Obvious Child is 5% groundbreaking, 95% uninspired formula
Obvious Child has a few interesting things to say about abortion, but says it with cardboard characters and a haphazard story.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier – the only problem is that Captain America & The Winter Soldier are in it
The worst thing about Captain America:...
American Hustle has style, but can’t back up its ambition
American Hustle opens with a balding...
Dredd aims low, gets the job done
Dredd is a well-executed, if unexceptional, standard action movie. There are obvious similarities to The Raid, but Die Hard is an equally valid touchpoint. Dredd and his psychic partner alternate running, hiding, and shooting in a series of solid but uninspiring action sequences.
Midnight in Paris and the terrible power of nostalgia
Midnight in Paris marks a return to form for Woody Allen, but only partially. It has many of the hallmarks of a great Woody Allen film, but also the flaws of a filmmaker who didn't bother to fully develop his ideas. Why is it receiving so much praise in spite of its significant flaws?
Carnage: The joys of watching people being horrible
If you're the sort of person who insists on likeable characters in entertainment, Carnage might be the most unpleasant film you've ever seen. The characters are dishonest, hypocritical, condescending, arrogant, snide, antagonistic, and insulting. They begin the film with a mask of pleasantries covering their inner ugliness, but by the time the credits roll everyone has been exposed as a tremendous asshole.
Meek’s Cutoff’s: The wild, stoic, wandering west
It's hard to say exactly when Meek's Cutoff grips you, but before you know it a group of 19th-century settlers carefully easing their wagons down a steep hill is one of the most riveting scenes you can imagine. Everyone in the film feels real, and the stakes are impossibly high: If things go any more wrong, or don't start to go right, people are going to die.
The Debt: Heroes, lies, guilt, and Nazis
The Debt begins by revealing one of its climactic scenes: A Nazi war criminal escapes from his Israeli captors, brutally assaulting one of them in the process. She recovers just in time to shoot him dead before he escapes into hiding forever. The event makes everyone a hero, as long as none of them talk about what really happened.