Excerpt: Even with a few rough patches, The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil bubbles with a propulsive energy. Polished and glossy, it moves along with an easy, rapid momentum, myriad action beats, and another top-tier performance from Ma Dong-seok as a businessman brawler who provides a thoughtful sharpness to this fun, if familiar, crime thriller.
Excerpt: Late Night [teaches] inclusivity and diversity as a means of reinvigorating creativity. [It] falls short of [its] potential, but the good still easily outweighs the bad.
Excerpt: While writer Brian Lynch repeats the same mistakes he made with the first movie – mainly going far afield of organic adventures like a lost toy or trip to the vet’s – this time around he only errs with one of his plot threads and it is, once again, the one that features the thoroughly obnoxious Snowball.
Excerpt: Underwhelming: episodic, a random collection of unconnected vignettes rather than one cohesive story. Inoffensive, but missing the first movie’s fantastical animals’ perspective on the human world.
Excerpt: Illumination missed the boat on The Secret Life of Pets because the way they’ve told these stories thus far make them a lot more conducive to television than cinema.
Excerpt: Dark Phoenix is bogged down by the fact that everything it does has been done before in some capacity — and better — by other superhero movies, making this final installment an uninspiring watch.
Excerpt: A lazy treadmill of a sci-fi morality play that wastes a terrific cast. A numbingly dull game of mutant checkers that has no idea how to tell a woman’s story except filtered through the eyes of men.
Excerpt: Jean Grey is supposed to be beyond powerful, a rival to Professor Xavier in pure cerebral output, but she never does anything worth watching. Dark Phoenix is not unique in its failure to thrill fans with Jean Grey’s theatrics, it is merely another attempt to do so – and like all the rest – you’ll forget about it in a moment.
Excerpt: While Kinberg obviously wants Jean to have the punishingly melancholic end Wolverine received in Logan, the film yearns for bow-tied binary carnage. There’s still enough to like, but hardly enough to leave fulfilled.
Excerpt: The film may have a bit too much of a déjà vu issue in terms of the story being told, with characters I wish I felt more attached to, but it is efficiently made.
Excerpt: X-Men: Dark Phoenix is reasonably well-put together, and a seriously great original score by Hans Zimmer, with fittingly 80s synth vibes, is often enough to convince us the images we’re seeing have more resonance than the story gives them.
Excerpt: When you watch this new movie and actually miss the gaudy theatrics of X-Men: The Last Stand because it at least tried, that’s a very surprising and telling thing.
Excerpt: …inspirational in how it documents the resilience and intelligent design of nature, but who is it inspiring? Only those with seemingly unlimited financial resources and a large crew of devoted interns need apply.
Excerpt: If your success is truly that pure—own it. Don’t pretend otherwise because you think it would be more compelling [only to show each hardship is but a hiccup].
Excerpt: In the hands of an artist and filmmaker, The Biggest Little Farm takes would look like a capricious and half-hearted whim fit for a green reality show on basic cable and turns the the documented endeavor something ambitious, important, and miraculous.
Excerpt: Like Howl’s castle, this movie is cobbled together from mismatched parts; it looks unstable and threatens to tumble over as it rambles along, but master wizardry holds it together.
Excerpt: Tourneur and screenwriter Jules Furthman (working under the pseudonym Stephen Fox) manage to pack an amazing amount of story and smart characterisation into just over an hour of running time with Victory.
Excerpt: uses John and Taupin’s songs to dramatize various important stages of his life, usually ending in a completely different time and space where they begin. The effect is dazzling…a heady rush of entertainment with an emotional undertow.
Excerpt: Too frantic in its pacing to make the impact that the filmmakers clearly desired, but it’s an often stunning film with a terrific central performance from Taron Egerton.
Excerpt: Joyful and rowdy, self-deprecating and vulnerable, absolutely electrifying as it deconstructs the sex-drugs-and-rock’n’-roll story. Taron Egerton is chills-inducingly good. Sheer cinematic magic.
Excerpt: 30 years of Elton John’s ups and downs is middling material, but a few things catapult the product to fascinating – Taron Egerton’s virtuoso performance, the soaring anthems, and one perfect scene.
Excerpt: The filmmakers seek to delve deeper than appearances to really highlight the existential struggle behind [their subject’s] choices. This isn’t our perception of Elton John’s life. It’s his.
Excerpt: While the chronological progression still holds Rocketman on a familiar narrative path, the film’s ambition concerning the incorporation of fantastical musical sequences makes it a memorable and engaging watch.
Excerpt: Thoroughly eye-popping, sprawling with vibrancy and vision, and spryly contemplative, ROCKETMAN is a virtual blast into the effervescent orbit of the meaningful musical biopic.
Excerpt: Oscar winner Octavia Spencer slumming it in this “Carrie” crossed with “Friday the 13th” creepfest gentrifies this hoot of a horror movie…”Ma” sneaks up on you.
Excerpt: A bargain-bin cockadoodie pseudo-Misery, a disgraceful waste of the brilliant Octavia Spencer. Has no interest in women’s pain and trauma even as it appropriates it for entertainment purposes.
Excerpt: Campy and goofy, vicious and bloody, if that sounds like a good time, you might have a lot of fun partying with “Ma,” even if you won’t remember much tomorrow.
Excerpt: The fun in this film comes from watching a terrific off-kilter performance from Octavia Spencer matched against a group of kids you’d only want to root for on moral terms because all of their actions are incredibly dumb.
Excerpt: …this schmaltzy showcase of surrogate Mommy Meanest never materializes beyond its cheapened B-movie transparent terror…feels mechanical and familiar and never really taps effectively into its inherent cynical silliness.
Excerpt: Although it’s been goosed with dramatic license which proves unnecessary overkill by “Precious” screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher, director Edward Zwick’s adaptation is the most powerful anti-death penalty film since 1995’s “Dead Man Walking.”
Excerpt: Earnest, old-fashioned social-justice drama focuses on the death penalty from the “what if we execute an innocent person?” angle, with hugely engaging performances by Jack O’Connell and Laura Dern.
Excerpt: Trial by Fire has plenty of strength when it comes to its two lead performers, but it’s as if director Edward Zwick feels as though holding back and letting the linear plot do the work is all that’s needed…
