Throughout, Diane Nyad is defined almost exclusively by the adversity over which she triumphs.
The Game of Thrones prequel struggles to apply new makeup to the old face of palace intrigue.
The film loses its satiric edge as it begins to melodramatically detail how Maurice Flitcroft inherited the mantle of folk hero.
There’s no attempt to hide that the film is pure fan service, a greatest-hits mashup of Spider-Man’s cinematic legacy.
The xenophobic subtext of the prior films in the Kingsman series is text in Matthew Vaughn’s The King’s Man.
Gavin Hood wrings suspense out of the parsing of the nuances of evidence and the tapping of mysterious contacts.
It depicts Snowden’s ethical dilemmas in a political vacuum that disregards America’s complex security threats.
The film doesn’t clear the CGI cobwebs or successfully anchor any of its new events with emotional heft.
Familiar as its art/life paralleling may be, it’s all fueled by a filmmaker with an intimate relationship to his subject matter.
It neglects to thoroughly conceive of Emma’s plight, instead making only sporadic gestures to it.
The film can’t reconcile Ron Rash’s apocalyptic tenderness with its own eagerness to revel in romantic star allure.
The only truly graspable notion the film can be said to put forth is one of increasingly tedious sci-fi-romantic genre busy-ness.
So often is it rehashing moments already handled expertly by Raimi’s films that Amazing Spider-Man never takes flight.
Nicholas Stoller’s film is a romantic comedy that gets it.
Stoking one’s cynicism over this category is the very real probability that Jonah Hill will be an Oscar nominee.
Roland Emmerich’s film is an interesting case in that it may very well be its director’s best work; however, a better director is the one thing it surely needed.
Anonymous leaves one bereft of any meaningful knowledge of its central personages or the theatrical energy of their age.
Mr. Nice has a number of lively moments that suggest a comedy of the inevitablity of radicals selling out.
As with its predecessors, Deathly Hallows’s narrative is driven by gobbledygook devices.
For all the respect that its cast commands, Nanny McPhee Returns is just too self-conscious to ever take off.