Marjorie Baumgarten

The fabricated story that propels the movie, though tenable as events that might have occurred, is insufficient to seize our attention. It’s like a bent note that never finds its correct register.

Hush has a solid first half before the cat-and-mouse shenanigans begin to seem repetitive and prolonged. Still, at 82 minutes Hush is a concise and well-executed horror nightmare.

The filmmakers insert their own bulldozer midway through the story, rendering the metaphoric literal and the literal absurd.

There are a lot of laughs in The Boss. The problem is that the space in between them is stagnant and shapeless. Falcone, who also directed and co-wrote "Tammy," is a dud as a filmmaker.

British actor Hiddleston transcendently captures the sound of Williams’ voice and his performative swagger, and it’s something that’s worth seeing for its amazing conjuring act.

The film is also comic, mysterious, and structurally ambitious, while offering numerous points of entry and perspective.

Emblazoned with ambition, this throwback Seventies-style private-eye movie (think Robert Altman’s "The Long Goodbye" or Robert Aldrich’s "Hustle") seems more invested in its form than its content.

There’s a certain spiritualism that inhabits all of Nichols’ films, and I’m not sure that the explanations finally offered to shed light on the specialness of this child are truly sufficient. But in the context of the movie, it all works.

This comedy has a few genuine laughs, but The Bronze never even comes close to making it to qualifiers.

There’s no denying the poetry at work in his film, but so much of it is inchoate and fundamentally sexualized that it becomes more of a turn-off than a turn-on. Malick’s Cups is ultimately half-full.

Effective performances by the principals are unable to surmount the movie’s many cliches, although the actors render them more endurable. A more evocative title for this Hindu Gothic might be: "Mommies Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things."

WTF is on the right track, even if it never pulls all the way in to the station.

A quietly searing drama about morality, priorities, and absolute truth. It’s told in a matter-of-fact manner that eschews melodrama, yet is loaded with haunting human moments and circumstances.

As long as underdog sports stories hold a place in the cinematic universe, Eddie the Eagle, despite its shortcomings, will soar into moviegoers’ hearts.

There is no doubt the film is exquisitely felt, yet Touched With Fire often feels like a "David and Lisa" redux for the psychotropic drug era.

As Owens, relative newcomer Stephan James delivers a stirring performance, and as his coach, comedian Jason Sudeikis turns in a solid and smirk-free performance.

Loaded with sass, sex, and sadistic violence, Deadpool is not your youngster’s comic-book origin story. Deadpool earns every bit of its R rating, a quality that’s sure to appeal to fans weary of the macho, apple-pie-eating, altruistic superheroes who buck for attention in the comic-book stables.

You have to feel a certain sympathy for a project as cursed as this one, but there’s no denying that Jane’s gun barely grazes its target.

Adults may respond with a laugh every once in a while, but they’re unlikely to find Fifty Shades of Black a nonstop titter fest.

Although the film never fully convinces us of its characters’ cold, pain, and desperation, their brotherly sparring keeps the story interesting.

Told in a chaotic fashion, the movie jumps from scene to scene without a lot of continuity.

Although the plot is pretty bare-bones, it’s propped up by plenty of gratuitous dialogue and imagery that do nothing to further the story.

The most punishing movie of 2015, The Revenant, is almost as brutal an experience for the viewer to watch as it is for its title character Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) to undergo. That’s not meant as a knock, but rather as a warning that the film may leave you as near-speechless and mono-minded as its battered returnee from the dead.

Even in its disassociation, The Great Beauty ingratiates itself as a witty and compelling companion – much like Jep Gambardella.

The original was indeed ludicrous, but it exuded warmth, vitality, and belief in itself. The 2.0 update splashes up on shore DOA.

In Carol, all the elements dovetail perfectly to create a movie that is as irresistible as its title character.

Daddy’s Home is one of those comedies that is not terribly good, but not nearly as terrible as it might have been.

Despite The Danish Girl’s lack of specificity regarding what motivates Einar’s transformation into Lili Elbe, the film is still quite lovely. Its compositions are lovely to look at, and the performances engaging.

The religious charlatans who are the primary characters in Don Verdean are ripe for comic deflation, but the film’s unsteady tone has no discernible target.

Chi-Raq constantly shifts tones from comedy to drama and back again, while most of its dialogue is delivered in rhyming couplets. The transitions can sometimes be bumpy, but never when Samuel L. Jackson pops up as nattily dressed and off-color one-man Greek chorus.

The Good Dinosaur may not be as revolutionary as 1914’s “Gertie the Dinosaur,” but as Jurassic World already demonstrated this year, we never tire of these prehistoric critters.

Spotlight is a great newspaper movie, ranking up there with "All the President’s Men" and "Citizen Kane", and it’s certainly the best of its kind since "The Paper" in 1994, which also happened to star Michael Keaton.

Julia Roberts is the only central character whose appearance is drastically different in the two time periods, and it remains to be seen if the pretty woman with the million-dollar smile will be accepted as a character bearing a pinched face and dead eyes or whether it will seem like stunt casting despite a solid performance.

