And While We Were Here comes across like a well-intentioned missed opportunity, and while writer/director Coiro has earned a place on my radar she’s going to have to craft something better than this next time out if she’s going to stay there.

Even though it fires a couple of blanks, The Family hits its targets far more often than it misses them, the overwhelming firepower that De Niro, Pfeiffer, Jones and Besson bring to the table undeniably impressive.

Insidious Story Continues Down a Familiar Path Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) has saved his son. Journeying into the realm between life and death, he has reunited eldest Dalton (Ty Simpkins) with his soul, saving him from a demonic presence that wanted to use the child as a vessel to return to the land of the […]

Touchy Feely is as far removed from Your Sister’s Sister and Humpday as you can get, the whimsical, freewheeling nature of the narrative both absurdist yet surprisingly tetchy. But its eccentricities are remarkably concrete, while the ephemeral nature of the idea itself is grounded in a real world familial aesthetic that’s easy to relate to.

“My philosophy is, better to be surprised than be satisfied. Better to be upset than bored to death.”
– Richard Raaphorst

The Frozen Ground holds the viewer’s attention extremely well, and while everything does indeed build to a rather forgone conclusion (it’s not exactly a secret what happens), getting there still manages to be a disturbingly satisfying trip.

Yet as much as he and Diesel love the character, as beholden to the fans as they feel to do him justice, Riddick is frustratingly half-baked. It never goes to the level that it needs to in order to fully succeed, following in the footsteps in the successful entry of the series oddly afraid to slice and dice a pathway entirely of its own design. The perceived failure of the last outing has made the pair, of all things, timid, a trait that sadly shows its colors far too much of the time, and if stories with this character are going to continue than that’s one facet that has to immediately change.

Cretton understands his story and his characters in ways that are inspiring, never once belittling them or taking them for granted. The final moments of Short Term 12 are as refreshingly invigorating as any I could have dreamt of, and as such the filmmaker’s latest effort is cause for complete and total celebration.

Austenland is a sitcom masquerading as a feature, and while for some that will be just fine, I’m not one of those who typically finds such pieces of pop entertainment all that worthwhile. I simply don’t see the appeal, this love letter to Jane Austen an envelope better left unopened.