Jared Hess’s film turns out to be a succession of failed jokes punctuated by a few cathartic laughs.
The frequent contemptuousness the film displays toward its characters keeps the audience at arm’s length.
The film’s ruefully honest tone is periodically drowned out by the blare of stagey coincidences.
The Panamanian-born Roberto Duran’s story has all the makings of a fascinating film, but Hands of Stone isn’t it.
Florence Foster Jenkins champions coddling people like Jenkins and treats critical thinking as the enemy.
Facts about each character are dutifully punched out, in earnest speeches or actions that are wildly overdrawn.
Its clunky incidents of exposition leave us with no real understanding of what anyone is thinking or feeling.
Lane talks the pros and cons of using animation, the doctor she anatomizes in the film, Donald Trump, and more.
Throughout, director Penny Lane strings together telling incidents and anecdotes with a light touch.
It implies that not even the concentrated self-scrutiny required to make art like Ida Applebroog’s is enough to make sense of ourselves to ourselves.
The filmmaker discusses her early successes, gender inequality in Hollywood, and more.
Most of the film’s characters are unconvincing, flattened out by Charlie’s self-focused lens.
It finds humor and love in a potentially grim situation without ever belittling or caricaturing the characters.
Writer-director Lorene Scafaria’s film is an unconvincing character study that plays like a painfully unfunny sitcom.
Mike Birbiglia film isn’t about success or failure as much as it is about the creative life.
The last few minutes of the episode are suffused with the potent mixture of love and bemusement.
The episode deals with several kinds of love: romantic, platonic, and that sparkly feeling somewhere in between.
There’s almost no sense of discovery or emotional evolution as the scenarios grind toward their conclusions.
There’s emotional heft to Baxter and Annie’s relationship, but that’s thanks more to the actors than the script.
There’s plenty of life in this honest, impressionistic portrait of a cohort of 21st-century American girls.