Because of embargoes (those happy little restrictions on when critics can post reviews, good or bad), a lot of our critics aren’t able to share links with you until release day. Here are some last-minute reviews for this weekend’s upcoming films. We’ve kept in all the reviews posted yesterday as well so you can have more help in deciding what to see (if you haven’t already).
Our critics have been hard at work reviewing the latest films. Here is a look at what’s coming out this weekend (in select cities, check your local listings) and what else may be in theaters right now.
Opening: Mar. 27-29, 2015
Wide (United States)
Get Hard
[New Reviews Today] For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Home
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Expanding (United States)
It Follows
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Limited (United States)
A Girl Like Her
Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Earnest and well-intentioned but preachy in the way of an afterschool special and stylistically problematic.
Man from Reno
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An evocative film noir set in San Francisco and a nearby small town.
The Riot Club
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: The authentic performances in ‘The Riot Club’ make it difficult to watch, but it does not add much to the conversation of inequality.
The Salt of the Earth
Chris Barsanti @ Film Journal International
- Excerpt: Wim Wenders delivers another generously appreciative fellow-artist collaboration with this luminous portrait of epic photographer Sebastião Salgado, whose knack for unearthly imagery is less intriguing than his empathic optimism.
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: There’s no sardonic, existential pondering in Wenders’ voice. Rather, and despite the graphic and upsetting nature of some of the imagery, the film is warm, humanistic and even sentimental.
Donald Jay Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Serena
[New Reviews Today] For member reviews of this film, follow this link
While We’re Young
- Excerpt: Baumbach, it must be noted, wrote this film solo, without the seemingly idealistic spirit of Gerwig, so it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that its point of view is so much more cynical than those of their collaborations. But what does it say about him (as, at the very least, a storyteller) that this is where his presumptions and prejudices go?
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: While “Greenberg” had pointed observations to make about a middle aged egotist and his relationship with the younger generation and his own past, this one is muddied by unclear intent and sketchily defined female characters.
White God
Chris Barsanti @ Film Journal International
- Excerpt: In this imaginative but inept cautionary parable—the Un Certain Regard prize-winner at Cannes—a girl searches for her beloved dog, who becomes a canine Spartacus after being brutalized by a cruel dog-fighting ring.
2015 Films In Theaters Now In Select Areas
’71
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Backcountry
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Backtrack
The Barber
Stacia Kissick Jones @ She Blogged By Night
Oktay Kozak @ The Playlist
The Boy Next Door
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Cinderella
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Clouds of Sils Maria
Roderick Heath @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: Clouds of Sils Maria belongs to a small battery of recent films, including Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s Oscar-winning Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and Roman Polanski’s Venus in Fur (both 2014), which meditate on the process of actors creating new realities as they wrestle with the purity of the text and the complexity of existence. The corollary to his recurring theme is that Olivier Assayas knows that however much artists might wish it and be facilely in love with the notion of art and life conjoining, it never does.
The Cobbler
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The Crossing
Sarah Ward @ Trespass Magazine
Danny Collins
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The Dead Lands
Deli Man
Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Pretty darned tasty.
The Divergent Series: Insurgent
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Effie Gray
Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: A stultifyingly dreary costume drama that’s far too timid and tasteful for its own good.
La French
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: Making quite the connection…
From the Dark
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: Vamping it up, Irish style.
Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem
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Girl House
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Girl House isn’t even close to being high art and won’t be winning any awards for originality—or any awards, period—but it’s waywardly entertaining and well-made for what it is.
The Girl Is in Trouble
Growing Up and Other Lies
Travis Hopson @ Punch Drunk Critics
- Excerpt: One of those exasperating, totally fraudulent New York-centric indies about how tough it is to make it in the big city…without actually showing how tough it is to make it in the big city.
Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: Everything about the movie has a sloppy, throwaway feel to it.
