The Space Between Us is simply disappointing when it isn’t trying to browbeat its audience into emotional submission.
24: Legacy attempts to tap directly into the inflammatory racial tensions gripping the U.S. at the moment.
Stephen Gaghan’s Gold finds no treasure of gleaming originality in its crushingly clichéd anti-capitalist parable.
In Sing, musical theater is simply an excuse for the filmmakers to deliver an animated version of American Idol.
The film is amiable thanks to the commitment of its lead actors and its refusal to condescend to its characters.
Josh Gordon and Will Speck’s Office Christmas Party generally smacks of trying too hard to earn its laughs.
Katie Holmes’s film is more earnest than remarkable, but with its heart in the right place.
Dito Montiel’s silly plot machinations waste a solid performance from Shia LaBeouf.
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.