Reviews

Extraordinarily of the moment without underlining and bolding it.

Feels like a movie about writers by people who have only glimpsed the practice from afar, understanding little about an author’s mind or the literary community in which the work and the writers exist.

It is possible for good songs to have some clunky lyrics, and “Hearts Beat Loud” mostly rises above moments in which the feeling feels cheap.

Does little more than bob alongside every other title in the human vs. sea genre.

The theme is just too basic and the tone is too stilted for this to work.

Ultimately overcomes its exhausting, poorly staged comic bits to register as a testament to the resilience of kids and follies of parents.

Plays like Nicholas Sparks’ innocent kid sister, where the world is defined by piers and acoustic guitars and death’s ever-looming interruption of love.

There are interesting realities just outside the edges of the film, which would rather move the pieces than tip them over.

Screams amateur hour, not veteran Oscar winner.

Labors inside the sort of buffoonery that “Burn After Reading” achieved with much more cohesive performances and comic richness.

Anything intended to land as satire of the entitled only hovers as both familiar and unrefined.

The idea that Graham would deliver a movie that offers a corrective to, say, her small part in the misogynistic “The Hangover,” is more than welcome. Instead, she often settles for bland, cliché and amateur.

Might have been an Ivy League-pedigreed “The Wolf of Wall Street” for the comedy set -- appreciating the lowbrow takedown of the high-minded as well as the impact of pressure and money on friendship. “A Futile and Stupid Gesture” doesn't even deserve to carry the “The Social Network”’s books.