Scott Tobias

Writer/director Elijah Bynum's debut feature, a "nostalgia-soaked coming-of-age drama set in 1991 Cape Cod," is so beholden to its influences it never manages to escape their shadow.

Photographer/documentarian Lauren Greenfield (The Queen of Versailles) offers many examples of excessive wealth around the globe, but the resulting portrait lacks a clear point of view.

A dispute over a tree brings two neighboring households into grimly escalating conflict in this Icelandic comedy so pitch-black that "the laughs are strictly of the stuck-in-the-throat variety."

Despite a fascinating subject and an impressive cast, this tale of MLB catcher Moe Berg's stint as an OSS agent simply presents the facts without generating any insights.

This "hit-or-miss goof" of an ensemble comedy, about grown men playing a child's game, features a loaded cast, a great soundtrack and impressive action set-pieces.

While it's raunchier than Love, Simon - if less self-assured — writer-director Craig Johnson's film about a teen (Daniel Doheny) attempting to figure himself out is just as "deeply conventional."

Adrift, starring Sam Claflin and Shailene Woodley, could have been a generic disaster film, if not for some clever editing that helps pull together its themes.

When the film puts its four leads together, it sparkles. When they're apart, it's simply "a pleasant, low-stakes affair, as numbing as a two-glass buzz."

Gabrielle Union stars in a thriller that fails on the fundamentals, and never capitalizes on its setting — a tricked-out, high-security family estate.

Critic Scott Tobias says the updated Anna Faris/Eugenio Derbez take on the 1987 comedy is "not a particularly funny film, but it's big-hearted and sincere, with fine chemistry between the two leads."

Two young women (Alia Shawkat and Laia Costa) launch into a relationship, resolving to be completely truthful with each other. The film's insistent nature lacks subtlety or modulation.

Sophie Fiennes' film about the legendary performer "achieve[s] a level of intimacy and candor ... that's uncommon for documentaries about figures who control their images this closely."

Director John Krasinski's tense, well-acted horror film is about a family attempting to survive an invasion by terrifying creatures who hunt via sound.

Reynolds plays a vain, pathetic version of himself in a film full of moments so sappy and overplayed they feel "less like self-deprecation than elder abuse."

Max Winkler's tale of a teenager who uses sex to get revenge on a man who may or may not have assaulted her step-brother is a "glib character study" that tries too hard to shock.

Many noir thrillers play with misogynistic ideas, but "68 Kill keeps the hostility and loses the self-deprecation, which turns it into an example of misogyny rather than an examination of it."

"It may be style over substance," says critic Scott Tobias of this spy thriller starring a butt-kicking Charlize Theron, "but wow what style!"

Meanwhile, Back at the Raunch: This tale of four women letting loose in the Big Easy hits familiar beats, but Tiffany Haddish's "incandescently filthy" turn as Dina proves a revelation.

In writer-director Marti Noxon's drama, a young woman (Lily Collins) battles anorexia at an in-patient facility. The film, rounded out by a great cast, offers a knowing, intimate take on the disease.

Based on the novel by Eleanor Catton, The Rehearsal follows a young drama student unable to resist using a friend's misfortune as fodder for his art.