Matt Zoller Seitz

This is a whooping-and-hollering movie. It’s more than satisfying. It’s bloody heaven.

Signal One is modestly scaled and independently made, and seemingly has little in the way of a promotional budget, but it’s the kind of work that should have very long legs based solely on its merits.

These sorts of movies do more damage to the culture than any bloody horror flick you can name, because they make the unforgivable adorable.

During the course of the film, which is directed by Andrew Bernstein in a visually unmemorable, by-the-book manner characteristic of many big-budget action shows, Greer muses on the line separating civilization from savagery and where he stands in relation to it.

There’s no reason for anything in this movie except the wish to make even more money.

Guy Ritchie‘s In the Grey offers what fans expect from the director: relentless but nimble editing; breathtaking locations (Spain, Saudi Arabia, the Canary Islands); clothes, shoes, and hair to die for; the self-mocking machismo and playful insults of male bonding; and a character’s verbal summary of a plan intercut with shots of the actions being performed.

[Aselton's] excellent playing Erin, despite scenes of questionable worth concocted by the screenwriters. But it’s not enough to save a collection of ideas that never quite cohere.

The movie is a lot of fun and masters a pleasingly detached yet sardonic tone early on, but unfortunately, it doesn’t have a lot more to offer after that, aside from a growing human menagerie of admittedly lively characters and a philosophical through line that’s pretty worn out—something like, “Humans are the real monsters.”

The movie expects you to just roll with all this stuff. Or slither. Sometimes you can’t. But when the film escapes the confinement tank of its numerous hand-me-down cliches, you’re happy to follow the water trail to see where it leads.

Two Pianos is a melodrama, and damned proud to be one.