All Salvation is Temporary in ‘The Fault in Our Stars’
The Fault in Our Stars provides a showcase for the protagonist's honest openness, her capacity to radiate and inspire empathy.
Jesse Hassenger
‘We Are the Best!’: A Girls’ Punk Rock Band
All three young actresses are terrific, performing with the kind of unguarded, unaffected naturalism that sometimes seems unthinkable in American movies.
‘Veronica Mars’, Just Out of Law School, Takes Us Back to Neptune
Series creator Rob Thomas fashioned Veronica Mars as a reunion movie, for both the audience and the characters.
Jon Favreau Returns to Indie Scale in ‘Chef’
Chef comes alive when it resembles a cooking procedural, going through the details of preparing a meal for a food critic or cleaning and re-assembling a taco truck.
‘Make Your Move’ Ain’t Got the Groove
Make Your Move seems determined to take the most circuitous route through its myriad generic clichés.
Nicolas Cage Is Jolted Back to Life in ‘Joe’
Nicolas Cage jolts back to life for David Gordon Green's Joe, a Southern thriller and character study that asks more of him than grimacing or wigging out.
At It’s Worst, ‘American Hustle’ Is a Rollicking Comedy
Scene for scene, American Hustle may be most David O. Russell's most aesthetically pleasing film.
Calculated Provocations: ‘Nymph()maniac: Vol. I’
Nymph()maniac: Vol. I is conscious of its own storytelling, as Seligman listens intently to Joe's self-narration and we watch what she remembers.
There’s Uncompromising Orneriness ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’
Llewyn doesn’t look like a nice guy: he specializes in unsmiling bumbling coupled with prickly stubbornness. Yet he becomes oddly endearing oddly fast.
‘The Bag Man’ Is Another Low-Budget Thriller Set in New Orleans
"Over and over" is a good way to sum up The Bag Man, a movie that runs perilously close to two hours, and uses most of its bad ideas at least twice.
‘It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World’ Is an Omnibus Tribute to a Bizarre Array of Comic Talent
Stanley Kramer's widow notes that this movie was made more or less on a dare. Apocryphal or not, the origin makes sense.
Drones and Robots and ‘Robocop’
Scenes inside Murphy's dreaming brain give way to a real-life nightmare, and for a few brief moments, Robocop hums with disturbing sci-fi possibilities.