Brendan J. Byrne’s documentary about Bobby Sands colors its familiar formal lines with welcome intelligence.
Miss Sloane’s enigmatic nature holds one’s interest throughout, even as it veers into pat moralism.
It initially acknowledges Vinny Paz’s machismo before becoming another formulaic triumph-over-adversity saga.
The sense of a film school student doing movie karaoke with his influences is evident throughout Dreamland.
Courtney Hunt’s film ultimately plays as little more than the cinematic equivalent of a trashy airport novel.
At times throughout this concert film, Kevin Hart’s brash honesty about himself can feel liberating.
It aims for John Waters-style transgression without evincing half of Waters’s wit and affection for eccentric lifestyles.
Cristian Mungiu’s film is more than just a cry of despair toward the hopelessness of life in modern-day Romania.
Larraín’s Jackie is concerned with elucidating levels of performance in public and private spheres.
Mascots’s rapid-fire gags result in a hit-or-miss pattern, ranging from the wickedly inspired to the overly broad.
Bruce Beresford’s film is remarkable for how it manages to indulge so many offensive and shopworn clichés at once.
Morgan’s makers lose trust in the intellectual heft of their material and chose to prioritize empty sensation instead.
Any of the film’s attempts at moralizing are subsumed by Kevin Smith’s obsession with taking aim at his critics.
Southside with You may not announce itself as hagiography, but it’s hero-worshipful to its core.
This animated film isn’t willing to completely face the bleakness of its allegory of faith versus skepticism.
The end-credits sequence shows up the rest of the film as the broad and incoherent live-action cartoon that it is.
Meera Menon’s film ultimately succeeds in offering a fresh female-centered perspective on its genre material.
Its messy pile-up of comic diversions can be exhilarating in the moment—the chaos of an id given free rein.
The Purge: Election Year’s violent scenarios feel unhinged from recognizable social or moral outrages.
It resonates as a portrait of artists trying to figure out their own paths toward making valuable contributions to the world.