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: Apr. 11-13, 2014
Wide (United States)
Draft Day
[New Reviews Today] For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Oculus
[New Reviews Today] For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Rio 2
[New Reviews Today] For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Expanding (United States)
The Raid 2: Berandal
[New Reviews Today] For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Limited (United States)
Cuban Fury
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …like a new sitcom with a great cast that’s so badly conceived and executed it’s yanked after two episodes. Only the genuine sweetness between Frost and Jones and McShane’s wacky casting make this film remotely bearable.
Joe
[New Reviews Today] For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Hank and Asha
[New Today] Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A very imaginative take on modern romance and the yearning of lonely and isolated twentysomethings for an intimate relationship.
Only Lovers Left Alive
[New Reviews Today] For member reviews of this film, follow this link
2014 Films In Theaters Now In Select Areas
50 to 1
Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Earnest but cliche-ridden.
Afflicted
[New Today] Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: While it is never quite the game-changer that “Chronicle” managed to be, “Afflicted” is creatively creepy and more technically resourceful than the sub-genre deserves. It’s also better not knowing anything going in.
Alan Partridge
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: One of the great things Coogan does with his ambitious, self-absorbed, offensive, cowardly and not-as-bright-as-he-thinks-he-is character is make him capable of guilt and regret, always keeping us holding out for his redemption.
Calvary
Ross Miller @ Thoughts On Film
- Excerpt: It gets you laughing and leaves you thinking, grabbing you from minute one and not letting go until its haunting final shot. Brilliant.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
[New Reviews Today] For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Cheap Thrills
[New Reviews Today] For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Divergent
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Dom Hemingway
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Law conjures a somewhat dim man who yet has quite the way with words, a hair trigger guy who might cry or bite your face off at any given moment. It’s a balls to the wall performance and utterly entertaining.
Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Self-consciously written and directed redemption saga, it’s certainly not as compelling as other dramas in this British gangland genre.
[New Today] Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: When “Dom Hemingway” tries to soften its anti-hero, the film threatens to be a cowardly drag, but when Law is allowed to be a shamelessly blustery and vulgar force of nature without a filter, it’s a rampantly R-rated, rippingly in-your-face romp that’s ultimately hard to resist.
Fading Gigolo
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A charming, funny and oddball drama about a gentle, quiet, and sensitive florist who knows how to give women pleasure.
The French Minister
Carlos del Río @ El rincón de Carlos del Río [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Crónicas diplomáticas es divertida, y a veces lo es mucho, porque ves cómo funciona un ministerio desde dentro, y Tavernier te lo cuenta con un gran reparto y un ritmo rapidísimo.
God’s Not Dead
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: God’s Not Dead is a movie with its heart in the right place and its head up its butt. It contains a microcosm of an idea, debating God’s place in the natural order, but spends most of the time as a recruitment drive for the Christian faith in which you are recruited with your arm twisted behind your back.
The Grand Budapest Hotel
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Grand Piano
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In the Blood
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Jews of Egypt
Donald Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Jodorowsky’s Dune
[New Reviews Today] For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Lego Movie
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Living Things
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: Eric Shapiro’s Living Things is, very likely, the most exhausting movie you’ll ever see. And yet, there are no car chases, no gun battles, no cacophony of sound design. Here is a movie that is constructed almost entirely out of words. It contains only two actors, seated at a dinner table debating each other for just over an hour.
The Machine
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: When I get home, I spend a majority of my time on the computer. I don’t think I’m alone. This is the landscape of the 21st century, and I suspect that I am not alone in the opinion that we are less than five years away from the development of computers that can think for themselves. Will I be so dependent then? Having seen Caradog James’ effective science fiction thriller The Machine, I have reason to think not.
The Monuments Men
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Muppets Most Wanted
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Noah
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Non-Stop
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Nymphomaniac: Volumes 1 & 2
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The Quiet Ones
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: There aren’t many outright scares here, and when they do come, they are curiously circumspect, but the old-fashioned Hammer Horror atmosphere is appealingly spooky.