This movie won’t be for everyone; you’ll need to dive back into European arthouse cinema from the Sixties to find anything quite like it.

Might be more engaging were it not for the melodrama heavily larded into the screenplay (cobbled together by numerous writers).

Room is ultimately not something you’d readily call enjoyable, but it is a cathartic and provocative reminder that life is full of possibilities and outcomes.

Despite the vividness of the movement and the philosophical underpinnings of the cause and its tactical shifts, Suffragette unfolds in a sequentially predictable manner.

Solomon’s skills as a raconteur, the employees’ unabashed love for their work, and the constant stream of rock music playing in the background advance the film into something much more than a talking-heads documentary.

Writer/director James Vanderbilt...sticks to Mapes’ version of the truth, and the film serves as a valedictory for Mapes and Rather. Still, the movie never negates the truth’s other strands, while also showing what a human profession journalism is.

The German film Victoria gives off a lustrous intensity. Filmed all in one take in pre-dawn Berlin, the film is a technical marvel inset with small jewels.

The parade has now moved on and Freeheld seems more like a footnote than a groundswell.

The atrocities against children begin to acquire an unwelcome redundancy in their relentlessness and threaten to inure the viewer.

Much more a comedy than a heist film (think Ocean’s 11 rather than Casino or Rififi), Ladrones moves at a pretty entertaining pace and maintains a good sense of humor about itself.

Don’t come to this documentary expecting to learn more about the girl named Malala.

Still, you find yourself rooting for these women, even if their adventures aren’t always up to snuff.

Sicario is at its best when its borderlines are fluid and indistinct.

By now, we’ve grown accustomed to the signature touch of Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump), who is one of the best creative minds to see the innovative narrative potential lying dormant in technical cinematographic advances. This does not always provide the underpinnings for great stories, but bien sûr his movies are almost always quite something to see.

Maybe Stonewall will have more value to younger viewers for whom the riots and gay marginalization in general are distant history and might be vivified by watching the film. Yet even though the film’s heart seems genuine, its structure is buttressed by falsies.

Weitz (About a Boy) is a sharp observer, and Tomlin and the rest of the cast are so superlative that any anxiety is quickly quelled. You’re happy to follow this movie over the river and through the woods.

The Christian faith-based film genre takes a dramatic leap forward with 90 Minutes in Heaven, a well-appointed work based on Don Piper’s bestseller, that, for a change, doesn’t look and sound as though it was written, performed, and recorded in some church basement.

Refreshingly, this isn’t so much a found-footage movie – although it was backed by "Paranormal Activity" overseers Blumhouse Productions – as it is a completed faux documentary, complete with onscreen titles and a cripplingly hilarious end-credits sequence featuring Tyler being Tyler.

What A Walk in the Woods doesn’t have, however, is plot, character development, narrative conflict, and resolution – in other words, a destination.

With 7 Chinese Brothers, Austin-based filmmaker Bob Byington has made his most accessible film yet. The humor is less arch than in his previous comedies (among them Somebody up There Likes Me, Harmony and Me, and RSO [Registered Sex Offender]), and it’s plentiful and less diffuse than in his earlier works.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl is the rare movie that presents the subject of the loss of virginity from the female perspective. Not only is the film unique in this regard, but also in its frankness, humor, and artistry.

If nothing else, 6 Years is a testament to the cohesion of the Austin filmmaking community. You can barely round a corner without seeing a familiar face or production credit.

The details of what went down are fascinating, but the ultimate focus of Best of Enemies is television and this demonstration that it can be both eminently viewable and illuminating.

Movies about writers can be notorious slogs but, amazingly, The End of the Tour is not one of those films. In fact, it is so much better than any movie based primarily on conversations has any right to be.

Woody Allen generates films with such rapidity and inconsistency that you can never be certain if this season’s offering will be a hit or a miss. I’m happy to report that Irrational Man is a delight.

You’ll be the richer for spending time in Crimmins’ company, but the material seems better suited to the small screen.

What we witness onscreen is horrifying and deeply disturbing (as it should be), but a little more context might help us to not feel so marooned.

One of the unfunniest comedies it’s ever been my misfortune to see.

The sharp performances and committed cinematography elevate this stock drama to something beyond routine.

Even though it’s fair to say that Pixels is on steadier ground than most of Sandler’s recent comedies, the film is nevertheless flat-footed and grows tedious after the first hour.

Provocative though it is, Felt literally wears its ideas on its sleeves.

Although it’s a pleasant and handsome endeavor, Mr. Holmes hasn’t the consuming drive and sense of inexorability that marks the award-winning "Gods and Monsters."

Just as you begin settling into these science-fiction parameters and start pondering the wisdom of humanity’s vain quest for immortality, Self/less switches gears, much to its detriment, and becomes a frenzied chase thriller and shoot-‘em-up.

