Movie Reviews
Pitch Perfect 2 [AUDIO]
I didn't love the first "Pitch Perfect" -- it was fine, OK? -- and the sequel is more of the same, but less so. The story meanders and is stuffed with irrelevant subplots and tangents.
From this week's Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider podcast, he...
Mad Max: Fury Road
Noted Australian madman George Miller may have distracted himself (and amused us) with films like "Babe: Pig in the City" and the two "Happy Feet" toons, but now it's time to quit goofing around and get back to the dusty, post-apocalyptic wasteland t...
The D Train
"The D Train" marks Jack Black's first starring role since 2011's "Bernie," and it finds him a little more mature and self-restrained than we remember him. He's still very funny, though, adept as ever at reaction shots and physical comedy. That holds...
Hot Pursuit
"Hot Pursuit" is beneath Reese Witherspoon, just about right for Sofia Vergara, and bad for us all. It's one of those comedies about supposedly ordinary people of at least average intelligence who nonetheless spend the entire movie being frantic, bum...
Avengers: Age of Ultron
In "Avengers: Age of Ultron," the 43rd film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe®, Earth's mightiest heroes™ must band together to squabble amongst themselves, and also to save the world from a deadly threat unleashed by, uh, themselves. The Aveng...
Far from the Madding Crowd [AUDIO]
Thomas Vinterberg's adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel "Far from the Madding Crowd" is lush and chaste, like a Victorian romance ought to be. Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, and Michael Sheen all give sympathetic performances, expressing a lot ...
Adult Beginners
Nick Kroll is a funny, creative comedian who's good at playing a variety of characters. So why is "Adult Beginners" such a disappointingly familiar, albeit congenial, comedy? Kroll, sharing story credit with screenwriters Jeff Cox and Liz Flahive, st...
True Story
"True Story," much like the true story it recreates, begins better than it ends, with tantalizing details that suggest a more satisfying tale than is actually in store. Based on journalist Michael Finkel's memoir, the film opens with a succession of ...
Unfriended
"Unfriended," a horror movie for the social media age, has a premise that invites mockery: six teens on a Skype chat are harassed by what may be a supernatural entity. But while the tech is new, the tropes are familiar and potent. After all, the idea...
Ex Machina
Alex Garland's first novel, "The Beach" was turned into a movie by director Danny Boyle, who went on to direct two of Garland's screenplays, "28 Days Later" and "Sunshine." Garland strengthened his sci-fi bonafides with solid screenplay adaptations o...
Furious Seven
"Furious Seven," the latest installment in the "Fast and the Furious" car-oriented soap opera franchise, starts with newly introduced British villain Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) vowing to kill the entire Fast & Furious gang for almost killing hi...
Get Hard
On paper, the central joke of "Get Hard" is that a white-collar criminal (Will Ferrell) hires someone he believes is a tough felon (Kevin Hart) to help him prepare for San Quentin, where he's headed a month from now. In practice, the central joke is ...
It Follows
Many a horror film has punished its randy teenage characters by killing them after they have sex, but "It Follows" takes the idea to a new level, using a metaphorical device to conjure all the fears that adolescents (and other people) have about sex....
Run All Night
"Run All Night" looks to be just another movie where bad guys threaten Liam Neeson's family, and he uses his particular set of skills to kill them all. And in truth, it isn't much more than that. But this sturdy genre exercise -- Neeson's third colla...
Unfinished Business
Sometimes when I'm writing I'll get stuck on a paragraph or a sentence, leave it half-developed, and come back to it later. But it has happened (more than once, I confess) that I've been under a tight deadline and, in my haste, forgotten to return to...
Focus
"Focus" is about con artists, and the title refers to the fact that humans are easily distracted and thus subject to being conned. Some of us are easier marks than others, of course. I, for one, am almost always fooled by the tricks in con-artist mov...
The Lazarus Effect
"The Lazarus Effect" begins with some medical students trying to resurrect a pig. This is a great use of everyone's time, you'll agree. If there's one thing we don't have enough of, it's live pigs. Actually, these students have developed a serum that...
