All articles tagged with #film review
IndieWire’s review of Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars grades the film a C, calling it a dour, inert post-apocalyptic drama where Jacob Elordi’s restrained performance can’t compensate for a meandering script, underwhelming action, and a romance that lacks chemistry, despite a handful of capable visuals and mood.
Jason Statham anchors a boilerplate maritime actioner aboard a Bangkok–bound cargo ship, delivering his trademark brutal combat, but the otherwise thin plot and one‑note characters make Mutiny feel like familiar genre fare rather than a standout.
Despite a visually lush, production-driven fantasy and a star-studded British cast, The Magic Faraway Tree leans on whimsy at the expense of plot and character development, delivering a meandering, mechanical narrative that may satisfy Blyton fans or lovers of eye-catching fantasy but leaves younger viewers and casual audiences wanting more.
Claire Foy and Andrew Garfield star in The Magic Faraway Tree, a visually bright but relentlessly twee adaptation of Enid Blyton's tale. Polly and Tim move with their kids to the countryside after Polly resigns over a spying fridge she invented, leading the children to meet Silky the fairy and a parade of quirky characters. Judi Dench voices the sentient fridge, with Rebecca Ferguson as the villain and Jennifer Saunders as the grandmother. The film dazzles with bold pastel visuals and imaginative costumes, but its sugary, overstuffed tone and thin wit make it wearying for adults, even as it may charm younger audiences and offer a whimsical, bookish escape.
THR’s Frank Scheck reviews Insidious: Out of the Further, the sixth film in the franchise, noting it introduces a new batch of victims while sticking to the series’ mythology. Gemma, a single mother who can enter the Further as a Courier, clashes with Cyrus and his Acolytes, with Elise Rainier returning to guide her. Despite standout moments—the pillow-fort labyrinth and a gruesome dental scene—the movie largely rehashes prior installments, delivering scares but signaling diminishing returns and occasional self-parody, in a 1h46m PG-13 run time.
IndieWire’s review of Insidious: Out of the Further (the franchise’s sixth installment) calls it dull and overexposed, relying on constant jump scares and overexplaining its lore without delivering real scares or fresh ideas. Despite returning characters and a moody visual palette, the film is criticized as lacking psychological depth and reinvigorating the Blumhouse saga, earning a grade of D ahead of its August 21, 2026 release.
Insidious: Out of the Further delivers fresh scares with new characters while honoring the franchise’s history, leveraging practical effects and clear rules for the Further under director Jacob Chase. Though it sticks to familiar jump-scare and family-trauma beats, it remains visually inventive enough to keep the series moving, offering a potential new foothold beyond the Lambert saga.
Hollywood Reporter’s James Hibberd argues that The End of Oak Street is a sharp, darkly funny dino-thriller that exposes how the Jurassic franchise has grown stale by returning dinosaurs to fear, letting heroes actually fight, delivering brutal shocks, and mixing dark humor with real emotion, all while channeling a Spielberg-tinged 1980s suburban vibe; the film stars Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, directed by David Robert Mitchell, and opened to about $47 million worldwide.
Warner Bros. Discovery’s shelved-then-released stance on Coyote vs. Acme drew attention to the studio’s pattern of discarding finished films for tax reasons. The live-action/animated Looney Tunes feature is praised as one of the best in years, blending zany gags with sharp corporate satire. Its release is handled by Ketchup Entertainment amid talk of a Paramount merger, and while its box-office upside isn’t guaranteed, the behind‑the‑scenes drama and self‑parody add to its appeal.
David Robert Mitchell’s The End Of Oak Street rejects wonder in favor of brutal, feathered dinosaurs and a mean-spirited tone, reworking Amblin nostalgia with a suburban-family crisis and a time-travel twist to deliver a bold, flawed reimagining of dinosaur cinema.
Jeff Daniels stars as Reagan opposite Jared Harris’s Gorbachev in a Reykjavik Summit drama that aims to spark political conversation but leans one-sided to a US perspective; strong performances and striking Icelandic visuals cannot fully compensate for director Michael Russell Gunn’s restrained, schematic approach.
A criticism-driven round-up centers on The Brink Of War, arguing Angel Studios is accelerating a nationalist, crowd-funded propaganda arc by mythologizing Reagan, while companion pieces examine a gendered real-life crime doc (A Child Of My Own), a climate-change documentary (An Inconvenient Truth), and a Scorsese-in-context piece on The Departed, illustrating how 2026 cinema contests politics, memory, and power.
Andrew Patterson’s The Rivals of Amziah King is a genre-bending Americana that fuses Western, noir, musical, heist, and Christian-inflected themes around Amziah King, a beekeeper whose honey binds a town together. Matthew McConaughey delivers a magnetic lead, while Kateri’s story reframes the drama through interconnected, morally nuanced town tales—an ambitious, music-filled journey that treats faith and community with nuance rather than preaching.
Salon critic Coleman Spilde argues that Matt Johnson’s Tony sanitizes Anthony Bourdain’s early life, leaning on a nostalgic image rather than the man’s candor, underexplores the realities of the kitchen, and ends up a safe, somewhat superficial portrayal that Bourdain himself would likely have disliked.
A nostalgia-soaked, over-the-top dinosaur thriller set in a 1982 suburb, The End of Oak Street delivers goofy blockbuster fun with Spielberg-like touches and tense moments, anchored by strong performances from Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor as a couple grappling with beasts invading their neighborhood and a plot that nods to Jurassic-era adventures while embracing its own cheeky B-movie charm.