William Oldroyd’s film is a deliciously a pulpy phantasmagoria of fear and desire.
The film matches stylistic experimentation with a multi-tiered narrative of equal ambition.
The series is gory and dour with a bone-deep cynicism, but it’s also optimistic in its own small way.
Only Michel Shannon’s off-kilter timing brings The Quarry to sporadic life.
Kevin McMullin displays a piercing awareness of the tensions that drive the dynamics of adolescent outsiders.
The show’s fundamental goal isn’t to present love that’s unique to the current moment, but to expose the universality of its stories.
The film is one that might have been dreamed up by one of the cynical douche bros from the Hangover during a blacked-out stupor.
There’s a little Charlie Chaplin in the Joker’s steps early on, before madness grips him in ways that would probably make Pennywise shudder.
Vice is as noisy as the media landscape that writer-director Adam McKay holds in contempt.
The film’s satisfyingly tactile action set pieces serve to hammer home just how perilous the space race really was.
The plot takes leaps that feel as reckless as they are refreshing in such a doleful film of terminal prognoses.
As it proceeds, the appeal of its nostalgia wears thin and you may notice that there isn’t much beyond the window dressing.
Brad Anderson’s Beirut shows how espionage might appeal to the sort of masochist who’s also an adrenaline addict.
The more grounded scenes from Death Note anchor a startlingly bloody fantasy of power run amok.
Every creature here that’s intended to burrow into our nightmares is less a wonder of imagination than of size.
The narrative derives much of its tension from the unsentimental ambivalence Jon Watts displays toward the story’s two pre-teen boys.
The film ultimately succeeds as a convincing social plea, but fails as compelling cinema.
In its final season, Boardwalk Empire seems determined to follow up on the show’s early tag line, “You can’t be half a gangster.”
The home-video format, which encourages binge viewing, could serve to accentuate the nagging hollowness of the show’s busy-body plotting.
If only we lived in a world where production values counted for everything, Boardwalk Empire would be some kind of masterpiece.