Movie reviews of Alex Brannan

It is more harm than good. Review

The film is like Spring Breakers meets The Purge but with more on its mind. Yet its ultimate message does not live up to its lofty satiric ambitions. Review

Armed with a well-known, inherently engaging story. But it doesn’t do much with it. Review

An entirely adequate horror-fantasy adventure for children. Review

It is sharply written and packed with tense emotions. When the film is not directly informed by Close’s performance, however, it quickly loses its way. Review

Not a good film, per se. In some instances, it is barely coherent. But it is an experience, one that kept me rapt until the very end. Review

More of a comedy than the sci-fi-horror-action hybrid that the franchise is known for. And most of this comedy is groan-worthy, at best. Review

Comes off as a derivative true crime film that has been filled to the brim with acting talent to hide the fact that the characters have no character to them. Review

An intriguing comic design that yields some smirks, but in total it is a comedy of absurdist pretension with much more bark than bite. Review

It all reeks of a certain stock and trade, one in which the audience expects little enough that anything above mediocre will suffice. Review

Not entirely unwatchable, but entirely unremarkable. Review

A fascinating examination of modern day criminal detection. Review

It is clear that, structurally, Kin is a disaster. What it does have going for it is fairly decent acting. Review

Puzzle is an insular drama with an interesting protagonist. Review

Makes for an interesting concept ill-serviced by under-cooked plotting. Review

The dramatic weight of the World War II subject matter has been more effectively weighty before. Review

Simply unfunny, The Happytime Murders has so little substance that it is hard to even discuss it. Review

A grimy film with little to say for itself. Review

A character-driven romantic film that leans into tropes without falling victim to them. Review

The humor isn’t funny, and, when it comes down to it, the film wants to be Jaws. Review

We are somersaulting toward a resolution that fails to cash in on the immersive storytelling that came before. Review

It just fails to strike a balance, and, as such, the comedy often does not land. Review

The fuzzy characters doing and saying big-hearted things is all well and good, but it does not remedy the glaring issues in the plot and its messaging. Review

There are blockbuster-level action set pieces. Between these sequences, though, the film reads much more flat... Review