Oli Welsh

Smurfs is garbage. It’s a randomized assortment of Stuff That Happens in Kids’ Animated Movies. . . It’s mostly meaningless, or occasionally mildly offensive, if you stop to think about it. It’s also blandly drawn, stiffly animated, and maddeningly inconsistent in its visual design.

Eggers has made a visually grand movie, with an impressively doomy atmosphere and one hell of a closing shot. As a finely wrought monument to the ultimate Gothic horror movie, it’s worth seeing. But as a new reading of one of the most resonant stories of the past 150 years, it rings hollow.

When I say that Don’t Move is the modern equivalent of a Corman movie, that might make it sound more trashy or exotic than it really is. It’s not some future cult classic. But it is an expedient, efficient piece of filmmaking that does exactly what it needs to do, no more and no less, to exploit one great idea — the terror of being trapped in your own body, unable to move or speak.

It’s spiky, entertaining stuff, and although it’s played mostly for laughs and thrills, it’s a setup with real thematic teeth.

The dialogue (by Ritchie and three other screenwriters) is lumpy and unconvincing, but that’s not why anyone watches a film like this. It’s a romp, disposable but sturdily made, with satisfyingly blunt action scenes that have been framed by a true master.

Hit Man could have been a lot of different movies, and part of the joy of the film is in how playfully it gestures toward all those different potential versions of itself. But ultimately, that one perfect scene defines it as a great romantic comedy with a delicious bite.

In a way, Monkey Man’s lack of composure is the point, and after it’s over, it’s easy to see Patel as an action star, but hard to picture him slipping into the role of a smooth agent of the colonial order. Maybe Bond’s not what he should be doing after all.

With a patient, compassionate, but penetrating gaze, How to Have Sex maps out the dangerous, murky territory of teenage sexuality and friendships.

Howard and Rockwell are both funny, charismatic actors, but it’s a struggle for them to build real romantic chemistry amid all Argylle’s layered artificiality.

Mielants is too tough-minded to be caught, it turns out, but that’s bad news for the rest of us. Will nurses a glimmer of hope in the darkness, only to snuff it out completely. This is a bleak, bleak movie.