Drew McWeeny

If you’re in the mood to laugh until various parts of you hurt for a multitude of reasons, then I have a feeling Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping will accomplish the goal. And then some.

It’s mind-boggling that this entire thing was shot on soundstages using greenscreens. Favreau’s jungle feels like a real place, but it’s heightened and stylized and it feels like a perfect fit for the talking animals who make up the majority of the cast.

This is a film that suggests that Morehead and Benson have something important to share with their work.

I think Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is the most consistently entertaining, most laser-focused entry in the series so far, and while I would argue that it is very much a sequel to the third film and not just a disconnected piece of a flexible franchise, it is also a great rollicking self-contained spy movie adventure on a grand scale, and it's preposterous fun.

Gone Girl is not Fincher's best film, nor is it the most conventionally satisfying of them, but it feels like this is a movie that represents the very best that Hollywood craft can offer at the moment.

This is a case of all the elements lining up and pushing a potentially good film into the great category because of just how well executed it is.

The Interview is laugh out loud funny all the way through, and once again proves that Rogen and Goldberg will do anything, no matter how dark, for a big laugh, and that character is just as important as punchlines in their work.

Plot is unimportant. Family is everything, and Furious 7 is a blast.

By making this look like the sort of film that studios think of when they think of animation, but subverting the very nature of those movies, Sausage Party is more than funny. It’s downright revolutionary.

Palo Alto is the sort of debut picture that makes me eager to see how Gia Coppola is going to grow and change as an artist, but it's more than just a demonstration of potential.

Beautifully shot, impeccably paced, and with a voice cast that nails it in every role, large or small, "The Lego Movie" is a genuine delight.

It is rowdy at heart, but smart about it, and it is one more reminder that Channing Tatum is really not like anyone else working in movies right now. It is also celebratory in the way that the first film was sad, concerned more with self-acceptance than running from something.

Say what you will, but Pixar understands innately that making their audience feel something deeply is the greatest magic trick in movies, and all of their work as technicians and artists are always focused on making that happen. Finding Dory may be familiar magic, but there’s magic in it all the same.

I was moved by Interstellar, and there are stretches where it is as good and as pure as anything Nolan's made. You can feel just how important all of it is to him in every frame of the thing. I don't love all of the film's dramatic choices, though.

The details are what matters, and the script by Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber, adapted from the well-loved novel by John Green, is very smart and fairly unsentimental, which works to the material's advantage.

This is a film of tactile decadence, such a rich sensory experience that it's almost suffocating.

John Wick won't redefine action movies, but it perfectly exemplifies what I want from an action film when I go. Have fun with the world, shoot the action well, motivate it in a way that doesn't feel cheap.

The film is at its best when it simply focuses on this strange dynamic between the two couples and the way they are each looking for something from the other that they don't dare articulate for fear of having to grapple with these weaknesses or flaws in themselves.

Ant-Man has its own voice, no doubt thanks to all of the talent involved, and it stands as a surprisingly sturdy success for the studio, a delightfully weird little movie that has no business working this well.

This could easily be ground zero for a whole new series of films, but if it remains a stand-alone single movie, Edwards told an entire story, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, it feels like Godzilla actually matters.

Even when they're silly, Joel and Ethan Coen are as smart as any filmmakers working, and Hail, Caesar! is a clever cartoon filter through which they examine some very sincere spiritual ideas.

Darren Aronofsky's Noah is not just one of the most ambitious films I've seen this year, it's one of the most ambitious films I've ever seen.

As someone who enjoyed the show enormously while it was on the air, I am relieved to report that the film felt to me like it successfully recaptured the spirit of the show's first season.

[Bateman] proves himself just as comfortable behind the camera as he in in front of it, and "Bad Words" is very, very good as a result.

Prisoners pulls no punches, and it wants to leave a mark on you, and it is a testament to all involved that it manages to accomplish those things so well.

It's impressive to see how Johnson manages tone in the film, as things go from sort of giddy and fun at the start to increasingly paranoid and then eventually taking a turn into a sort of brutal sadness.

It's an excellent showcase for Paul King, for the tremendous character animation by Framestore, and for Ben Whishaw's delicate, inquisitive work as the title character, and it is one of those rare family films that actually seems to think of children as smart and full of empathy.

It may be overstuffed the point of bursting, but there's much to like here.