A.O. Scott

Mediocre movies suffer from a deficit of imagination. Truly bad ones, in contrast, are afflicted by imagination run amok, unchecked by formal discipline or competence. Show less «

Paperboy (2012) is what cinema scholars (and speakers fluent in the film's native idiom) might call a hot mess. Show less «

The only explicable thing about Babylon A.D. (2008) is that it was not screened in advance for critics. Show less «

To watch The tree of life - l'arbre de vie (2011) is, in analogous fashion, to participate in its making. And any criticism will therefore have to be provisional. [Terrence Malick] might have been well advised to leave out the dinosaurs and the trip to the afterlife and given us a delicate chronicle of a young man's struggle with his father and himself, set against a backdrop of rapid social change. And perhaps [Herman Melville] should have suppressed his philosophizing impulses and written a lively tale of a whaling voyage. Show less «

It's funny how much people complain about spoilers, when so many plots are the same. This is partly because so many movies fit comfortably into established genres, and much of the time moviegoers seek out the comforts of familiarity. Following genre conventions is not necessarily a sign of failure - some of the best movies ever are perfectly orthodox westerns, detective stories, melodramas and marriage comedies - and flouting them is not in itself a virtue. But it can be thrilling to see something that feels new, risky or unusual, and even to venture into the realm of the confounding. Show less «