Drew McWeeny

When it comes to this particular story, I find myself unconvinced in the end. Unbroken looks like the real thing, but evaporates upon closer scrutiny.

By focusing on a few key emotional arcs instead of making it about every shot being the BIGGEST THING OF ALL TIME, Jackson gives the battle a sense of urgency that builds and ebbs, builds and ebbs.

This is that rare case where it feels like every choice Scott made was off, and the cumulative impact of all of these choices is one of the most crushing disappointments of the year in terms of who made the film and how little of it works.

It is a perfect example of marketing driving the machine. It's also a profoundly silly movie that really isn't even trying to play by the conventional rules of family animation.

The film explores the way propaganda is used to set the stage for a conflict, and considering this is a mainstream franchise aimed primarily at young audiences, it's actually a pretty interesting take on how image matters as much as action in a media age.

There are gags that work, that pay off in a big way, and gags that fall flat, derailing entire sequences. Because the world around them is so absurd, the film's attempts at creating some genuine heart for Harry and Lloyd doesn't really work.

There are laughs in the movie, but they feel like they are isolated gags, not sustained runs, and in order for this to work as character comedy, they'd have to be playing better defined characters and not just heightened versions of themselves.

Overall, American Sniper is a solidly-staged but unexceptional picture, filled with overly familiar dramatic situations and a surprisingly blindered view of the world around its central character.

This is a film that is quietly confident. Everything's well-composed. Everything's put together right. There's a very sure hand on the wheel here, and at this point, I'm sold on Rupert Wyatt as a guy who can tell a story with a certain kind of intelligence, both towards his subject and towards his audience.

This is brutally strong filmmaking, aggressive and alive and impeccably accomplished.

J. C. Chandor's A Most Violent Year is a powerfully told story, a thrilling surprise, and both Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain do remarkable work.

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.

As much as the action stuff works and would indicate that any other property Marvel entrusts to the animation side of things is in good hands, Big Hero 6 gets by more on the charms of its comedy.

It's a gentle, amiable, sincere little movie, and we could use about a hundred more Lynn Sheltons in this business, making movies that feel this lived in, this true.

The Book Of Life may play by the rules when it comes to story, but it plays its own game when it comes to how it looks, and in the world of animated family films, that's what really counts.

Housebound is that rare film that manages to be funny without defusing any of its scares.

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's best moments are those focused on combat, and Ayer does a tremendous job of creating the details of daily life for a combat tank team in the waning days of WWII.

This movie is so funny, so strange, so wonderfully charmingly deranged.

Things escalate nicely over the course of the film, and there is a creeping sense of dread that is carefully calibrated.

Leonetti doesn't seem to have any particular knack for the staging of suspense or fear.

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.

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.

Gabe Polsky has made a smart and incisive film about an important moment in the history of a now-fallen empire, and he happened to make it wildly entertaining as well. No easy feat.

Wes Ball's background is in animation and effects, and he certainly has an eye for composition. Thankfully, he doesn't just lean on visual flash in his debut feature, the adaptation of the first of James Dashner's four books, and his skills allow him to build a convincing world around his appealing cast without losing them in it completely.

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.

Top Five is, above everything else, really entertaining. It is a successful sophisticated spin on Hollywood formula, and it feels like Chris Rock finally finding a filmmaking voice that is just as limber and funny and sharply satirical and angry and even romantic as Rock's stand-up.

Niccol is working in a very stripped down and direct mode, and I think overall, it works. Good Kill is unsettling, and the entire cast does spare, unsentimental work.