Marc Mohan

It’s a harrowing and impressive accomplishment (especially considering potential government censorship), and it shows how, in its mad rush toward modernity, China has become a land of haves and have-nots, where income inequality and lack of opportunity have made a mockery of the nation’s purported ideals. Sound familiar?

Telling Northrup’s story, McQueen gives a grand tour of the institutionalized sadism and astonishing inhumanity ubiquitous in the slave economy.

Nothing tops the discussions of mortality between Leary and Ram Dass, during which both of these battered but unbowed explorers of reality come off as nothing less than enlightened.

Inspired by uprisings in the former Soviet bloc as well as, more pointedly, the Arab Spring, Makhmalbaf serves up a surprisingly tense, sometimes poignant parable. It's good to have him back.

Sorrentino’s storytelling sometimes seems deliberately obscure, and his film can be as indulgent as the society it chronicles. But as this existential odyssey draws to a close, it sews itself up with the aplomb that only a confident, controlled filmmaker can marshal.

German director Christian Petzold's new movie is a testament to the way textured performances and a skillfully woven script can entice a remarkable suspension of disbelief.

An inspirational, and mostly entertaining, saga, Joy is a Horatio Alger story for the 21st century — but who reads those anymore?

The best and creepiest sequence involves a sort of beta test, during which a patchwork chimplike creature is brought to life and rampages about.

It's beautifully photographed, but pretentious, overlong and trite.

Here's a movie that's jam-packed with bizarre sci-fi concepts, political allegory, a fascinating international cast and some truly over the top set pieces. But for just about everything maniacally cool in the movie, there's a flaw, sometimes a near-fatal one.

At times the movie feels like two Very Special Episodes of "Law & Order: SVU" stitched together, but on balance it's a smart, well-cast piece of grown-up entertainment.

William Faulkner's oft-cited quote has rarely been more apt: "The past is never dead. It's not even the past."

What's most endearing about "Taxi," as well as Panahi's earlier films made under repression, is the lack of righteous anger.

Ultimately, The Keeping Room feels more like a clumsy melding of "Unforgiven" and "12 Years a Slave" than a unique take on violence, race, and gender.

What makes Miss You Already work (when it does work, which is most of the time) is that it shows imperfect characters dealing imperfectly with situations ranging from the maritally frustrating to the existentially overwhelming.

Boosted by award-caliber performances and a perfectly struck tone, it becomes one of the more moving dramas of the year and an early, dark-horse award-season contender.

The well-chosen supporting cast — Anthony Edwards as a test subject, Jim Gaffigan as one of Milgram's confederates, and especially Winona Ryder as Milgram's wife — help tremendously to keep The Experimenter humming along as entertainment rather than dry docudrama.

It's also exhausting, despite an engaging premise.

Political machinations, emotional revelations, and a few well-choreographed fight scenes ensue, but Hou focuses less on the satisfactions of plot and action than on crafting, if not quite bringing to life, his auteurist vision of the past (both historical and cinematic).

The real star is Attah, a Ghanaian street kid plucked from obscurity, who imbues Agu with just the right mix of terror, brutality and the last remaining vestiges of boyish innocence.

Crimson Peak ends up feeling like a bit of make-work, a project to keep the visionary filmmaker busy until something that truly sparks his passion comes along.

The result is an uneasy mix of social-issue realism and escapist excitement that's ultimately disposable.

It's not that Pan isn't entertaining. There's plenty of color and action and some inventive 3-D effects. Jackman's unhinged performance is either gloriously great or gloriously terrible, but captivating either way. There's no magic, though.

There's a Gordon Gekko vibe to Shannon's reptilian, charismatic villain. Like Oliver Stone's "Wall Street," 99 Homes understands that people don't sell their souls because they're inherently evil — they do it because being rich is cool.

Historical resonances aside, Coming Home functions well as an impeccably crafted, compellingly acted tale.

Most of the time, Goodnight Mommy creates its air of supreme unease quietly, even subtly, but even hardened horror fans might be shocked by some of what goes down in the movie's second half.

Only in its final moments does Breathe extend its reach beyond experiences that most, if not all, teens (and ex-teens) can relate to. When it does, it might just leave you breathless.

