The film’s pervasive flashbacks to childhood abuse and misbehavior come to feel manipulative and unnecessary.
It may be the first movie in which a character stops shaving his chest in order to express his independence.
Thanks to a strong performance by Nicholas Hoult, the film keeps threatening to become more dynamic and self-critical than its final result.
An origin story, apologia, and harbinger of a second expanded universe of overpopulated action bonanzas.
It starts off as a dynamic parable about faith before wilting into a glum and rather disingenuous paean to the family.
Josh Kriegman and Elyse Sternberg’s film never discovers a greater purpose beyond its undeniable sideshow appeal.
A warts-and-all portrait that asserts its subject’s sense of purpose even as it seems to slip out of his grasp.
The film labors for a strong sense of place, but strange lapses confirm a sense that the city isn’t a character here.
Andrew Nackman’s film is persistently aligned with the latent homophobia of its small-town setting.
It boasts a Greatest Generation nostalgia so thoroughgoing it might as well be called Boys Becoming Men.
Andrew Renzi treats unfettered wealth as a hyperbolic playground through which to explore masculine insecurity.
It’s rarely clear where we are or how we got here, but it nonetheless delivers some vertiginous 3D thrills.
The documentary isn’t advancing an argument so much as simply restating a European socialistic breed of fact.
The narrative is helplessly adrift, a yarn that extols vague grit and determination with no discernible through line.
It aims to foster a spirit of giddy anarchy in order to tie a ribbon around its shambolic script and rickety pacing.
The film is deferent to The New Yorker’s hallowed aura, and doesn’t seem to aspire to much more than proving that there are nice, talented people behind its walls.
If it stumbles when it seeks our sympathy, it thrives when it’s exploiting our fascination with the surface of things, and all that’s unknowable underneath.
A work of astounding sensitivity and precision, it argues for emotional honesty as a moral and psychic imperative.
The film’s ode to effective, low-budget creature effects is earnest but unnecessarily deadpan.
It can’t develop themes because it’s too busy disseminating information, and this extends to its main characters.