Movie reviews of Eric Hillis

What saves the movie is the performance of Efron, who just may be the natural heir to Tom Cruise. Like all great movie stars, he has a knack of papering over the film's many cracks, forcing us to invest in his character in a way both his director and the script fail to. Review

The dialogue is simply atrocious, so bad it probably wouldn't make it into the cut scenes of the video game. The lack of effort on the page however isn't mirrored in the visuals; this is a simply stunning movie to behold. Review

Relentlessly grim, and delivered at a cracking pace, No Escape's spiritual home is the drive-in, but it's worth catching at the multiplex too. Review

Sinister 2 opts for horror's lowest common denominators - jump scares and gore - but the genre has moved on. No more cattle-prod cinema! Snuff's enough! Review

Ullmann shoots her cast like the director of a football match during an extended timeout for injury. At 130 minutes, this will test the patience of all but the most enthusiastic theatre buffs. Review

Like a nap in a Normandy field on an August afternoon, Gemma Bovery is a serene but ultimately empty experience. It will, however, be interesting to see how Arterton's burgeoning sideline in Gallic cinema develops. Review

Chen gives a committed performance, and certainly generates sympathy, but the hysterical, menopausal heroine is becoming something of an arthouse cliché. Review

At one point Mistress America morphs into an almost self-contained one-act play. It's in this sequence that Gerwig takes over the movie, prowling around like the love-child of Carole Lombard and Katherine Hepburn, and it's all the better for it. Review

Whatever intentions Schumer and Apatow had for Trainwreck, they've delivered a numbingly mainstream comedy. The woman may be on top, but the position hasn't changed. Review

If you're a fan of the original show, there's much to infuriate about this new interpretation. I understand the movie has to appeal to as large an audience as possible, and rightly so, but the film seems to go out of its way to distance itself from its source. Review

Cub is clearly made by a horror fan, for horror fans, who I think will appreciate the many tropes in the film that are associated with the genre. Unfortunately, the film as a whole just doesn’t seem to fit together. Review

It's interesting that in Pixels, nostalgia literally comes back to destroy us - pop eating itself like Pac-Man chewing down pellets - but I'd probably be giving the film too much credit should I suggest this is an intended subtext. Review

A common complaint about comic book adaptations is how visually uninteresting they are, and with 90% of the movie set in a laboratory, Fantastic Four leads us to wonder in bemusement at where its $122 million budget was spent. Review

It's a rare movie that will appeal as much to teenage girls as adults. A teenage audience may well nod along to Minnie's words and actions, but the rest of us will frown, chuckle, and worry. In our own ways, we'll both be correct. Review

I'm struggling to recall a thriller so content to display a lack of originality on the scale of Marshland. If you've seen Twin Peaks, The Killing, or any of the many Nordic Noirs that have gained prominence in the culture lately, none of the plot beats here will come as a surprise. Review

David Gordon Green has dabbled in magic realism before, but never to this degree. It's an aspect that will likely prove frustrating for viewers expecting a standard character drama, but it adds a fascinating extra dimension to an otherwise mundane slice of working class Americana. Review

Essentially 'Gordon Gekko hunts human prey', the film can't quite decide whether it's a scathing, serious social commentary or a down and dirty drive-in flick. The bones of a decent B-movie are here, but it seems they've been picked dry by vultures. Review

Chih-yen Yee has fashioned his film in a way that will appeal to a child audience more effectively than adults, thanks to the political subtext, which feels didactic and forced in a way children won't notice. Review

As summer popcorn fodder goes, Rogue Nation is perfectly serviceable, but this franchise seems to have run out of steam at this point, and the face-mask trick really needs retiring. A Skyfall type reboot may be required for Hunt and friends if we're to accept any further missions. Review

Eden expresses itself in such a low key manner that it's all too easy to mistake its subtlety for superficiality. It's arguably the most interesting look at the power of language since Godard's King Lear. Review

Everyone involved is far too good for this material and it's arguably a career low for the entire cast, none of whom appear remotely comfortable here, as if they've been reluctantly enlisted for a Comic Relief skit. As Barney Thomson would say himself, it's "shite!"... Review

The fact that all the characters share the same names as the actors playing them tells you a lot about the lack of creativity at play here. Once again, horror - that most cinematic of genres - has been reduced to a series of blurry night vision shots of feet. Review

Why you should be asked to wear 3D glasses for a movie that consists overwhelmingly of close-ups of talking heads is beyond me. Ant-Man isn't Marvel's worst movie (it'll take some doing to beat Thor: The Dark World in that regard), but it's certainly its least cinematic. Review

Much of what we get here was covered in far more insightful style in the original Planet of the Apes series, and when a horde of angry citizens are baying for blood in the film's all too late climax you'll be forgiven for imagining hearing a chant of "Ape shall never kill ape! Review