Liam Lacey

Sissako’s point, while never heavy-handed, is hard to miss: Traditional Muslims are among the world’s biggest victims of Islamic militarism.

Torching “witches” is the one part of the story that has some historical basis, and adds an uncomfortable edge of misogyny to this otherwise empty fantasy.

Like that camel-hair coat Abel wears, A Most Violent Year is classy and commands respect, but a stronger pulse under the lapels would make us care much more.

Call it what you like – a modern Russian epic, a crime drama, a black comedy or a scream in the dark – Leviathan is a shaggy masterpiece.

Still Alice is being called a career performance for Moore, and although it may be one of her most poignant roles (it has earned her a fifth Oscar nomination), the part barely scratches the surface of her ability.

Between a string of post-Friends dismal rom-coms, Aniston has succeeded in these kinds of grownup roles every few years. Here, she negotiates the character’s quirks and contradictions competently, but nothing short of a rewrite from scratch could make Cake palatable.

While the movie is narrow, it has a deep, melancholic resonance.

Faithful to Chekhov, Ceylan spells out nothing except that unhappiness unrecognized is unhappiness compounded, and despite the film’s wintry chill, there’s a thrilling warmth in this struggle to shine a light on life.

Taken strictly as a movie, though, Selma is an uneven yet generally skillful effort that has probably drawn more praise and criticism than it warrants.

Performances are still the heart of Leigh’s work, and at the heart of this film is an extraordinary performance by Leigh’s frequent collaborator, the British actor Timothy Spall.

A beautifully shot, well-acted, and worthy-to-a-fault Second World War survivor story that only intermittently achieves the kind of emotional impact for which it aims.

Full of post-hippie fatalism and cynical macho barroom existentialism, the original film feels very much of its era, and the remake anachronistic.

While the pale skin tones (bronzer is selectively applied) and haphazard mix of American and British accents is distracting, it barely scratches the surface of Exodus’s ungainly artificiality.

The triumph of Foxcatcher is not in the subject but in its art. The clear-eyed compassion and moral intelligence of Miller’s film brings sense to the senseless, and finds the human pulse behind the tabloid shock. It’s not a movie to make you feel good, but, at moments, it reminds you what goodness is.

That makes Mockingjay – Part 1 an experience to be endured, like a prison sentence, rather than enjoyed. By all means, bring on the revolution: It has to be more exciting than this.

Over all, the movie is just funny enough to make you wish it were much better than it is.

The documentary of the year may also be its most hair-raising thriller.

The pitch on Dear White People is that it’s “Do the Right Thing for the Obama generation,” which is both an oversell and a disservice to Justin Simien’s witty satire about race relations on a fictional Ivy League campus.

While it’s technically eye-popping and intricately structured, Interstellar is at its most fascinating when it struggles hard to communicate those things we human beings call “emotions”. Instead, we get something like a freeze-dried approximation of Steven Spielberg at his most sentimental.

Throbbing musical crescendos and flickery flashbacks abound but apart from some outlandish plot machinations, nothing here is good or bad enough to be memorable.

The trouble is that absolutely nothing about the movie feels like news.

Yes, at its best, Birdman soars, swoops and flutters with life and invention, but it parrots more than it speaks. You long for a writer as reliably, elegantly witty as Tom Stoppard, whose dramas are typically “backstage,” or if not Stoppard, at least a verbal speed-puncher like Armando Iannucci, or if not Iannucci, someone as relentlessly inventive and obsessive as Charlie Kaufman to make you feel like somebody is trying to say something, rather than a writing team filling in the intelligent-sounding words to support the boisterous performances and the virtuosic camera dance.

Barnaby puts a mythic frame around a grim history, shaping it in a way that feels always like a creative adventure, not a duty.

The title comes from prosecutor Ferencz, who compares his work to that of the 16th-century astronomer Tycho Brahe, who said he watched the sky so future generations could use him as their foundation.

Here’s how good an actor Bill Murray is. He does such a bristly, entertaining turn as a boozy curmudgeon in St. Vincent, that he saves first-time director Theodore Melfi’s obvious dramedy from sliding into a burbling sinkhole of schmaltz.

The movie’s compromised tone, wavering between emo introspection and rom-com cuteness, is awkward in all the wrong ways.

Sparks’s preposterous approach has crystalized into cliché.

Director David Dobkin, best known for comedies such as "Shanghai Nights" and "Wedding Crashers," demonstrates his serious intent mostly by paint-by-numbers psychology and a ponderous pace.