It's also a real shame that such a fascinating reminder of how far civil rights have come in the last five decades has been reduced to such a turkey of a film.

Like Brad Pitt and Robert Redford, Gere's good looks have made it hard sometimes to recognize his acting ability, but it's on full display here in what is anything but a vanity project.

Just because it's how they did things in the old country doesn't excuse clinging to these outdated, oppressive traditions, even if Ravi manages to negotiate them with surprising good humor.

Sleeping with Other People turns out to be more entertaining than it sounds. The movie, that is.

He's good, but Depp can't quite annihilate the self-consciousness that makes some of his more light-hearted work shine. Too often, it feels like he's channeling other actors: here he's Jack Nicholson with Hunter S. Thompson's nose, there he's an Irish-American Ray Liotta.

Grandma is a movie that, for what it's worth, gets an A+ on the Bechdel test. Writer-director Paul Weitz may still be cashing residual checks for the "American Pie" movies, but this is his most heartfelt, successful effort since 2002's "About a Boy."

There have been plenty of mountaineering documentaries over the last few years, and Everest suffers in comparison to them simply by being a dramatization. As realistic as the effects are (and you can occasionally tell when a shot is green-screened), you're still aware on a gut level that Jason Clarke and Josh Brolin were not actually filmed at 29,000 feet above sea level.

The performances, especially that of Regina Casé in the lead role, inject potent, lived-in humanity to the movie's flat political allegory.

Z for Zachariah has things to say about the tugs-of-war between science and spirituality, thought and action, men and women. It's just not exactly sure what they are.

Sometimes those kinds of movies work (just ask the Duplass brothers) and sometimes they seem like the cast and crew had more fun making them than you do watching them. This one sits somewhere in the middle.

At its more abstract moments, it's a treat for the eye and the soul.

If the filmmakers had opted to play things closer to the vest, this could have been the clever "Pineapple Express"-meets-"The Bourne Identity" mashup it wants to be instead of the shallow, gratuitously violent exercise it actually is.

Starring in, directing and writing (in collaboration with Michel Marc Bouchard, on whose play it's based) a movie at Dolan's tender age is certainly a Wellesian accomplishment. All three actors are convincing, especially Cardinal as the cruel, manipulative Francis, and their characters' behavior feels authentic even when it's not logical.

Theron makes Libby a bristling, emotionally crippled live wire, her anger, guilt, and distrust bubbling to the surface with the slightest provocation. She's neither quite as fascinating nor nearly as despicable a character as "Gone Girl"'s Amazing Amy, but director Gilles Paquet-Brenner is no David Fincher.

This is the Fantastic Four. Maybe someday they'll get to act like it.

Shaun the Sheep Movie delivers exactly what it promises: The cutest, most innocuous entertainment this side of Internet panda videos.

Allen's movies, even at their lowest, have usually boasted interesting musical scores, melding jazz, classical, and American standards. Irrational Man, though, uses The Ramsey Lewis Trio's "The 'In' Crowd," an already overexposed riff, so repetitively that I thought I was seeing the film with a temp soundtrack. The real Woody, whatever his flaws, would never have allowed this. I hope he comes back someday.

This 90-minute exploration of the myriad ways Lego is great suffers from a relentlessly annoying narrator and a punishingly peppy tone. Still, if you're an AFOL—that is, an Adult Fan of Lego — or even a KFOL — you can figure that one out, right?—there's plenty to make it worth your while. If you're not, don't bother.

Most impressively, "Rogue Nation" keeps the body count minimal.

Moving and suspenseful.

In the end, as gay people and other marginalized groups throughout history have shown, the only real solution is to learn not to be agonized or ashamed over differences, but to celebrate them with pride.

There are legitimate excuses for going to see Pixels. Losing a bet, perhaps. Having a loved one held for ransom. Maybe a serious blow to the head. But none of those (except maybe the last) would allow you watch and actually enjoy the latest cinematic leavings of Adam Sandler.

There will always be plenty of fictional geniuses solving impossible crimes, but Holmes, it turns out, it where the heart is.