With Infinitely Polar Bear, Forbes has created a warm family portrait, even though it sugarcoats the specter that mental illness casts on this group’s well-being.

If only Cartel Land were as rigorous in its thinking as it is in its filmmaking methods, the film might strike an even deeper blow than it presently does.

When this stereotype masquerades as a storyline, it needs to have a unique spin or radical narrative disruption for it to stand out from all the other self-made movies about white male artists with girl problems and self-worth issues. In Stereo is not the movie that stands out from the rest.

Aloft’s characters exude a certain impregnability, and the story’s structure only further distances us from them.

Messages about learning to be comfortable in one’s own skin and the hypocrisy of the ruling class are delivered with genial humor and mild pokes.

Even if some of its history and buckles are askew, the film is still an original take on a Christian redemption story.

You have a horror movie with two strong female leads – no small thing. The movie, however, has little else going for it.

For better or worse, the film plays like an extended TV episode, jumping from each character’s story arc to the next, rarely lingering longer than the time it takes to land a few low-bro love jabs before moving on to the next scene.

Terribly slight but not unpleasant, 5 Flights Up is hardly worth the climb.

Unfortunately, the film is as bloodless as its purported crime. In the Name of My Daughter is presented dispassionately, and the performances neither intrigue nor captivate.

There’s much to applaud and much to knock in this Disney action adventure. Tomorrowland breaks the mold and becomes something quite original, while at the same time it ballyhoos its inspirational message to an extent that deadens the narrative.

Welcome to Me isn’t laughing with Alice, but at her, in what seems like a harsh reaction to mental illness.

Although The D Train doesn’t completely live up to its potential, the film earns lots of points for treading a distinctive path through a conventional setup.

Although there are shades of "All About Eve" here, the resonances lean more toward the fluid identities of the actresses in Ingmar Bergman’s work or even Assayas’ own "Irma Vep."

Set mostly during the waning years of Stalin’s totalitarian grip on the USSR, Child 44 does a superb job of capturing the grim living conditions and pervasive paranoia that marked the bleak era. Sadly, that’s about all this movie does well.

The problem with True Story is that you wish there were more of it. The philosophical questions it encourages are like the tail that wags the dog. The truth becomes something of an obfuscation, and unlike films such as "Capote" and "Infamous," there’s not enough drama about the compulsive relationship between the writer and his felonious subject.

Lost River is a film whose reputation precedes it. Viewers have decried it as a mess or lauded it as an artistic achievement ever since it premiered at Cannes 11 months ago. Ultimately, the film is really neither. Yes, Gosling’s ambition exceeds his accomplishment, but what he’s delivered is hardly a disaster.

Titled Girlhood for its American release in an obvious ploy to be viewed as a counterpart to last year’s widely hailed Boyhood, this film is better described by its original French title Bande de Filles, which translates as Girl Gang.

Gustav Klimt’s spectacular painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I far outshines this pedestrian movie about the legal battle waged by Maria Altmann (Mirren), the niece of the portrait’s subject, to regain possession of the work which was seized from her family by the Nazis during their takeover of Austria.

Pacino delivers his best work in a long time, but it’s contained within an utterly predictable redemption movie that only comes alive when Pacino plays one-on-one scenes with the other members of the cast.

So many follow-up questions are left unasked. The film is at its liveliest when the filmmaker and his subject discuss the twofold presence of human monstrosity and artistic gifts or the human propensity to value talent over craft.

If overly familiar and uninspired, Home is nevertheless agreeable, especially for young viewers who haven’t been down this road countless times.

It’s an enchanting work, heartbreaking yet wryly amusing.

Remarkably, the film is composed entirely of point-of-view shots. Although she’s in the room, Viviane is not even part of the image during the early minutes of the film.

Deli Man needs more meat on its rye.

The film is a magnificent document of secular humanism.

A la Mala coasts on its style and charm, and that may be enough for this kind of romp. Mala’s roommates Kika (Aurora) and Pablo (Arrieta) provide enjoyable interludes as something of a Greek chorus to Mala’s dilemma. Nevertheless, a bit more originality in the script by Issa López and Ari Rosen would be a welcome diversion.

Oh, for a time machine that would give me back the hour and a half I spent watching this movie.

The film loses its focus a bit in the third act, but until then Good Day, Ramón is a heartwarming tale punctuated by moments of true concern for the likable but imperiled young hero.

The story is really rather prosaic and character details are fairly nonexistent. Yet LaGravenese should be commended for his vision and tenacity, which has helped to create a piece that should be catnip to fans of the modern musical theatre – and in these post-Glee days, who isn’t?

Yet for all Vaughn’s attention to stylized details, I noticed a number of obvious continuity errors throughout to which Vaughn seems blind.

Mommy bursts with so much frenzied, turbulent energy that it really only makes sense when looked at as the fifth feature film by a 25-year-old moviemaker. Québécois Xavier Dolan is one of those enfants terribles of the cinema, making and sometimes acting in films that court attention.