’71
Northern Ireland's long, bloody conflict, quaintly nicknamed The Troubles, was between people (mostly Protestant) who wanted to remain part of the U.K. and people (mostly Catholic) who wanted an independent, united Ireland. Americans may have only a ...
The Duff
Everyone knows Duff is Homer Simpson's favorite brand of beer. What "The DUFF" presupposes is: what if it were also a mean acronym used by teens in a formulaic high school comedy? DUFF stands for Designated Ugly Fat Friend, and it's the person in a g...
Hot Tub Time Machine 2
"Hot Tub Time Machine 2" answers the question of how bad a movie has to be for John Cusack to want nothing to do with it. His original "HTTM" co-stars Rob Corddry, Clark Duke and Craig Robinson all returned for this misbegotten, low-energy sequel, wh...
What We Do in the Shadows
"What We Do in the Shadows," a mockumentary about vampires, arrives at a critical juncture, when audiences have begun to tire of both mockumentaries and vampires. But the brilliant, buoyant comedy from New Zealand's happy shores proves an old truth: ...
Kingsman: The Secret Service
The gentleman spies in "Kingsman: The Secret Service" have Knights of the Round Table nicknames and use a Savile Row tailor's shop as their front. Though their job requires deception and violence, they view proper etiquette as a non-negotiable trait ...
Fifty Shades of Grey
However kinky and taboo the novel "Fifty Shades of Grey" may be -- and I haven't read it, so I don't know, and I'm not going to read it, so I'll never know -- the movie version is disappointingly tame and astonishingly boring. It's about an adult vic...
The Voices
There are three messages to take away from "The Voices." One: Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian filmmaker whose autobiographical "Persepolis" made waves a few years ago, is a major directorial talent. Two: there is a demented screenwriter named Michael R....
Jupiter Ascending
According to interviews, Andy and Lana Wachowski's screenplay for "Jupiter Ascending" was originally more than 200 pages long. Assuming the usual metric of one page in the script being about one minute on the screen, that means they chopped 40% from ...
Seventh Son
Ah, "Seventh Son." It is at times like these -- i.e., when we are assigned to review "Seventh Son" -- that we recall the immortal words spoken at the beginning of "Seventh Son" by Julianne Moore, who plays a witch who is also sometimes a dragon:
...
The Duke of Burgundy
Photographed in the sumptuous colors of yesteryear's art-house smut, "The Duke of Burgundy" does concern an intimate S&M relationship between two winsome ladies, Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and Ellen (Chiara D'Anna). And these ladies do indeed...
Stockholm, Pennsylvania
When you hear news stories about long-missing children being found, the joy you feel for the parents probably overshadows the murkier issues. For a child who lived for years with an abductor, being uprooted from that familiar situation and taken "hom...
Blackhat
Looking at the known facts before seeing the film, "Blackhat" could go either way. On the one hand, it's directed by Oscar-nominated Michael Mann, a smart filmmaker with some established credibility ("Heat," "Collateral," "The Last of the Mohicans")....
The Wedding Ringer
The lesson all filmmakers must eventually learn is this: your movie can work even if it has a stupid premise -- but you have to try a lot harder. Audiences will swallow just about any kind of plot-related nonsense, especially in a comedy. But only if...
Taken 3
Say what you will about Hollywood, those people are very good at making sequels that utterly fail to capture what people liked about the first one. It's almost a gift. "Taken 2" had less energy, action, and butt-kicking than its predecessor, merely r...
Selma
As advanced as we like to say we are, living in the future and all, it's astonishing to watch "Selma" in 2015 and realize the events it depicts happened only 50 years ago. In America! Mostly in the parts of America that have always embarrassed the ot...
American Sniper
There are a few moments in "American Sniper" when it looks like the movie is going to start examining the psychological impact of being the deadliest military sniper in U.S. history. So much killing, even justified killing, the kind that saves your f...