Oscar-winner Davis can maintain her dignity in just about anything, and she almost gives Lila enough depth to be a compelling character. Lopez gets points for trying something a bit more challenging than the hot-for-teacher dreck of "The Boy Next Door," but she inevitably struggles to hit more than one note.

Baker's previous films "Take Out" and "Starlet" have focused on populations generally treated with disdain by mainstream society -- illegal immigrants and porn performers, respectively. With Tangerine he continues to prove that by depicting these characters in all their flaws and majesty, movies can inspire awareness of our shared humanity. And make us laugh.

Trainwreck doesn't try to reinvent the wheel so much as rotate the tires of comedy.

Brittain's life and literary output are worthy of celebration, and there's no better time that the centenary of "The War to End All Wars" to commemorate its bloody folly. It's a shame that Testament of Youth does both in such a bloodless way.

Without passing moral judgments on either group, Cartel Land provides a vivid illustration of the dangers inherent whenever a government fails to meet its citizens' needs to the extent that they take matters into their own hands.

Once goateed, acerbic Kingsley vanishes from the screen, he takes any smidgen of life with him.

Aloft reminded me of the work of another Latin American filmmaker, Alejandro González Iñárritu, who made somber, constipated dramas such as "Babel" and "Biutiful" before loosening up and conjuring the lunatic profundity of "Birdman." Llosa has the intelligence and directing chops — Aloft looks fantastic — to do wonders, but she should take a cue from him and warm up by just chilling out.

Terminator: Genisys isn't so much a sequel or a reboot but a piece of fan fiction come to ludicrous, big-budget life. Even for an unnecessary entry in a series of movies about indestructible time-traveling robots and genocidal computer networks, it's pretty silly.

Although it treads water for the final fifteen or so minutes, the movie is brisk and engaging enough that it still doesn't feel overlong.

Inside Out expands the possibilities of animation. It's also a hilarious ride that delights the eye, the mind and the heart.

Despite the solid performances (Roberta Maxwell as Jude's mother is the exception), the one-note intensity wears you down, until a shocking coda wraps things up. It turns out that being trapped in a bathroom together is nothing compared to being trapped in a marriage, or a nearly two-hour movie, with a crazy person.

Despite familiar elements, including the classic family-versus-work conflict faced by almost every movie cop in history and the equally hoary discovery of corruption among Michel's colleagues, The Connection remains tense and believable.

A bit too familiar, and at times gentle to a fault.

A recent article in Film Comment magazine praised Saint Laurent for avoiding "banal psychologizing," but Bonello avoids any insight into his subject's state of mind, banal or not.

Some of the combat scenes work, including a kitchen-set hand-to-hand battle that's one of the movie's highlights, but more often they feel superfluous at best.

Despite convincing work from its cast, the movie remains oddly uninvolving.

Multiplex audiences can choose over the next few weeks between two starkly different views of the future. The remnants of humanity struggle for survival in the brutal world of "Mad Max: Fury Road," while Tomorrowland offers an optimistic retro-future paradise full of jetpacks and robots. Me, I'll take post-apocalyptic desert wasteland over soulless corporate utopia any day of the week.

Making a movie with a sad-sack protagonist this hard to root for is like laying track for the main line express to nowhere. Watching it is like taking a ride so bumpy, with scenery so boring, that you end up hoping for a derailment. Either way, buying a ticket for The D Train is something to regret.

As I sat slavishly (and needlessly) through the entire end credit roll, it was hard to muster anything more fervent than "Yeah, it was pretty good." Even a clean, white hate would have somehow been more satisfying.

The movie runs the risk of coming off as misogynistic tripe, especially considering it was written by two men and directed by another. Somehow it avoids that fate, rising to the level of a serviceable YA fantasy about the way mortality gives meaning to life.

To dismiss Ex Machina as just another robot movie would be like calling the Grand Canyon a hole in the ground. It's one of the most original, smart, thought-provoking science fiction movies of recent years.

White God holds some fascination. But as an indictment of the evil that men do, it's all bark and no bite.

With a deft touch that veers from wry, absurd humor to appalled outrage, the Italian journalist and satirist Pierfrancesco Diliberto makes a noteworthy film debut with The Mafia Kills Only in the Summer.