Ross Miller @ Thoughts On Film
- Excerpt: It will leave anyone but the newest of horror converts feeling let down.
The Retrieval
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
Sabotage
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Stage Fright
[New Today] Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: With all the pieces in place to make a cult hit to remember, “Stage Fright” doesn’t quite go all-out. It has its alternately catchy and bloody moments, though.
Stranger by the Lake
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That Demon Within
- Excerpt: Hong Kong’s reigning champion of pyrotechnic mayhem continues to move outside of his comfort zone with the psychological crime drama That Demon Within, but the results fail to hit the mark as poor plotting, loose direction and an increasingly preposterous script do their best to undermine a spirited central performance from Daniel Wu.
Under the Skin
[New Reviews Today] For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Unknown Known
- Excerpt: It’s easier, for us and frankly for them, to dismiss those whose politics and policy decisions we abhor as monsters or Bond villains and leave it at that. What’s more interesting — in our interactions, and in our understanding of history — is to understand how smart people can make giant miscalculations, and dig in their heels.
[New Today] Jamie S. Rich @ DVDTalk
- Excerpt: Rumsfeld comes off as a man ruled by caprice, subject to his whims without ever wondering why he had them. And that, when it comes down to it, is all the more unsettling.
Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: To his supporters, he will come off as a no-nonsense, witty, unflappable sage. His detractors will see a smug, narcissistic sociopath to whom his architecture of the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and the devastation of America’s economy and prestige, are matters to be dismissed with a quip and a smirk.
Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: “The Unknown Known” is a valuable window inside the warped mind of an irrational sociopath who, like those around him during his time in Office — Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, etc. — acted with unfathomable incompetence that they were able to disguise with the complicity of corporate news media.
War of the Worlds: Goliath
Le Week-End
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Young & Beautiful
Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: For his latest filmic exploration François Ozon addresses a complex mix of sexual, personal, social, familial, gender-based, and technological issues, inexorably honing in on a striking synthesis of generational catharsis.
2013 Films In Theaters Now In Select Areas
47 Ronin
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Book Thief
[New Reviews Today] For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Captain Phillips
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Ernest & Celestine
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The Fifth Estate
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Frozen
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Grudge Match
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The Invisible Woman
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Jesus People
Marina Antunes @ Row Three
[New Today] MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: This gentle — too gentle — mockumentary barely even takes aim at its easiest potential targets, but the appealing cast is game and manages a few cogent hits.
Planes
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Saving Mr. Banks
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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
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2014 Films (Coming Soon)
3D Naked Ambition
James Marsh @ Screen International
- Excerpt: Brimming with colloquial Hong Kong humour and plenty of bare flesh, Lee Kung-lok’s jolly romp through the Japanese AV (adult film) scene is slight yet entertaining fare, and likely to offend only the most bashful of audiences.
Bhoothnath Returns
[New Today] Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Ich Hunger
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: A sociopath on the loose, Creature has no empathy for his prey. He delights in the chase and his hunger happily motivates his hunt for the next meal.
The John Hines Show
- Excerpt: Talking movies (NOAH) with WCCO host John Hines
A Long Way Down
José Arce @ LaButaca.net [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Pascal Chaumeil sigue abriendo zanja internacional en su trabajo con esta floja adaptación de la novela de Nick Hornby que sacrifica su mordacidad para abrirse a un discurso más bien meloso.
A Long Way Down
- Excerpt: Shamelessly cloying, so misguided and vacuous it made me want to scream, A Long Way Down is an unusually bad test of your patience that is bound to induce squirms.
The Other Woman
Blake Howard @ Graffiti with Punctuation
- Excerpt: The Other Woman is frustratingly indecisive.
Thomas Keating: A Rising Tide of Silence
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: An elegant and enlightening portrait of the life and ministry of Father Thomas Keating, one of the towering figures on the global spirituality scene.