The Gunman
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The Hunting Ground
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Excerpt: The Hunting Ground Puts Faces To The Stories Of Sexual Assault On College Campuses
Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter
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Of Horses and Men
Donald Jay Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Run All Night
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The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
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Seventh Son
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The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water
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Spring
Daniel Lackey @ The Nightmare Gallery
- Excerpt: A lo-fi, intimate indie horror-romance about what it means to be human.
Tracers
Travis Hopson @ Punch Drunk Critics
- Excerpt: Let’s just say there’s barely a trace of an interesting plot to be found.
True Story
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A riveting and rigorous examination of lying.
The Voices
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A chipper woman-hating comedy about a serial killer… that wants us to feel sorry for him? This is disgusting, repulsive, and enraging.
The Water Diviner
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: Not quite a wash…
- Excerpt: Earnest and well-intentioned – if also formulaic and expectedly maudlin – the compelling premise is given a surprisingly relaxed, somewhat low-key treatment by the first-time director.
Wild Card
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Piles of noirish exposition get the better of Jason Statham in this unpleasantly retrograde crime drama. What happened in Vegas should have stayed there.
Wild Tales
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Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead
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Zombeavers
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2014 Films In Theaters Now In Select Areas
The Amazing Spider-Man 2
[New Reviews Today] For member reviews of this film, follow this link
American Sniper
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Chef
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The Connection
Exodus: Gods and Kings
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The Face of Love
Sarah Ward @ Concrete Playground
Frank
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The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
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Into the Woods
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Leviathan
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A Most Violent Year
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Nightcrawler
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The Other Woman
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Penguins of Madagascar
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Red Army
Matthew Lucas @ From the Front Row
- Excerpt: Its tonal shifts undercut its narrative momentum, leaving it feeling scattershot and kind of sloppy. This just doesn’t feel like a professionally shot documentary.
Red Hollywood
Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: Indispensable.
The Signal
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West
Aaron Pinkston @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: The small-set character study about a woman acclimating herself to life on the other side of the wall may not be as ambitious as an epic historical drama, but its use of the timeframe is smart and simple. It is a wonderfully rendered depiction of the lasting legacy of East Germany without being a history lesson.
2015 Films (Coming Soon)
7500
Amir Siregar @ Flick Magazine [Indonesian]
The 50-Year Argument
Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery
- Excerpt: What constitutes ‘real art’?
Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police
Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: …more for “Police” fans than it is for the uninitiated.
The Dark Valley
Aaron Pinkston @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: The Dark Valley is a sobering film that pulls from traditions of the Old West. It is a very interesting mix of cultures that stands on its own, above its genre trappings.
The Dinner
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: The tack De Matteo takes to this story recalls the amorality of privilege and the immorality of envy found in The Bling Ring (2013), suggesting that Gen X filmmakers (De Matteo is 49) are acutely aware of the worm riddling our new Gilded Age and are seeking to examine and expose it.
Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: Talk about a bad film Cannon…
The Hour of the Lynx
Aaron Pinkston @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Many moments in The Hour of the Lynx are incredibly dark, including the film’s very first scene. This should set the tone for the rest of the film, but it really doesn’t – despite a number of other violent and disturbing scenes, it never really commits to a specific tone.
Magical Girl
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: Damián is the sleeper character in this film, and his obsession with Bárbara the driving force in a truly unsettling tale of revenge. Like the Spanish, director Carlos Vermut moves us slyly between the poles of reason and passion. The final victory, perhaps unsurprisingly, goes to the bull.
Open Up to Me
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: Although this is a film that will draw attention because of its unique central character, the real takeaway is that honesty, no matter what its cost, is the most rewarding way to go through life and that eventually those we love can learn to live with the truth. In the film’s best moment, Pinja and an emotionally overcome Maarit are reunited. Pinja’s matter-of-fact last line is, “Dad, your make-up is running.”
The Price of Desire
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: The price is wrong.
Queen of Amsterdam
Shaun the Sheep Movie
Veve
Andrew Wyatt @ St. Louis Magazine
- Excerpt: Veve neatly illustrates how a stale Hollywood outline can be invigorated in the hands of a native African filmmaker.
