Brett Cullen

With a simple premise and plenty of visual style, Spanish filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra (Unknown) takes the audience on a terrifying odyssey involving a lone woman and a menacing shark. What emerges is a gruelling one-woman show, as Blake Lively throws herself into a ferocious cat and mouse game that's relentlessly suspenseful.

She plays Nancy, a young medical school drop-out on a pilgrimage to a mythical beach her mother told her about before dying of cancer. So she has very personal reasons to visit it. And with the help of nice-guy guide Carlos (Oscar Jaenada), she finds it on a remote stretch of Mexico's coastline. After video chatting with her father and sister (Brett Cullen and Sedona Legge), she paddles out to join a couple of local surfers. Then when she decides to stay for one last wave on her own, the great white pounces. Injured and alone, she takes refuge on a tiny rock that will disappear when the tide rises. And in order to survive, she'll have to get creative.

Shot in Australia, the film is carefully assembled to ratchet up the intensity right from the start. Collet-Serra gleefully stirs in plenty of creepy Jaws-like insinuation, hinting at what's coming long before he reveals the enormous single-minded shark. The combination of digital effects and rubbery models never quite looks real, but the film is so sharply well-made that we never mind. And besides, Lively does a great job at convincing us that she's in proper peril. This is a full-bodied performance, so grounded and authentic that Lively is able to take the audience through the ordeal right with Nancy. Her experience in the water is bolstered through visions and flashbacks that add a surprising emotions. And her banter with Carlos offers some insight into her feisty personality.

Continue reading: The Shallows Review

Virtually impossible to market, this film isn't nearly as wacky and rude as its cast and crew suggest. Despite the presence of Rogen (Pineapple Express) and Streisand (Meet the Fockers), plus writer Fogelman (Crazy Stupid Love), director Fletcher (The Proposal) and producer Goldberg (Superbad), this is actually a warm, gentle comedy about the relationship between a mother and son. Sure, there are moments of inspired silliness, but you're more likely to feel a lump in your throat than a stitch in your side.

Rogen plays the science nerd Andrew, who has just invented an organic cleaning product and is taking a cross-country trip to find a buyer. In a moment of weakness, he invites his meddling mother Joyce (Streisand) to join him on the road from New Jersey to San Francisco. She doesn't know that he has discovered that her old flame now lives in California, and he hopes that sparking her love life might get her off his back. But their time together takes some unexpected turns, which change their relationship forever.

Even in the film's goofier segments, such as a ridiculous beef-eating contest Joyce enters in Texas, Fletcher and Fogelman keep the characters likeable and grounded. Streisand is especially impressive, delivering a layered performance that mixes broad one-liners with more internalised emotions. She's much more than just a pushy Jewish mother: Joyce is a middle-aged woman with needs of her own and real love for her son. Meanwhile, Rogen plays Andrew as a nice guy with social issues. So instead of rooting for Joyce and Andrew to sort out their relationship, or even for Andrew to sell his invention, we are more interested in whether Joyce will be able to reignite her personal life.

Continue reading: The Guilt Trip Review

At only 15, Cherie Currie (Fanning) is overwhelmed when Joan Jett (Stewart) asks her to front her band The Runaways. With the encouragement of music promoter Kim Fowley (Shannon), Cherie becomes an iconic presence on stage and off, propelling the group into previously uncharted territory as female rockers. And while Joan and the other bandmates (Maeve, Taylor-Compton and Shawkat) take the lifestyle in their stride, Cherie is continually drawn back to her big sister (Keough) and absent parents (O'Neal and Cullen).

Continue reading: The Runaways Review

The Replacements is a hokey mistake of a football film, a mishmash collage of one-dimensional characters, rampant stereotypes of cultures and races, cliched emotional statements of purpose, and Keanu Reeves wishing for The Matrix sequel to start principal photography. The story is loosely based around the pro football players' strike in 1987 and a rag-tag team of replacement football players taking up the reins of professional play for a variety of teams with names like the Washington Sentinels. Keanu Reeves stars as Shane Falco, a has-been football college player looking for redemption. Gene Hackman dons a fedora like Tom Landry and speaks with gusto like a certain coach in Hoosiers.

Continue reading: The Replacements Review