Movie reviews of Eric Hillis

Oxygen plays its story with a straight face, and its sober tone and lack of emotional engagement makes its real time 100 minutes suffocating for the wrong reasons. Review

Zhao is as poetic a filmmaker as it gets, the closest to a John Ford figure we have today; and like that great American master, she knows where to find poetry in America, in its people and its panoramas. Review

There's an interesting movie somewhere in Here Are the Young Men, or maybe a better adaptation of Doyle's book. Ironically, it suffers from a filmmaker who seems intent on following the example of others rather than forging his own creative path. Review

Things Heard & Seen desperately wants to be a horror movie for our moment, but it's unlikely to haunt your thoughts for more than a minute. Review

It's difficult to imagine audiences clamouring for the further adventures of John Kelly/Clark, as this potential franchise runs out of ideas halfway through its first instalment. Review

These characters are so uninteresting and their journey so monotonous that by the time they're in danger you couldn't care less who makes it off the island. Review

Beast Beast doesn't quite coalesce as neatly as it might like, but there's something affecting about its rough edges. Mining three striking performances from his young leads and displaying a talent for structuring a story to elicit the maximum build-up of tension, Madden has marked himself as one to watch. Review

Regardless of the racial issues, it never really grapples with its central theme of how human lives are valued by education level and skills. After all its tortured moodiness, it ultimately comes down to another protracted scene in which someone has to venture outside the shuttle and take a dangerous space walk to repair a doohickey. Review

Laid out on paper, The Oak Room may not spin the most original story, but in Calahan, Genoway and their grizzled ensemble of motormouths, we're treated to a captivating spin on some old standards. Review

Using limited means, Robinson and Young have crafted an engaging horror story that focusses on the one element so often overlooked by low budget practitioners of the genre – the people at its centre. Review

O'Brien is affable enough as Joel, but after setting him up as a nebbish in the opening scenes, the film fails to exploit the comic potential of how out of depth he is. Review

Agutter perfectly captures Wynne's contradictory mix of naivete and precociousness. Review

I suspect Marshall may have been aiming to create a sort of b-horror Passion of Joan of Arc, along the lines of how Roger Corman and Vincent Price gave us a glorious drive-in take on Shakespeare with Tower of London, but the movie doesn't embrace its trashiness enough to compensate for how dull the whole affair is. Review

It is Ahmed’s tight performance which keeps Sound of Metal’s emotional rhythm on point. Review

But for all its structural smarts, Palm Springs works because of its charm. It's a light-hearted delight anchored by two winning performances from Samberg and Milioti. Review

It's ironic that a filmmaker from China found a natural home in this corner of America – what a shame that she too has now been tempted by the bright lights of Los Angeles, as you can't help but feel that Pine Ridge has many more stories to tell. Review

Though A Common Crime is set in modern day Argentina, it's very much dealing with the ghosts of that era, how those who kept silent are haunted by the spirits of the dead. Review

While Silent Action is never quite as gripping as it might have been, it's an entertaining distillation of everything that was occurring in both Italy's cinema and its politics in the '70s, a fruitful time on screen if a fearful era on the streets. Review

It's a shame The Power couldn't explore its theme in a more nuanced, genre-savvy fashion. Review

I hated Antebellum, but I found myself interrogating just why it rubbed me the wrong way. Review

Run might be described as a bigger budget Lifetime thriller of the week, but for all their cheese, Lifetime thrillers generally boast much more airtight plotlines than can be found in Chaganty's difficult second movie. Review

Said scrap, when it finally arrives, is entertaining enough, but by that point you'll probably have already dozed off. Review

Nostalgia only gets you so far, and as the predictable plot unspools you'll likely be reminded that with a few exceptions, those '90s thrillers simply weren't very good. Review

Concrete Cowboy is a formulaic urban story occasionally enlivened by the texture gifted by its amateur but authentic supporting cast. Review