Here is a summary of film reviews from the past two weeks:
The Maze Runner is not a great movie but it is better than the average adaptation of a young adult dystopian novel. The movie does not inspire excitement over its potential sequels the way the original Hunger Games did and any follow up is going to have to be much better than this.
Like most of Terry Gilliam’s work, The Zero Theorem is going to appeal to a very specific group of viewers. General audiences are probably going to be baffled by it but those who get Gilliam’s work are in for a treat. It’s a flawed picture but it’s also an ambitious and smart sendup of contemporary life.
A Walk Among the Tombstones is an interesting piece of neo-noir filmmaking. The picture is equally part hardboiled detective story and part torture film but it succeeds less at the former and more at the latter. It’s a flawed movie but despite the violence there is humanity and intelligence at its center.
This is Where I Leave You features an excellent cast chewing the scenery amid a script that doesn’t quite utilize their talents. Viewers who are fans of any or all of these actors will want to check out the picture but its storytelling suffers from too many basic mistakes.
Dom Hemingway is an audacious movie anchored by a terrific performance by Jude Law. The film is a credible tale of redemption that takes down a stupid formulation of masculinity while also having a laugh.
Life Itself is a fitting tribute to one of the great champions of movie criticism but the filmmakers craftily sneak up on the audience and give us much more than that. This movie offers a portrait of a man and of the process of dying with an unvarnished honesty that is rare in contemporary movies.
No Good Deed wastes a pair of talented actors on a lazy script executed with sloppy filmmaking. This is a movie that alternately offers clichés and contrivances and very little of it is exciting, believable, or competently made.
The Drop is a very well made crime thriller. The filmmakers combine violence and grit with an underlying sense of honor and good heartedness that mostly fits together and the picture features notable performances by Tom Hardy and James Gandolfini.
Locke is a terrific film, albeit an unusual one. This movie is extremely well made and features a terrific performance by Tom Hardy. It also ought to be an inspiring film for up and coming filmmakers, at it shows how much can be done with so little.
You can find the full text of each review in the Sounds of Cinema review archive.