Excerpt: For all the aspect ratio changes, ruminations concerning what going to space can do to a person, and solid performances from a strong cast, the film is still plagued by problems regarding the story.
Excerpt: Pain and Glory is a colorful, funny and profound film where Pedro Almodóvar reckons with his past and career — featuring a career-best performance by Antonio Banderas.
Excerpt: [Colaizzo’s] found his perfect star in Jillian Bell…who has proven she was more than ready to step up from supporting roles that proved her comedic chops into a dramatic lead leavened with humor.
Excerpt: Brittany Runs a Marathon has enough charm, laughs, and wonderfully eclectic characters — especially Jillian Bell‘s eponymous Brittany — to get it past its weaker moments.
Excerpt: As the pounds are shed, however, so too does the lightness of Brittany’s personality. Actress Jillian Bell must act within the confines of a screenplay that continues to keep her character within a place of despair.
Excerpt: Brittany’s arc from drunken party girl to lonely island to trying to maintain life balance like the rest of us is what will most likely connect this Sundance-winner with audiences looking to root for an example of someone who confronts the worst, running and self improvement, and comes out the other side.
Excerpt: If Goold’s film feels a little small for its outsize subject, Zellweger’s performance is not contained nor restrained by it. She’s a marvel and her “Judy” will inspire both cheers and tears.
Excerpt: Renée Zellweger has Judy Garland down; effortlessly imitating the Wizard of Oz star’s delivery and mannerisms. She approaches the title role in Judy with conviction, raising the biopic above the level of cheap novelty. But had the film consisted simply of Zellweger bellowing show tunes, it might have been more substantial.
Excerpt: It’s a complex role depicting a complex soul and Zellweger is stunning in her portrayal even if the package does little to advance the bio-pic beyond its generic machinations.
Excerpt: the film’s main asset is Phoenix’s insane tour de force, the actor projecting a tortured physique, his torso twisted and ribs projecting as he moves with a grace that can only be called balletic.
Excerpt: Iterations of Batman and his fictional universe are everywhere at the moment…So it’s logical that Phillips, however pretentiously, tries to imbue his take with some specificity essentially by taking it out of its nominal genre.
Excerpt: Not fit to lick the boots of Martin Scorsese or Christopher Nolan, though the height of its ambition appears to be its desperation to do so. A movie as pathetically ineffectual as its protagonist.
Excerpt: Joker will challenge your black and white view of the world with a, “But it’s not his fault” excuse you would normally toss aside in the real world.
Excerpt: From watching his latest movie, I can tell that Todd Philips loves the movies Martin Scorsese made in the 1970s and 80s as much as I do. As much as I’d like to sit back with him and down a beer or two discussing those films, it’s disheartening that his own, dark gritty film makes me want to run back to my DVDs of the good stuff.
Excerpt: This thing has a towering performance from Phoenix, who becomes the best to ever do it (‘it’ being the ultimate acting challenge of depicting the clown who fights Batman).
Excerpt: Everything that captivates us about Arthur is inevitably forgotten and everything he becomes is beholden to familiar tropes. It does look great, but I left feeling nothing.
Excerpt: After all the speculation, adulation, and accusations paving the way for me on the way to seeing Joker, the final product is compelling enough, without becoming something grander.
Excerpt: Todd Phillips turns ‘Joker’ into a dark and terrifying character study with the help of Joaquin Phoenix’s stunning, bone-chilling performance.
Excerpt: Joker is a bleak, hateful movie. Phillips and his art direction team stack piles of garbage high on Gotham’s city streets to match what we see with what the movie wants us to feel. It’s oppressive and overwhelming.
Excerpt: For those weaned on more graphic horror, The White Reindeer may come across as quaint. In terms of genre, contemporary viewers may find it of interest as a predecessor to those films inspired by folk beliefs such as The Wicker Man and Midsommar.
Excerpt: The Day Shall Come is not quite as hard-edged as his previous feature, but there is still a good amount of fun to go with the messaging seen this time around.
Excerpt: After a foray into period Samurai films, prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike (“Audition,” “Blade of the Immortal”) switches gears with a very violent, often funny, Yakuza noir with a blossoming romance as its through line.
Excerpt: If Goold’s film feels a little small for its outsize subject, Zellweger’s performance is not contained nor restrained by it. She’s a marvel and her “Judy” will inspire both cheers and tears.
Excerpt: With his updating of the Frankenstein legend, the filmmaker indicts Big Pharma while probing the need for a generational shift in society’s moral values. And as usual, Fessenden does a lot with a little…
Excerpt: Depraved is about many things, among them the repercussions of technologies we invent, and, maybe more importantly, the results of raising our children and new generations in all the most toxic ways.
Excerpt: while the story itself is often riveting, Hood’s execution is often bumpy, some aspects presently dryly, others too abruptly…The film’s brightest note is Ralph Fiennes who gives a puckish quality to his portrayal of human rights lawyer Ben Emmerson
Excerpt: Not a spy thriller but a story of emotional and intellectual suspense wrangling with matters of patriotism and of conscience, and of just how far journalism’s watchdog role can and should take it.
Excerpt: While director Gavin Hood makes no excuses for Bush and his clan, his direct ire and vitriol accuses Blair and the British government of high crimes against the British people. He is angry and here in 2019 to ensure you do not forget the audacity and ineptitude of 2003.
Excerpt: The film’s single most stunning achievement comes from composer Mica Levi (“Under the Skin”), her original score comprised of wavering call and response whistles and thunderous drum rolls which sound forged from rippling metal sheets.
Excerpt: Intensity grows until ambiguity between childhood and adulthood fades away. Those with capacity to kill lose their virtue and those without realize there’s nowhere to turn.
Excerpt: There are memorable visuals, a haunting and offbeat score, and other elements turning this survival story concerning a group of child soldiers into something as profound as it is atmospheric.
