Peter Travers

Lots of movies are labeled as "inspirational" – Hidden Figures truly earns the right to the term.

There’s enough here for half a dozen movies, and you can feel the severe overcrowding. But you can't keep your eyes off it.

If you're looking for the best and most beguiling foreign-language film of the year, you'll find it in Maren Ade's Toni Erdmann, a German father-daughter story that will leave you laughing and choking back tears, often simultaneously.

Evocative, mysterious and shot through with bruising humor and heartbreak, A Monster Calls gets you where you live and where there's no place to hide. There's magic in it.

By showing signs of intelligent life in a universe of diseased, digital drivel, Assassin's Creed stands above the herd of movies based on video games by default.

Almodóvar's admiration for Munro is not misplaced. Despite rough patches, Julieta morphs into a haunting and hypnotic tribute to both their talents.

Berg's unquestioning faith in law and order could have used, well, a little questioning. But there's no doubt about the worth of the movie as a well-earned tribute to the heroes and victims of a tragic event that may have just made Boston stronger.

No one with a genuine belief in the possibilities and mysteries of cinema would think of missing Silence. It's essential filmmaking from the church of Scorsese, a modern master who lives and breathes in the images he puts on screen.

Sing doesn't have the grit or the grace notes of Zootopia, which it resembles only in its concept of an animal kingdom.

The spectacle feels lifeless and what could have been a challenging moral provocation dissolves into sappy, feel-good pandering. Lawrence and Pratt deserve better. So do audiences.

The movie of Fences doesn't need Hollywood bells and whistles. This writer, this director and these actors are all the magnificence required to grab your attention and hold it.

The unholy mess that director David Frankel and screenwriter Allan Loeb have unleashed for the holidays strands an all-star cast...on a sinking ship that churns the waters from absurd to zombified with frequent stops at pretentious.

With the smashing Jones giving us a female warrior to rank with the great ones and a cast that knows how to keep it real even in a sci-fi fantasy, Rogue One proves itself a Star Wars story worth telling.

This pooped party brings you down from all the jokes that don't land and the flop sweat pouring off good actors whose forced cheer is exhausting.

Bare and Miele do more than track a remarkable career here; they reveal the essentials of what makes Benson unique. Any paparazzo with moxie can get into the action and shoot first. But what this shutterbug's eye arranges, sometimes in a split second, is the work of a singular craftsman with a rare gift: raising the click of a camera shutter to the level of art.

What makes La La Land such a hot miracle is how the passion for cinema and its possibilities radiates from every frame.

Best Worst Thing brims over with moments of humor and heartbreak that reflect the feeling of knowing "we're what's new." This movie is more than good, pal. It's indispensable.

It plays like an opportunity missed.

Powered by a transfixing Portman, Larrain's film – one of the year's best – is appropriately hard to pin down and impossible to forget.

Sound plays as crucial a role as visuals in replicating an authentic culture to drive the storytelling.

It's clear that Beatty, who has studied Hughes for decades, has an instinctive understanding of the man, from getting stuck on phrases he repeats endlessly to making deals he can't wait to run away from. No kids. No roots. Sex, movies and aviation are the only constants. Why? Beatty hints, but never tells us. But his performance, filled with comic bite and aching confusion, teases a much deeper portrait.

Sloane is a nasty piece of work. Yet Chastain draws us in, making us see what the character keeps inside by the sheer force of her fireball performance. There are times when Miss Sloane plays like a pilot for a TV series. No knock on that. If Chastain stars, I'm in.

What a handsome empty shell of a movie Allied is.

The young star, maturing nicely past the boyish enthusiasm he showed in "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Marigold Hotel" films, enters a new phase of his career with fierce commitment. Lion is one from the heart.

Younger jacks up the action in the last third, but the air goes out of a fight movie when you can see the next jab coming.

No film this year has moved me more with its humor, heart and humanity.

Ford hits it out of the park again in Nocturnal Animals, a stunning film noir that resonates with ghostly, poetic terror.

The real stars here are the beasts, supposedly ugly, weird and dangerous, but paragons of FX creativity in service of genuine ideas.

Huppert, an fearless actress (see The Piano Teacher), gives a performance that's a riveting mix of carnal and chilly – you can't take your eyes off her.

