The xenophobic subtext of the prior films in the Kingsman series is text in Matthew Vaughn’s The King’s Man.
The film looks better than ever, though the lack of a new 4K transfer from the negative leaves open the possibility of a superior future release.
Unlike Malcom & Marie, Daniel Brühl’s feature-length directorial debut proves to be authentically self-castigating.
Throughout the film, nearly every exchange of dialogue sounds like sparring blocks of Wikipedia-like information.
It imbues a pessimistic view of the seemingly bottomless depths of human cruelty with sorrowful tragic force.
The film attempts a tone of tragic understatement that registers instead as flat, plodding, and underfelt.
The fun of the action scenes exacerbates the failure of the narrative to adequately contend with its own themes.
Nothing more than leftwing exploitation cinema, a cheap thriller dressed up in the guise of a social-justice exposé.
Everything in the script signals that the hero must transform himself from an abusive tyrant in the kitchen to the head of a loving and fully functional family.
The film is a mess of tones, but not of ideas, which could well sum up the director’s oeuvre.
The film evades all but the most careful commonplaces about the relationship between the viewer and art.
A new element in Look of Silence is the view it offers of those who knew murdered victims or who managed to escape death.
Anton Corbijn constructs a stifling world of shadowy surveillance and intersecting national interests.
Our ballot here will look much different from Oscar’s.
The film is guilty of some of the same quick judgment it clearly doesn’t endorse.
Ron Howard’s by-the-seat-of-your-pants aesthetic makes the slower, darker sequences feel hurried and bland, especially when stacked up next to the racing sequences.
The film is divided between a desire to present the elderly in all their still-kicking vividness and a tendency to indulge in cutesy old-people caricature.
For the most part, the film’s story is one of heroism in the face of potentially deadly circumstances.
It’s no less meticulously engineered than Tarantino’s other pulp fictions, except this one is more linear and—gasp—humane than most.
Throughout, you may wonder if Julie Delpy isn’t unconsciously working through some residual, latent anger at Ethan Hawke.