The film matches stylistic experimentation with a multi-tiered narrative of equal ambition.
Sony’s Blu-ray does right by the film’s aesthetic wonders and includes a plethora of kid- and adult-friendly extras that dig into the complexity of the animation.
Bumblebee exudes some of the tediousness of a reformed sinner who decries hedonism, trying hard to convince us that it now believes in something.
With its fine-tuned comic timing and feeling of constant action, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is downright invigorating.
Women deserve a better vehicle for demonstrating the power of female solidarity than this empty money grab.
The finest American teen film in at least a generation, The Edge of Seventeen arrives on home video ripe for discovery as a new cult classic.
The smartest thing about Kelly Fremon Craig’s teen dramedy is its measured take on its protagonist’s theatrics.
Director Daniel Barber uses a bleak and unresolved portion of American history to justify indulging typical genre-film nihilism.
Even when tragedy strikes early on, the revelation is just another “growing up is hard” dot on the grid.
The film settles into a time-honored groove of so many forgettable juvenile comedies before it.
Stronger than its predecessor, which didn’t quite go as far in terms of representing these women in a wider context.
This is a film that lives in the high and not in the comedown, even though its characters are often stalled and wallowing.
With the notable exception of Hilary Swank’s upright and uptight Mary Bee Cuddy, the film never lets its female characters speak for themselves.
It ultimately offers little more than another opportunity for famous actors to indulge their fetishistic, inadvertently condescending impressions of “everyday” people.
McG’s technical skill can’t quite overcome the story’s lazy sense of humor and incomprehensible plotting.
Gavin Hood relays a vague sense of what it’s like to live in duty, and yet at a distance from one’s home, but this vision of the future never rouses, never asks to be remembered.
Not even when the doomed Juliet reaches for Romeo’s dagger do you feel a single vicarious pain in your gut.
So-so features can’t dampen an otherwise prodigious presentation of the Coens’ latest masterwork.
And so it is that Oscar bloggers, seeking to itch the scratch Leo’s blatant assertion that campaigning, not prognosticating, is what wins Oscars, have collectively shifted the balance of power back to the plucky 14-year-old girl who tore through every scene (every. scene.)
Jeff Bridges does meet the challenge, but he does so by kind of skirting around it.