The Nut Job 2’s episodic plot is little more than a clothesline on which to hang manic action sequences.
David F. Sandberg’s Annabelle: Creation is a haunted-house horror story that plays on our primeval fear of the dark.
Amanda Lipitz’s documentary Step fits the lives of its three main subjects into a predetermined narrative arc.
The film is less interested in the metaphysical challenges posed by language than in using it as a narrative device.
First Kill is not only as bland and leaden as its über-generic title suggests, it’s downright sloppy to boot.
It pulls off the difficult trick of integrating an alien creature into a fully realized narrative of sexual dissatisfaction.
Daniel Y-Li Grove would rather get a rise out of his audience than craft interesting characters or a coherent cultural milieu.
The ending cheapens Julie and weakens the film’s firm commitment to the importance of workplace organizing.
By partially demonstrating what a fresher superhero movie might look like, it underlines its genre-defined limitations.
Its wackiness is only occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, but it’s still executed with good-natured breeziness.
If, as Jimmy famously tells us, there’s no crying in baseball, there’s plenty of it in baseball nostalgia.
It uses the mawkishness of a Hallmark Channel movie as an ironic backdrop for a twisted Hitchcockian thriller.
Heavy on training montages and intergenerational torch passing, Cars 3 is an old-fashioned sports film at heart.
My Cousin Rachel leaves Rachel’s motives, desires, and integrity (or lack thereof) ambiguous through to the end.
Sam Elliott’s calmly affecting performance is overwhelmed by a doggedly conventional screenplay.
The film is packed with mirthful pranksterism, a vigorous anti-authoritarian streak, and literal potty humor.
Wonder Woman’s Diana is ultimately an idealized abstraction more than a fully rounded character.
Lucy Walker’s film is at its most incisive when it explores the historical development of son music.
When it comes to comedy, Seth Gordon’s big-screen Baywatch is a total boys’ club.
The film’s problem isn’t so much the grossness of its humor as the laziness with which it’s executed.