Movie reviews of Eric Hillis

What we have here is a classic example of Hollywood execs wanting to have their cake and eat it, all too happy to cash in on the name recognition of an existing property, but too embarrassed by the source material to remain true to it. Review

A Walk Among the Tombstones is far from ground-breaking, nor is it particularly original, but there's enough here to satisfy fans of the gumshoe genre. Review

The ensemble cast is great, with Firth stealing the show with a performance reminiscent of Alvy Singer and Basil Fawlty trapped in the one body. Review

The premise of Maps to the Stars might be somewhat timeworn, but there's an undeniable pleasure in watching its cast essay such a rogues gallery with relish. Review

The ensuing mayhem resembles something from a 70s horror movie, and manipulative though it may be, it's impossible not to feel your blood boiling at the antics of these self-entitled gits. Review

As with Garden State, Braff fills the movie with "feel now!" moments accompanied by middle of the road indie folk and even recited poetry, borrowing emotion that, like everything else about this project, will never be reciprocated. Review

Remove the comedy and In Order of Disappearance could have been a satisfying grym film, but sadly it's just the latest crime caper to fall somewhere below Tarantino and somewhere above Guy Ritchie. Review

If you're after a high octane spy thriller, you won't find it here. What you will find is an immaculately constructed and realistic look at the workings of Western intelligence, with a signature Hoffman performance that serves as a worthy bookend to his cinematic legacy. Review

Little details like this quickly pile up, so by the midpoint of the story we've lost all faith in the script. When the end credits roll, you'll wish you could temporarily suffer amnesia, so you can wipe the memory of this headache inducer. Review

The setting of Paris's famous catacombs, built to house the city's dead and now home to six million corpses, automatically adds a creepy atmosphere, and the movie succeeds initially by leaving things to our imagination and allowing us to half-glimpse images in the shadows. Towards the end, however, we enter crash, bang and wallop territory, and the movie begins to feel like a Youtube walk-through of a horror themed video game. Review

Reichardt removes all the usual tropes of the suspense thriller, and the result is a film that will test the patience of many a viewer. Stick with it though and you'll find it's an effective character drama, with a trio of cracking central performances. Review

While The Guest feels like a product of a more innocent era, it never explicitly references any earlier works, and never winks knowingly at its audience. This is a film that's unashamedly proud to be a genre movie, and so it should be, as it's the best thriller we've seen in a long, long time. Review

The film is comprised of three storylines, but I use that term loosely. They're really just jokes with no punchlines, and are so uninspired they would have been rejected by the producers of the worst of those many anthology series that clogged up Cable TV schedules in the 80s. Review

As it is, we'll have to file it under flawed, almost-masterpiece. Review

For a movie from the writer of The Station Agent and the director of Lars and the Real Girl, this is as safe and sugary as they come, but the charisma of Hamm, Bell and Arkin, combined with that indefinable romance of the featured sport, make it watchable for baseball novices. Review

Her character's immature potty mouth makes her intensely unlikable, but the film itself also trades in gutter humour. Review

The visual effects are very impressive, but all this hard work is wasted, as it never plays into creating any suspense or tension. Review

Like 2011's Limitless, Lucy is based on the ludicrous notion that humans only use 10% of our brain power. After watching the movie, I felt like I had lost 90% of my brain cells. Review

Deliver Us From Evil purports to be inspired by a real-life cop/priest duo in the NYPD. That sounds like the basis for a very interesting movie, but this isn't it. Review

Like the best parties, you won't remember a thing about The Expendables 3 the following morning, but you'll be glad you were there. Review

Relying on the charm of its cast rather than pulling you into anything approaching a story, What If feels like a pilot for a TV comedy series. It promises much but delivers little, yet you're left wanting more from its infectious characters. Review

Take away its instagram indie veneer and WGGOOTP is the sort of C-grade thriller that would have gone straight to video shelves back in the 90s. Review

Whatever you might think of his contentious off-screen persona, on-screen Depardieu is a big ball of charisma, and it's easy to see Deveraux as a seductive charmer, exuding a little boy lost vulnerability despite the protection of his wealth and status. Review

For a movie about fine cuisine, The Hundred Foot Journey is as bland as a service station panini; it'll fill a hole for a couple of hours, but you won't be thinking about it for too long afterwards. Review