The Divergent Series: Allegiant movie review: walled in by reality
A disappointing downfall from the previous films, the appealing metaphor for nonconformity giving way to dull good-vs-evil battle and dumb plot conundrums.
2016 theatrical releases
Grimsby (aka The Brothers Grimsby) movie review: grim indeed
A soul-crushing experience: lazy, cheap, lurid, and stupid. Painfully unfunny and pointless. Sacha Baron Cohen now panders to those he once rightly mocked.
Hail, Caesar! movie review: far from perfect, but pretty swell
Full of the Coen Brothers’ usual exuberant joie de cinema, and a helluva lot of fun, but too scattershot to ever settle on saying the things it has to say.
The Boy and the Beast movie rating: yellow light
A few instances of gorgeous and magical imagery cannot make up for the lack of genuine emotion or a fresh story. Strictly for devoted anime fans.
Emelie movie review: bad babysitter, under a glossy veneer
A slow-burn twist on the home-invasion story with a creepily classy atmosphere of dread and menace, but where it ends up is the stuff of hoary cliché.
London Has Fallen movie review: agitprop security theater
A Nuremberg rally for 21st-century America. Pure terror porn: racist, jingoistic, thoroughly obnoxious. Donald Trump voters will love it. *sob*
Embrace of the Serpent movie review: mild Amazonian odyssey
More intriguing in its ambitions than in it successes, which are limited, and oddly keeps its distance from the very people it wants to enlighten us about.
Exposed movie review: cover it up, burn it, bury it, never look at it again
To call it disjointed is an understatement: Exposed is unintelligible. It feels like two completely different movies inelegantly Frankensteined together.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies movie review: ironically, it has no brains
A Mr. Collins of a movie: fatuous, self-important, and nowhere near as smart or as elegant as it thinks it is. There isn’t a lick of wit to be found here.
The Finest Hours movie review: that sinking feeling
See this for Casey Affleck: he exudes a classic cinematic masculinity here. Alas, the rest of the film is old-fashioned in ways that are downright stodgy.
