Movie reviews of Eric Hillis

Despite a run-time of 135 minutes, the film somehow never manages to find time to develop any of its characters. Review

This just might be Elisabeth Moss's best performance to date. All snot and runny mascara, she resembles a clown hit by a car and left for dead in the rain. We'd give her a hug if we didn't believe she'd stab us in the back. Review

Yonebayashi's movie may not stand up to the classics of the studio, but if Ghibli is to carry on in some form or other, we're in safe hands on this evidence. Review

If you can accept the printing of a dubious legend and embrace your white privilege, Race has enough to keep you entertained, but this is a story that needed to be told from an African-American perspective with no concessions to the fragility of white guilt. Review

Go With Me is a movie that skillfully uses what could be dismissed as clichés and tropes in its narrative to allow for a subtle exploration of its characters' motivations, never bragging about its sly commentary on and deconstruction of its genre. It plays like a companion piece to Jeremy Saulnier's Blue Ruin, but it's ultimately the more rewarding of the two. Review

The problem with Me Before You's stance on euthanasia is that it constantly tells us how much pain Will is in, but never dares to back this up visually, making it all too easy for those who oppose the practice to dismiss the film as an offensive and demeaning take on life for the disabled. Review

Watching someone play the game itself would probably constitute a far more rewarding experience than having to endure the movie, and at least you could ask the gamer to explain what exactly it is you're watching; this isn't entertainment, it's homework. Review

Shane Black is back to doing what he does best, a buddy action comedy, with characters of his own imagining, and the result is one of the most deliriously enjoyable movies to come out of mainstream American cinema since... well, since Iron Man 3. Review

I've long been on the fence with regard to the validity of Beckinsale's talents as an actress - her filmography is loaded with stinkers - but her career-best performance here suggests the problem lies with her choice of roles. This almost feels like a debut, giving us a side of the English actress we've rarely seen before as she rampages through this film like a force of nature. Review

Watching talented movie stars embrace and enjoy their roles as much as the actors appear to here always provides a degree of entertainment, but there are far better movies out there you could invest your own savings in. Review

Steggall pulls out some clichéd imagery - none more so than Elliott's submersion under water, that most trite and over-used cinematic shorthand for depression - and a scene involving Elliott's experimentation with a carrot is unintentionally amusing. It's an unconvincing debut from its writer-director, but the performances of Lawther and Stevenson just about tip Departure over the line. Review

Lewis is truly awful here, but it's Riseborough's bewildering accent that really derails the film as we attempt to figure out where the hell her character is meant to be from. The script's stubborn refusal to clear this up makes her character the film's most infuriating element. Review

Rise is a bit like a prison sentence; at the start you’re unsure what to expect, but, very soon, you find yourself trapped within the solid narrative, and intimidated by the forceful characters. That’s as far as the metaphor goes though, as, in a complete contrast to the prison experience, Rise is never boring. Review

With a bunch of characters that could easily carry their own solo movies, it's a shame that X-Men: Apocalypse teases their potential early on, only to gradually turn them into indistinguishable figures duking it out in the ruins of yet another destroyed city. Review

It's the sort of movie in which websites concerning the paranormal all appear to have been designed on geocities in 1999. It's the sort of movie in which every TV set glimpsed is always playing a public domain horror movie. It's the sort of movie genre snobs use as a weapon to beat on horror fans. Review

Lindon is fantastic in a quiet role that requires him to act as an emotional punching bag as Thierry goes from one degrading scenario to the next. It's impossible not to root for this guy, but while you may be shouting "Give him a job!" during the film's first half, by the end you'll be pleading for him to quit his soul destroying position. Review

The Carroll estate may be counting the cash, but I suspect old Lewis is turning in his grave at the thoughts of his little book of wonder being transformed (oh, that reminds me, there are Transformers in this - no, seriously) into this soulless sequel. If Burton's film was a poor man's Wizard of Oz, this is a second rate Return to Oz. Review

Bad Neighbours 2 is so commendably progressive in its outlook, a feature notably lacking from most mainstream Hollywood comedies, that it goes some way to brushing over its reliance on lowest common denominator comedy. Its mind may be in the gutter, but its heart is in the right place. Review

Though written and directed by Tom Tykwer, a filmmaker often accused of style over substance, A Hologram for the King is exactly the sort of movie you might expect from someone like Lasse Hallstrom, another European who began life as a somewhat celebrated auteur only to find himself in the realms of journeyman mediocrity. Review

The makers of the recent spate of American Christian themed movies could learn a lot from Journey to the Shore, a movie that wears its spiritualism on its sleeve, but doesn't feel the need to rub said sleeve in your face. There's nothing mean spirited or bigoted about its message, and as an atheist I had no difficulty identifying with and warming to its central conceit. Review

Better suited to a two-night TV mini series, Our Kind of Traitor is very much a character drama, and it boasts a cast well up to that task (Lewis is a standout as a very British spy), but the story's players are paper thin at best, caricatures at worst. Our Kind of Traitor isn't my kind of thriller, and it probably won't be yours. Review

Malick offers us so much stunning imagery here - an astronaut's view of the earth bathed in the emerald light of the aurora borealis and a multi-storey car showroom at night, standing out in the LA night like a barroom aquarium - that even if you fail to engage with his film's theme, there should be enough eye candy on display to keep anyone remotely interested in cinema dazzled for two hours. Review

Director Joe Stephenson fits comfortably in the lineage of great British social realist filmmakers like Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, Alan Clarke and Shane Meadows with an assured, confident and mature debut behind the camera, while young actor Scott Chambers delivers a contender for performance of the year in his first feature lead role. Review

The film conveys the appeal of music in an explicit manner lacking in most biopics of genuinely talented performers. In many ways it could be considered a musical companion to Tim Burton's Ed Wood, as both movies are celebrations of talentless yet undoubtedly passionate figures. Review