Mike Scott

This being a period drama, all the expected visual grandeur is present and accounted for, from Yves Belanger's vibrant cinematography to Odile Dicks-Mireaux's period-authentic costumes to Francois Seguin's production design.

An uneven R-rated Christmas comedy that's more enjoyable than, say, your Nana's fruitcake, but which at the same time doesn't feel quite like the dose of memorable holiday cheer it could have been.

In someone else's hands, Room easily could have become a horror movie. Instead, we get an emotional roller coaster ride -- at turns touching, harrowing, crushing and flat-out beautiful...Along the way, Abrahamson's Room becomes an immensely rewarding film, and the kind of movie that promises to stick with audiences long after the closing credits roll.

Granted, there's comfort to be found in the familiarity of Mendes' film, which makes an effort to look back while also advancing the series. But there's a fine line between paying homage to the past and merely repeating it.... Spectre often crosses that line.

An imperfectly executed but still perfectly enjoyable film.

Boyle, Sorkin and company might not have invented the iPhone or changed the way people viewed technology, but it does something the real Steve Jobs had trouble doing: It offers a genuine peek at the man behind the turtleneck, and in the process finds a way to connect with its viewers.

There's hardly a shred of cleverness to be found amid all the predictabilities.

Bridge of Spies, with its stop-and-go momentum, is also more merely interesting than it is full-on riveting. It's still quite good stuff, but despite its impressive pedigree... it doesn't feel as if it's quite the sum of all of its parts.

Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn, and their casting in the lead roles pays off in spades. In fact, they're the primary reasons Mississippi Grind works as well as it does.

Guggenheim's film makes it clear that she is funny. She is humble. And, beneath her extraordinary sense of purpose, she is an ordinary kid.

Still, none of that holds back Bahrani's film from becoming a thought-provoking treatise on the self-perpetuating and dehumanizing nature of greed, which more often than not spawns desperation in others, which in turn spawns greed, which spawns more desperation, which spawns greed ...

Its smattering of enjoyable moments aside, this is one of those horror films that will beg to be remade -- just smarter -- once this initial outing fades into the memories of moviegoers.

Where's a wooden stake when you need one?

Like the rest of the film, it's has its laughs and it has its emotion, just not enough of either.

What we end up with is a sweet, feminist character study that shows off Weitz's deft hand as a writer while doubling as a perfect showcase for Tomlin.

It succeeds wonderfully, offering moviegoers a rare taste of rarified air -- and as compelling an argument as you can make for seeing a movie writ large on the oversized screen of an actual movie theater.

Once Learning to Drive gets up to speed it hums along nicely.

Unlike in some of his other recent films, Shyamalan never overreaches this time. Instead, he keeps things simple and focuses on the story at hand.

Granted, it's not a movie that will stick with many viewers for any extended time after the closing credits roll. But, sort of like Pop Rocks and Coke, it's enjoyable while it does its fizzy, burbly thing.

It's a comfortable and tidily assembled story of human perseverance in the face of adversity. Which is yet another thing about which the Irish know a thing or two.

Beneath all that genre eye candy, though, resides a smart and moving story that, after a somewhat slow-moving first hour, builds nicely to become an emotionally engaging drama.

If viewed as a literal narrative, the post-war German drama Phoenix, with its implausibilities and contrivances, works only so well. If viewed as an allegory, on the other hand, it ends up as something else entirely -- something intriguing, complex and altogether moving.

Even with that pedigree, Ponsoldt's film doesn't snap and sizzle as much as it just lays there, leaving moviegoers who haven't been converted to the Wallace cult to long for the end of this particular "Tour."

While Nourizadeh's just-for-fun head trip is no more ambitious than its long-haired pothead of a main character, it delivers on its sole goal: to entertain and to surprise.

Straight Outta Compton doesn't shy entirely from the uglier side of the N.W.A. story, including the claims that their music and their lifestyles glorified thug life, perpetuated gun violence, advocated drug use and reveled in misogyny. Instead, Gray's film owns it.

As is the case with "Amy," there's probably no way any of us could ever truly understand Brando, who often seemed to be living on a different planet than that occupied by the rest of us. But with its anguished first-person voice -- and its permeating sense of sadness -- Listen to Me Marlon comes as close as one imagines is possible.

New Orleans makes for a distinctive backdrop, but that's really all just window dressing, and it goes only so far in covering the fact that The Runner -- from its moody, electric-guitar-driven score to its faintly 1990s, Grisham-flavored sensibilities -- runs out of narrative inspiration before it crosses the finish line.

Simply, this is a story that needs to be told, one that proves that sometimes the past shouldn't be relegated to the past. It also makes The Look of Silence an unassailably essential and necessary film.