FILM REVIEWS

Ridley Scott gives up on the incomprehensible mythology of Prometheus, and sadly embraces the uninspired misery of another Alien retread.

Silly, soulless, and disappointingly executed, Life is an instantly forgettable B-movie dressed up—not very convincingly—to look like a serious production.

Thoughtful, powerful, and existentially bleak, Logan may be the film that finally expands our expectations of what a "superhero movie" can be.

Jordan Peele has made the first essential horror film of the Black Lives Matter era, and the smartest, most self-aware scary movie since The Cabin in the Woods.

Gore Verbinski's stylish horror film manages to entertain the eye and taunt the brain, but it never really engages the heart or soul.

James Baldwin's is the voice we need right now, and director Raoul Peck knows it, bringing a comparable clarity and poetry to one of the most powerful and provocative films of the year.

Theodore Melfi's Hidden Figures is not a groundbreaking film, but an old-fashioned, very entertaining film about some groundbreaking people.

When it's not trying to be more, Civil War is a fantastic superhero movie.

With the narrative simplicity of the darkest fairy tale, but dense with psychological and spiritual complexity, The Witch heralds the arrival of a major new talent.

There's more beauty, sadness, humor, and wisdom in this year's Animated Shorts than I saw in most full-length features this year.

Deniz Gamze Erguven's debut feature Mustang is both a dark parable of patriarchy and a joyous celebration of feminine rebellion.

Alejandro González Iñárritu leaves behind most of his narrative pretensions, and offers a purer form of beautiful misery porn.

Riding a populist wave of gleefully indulgent ugliness, Quentin Tarantino may be the Donald Trump of American film directors.

J.J. Abrams passes the torch to a new generation of heroes, and gives Star Wars fans what they desperately needed: a new hope.

In a medium rampant with stories of horny teenage boys, Marielle Heller's exploration of young female sexuality—delivered without exploitation or admonishment—is something to celebrate.

Gareth Edwards' GODZILLA is a curious beast, neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring.

From the Chicago Critics Film Festival, a review of THE ONE I LOVE, directed by Charlie McDowell, starring Elisabeth Moss, Mark Duplass, and Ted Danson.

To say that OCULUS is a better-than-average scary movie is to acknowledge the tragically lowered expectations of the genre itself.

A review of CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER, directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, starring Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, and Robert Redford.

A review, in Biblical verse, of Darren Aronofky's NOAH.

A review of DIVERGENT, directed by Neil Burger, based on the novel by Veronica Roth. Starring Shailene Woodley, Kate Winslet, Theo James, Jai Courtney, Zoe Kravitz, Miles Teller, Ashley Judd, and Tony Goldwyn.

A review of the VERONICA MARS movie, written and directed by Rob Thomas, starring Kristen Bell, Jason Dohring, Gabby Hoffmann, Krysten Ritter, Martin Starr, Percy Deggs III, Tina Majorino, Francis Capra, Chris Lowell, and Enrico Colantoni.

A review of POMPEII, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, starring Kit Harington, Emily Browning, Kiefer Sutherland, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Jared Harris, and Carrie-Anne Moss.

THE MONUMENTS MEN is an artless movie about art, and a monument to nothing but mediocrity.

A review of the five films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short Film.

My review of THE OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS: ANIMATION.

I, FRANKENSTEIN? Ay, caramba…

Sharply funny, visually stunning, and with a generous heart, THE GREAT BEAUTY is an exuberant celebration of life.

As a war movie, Peter Berg's LONE SURVIVOR is all war, no movie.

There's a troubling marriage of technical bravura and moral vacuity in Martin Scorsese's THE WOLF OF WALL STREET.

Smart, wise, and emotionally rich, HER turns out to be one of the most believably touching romances of the 21st century so far, and easily one of the best pictures of the year.

Inside Llewyn Davis is one of the Coen Brothers' most mature and masterful films so far, and one of the best American movies in recent years.

Director Francis Lawrence builds honorably on the solid foundations of the first film, improving the action but sacrificing a little of the moral high-ground.

To say 12 YEARS A SLAVE is the best movie of the year is to damn it with faint praise, because it is a much more important work than that, a vital corrective to 100 years of cinematic lies.

A technological masterpiece, GRAVITY provides all the width and breadth of space: you just have to bring your own depth.

