Steve Coogan has seldom been better or sourer as the irascible Paul.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 11, 2017

An absolutely first-rate cast is cut adrift in a sea of laboured, overwritten dialogue in this disappointing drama.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 10, 2017

You can see where this is heading, but it just doesn't work, and most of that, sadly, is down to Coogan.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 8, 2017

You can see the points [director Oren] Moverman is trying to make, but it's just a pity that the dialogue isn't sharper and that the protagonists are so thoroughly unsympathetic.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 7, 2017

The first course will be family dysfunction with a sprig of bitter wit. The second course will be fraternal foreboding crushed in a mortar of historical resonance and symbolism. ... The third course - oh the hell with that. Let's have the bill.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 6, 2017

Brittle, stiff and frustratingly chopped about in a restless bid to break free from its claustrophobic setting, The Dinner is a far from satisfying feast, despite its appetising cast.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 6, 2017

Not even a powerhouse cast can rescue this talky parable about how far parents will go to protect their kids.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 5, 2017

The Dinner had the bones of a decent thriller. Instead, we're saddled with something that's tonally confusing and obtuse, that by the time the real action happens, it's too late.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 13, 2017

Even with a top-notch cast and fine performances, the film is a long, bleak dirge.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 8, 2017

At the heart of it all is a moral dilemma about the responsibilities attached to being a parent and the question of just how far you would go to protect your child. Nor does it stop there. It goes on to ask what such protection actually means.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 6, 2017

As focus lurches distractingly from the heated dinner-table debate to a zigzagging network of flashbacks, momentum fatally stalls, while the illustrious ensemble of actors at the film's center never quite gets cooking.

| May 26, 2017

Despite the skill of the cast, you spend much of the film trying to decide which of its characters most deserves to choke on an appetizer.

| May 15, 2017

The Dinner is two hours of unrelenting nastiness, steeped in the trappings of extreme wealth and the toxic privilege it affords.

| May 12, 2017

Although Moverman's cinematic style can be physically uncomfortable to experience, it's impossible to turn away from the quartet of incredible performances.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 11, 2017

Potential game-changing touch: this time, it's the politician and not his middle-class brother who is in favor of exposing the truth.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 5, 2017

Coogan's dramatic performance is unmatched: raw, intense, satiric, self-immolating. There is not a moment when he is not being frighteningly honest, searching out the mortifying nooks and crannies of his often petty character and exposing them.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 5, 2017

There are bumps along the way, but Moverman and his top-tier cast (Gere, Coogan, Hall and Linney) take a piece out of you. It's a gripping psychological thriller with a sting in its tail.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 5, 2017

A meal that just doesn't leave you feeling full in any way.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 5, 2017

Coogan's pinched Paul is a magnificently detailed portrait of a man whose intelligence and hurt give way to neurosis and depression as the actor paints many shades between eccentricity and mental illness.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 4, 2017

The tone and thrust of Oren Moverman's adaptation of Howard Koch's novel is damn near impossible to pin down, which can be a compliment, but isn't here.

| May 4, 2017