The Interview
Consistently funny and obsessed with men's anuses, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's "The Interview" isn't as interesting as the foofaraw it caused, but what is? (It isn't exactly trenchant political satire, either, but nobody expected that from the wee...
Two Days, One Night (French)
Who's your favorite pair of Belgian filmmaking brothers? Mine is probably Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. They arrived on the international scene in the mid-1990s (when they were both in their early 40s), and have since won multiple prizes at Cannes an...
Annie (2014)
It's a tribute to the talents of 11-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis that the "Annie" remake in which she stars conveys the earnest optimism of everybody's second favorite orphan (after Batman) despite its many flaws. The film is modernized, prefabricated,...
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Peter Jackson's ill-advised and transparently greedy three-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's one-part "The Hobbit" sputters to a conclusion in "The Battle of the Five Armies." This cacophonous and half-hearted sequel bears the distinction of being ...
Exodus: Gods and Kings
This was the year that Hollywood tried to revive the Biblical epic, hoping to duplicate the success of 1950s smashes like "The Ten Commandments" and "Ben-Hur." It seemed like a long-shot, but Hollywood was willing to try anything (other than original...
Wild
It's been several years since Reese Witherspoon starred in a movie worth recommending, and a decade since she won her Oscar for playing June Carter Cash. Whether by choice or happenstance, she's been flying under the radar, making easy trifles like "...
Zero Motivation (Hebrew)
One of the ways for film festivals to earn prestige within the industry is to host the world premiere of an under-the-radar movie that turns out to be noteworthy, thus forever associating the festival with that film. Such programming coups imply two ...
The Imitation Game
Alan Turing, the English math genius who cracked Nazi codes and was the father of computer science, deserves to be the subject of a masterful biopic someday. This is not that day. But "The Imitation Game" works as a glossy, conventionally entertainin...
The Babadook
In "The Babadook," almost-7-year-old Samuel (Noah Wiseman) pledges to protect his beleaguered mother, Amelia (Essie Davis), from "the monster," whatever it may be. He can tell something is plaguing her -- she's exhausted, bleary-eyed, and frazzled --...
Penguins of Madagascar
Whether in TV or movies, spin-offs are risky, never more so than when the figures being spun off are wacky supporting characters who must now carry the story themselves. What made viewers happy in small doses may overwhelm them when it's administered...
Horrible Bosses 2
Understand: nobody "needed" a sequel to "Horrible Bosses." But it made $209 million worldwide, which for a comedy means a sequel will be spawned automatically, whether anyone wants it or not. Fortunately, "Horrible Bosses 2" turns out to be another p...
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1
Having survived back-to-back trips to the arena in "The Hunger Games" and "Catching Fire," fearless Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) graduates to real-life struggles in "Mockingjay," applying what she has learned about war, propaganda, and public...
Foxcatcher
If you don't remember the bizarre news story from the '90s about weirdo billionaire John du Pont and gold-medalist wrestlers Mark and Dave Schultz, then Bennett Miller's "Foxcatcher" won't just be deeply unsettling, it will also be surprising. And ev...
The Homesman
Tommy Lee Jones has acted in movies of many genres, but when he directs, he sticks to Westerns. His debut behind the camera was a 1995 TV movie, "The Good Old Boys," followed 10 years later by an impressive theatrical feature, "The Three Burials of M...
Rosewater
"Rosewater" is a sober, respectful account of an Iranian journalist's experiences covering that country's controversial 2009 election, and his subsequent imprisonment on nonsensical espionage charges. It's a serious reminder that freedom of the press...
Dumb and Dumber To
The first problem with making a sequel to "Dumb and Dumber" 20 years later -- a problem that might have been unavoidable -- is that playing an idiot is a young man's game. Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels aren't "old," exactly (they're 52 and 59, respecti...
The Theory of Everything
The crisp air, the pumpkin-flavored things, the respectful biopics about troubled famous people: these are the unmistakable signs of autumn. "The Theory of Everything" is about Stephen Hawking, the brilliant physicist with the robot voice, and it is ...
