surprisingly incisive idea at the movie’s center.

Part of the point may be how trauma simplifies life by stripping away everything inessential, but just as there’s little satisfaction in watching Daisy pursue an unworthy goal, there’s little satisfaction in watching a specific, colorful, keenly felt portrait become such a familiar story.

It began a transition in the series away from horror and toward kid-friendly adventure.

Even at its goofiest, Through The Never brings back the communal appeal of those early concert films, which were often just a way for young fans to bond with other young fans over the music of entertainers who seemed to understand what they really wanted.

Newell brings the tale a brisk touch, avoiding the fate of Victorian costume epics bloated by too much window-dressing.

It’s undeniably moving, but straightforward to a fault.

Dormant Beauty always comes back to the difficult decisions that family members have to make for each other, contrasted with the huffiness of outsiders who try to project their own beliefs onto someone else’s business.

The film falls apart once its mysteries dissipate. With them go all the dark ambiguities that colored the first hour.

For a first-time director, Amini demonstrates considerable skill both with actors and with the camera, giving the film a pungent balance of visual elegance and moral seediness.

Rigor Mortis can’t fully work for a Western audience, but it does at least provide a fascinating glimpse of a strange genre that never quite crossed over.

Though it’s still a disappointment in relation to its two predecessors, it has much to recommend it. It begins and ends brilliantly.

More and more, the film’s incisive realism seems at war with its ludicrous plot, until both finally just collapse, exhausted.

Ultimately, Digging Up The Marrow is more of an affectionate comedy than a horror movie, despite a third act that features some tense moments and hostile critters.

Next Goal Wins could stand to go deeper into game strategy, or local customs and living conditions, or any number of personal stories, but the victories it does achieve are enormously satisfying.

As it settles in, the thrilling chutzpah of The Blue Room’s opening salvo gets lost in the intricate curlicues of the plot, which take away much of its illicit rush.

[An] occasionally awkward but finally light-footed movie.

While it’s a shame Leong couldn’t find a fresher approach to Lin’s story—and that he left out any postscript about his struggles the following season in Houston—he does well in setting the stakes.

The Best Man Holiday alternates smoothly between raucous comedy and soap opera for a solid hour... Yet the balance begins to tip toward leaden melodrama in the crazily overloaded third act, which speeds past the line separating crowd-pleasing from crowd-pandering.

Searching for originality in an addiction narrative like Animals is a problem, because these stories of decline and degradation tend to sound the same. So the limited time frame is the film’s strongest asset, because it’s only paying attention to the final hours.

By establishing some of the Glade’s castes, rituals, and personalities, the writers make an incredibly contrived scenario seem a little more tangible. But once that high gear is engaged, the IQ and ambition drop precipitously.

Though Ryan and Monroe prove adept at the film’s most elemental factors, they don’t offer enough backstory or characterization.

Screenwriter Hanif Kureishi (My Beautiful Laundrette, Sammy And Rosie Get Laid) sometimes overdoes the emotional-seesaw routine... But director Roger Michell (who’s previously worked with Kureishi on The Mother, Venus, and the miniseries The Buddha Of Suburbia) maintains a slightly jagged rhythm that proves disarming, and he has two magnificent collaborators in Broadbent and Duncan.