For being a kids-centric film, the picture is relatively slow and joyless.

The problem isn’t quite that the film is short on thrills (there is a paucity; the first adrenaline racing sequences don’t arrive until about an hour in), it’s that it’s not quite a character piece either.

The quest to be the best is a familiar film story, but if director-writer Chazelle has achieved anything here, it’s a deeply and richly different take on that journey—not only examining the cost of struggle but the reward of it, showing both what it takes to be great and what happens when you don’t have it.

Batra's film is ultimately less about love than about the vulnerability relationships place us in emotionally, and courage required to move past pain, and experience life again after we've been hurt.

Calling Love Is Strange a great gay love story is both precise and inaccurate; I doubt I’ll see a more finely performed and beautifully crafted love story, with or without any mere modifiers, up on the big screen this year.

Despite the affecting drama and performances, Run and Jump just never feels more that perfunctory in this regards.

Maidentrip ends up being not necessarily about the amazing feat that Dekker accomplished, it’s about finding one’s true self, and enjoying the ride along the way.

Wanting to create a leading character worth rooting for, and experiencing the schadenfreude that comes from her failure, is a complex balancing act, one that Adult World simply cannot pull off.

If there's a problem that gets in the way of some genuinely scary moments, it's that the filmmakers (all four of them) don't ever give you enough information to invest in the characters.

A genuinely sweet, charming and funny tale of identity lost and found.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit refashions the character (this time played by Chris Pine) into a man of immediate action, and in doing so drains him of anything that made him a relatable human being.

Eventually settles into a dull routine much like the dissatisfied characters of the film, which will make for an easily dissatisfied audience.

He (Fishburne) rips into his dialogue like steak, savoring every word as if he were paid by the syllable. For a moment, we’re in a different movie, one where someone has decided to singlehandedly deconstruct a cliché. It’s a very short moment.

Less a polemic than a portrait, If You Build It celebrates the flinty spirit that spurs problem solving and creativity (sometimes at the same time) with people not dedicated to a cause, but to people.

Chun admirably attempts to make each thriller-y motion mean a little bit more. But oftentimes he fails, and the back half of the movie is filled with perfunctory suspense set pieces, doused in blood and full of trauma, that leave little impact.

A movie so ugly and woeful that you'll wish you had superhuman strength to pluck your own eyeballs out of your head.

The picture isn’t plotted with story beats, only shock moments.

Franco has finally delivered a side project that does at least some justice to his eclectic artistic ambitions.

It’s a strong and eye-catching debut, but one that doesn’t quite mark its ground as the next big thing in Israeli cinema.

While it’s an occasionally funny film with good performances from its stars, it’s poorly and cheaply made.

Mordaunt’s eye indicates a thoughtful filmmaker able to listen to the winds of what a movie needs. Effortlessly natural, his workmanlike craft carries the capacity to keep an ear open to happenstance.

You get the feeling that if there were less fighting and more character work, not only would Bell knock it out of the park, but Raze would be a better, more interesting movie.

Strangely old-fashioned in its construction and requiring a Golden Gate-level feat of engineering to achieve the suspension of disbelief necessary to unironically enjoy it.

It’s easily the most suspenseful American film of the year, a thriller that feels like lightning across a quiet night sky; sudden, terrifying, and excitingly singular.

An expertly timed, painstakingly assembled and endlessly engaging game of cat and mouse, Grand Piano succeeds as a whole for the same reasons that Selznick does—namely, because Mira brings all of its elements to work together in concert, and then executes them like a virtuoso.

Patchy as often as its outright hilarious, fantastically outrageous just as frequently as its forgettable and flatlining, the sequel winds up a bit better than a second tier Ferrell outing.

As an sensory experience, 'WOWS' is mostly a terrifically visceral one, a full throttle fast and furious bacchanalia of drug-fueled madness. But as a scathing indictment of American rapacity, it isn't particularly deep or resonant beyond the exterior.

It's all very cheap, wholly unconvincing, and loaded with dull narration.