Interstellar
Like most of his movies, Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" is about the conflict between human weakness and human ambition. Whether it's an amnesiac tracking a killer, a troubled billionaire dressing as a bat to wipe out injustice, or the last remna...
John Wick
There's a certain kind of action movie where a former cop/assassin/mercenary is dragged out of retirement by a nefarious act that begs for -- nay, demands -- justice (this time it's personal, usually), whereupon we are treated to a satisfying tale of...
Fury
The title character of "Fury" is a Sherman tank operated by the U.S. Army at the tail end of World War II, in the heart of Nazi Germany. In addition to the home-field advantage, we're told the Germans also have more firepower and better war machines ...
Birdman
"Birdman" opens in a dressing room at Broadway's St. James Theatre, where a fifty-ish man in tighty-whiteys sits meditating. And levitating. And hearing a guttural, self-doubting voice in his head berating him for falling this far. The man is Riggan ...
Listen Up Philip
With its omniscient narrator, sparkling, literate dialogue, and insufferable white male protagonist, "Listen Up Philip" is more like a novel than a film (and in fact more like a novel than many novels I've read). Written and directed with astoni...
Whiplash
"Whiplash" is about a demanding teacher trying to coax greatness out of a student, yet it couldn't be further from the saccharine exploits of Mr. Holland, Mr. Dead Poets, and the countless other educators who have inspired their pupils and moved audi...
Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day
Bearing so little resemblance to Judith Viorst's 1972 kid classic that the matching titles may as well be coincidental, the movie version of "Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day" is a pointless series of wacky mishaps that befall...
Kill the Messenger
"Kill the Messenger" begins with footage of Richard Nixon calling drugs "public enemy No. 1," followed by clips of subsequent presidents reaffirming their commitment to eradicating the foe. This is all prelude to the film's soberingly ironic subject ...
Annabelle
In the summer of 2013, a spooky movie called "The Conjuring" struck terror in America's hearts and pants, telling a "fact-based" story about husband-and-wife paranormal investigators checking out a worried family's haunted house in 1971. Among the be...
Gone Girl
David Fincher, a sly, calculating filmmaker with a fondness for dark themes and plot twists, was a perfect match for "Gone Girl," a 2012 novel by Gillian Flynn that's full of both. The story was lurid, "trashy" crime fiction, but Flynn also offered i...
A Walk Among the Tombstones
Liam Neeson, now deeply invested in his mid-career pivot into revenge-and-justice thrillers that allow him to threaten kidnappers on the telephone before killing them in person, could do a film like "A Walk Among the Tombstones" in his sleep. Goodnes...
Mommy (French)
Xavier Dolan is 25 years old, the writer and director of five critically acclaimed movies, and the co-recipient of a jury prize at Cannes, where the vote was split between his fifth film and Jean-Luc Godard's 39th. Knowing this, and having seen none ...
The Guest
"A Horrible Way to Die," "You're Next," "What Fun We're Having," "Autoerotic," segments in the anthologies "VHS," "VHS 2," and "The ABCs of Death": director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett are probably the pair of collaborators who have made th...
The Skeleton Twins
On paper, "The Skeleton Twins" looks like an amalgamation of Sundance-friendly dramedies, the sort of film that already feels familiar the first time you see it. But in the execution, it benefits from the presence of Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, two ...
The Drop
If you're a fan of adorable things happening in grim settings, you should know that Tom Hardy adopts a puppy in "The Drop," an average crime drama that is otherwise serious and not at all puppy-like. Although he does find the puppy in a garbage can, ...
The Congress
Even with its murky story and assorted other shortcomings, "The Congress" is a wildly original and memorable experience, the sort of movie that lodges itself in your head whether you fully understand it or not. Melancholic, thoughtful, and compl...
The One I Love
What if I told you "The One I Love" is about a married couple who take a weekend retreat to restore vitality to their strained relationship? Your interest would probably not be particularly aroused. But what if I added that when they arrive at the co...