The clichés at its core make Metalhead something less than a full-bore, head-banging triumph. But it does perform the service of reminding us that even Judas Priest is capable of saving souls, and any film that features a cross-generational dance-off to Megadeth's "Symphony of Destruction" can't be all bad.

Today, Randi's stooped, gnomish gait and expansive white beard give him the appearance of a Tolkien wizard, but the man's passion for rationality and for exposing fraud and misbelief are stronger than ever. An Honest Liar is a fitting tribute to a figure whose stamina and wit only appear to be magical.

It's a sad commentary on the independent film business when a proven filmmaker like Hartley has to go hat in hand to the Internet for his budget, but at least he got to make the movie on his terms. It turns out to be the best thing he's done since "Henry Fool."

The octogenarian pianist Seymour Bernstein is the charming, inspirational subject of this appreciative, occasionally fawning documentary.

Merchants of Doubt is an important film. It's a riveting film, a necessary film, one that every American should see.

It's a shame that a movie centered on such a powerful and unique work of art is itself so obviously a corporate product.

Without a more coherent perspective, the movie remains a collection of genuinely scary scenes and not much more.

Home is like when someone gets you a birthday present by just clicking on an item from your Amazon wish list. It's well-made, suitable, and appreciated, but there wasn't really any thought put into it.

An unrelenting and important exposé of a system that, as depicted here, has no place in the modern world.

There's also something tired and way too familiar to the story of a white guy who acts as the savior of Africa while the only major black character in the movie stands ineptly on the sidelines.

In the quest to purge this Cinderella of anything sly or post-modern, though, the filmmakers have eliminated any wit or distinction, making this a pre-modern disappointment.

With a titanium body and a child's mind, Chappie is a fascinating figure, vividly rendered, enough so that you wish there was a better movie around him.

If Song of the Sea had had the promotional muscle of Disney or Dreamworks behind it, it may have won this year's Oscar for Best Animated Feature instead of merely being nominated. It certainly would have deserved it.

Once things get going, and especially when Moore takes center stage, "Maps" becomes more involving, sometimes queasily funny, and even, almost despite itself, a tiny bit moving. Hooray for Hollywood, indeed.

As an artist who can craft an ebullient postmodern pastiche but maintains links to an idiosyncratic heritage, Amirpour has instantly become one of the most exciting, globally relevant filmmakers working today. Her film is a testament both to her own creativity and the infinite elasticity of the vampire mythos.

The film's structure is a reminder that being Pinteresque isn't the same as being written by Harold Pinter, and its lyrics prove that there's a big difference between something Sondheim-esque and the real deal.

Sissako, whose previous film, 2006's "Bamako," also tackled political issues with aplomb and complexity, doesn't need to craft an overwrought denunciation of ignorant fanaticism. The humanism with which he approaches both the perpetrators and the victims of the violence inherent in this petty, small-minded tyranny makes the strongest argument possible against the Boko Harams of the world.

It's a thriller, if the term can be applied to an inept, perfunctory movie with more laughs than thrills — and it only has a couple laughs. Let's call it an attempted thriller and an inadvertent comedy.

If the star does his utmost to make a one-dimensional character interesting, his director, Clint Eastwood, adapts Kyle's memoir — a life story rife with moral complexity — by hammering it flat.

Although its three-part structure plays out more like sketch comedy than a fully-cooked story, Lavie's debut is an impressive and entertaining one.

The screenplay, which Ceylan and his wife Ebru based on short stories by Anton Chekhov, is wordy but insightful. The widescreen cinematography, capturing the natural wonders that make Cappadocia a popular tourist destination, is crisp in exterior shots and delicately shaded indoors. And the performances are never less than totally convincing.

A film this heartfelt and intelligent about social justice will never be unimportant, but it feels especially relevant today.

The story of Matt VanDyke, as told in the fascinating documentary Point and Shoot, is a vivid illustration of the ups and downs of reinvention.

It's not a bad movie, but Big Eyes might have been better off if it had sold its audience the same bill of goods Walter Keane sold America.

The big star with the most unexpected chops, though, is Chris Pine, who runs with his Prince Charming role and, along with Billy Magnussen as Rapunzel's Prince, contributes the movie's best musical moment with the duet "Agony."