BLUE JASMINE might have been better conceived as a one-woman show, but that one performance is well worth the price of admission.

THE WOLVERINE is just good enough to make us wish it had been so much better.

Though an impressive technical achievement, I would not trade a single moment of Guillermo del Toro's better films for the entirety of this bloated, bone-shaking monstrosity.

Funny, insightful, and genuinely romantic, Much Ado About Nothing is one of the best movies of the year, and one of the best Shakespeare adaptations ever captured on film.

The legacy of STAR TREK should be that there are always strange new worlds to explore, new life and new civilizations to discover. Instead, Into Darkness goes competently, but disappointingly, where all of us have gone before.

Baz Luhrmann has used one of the true gems of American literature as an excuse to make a vapid, candy-colored monstrosity.

Iron Man 3 is shiny enough, but it turns out to be something of an empty shell.

If the slick, competent, painfully derivative thriller Side Effects does indeed turn out to be Soderbergh's swan song, it will be the sadly appropriate capstone to a career that promised so much brilliance, and delivered so little originality.

After a few weeks of silent cinematic masterpieces, preceded by several months of austere Oscar-bait movies, one does get the urge to watch a deeply silly popcorn movie—preferably, if possible, a teen-age-romantic-comedy-action-adventure-with-zombies. Thankfully, there happens to be one out.

Though Django Unchained is problematic in about a dozen different ways, my chief objections are not political, historical, moral, ethical, or linguistic: they're aesthetic. It just isn't a very good movie.

There are dreams that cannot be, there are storms we cannot weather, and there are films—like Les Misérables—we simply cannot endure.

It's estimated that a quarter of a million people lost their lives in the South Asian Tsunami: so why the fuck do I care about a family of wealthy European tourists who survived?

With a spare, ruthlessly precise screenplay, powerful and devastating performances, and a rigorous, uncompromising eye, Amour is a nearly flawless piece of filmmaking.

Hyde Park on Hudson is not an exposé, a love story, or a history lesson: it is too shallow, too flimsy, too cynically and dishonestly sleazy to be any of these things. And so I am left to believe that its sole purpose is to be a light and frothy comedy, divorced from reality, dressed up in period clothing, designed merely to provide some laughs and pass the time pleasantly. Unfortunately, by even these very minimal standards, it also fails horribly…

Spoiler Level: Safe I should probably begin by specifying which version of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey I'm reviewing, since there are currently

Finely acted, frequently funny, and stylishly directed, Killing Them Softly nonetheless ultimately fails to satisfy: its story is too slight, its characters are too familiar, and its stakes are too small. The talent involved in this film might have produced a modern classic, but Killing Them Softly ultimately amounts to little more than a minor diversion.

With a dark, indy-drama setup that somehow resolves into a phony, crowd-pleasing romantic comedy, Silver Linings Playbook feels like a movie at war with itself.

Ultimately, there is not a single moment in the tame, tepid Hitchcock that would not be better spent watching a single moment—any moment—of one of Hitchcock's films.

Life of PI is a beautiful, moving film that restores our faith in stories even as it reminds us that any good story is, itself, an act of faith.

It's not Tolstoy's sprawling, staggering epic: no film could be. What Wright has made instead is something clever, creative, and often breathtakingly beautiful. It might offend the literary purists, but it can stand proudly on its own as one of the best films of the year.

Respectful without being insightful, well-crafted but without creativity, and visually impressive without any real vision, Lincoln represents an impressive panoply of talent coming together to create the cinematic equivalent of a B+ term paper in AP History.

There will always be an England, no matter how its power waxes and wanes, and so there will always be a Bond, who will be reborn periodically with a new face, a slightly new sensibility, and a reliable fondness for strong women and weak martinis.

Wreck-It Ralph builds a marvelous world, but its characters are never quite real enough, or rounded enough, to make the dream come alive.

The Master is a movie in which nearly everything works, and yet, at the end of its 150 minutes, one feels that all of this excellence—the careful direction, the lovely cinematography, the fine performances—has been in the service of something vague and forgettable.

There is little we haven't seen before in Looper, but the skill and care director Rian Johnson brings to it makes it all feel fresh and original. Appropriate for a time-travel movie, Johnson makes the old seem new again.

Emotionally harrowing, thought-provoking, and never less than fascinating, Compliance nevertheless fails to make us completely believe in all the turns of this lurid tale, and never manages to offer much insight or illumination into how and why events happen.