If I Stay
"Sometimes you make choices in life, and sometimes choices make you." So says an actual character in "If I Stay," which is a real movie. It's the kind of aphorism that sounds deep until you think about it, and "If I Stay," which is based on a novel f...
The Expendables 3
The point (such as it was) of the first two "Expendables" movies was to feature an all-star cast of action heroes past and present killing bad guys and blowing things up. The films took themselves too seriously overall, but you got the sense Stallone...
What If
"What If" doesn't exactly put a new spin on the tired romantic-comedy formula -- and the meaningless, arbitrarily assigned title doesn't help -- but it does apply enough wit and relatable human behavior to the formula to make it recommendable, which ...
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)
Long ago, in the closing decades of the 20th century, there was a children's cartoon, based on a comic book, called "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," in which a quartet of grotesque reptilian vigilantes lived in a sewer and fought criminals under the d...
Into the Storm
"Into the Storm" is the story of various idiots who team up to observe closely/flee in terror from a massive series of tornadoes in Oklahoma and environs. A few of the idiots are professional storm chasers, played by the likes of Matt Walsh ("Veep"),...
Calvary
Let us stipulate that the wide-faced, twinkly-eyed Irish actor Brendan Gleeson is an under-appreciated thespian who improves every movie he appears in, whether you know his name or not. (Fine, he played Mad-Eye Moody in the Harry Potters.) It is no s...
Guardians of the Galaxy
If it weren't for the Marvel label and some minor characters teased in previous films, you'd never know "Guardians of the Galaxy" had anything to do with any superheroes. This is a sci-fi comedy about a group of space rogues of assorted alien races, ...
Magic in the Moonlight
Maybe the reason Woody Allen is so fond of the 1920s and '30s is that in those days, nobody batted an eye when, say, a 53-year-old man like Colin Firth had a relationship with a 25-year-old woman like Emma Stone. Not so anymore! Nowadays, if a man is...
Hercules (2014)
"Hercules" begins with someone saying, "You think you know the truth about him? You know nothing!" That seems like an unnecessarily combative way to start a movie, but it does set the tone. This ain't your father's Hercules! Unless your father is Bre...
A Most Wanted Man
The venerable English spy-novelist John le Carré has been writing page-turners since the early 1960s, when the Cold War was giving people in le Carré's profession ample material to work with. As the times have changed, le Carré has adapted his skills...
Lucy
The familiar adage about how humans only use 10 percent of their brains is an old wives' tale (old scientists' tale?), but that doesn't mean it can't be the basis for a good story. I mean, it's not true that getting bitten by a radioactive spider giv...
And So It Goes
A while back, after years of directing good movies in a variety of genres, Rob Reiner decided to focus on tepid, forgettable, upscale comedies aimed at the least discerning, most easily entertained demographic in America: middle-aged white people. So...
Wish I Was Here
I doubt I'm the only person who loved Zach Braff's "Garden State" in 2004 but has been hesitant to watch it again for fear it won't hold up. It spoke to a particular demographic at a particular time. I'm no longer at that stage of life, and it's no l...
The Purge: Anarchy
Last year's "The Purge" made a sparse, modestly thrilling movie out of a dumb premise -- for 12 hours every year, all crime is legal! -- and hit pay dirt at the box office. The natural consequence of this, as you know, is a hastily produced sequel. I...
Sex Tape
"Sex Tape" is like an episode of a filthy sitcom that was stretched from 22 minutes to 94 even though they barely had 22 minutes' worth of story. Starring a slimmed-down Jason Segel and a very game Cameron Diaz, it centers on a workable premise: what...
Land Ho!
The Hollywood version of "Land Ho!" would star Alan Arkin and Michael Caine, be loud and grating, have a hundred Viagra references, and make $150 million. The real version, an unassuming little comedy about two old-timers taking a road trip across Ic...
Boyhood
Near the end of "Boyhood," Richard Linklater's truly remarkable time-lapse portrait of a child growing up, the boy's mother, Olivia (Patricia Arquette), is feeling wistful over his imminent departure for college. "I just thought there would be more,"...
