Rio 2 review: jungle feeble
This is what passes for a children’s movie these days: a 1950s sitcom drawn in pretty tropical CGI colors with a few mostly forgettable songs tossed in.
reviews by genre
La Camioneta: The Journey of One American School Bus review: get on the bus
Follow a humble yellow school bus as it is transformed into something joyous and defiant. It’s like discovering that your grandma is a secret agent.
Cheap Thrills review: in debasement
The movie equivalent of a mean girls’ game whose only goal is humiliation. Also: a failed parable of the twistedness of the 1 percent.
Le Week-end review: la vie et le bonheur
A marvelous little unpacking of the meaning of happiness, precisely what constitutes it, and how to know whether you’ve found it.
47 Ronin review: they’re not having much fun storming the castle
A handsome movie in many ways, but it feels like an unpolished first draft, one that can’t quite decide how fantastical it wants to be.
Noah review: The Bible Episode IV: A New Hope
A Biblical action disaster fantasy epic that is completely bonkers, endlessly entertaining, and actually religious in that inspiring-and-instructional way.
Locker 13 review: no fresh hell
Nothing here is terribly haunting, but at least someone is trying to make something like a horror movie these days that isn’t about gore and torture.
The Borderlands review: Sunday worst
Finds absolutely nothing new in the supposedly spooky found-footage subgenre, unless all the typical haunted-house frights occurring in a church counts.
The Past review: they are family
A remarkably grounded French-Iranian drama about a broken family trying to mend; unexpectedly riveting, thanks in part to one of 2013’s best ensembles.
Veronica Mars review: fan service included
I’ve never seen the show that spawned it, but it was still exactly what I was expecting. I am neither overwhelmed nor underwhelmed by it. I am whelmed.
