In the film, the embrace of storytelling through song and dance is front and center.
Kenneth Branagh’s third Agatha Christie adaptation is a dusty, dry, and sluggish affair.
The series displays some of the inevitable wear of a concept that has already gotten more mileage than anticipated.
The story’s center isn’t strong enough for the rest of its disparate parts to hold.
Soul gets a reference-quality presentation, but the supplements package (and packaging) lacks in, well, soulfulness.
In a troubling reversal from Pixar films past, it’s kids who will have to do the most heavy lifting to keep up here.
The film’s relatively static approach to narrative works in scenes where the material is funny or elevated by a certain performance.
Its feminist perspective checkmates the misogyny and machismo that too often mar films set in combat zones.
A regurgitation of Apatowian formula, wherein ostensibly edgy humor hides a core of conservative moralizing.
The film relies on a bevy of spectacularly funny clips and a plethora of talking heads, most falling back on plaudits rather than sage insights.
The cumulative effect is cheerily life-affirming, a bracing infusion of macaque-style joie de vivre.
And the jury’s still very much out over whether Shawn Levy is an inept comedy director masquerading as an opportunistically dramatic one, or vice versa.
Freed from the burden of starting anew, Muppets Most Wanted restores the Muppets’ rightful place as stars of their own show.
Chiemi Karasawa’s documentary is remarkable for its candor, but it’s a brutal honesty that Elaine Stritch herself gladly offers.
Believe it or not, we know exactly what’s going to happen at Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards.
Arcade Fire has been more than a little bit coy about their new album, Reflektor.
The estrogenic elements prove widely ineffectual, but they’re just pieces of this overloaded misfire whose double-entendre title ultimately just goads the jaded viewer to admit defeat.
Dammit, I’m not crying, I just got a Teamster sandwich in my eye.
With its rapid one-liners often coming in at under 140 characters, 30 Rock is the perfect comedy for our time.
There’s something to be said for 30 Rock’s unrepentant adherence to formula.