Every serious narrative beat in the film is ultimately undercut by pro-forma storytelling, or by faux-improvised humor.
Director Jeff Tomsic’s debut feature film, Tag, is exactly the Terms of Endearment our era deserves.
The film succumbs to its main character’s didacticism: His perceived humility masks a smug, Manichean worldview.
Nonsensical characterizations abound throughout The House without ever dipping into unbridled absurdity.
Villeneuve’s moving yet disappointingly cautious mind-bender is accorded a robustly beautiful transfer.
Its searching images counterpoint the hyper-articulate methodology of its characters’ sense of uncertainty.
With Arrival, Villeneuve communicates the wonder of a Steven Spielberg alien movie within a decidedly hard sci-fi milieu.
The fun of the action scenes exacerbates the failure of the narrative to adequately contend with its own themes.
Paramount rolls out the formal red carpet for Rogue Nation, a glamorous spy fantasy with shards of playful wit and meta derring-do.
It can’t resist winking at how this franchise manages to defy the limits of both human endurance and its superstar’s rickety public status.
Joss Whedon’s film struggles against the rigid formula that typifies the Marvel universe, but only does so up to a point.
The film devolves quickly into a pedestrian character study that basks in Gary Webb’s public shaming and victimization.
For the most part, however, the episode unspools as a dreary, clichéd story about Louie’s first exposure to pot.
In a year replete with great trash, American Hustle is the crown princess of the bunch.
The film manages to implicitly convey the overdriven, coked-up confusion that many ’70s period pieces make painfully overt.
Marion Cotillard is an icon of suffering in James Gray’s somber passion play.
In its stripped-down realism and blistering fixation on its main character’s grappling with life and mortality, the film is kin to Roberto Rossellini’s collaborations with Ingrid Bergman.
James Gray has been working toward The Immigrant for his entire career.
Hansel & Gretel’s idea of a gut-busting punchline is to pepper unusually flippant dialogue with the word “fuck.”
The film comes to Blu-ray armed with a superb A/V transfer and a solid packing of extras from Universal.