Flawed, fatalistic, and foul, Killer Joe is not a film I can endorse. However—if you have a strong stomach and a prurient curiosity—it is definitely a film you will remember.

It is now clear that Nolan has not just been making three films, but telling one story in three-acts. In retrospect, the long setup of the first film, and the unremitting darkness of the second film, were both necessary to set up this triumphant third act.

With The Amazing Spider-Man,, the Spider-Man franchise has only been rebooted: it has not been reconceived, and it has certainly not been reinvigorated. This is murky, paint-by-numbers movie-making, with too many stock elements, too little imagination, and far too few surprises.

After 75 years of Disney heroines who staked their happiness on finding a man, Merida may offer little girls a different definition of what "happily ever after" can look like.

Visually stunning, and filled with all the promise in the world, Prometheus eventually degenerates into an incoherent assemblage of mismatched elements, and a wasted opportunity on an epic scale.

The Avengers is not a Citizen Kane for the capes-and-cowls crowd, nor does it try to be a superhero film for people who hate superheroes. What it tries to be instead—and pretty much succeeds in being—is the film for which people who love superheroes have been waiting all their lives.

Almost anything I could tell you about The Cabin in the Woods would risk robbing you of some of its considerable pleasures. You can read this review in total safety (I promise), but don't read other reviews. Don't even watch the trailer. Just see the movie.

The Hunger Games is what all such franchise blockbusters should aspire to be, but what so few ever are: a real, proper movie, with brains, heart, and soul. Forget those dingy Twilight movies: as a piece of stand-alone entertainment, I'd send this one into combat with the best of the Harry Potter franchise and expect it to emerge from the arena triumphant.

As the inaugural blockbuster of the season, John Carter is a bit of a disappointment. It's not horrible: it's just dull, cheesy, and deeply, deeply silly.

Despite its promising questions about appearance and identity, the film never really dives beneath, nor rises above, the surface of its source material. As a result, Albert Nobbs never feels like anything more than a tepid adaptation of a minor short story.

Exceedingly phony and insufferably cloying, Stephen Daldry's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close begs the question: ten years after the events of September 11, 2001, are we ready as a nation to turn our collective trauma into simpering schmaltz?

We Need to Talk About Kevin is a harrowing and disquieting story to experience, but it is an artistic work to celebrate, one that trusts its medium, trusts its audience, and provides no easy answers.

The Iron Lady is a film that's unlikely to change anyone's opinion of Thatcher, as it has no opinions of its own: as such, it is unlikely to either offend or please a single member of its audience.

Epic, humane, and admirably unafraid of sentiment, War Horse is pure old-school storytelling. If you'll surrender your own cynicism long enough to forgive an unavoidable movie-review cliché, it's the kind of movie they just don't make any more.

Some movies are bad because they are badly made, while others—like this one—are bad the way people are bad: they are bad because their souls are faulty. They are bad because they are empty, or shallow, or smug, or disingenuous, or downright evil in intent or effect. The Descendants is not evil, but it's all the other adjectives and more: a faux-indy, annoyingly "quirky," middle-aged White guy angst-fest of the most manipulative and masturbatory kind.

The Adventures of Tintin—though an undeniably impressive technical achievement—is never quite as much fun as it should be…The result is a gorgeous, frenetic adventure that children might enjoy, and animation aficionados might admire, but which no one will ever really love.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a stylish, cookie-cutter crime drama, but Lisbeth Salander—at least as portrayed by Rooney Mara—is something immeasurably more: fascinating, undefinable, and unforgettable, she's one of the first great film characters of the 21st century.

My Week with Marilyn is competently made, but it has the feel of a superficial TV biopic blown up large. It is notable only for its lead performance from Michelle Williams, but that one performance is well worth the price of admission.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is best approached as a study of mood, period, and character: it captures—brilliantly—a peculiar era in history and a way of life that is almost unimaginable to most of us.

In the church of cinema, Scorsese is both a god and a high-priest, and he's brought both roles to bear on this magnificent, magical film. I don't know yet if I'll call Hugo the "best" film of the year—but that's an intellectual judgement, not an emotional one. In purely emotional terms, I doubt I'll see another film this decade that I love as much as Hugo.

Gorgeously filmed, and featuring amazing performances from Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melancholia is a powerful and effective work of art, and easily one of the best films of the year.