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
The surprisingly robust prequel "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" ended with a few dozen chimps, gorillas, and such escaping into the forests near San Francisco after being dosed with a drug that made them super intelligent (for apes). Over time, thes...
Snowpiercer
By a quirk of fate, "Snowpiercer" opened in American theaters on the same day as "Transformers: Age of Extinction." A viewer with no outside knowledge of the two movies would assume they were on equal footing, both sci-fi spectacles with stories cent...
Begin Again
Surely you remember "Once," that lovely indie drama from 2007 about the Irish guy and the Czech girl who connected through music, and who eventually sang their pretty song at the Oscars. Remember how sweet and plainspoken the film was, how its raw, m...
They Came Together
In this reviewer's not-so-humble opinion, the movie genre that is most deserving of mockery is the one that least often gets it: the Hollywood romantic comedy. Horror spoofs are a dime a dozen, and self-aware action movies have become almost as commo...
22 Jump Street
A comedy sequel (uh-oh) to a film that was based on a defunct TV show (yikes) ought to be an unwatchable disaster. That's the America I grew up in, anyway. But after the surprising non-badness of "21 Jump Street" two years ago, and the even more surp...
How to Train Your Dragon 2
How do you train your dragon? With love. That was the message of a certain unexpectedly magnificent toon from 2010, and the let's-all-try-to-get-along vibe is continued in "How to Train Your Dragon 2," a worthy followup with all the heart and humor o...
Hellion
The title character of "Hellion" is a 13-year-old southeast Texas boy named Jacob Wilson (Josh Wiggins), a motocross-loving vandal and troublemaker who can often be found wearing a sleeveless heavy metal T-shirt and running from security guards. But ...
Borgman (Dutch)
"Borgman" is a strange movie, but its strangeness is matter-of-fact, even casual. It's not the kind of strangeness that draws attention to itself and says, "Look how strange this is!" (That's the Tim Burton method.) If you were flipping channels and ...
Obvious Child
You can say it's reductive to call "Obvious Child" an "abortion comedy," and there's certainly more to the film than that. It's also a modern reshuffling of the romantic comedy, and a showcase for the talented Jenny Slate, a sweet-and-salty comic act...
Edge of Tomorrow
Like many big stars, Tom Cruise doesn't usually die in his movies, so "Edge of Tomorrow" -- in which he dies early and often -- is a novelty. It's also a satisfying chunk of sci-fi entertainment, breezily but carefully directed by Doug Liman ("The Bo...
A Million Ways to Die in the West
"Family Guy" mastermind Seth MacFarlane's first movie, "Ted," a huge commercial hit in 2012, was mostly on-target but showed signs of undisciplined, "Family Guy"-esque self-indulgence. MacFarlane's followup, "A Million Ways to Die in the West" -- whi...
Maleficent
Hey, kids! How would you like to see a new version of Disney's "Sleeping Beauty" that isn't animated and doesn't make any sense? Hmm? You wouldn't like that at all? Then why did we spend $200 million to make one?! You kids never appreciate anything.
...
We Are the Best! (Swedish)
The relentlessly upbeat Swedish comedy "We Are the Best!" has several positive messages, not least of which is its gentle reminder that despite cultural and chronological differences, 13-year-old girls in Sweden in 1982 were approximately the same as...
X-Men: Days of Future Past
You know what the "X-Men" franchise is? I'll tell you what it is. Venerable. The first installment, way back in 2000, launched a series that now has seven entries -- without any reboots! (Superman has started over twice since then.) That first "X-Men...
Cold in July
Reviewing "Cold in July" is tricky because so much of its appeal stems from its surprises -- not "surprises" in the sense of shocking plot twists, but in the way the story keeps us guessing about what kind of story it is. Is it a grim drama about the...
The Discoverers
"If history is written by the winners, what happens to the rest of us?" That's what history professor Lewis Birch (Griffin Dunne) wants to know in "The Discoverers," a clumsy but affectionate dramedy about a man trying to reconcile with his family an...
