Lou Lumenick

Desplechin draws uniformly superb performances from his young cast, making the coming-of-age genre seem fresh and vital.

Christopher Plummer confronts Nazi horrors again in Atom Egoyan’s preposterous thriller, which squanders a terrific performance by the Oscar-winning actor.

South African director Gavin Hood (“X-Men Origins: Wolverine’’) pulls off some really tricky tonal shifts.

The year’s best film so far.

Racist, stupid and boasting cheesy effects.

In the end, this relentlessly nihilistic crime-caper thriller adds up to less than the sum of its impressive parts.

Tautly directed by Kiefer’s longtime “24’’ helmer Jon Cassar, Forsaken greatly benefits from the poignant teaming of its father-and-son stars — as well as Michael Wincott as an especially elegant and eloquent gunfighter who has great respect for John.

What really makes Hail, Caesar! sing are the Coens’ painstaking period simulations of scenes from five films,including not only “Hail, Caesar!” but a synchronized swimming routine a la Busby Berkeley and a corny musical Western.

Some handsome location shooting in New Orleans doesn’t make up for the Oscar winners’ relentless hamming and a plot that twists way beyond credibility.

The true story behind a Coast Guard rescue depicted in Disney’s The Finest Hours is amazing enough that it didn’t require corny romantic embellishments that threaten to capsize everything.

The stunning visuals in DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda 3 surpass the high standards set by its predecessors, but storywise, the latest adventures of goofy Po the panda break no new ground.

The ironically titled A Perfect Day isn’t entirely successful, but Del Toro is wonderful and there are many well-judged moments, some involving a 9-year-old (Eldar Residovic) whose return to his home underlines the tragedies of this particular conflict.

The Hateful Eight is basically an expensive vanity project allowing Tarantino to expound on his bizarre theories about race relations.

Mostly it’s up to Lawrence to wring all the drama and pathos she can out of a battle over patent rights that pushes Joy to the brink of bankruptcy. No surprise that her mettle cleans up all the messiness in Joy.

Presenting a “true” adventure about a giant whale that supposedly inspired “Moby-Dick” raises tsunami-high expectations about In the Heart of the Sea that are crushed as thoroughly as if star Chris Hemsworth had brought down his “Thor” hammer on the entire enterprise.

Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel do some of the best work of their careers playing longtime friends navigating their twilight years in Paolo Sorrentino’s witty, wise and swooningly beautiful dramatic comedy Youth.

Hard-core Hitchcock fans will not find much in the way of revelations.

One of the year’s warmest and most crowd-pleasing surprises.

The Good Dinosaur is no instant classic like its sublime predecessor “Inside Out,” but is modestly pleasing in its own way.

This version, flatly directed and risibly written by Billy Ray, is saddled with endless coincidences, questionably motivated characters and an utterly laughable climax.

This is in many ways a companion piece to Haynes’ “Far From Heaven” (2002), which remains one of my favorite films so far this century.

A decade later, these tabloid hall-of-famers are finally back to share the screen in By the Sea — glumly emoting in a pretentiously arty, humorless vanity production that drags along for two hours that feel like at least four.

“A license to kill is also a license to not kill,” M lectures his new boss in the 24th James Bond film, Spectre. Well, it’s not a license to bore as much as this bloated drag manages to do.

Good grief! This painfully sincere animated feature seems aimed less at contemporary kids than nostalgic adults who might buy toys marketed for what is being billed as the 50th anniversary of the Peanuts gang for their children and grandchildren.

Bryan Cranston finally translates his critical acclaim for “Breaking Bad” into an Oscar-caliber performance in darkly comic Trumbo, playing an eloquent, witty screenwriter who bucked the Hollywood blacklist and triumphed.

Brilliantly acted by the year’s most carefully assembled cast, Spotlight is one of the year’s best films, showing just how hard it is to uncover painful truths.

For all of its in-your-face, full-frontal sex scenes and threesomes (one involving a transsexual), this autobiographical story is almost sweet.

A slapdash, sporadically funny cross between the infamous “Ishtar’’ and the mercifully forgotten “American Dreamz.’’