We expect more than we eventually get, even if what we get is watchable throughout.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 8, 2011

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 8, 2011

[A] breathless, enjoyable comedy-thriller based on the true story of how Hassidic Jews were recruited as mules in the late 1990s to smuggle ecstasy pills from Amsterdam into New York.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 7, 2011

Jesse Eisenberg, in the main role, enhances the film again and again with his comic timing and ability to nail the part of a sheltered ingnu with an incipient rebel streak. It might be dodgy merchandise, but he sells it all the same.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 7, 2011

This is more accurately a film about a revolution against innocence and the vacuum it leaves behind.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 7, 2011

This is moviemaking on autopilot.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 6, 2011

If ecstasy was as boring as this film about it then the war on drugs would've been over 25 years ago.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 3, 2011

Jewish clichs can be forgiven as Asch revisits the shtetl for his crime tale that shines a light upon a society within via one rebel's secular awakening.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 16, 2011

It's not a terrible movie, but all the way through you feel as if you've already seen it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 25, 2010

It's sadder and scarier than its predecessors, but it also may be the most important chapter in the tale.

| Jun 18, 2010

The scenes of family conflict are sketchily dramatized. We never get to the place where the two parts of Sam's personality meet -- the devoted son and sharp-dealing criminal.

| Jun 18, 2010

As a thriller, it's bubkes.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 17, 2010

The tense dynamic between these two fine actors, not to mention Asch's confident feel for New York City circa the late-1990s, keeps this slightly undercooked but wholly engrossing melodrama on course.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 11, 2010

Holy Rollers offers an intriguing portrait of an insular community, but its recounting of the seduction of a bright young man by the surrounding culture is heavy-handed.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 10, 2010

I think [Eisenberg is] a much more astute and detailed actor then some people give him credit for.

Full Review | Jun 7, 2010

Eisenberg showed this character's dilemma in, I thought, a really smart way.

Full Review | Jun 7, 2010

How could such a high concept sink so low?

| Original Score: C- | Jun 4, 2010

It feels like too many character corners were cut, removing the depth that would make the proceedings believable, and leaving only the clich.

| Jun 4, 2010

Inspired by an actual late-1990s case in which young Orthodox Brooklynites served as mules for an international drug ring, Holy Rollers has a great dramatic premise and no idea where to take it.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 3, 2010

This lackluster indie proves that the flattening power of cliche can trump even the most exotic social setting.

| Jun 3, 2010