The film's technical achievements are indisputable (a military salute to camera wiz John Toll). But Billy Lynn comes off as artificial when we most need it to be natural, organic and whisper-close. Maybe there's a future film that will use size and sharpness to express an epic and intimate truth. Not this time.

Adams, her face a reflection of conflicting emotions, is simply stellar in an Oscar-buzzed performance of amazing grit and grace. Without her, Arrival might be too cerebral to warm up to. With her, the film gets inside your head and emerges as something intimate and epic, a linguistics odyssey through space and time. It's the stuff that dreams are made of.

What Robert Downey, Jr. is to "Iron Man" and Ryan Reynolds is to "Deadpool" – that's what Benedict Cumberbatch is to Doctor Strange. By that I mean, he's everything.

The film sneaks up on you, quiet-like, until its implications accumulate. And then it crushes you.

Thanks to some of the greatest battle scenes ever filmed, Gibson once again shows his staggering gifts as a filmmaker, able to juxtapose savagery with aching tenderness.

Simon Niblett's cinematography, utilizing drones to catch impossible scenes of flight, is extraordinary, especially in the winter hunting sequences that end the film.

Hanks is one of the most likable actors on the planet. But Inferno just lays there onscreen, pancake-flat and with no animating spark to make us give a damn.

American Pastoral, Roth's magnum opus, needed a film revolutionary on the order of Paul Thomas Anderson, Alejandro González Iñárritu or the Coen brothers to re-imagine it for the screen. McGregor's timid approach does no one any favors, including Roth – and especially the audience.

Moonlight, which announces Jenkins as a major filmmaker, gets you good. It stays raw from first scene to last.

Cruise finds the core of Reacher in his eyes, with a haunted gaze that says this lone wolf is still on a mission and still a long way from home. That's the Reacher Lee Child created in his books. And Cruise does him proud.

Kelly Reichardt makes films that unfold at the speed of life, not Hollywood. She's a poet of the space between words, and the hypnotic and haunting Certain Women presents the writer-director at her artfully attentive best.

Clark is a talent to watch. He's made a transfixing film about a family that looks touchingly and unnervingly like yours and mine.

Preposterous can be defined in many, many ways. But for now, let's use the plot details of The Accountant as Exhibit A.

13th, available in theaters and on Netflix, is one for the cinema time capsule, a record of shame so powerful that it just might change things. Godspeed.

That's Emily Blunt, and she is perfection, playing the hell out of this blackout drunk and adding a touch of welcome empathy.

A movie of potent provocation and surging humanity that ranks with the year's best.

The movie has been on ice awaiting release for over a year, owing to the bankruptcy of its studio, Relativity. But some of the jokes were moldy long before that happened. Masterminds owes us our two hours back.

Berg does a tremendous job of throwing us into the action with the help of dizzying handheld camerawork from Enrique Chediak.

The film feels overstuffed and way too familiar, with Burton repeating tricks from his greatest hits (think Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands). And the fun runs out much before the film ends. But stick with it just for those times when Burton flies high on his own peculiar genius.

The British, Nigerian-born Oyelowo has proved himself an actor of extraordinary power in roles as diverse as Dr. Martin Luther King in "Selma" and the resentful son of a White House servant in "The Butler." As Robert, the actor radiates warm humor and quiet strength.

Kate Winslet can do anything ... except save this movie from quirky overkill.

Goat means to shake you, and does it ever.

The new Seven isn't aiming for cinema immortality. It's two hours of hardcore, shoot-em-up pow and it's entertaining as hell.

Every attempt at fright lands with a deadening thud. For shock value, Wingard and cowriter Simon Barrett simply repeat stuff from the original film, only this time louder, lamer, duller and stupider. Scarier? That got lost in the woods with whatever you spent for a movie ticket.

Sounds godawful in title and concept — but which in execution is a fizzy delight.

The documentary rightly keeps coming back to the music and the band's delight in making it. Good move. It truly is a joy forever.

What's your take on Edward Snowden: A patriot deserving of a presidential pardon? A traitor deserving of execution, as Trump believes? Something in between? In Snowden the movie, in which a fiercely committed Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the title role, Oliver Stone removes all doubt. He's Saint Edward.

Your reaction to Author will come down the question that haunts the film, and assuredly Albert herself: Do the widely-praised writings of LeRoy become less praiseworthy when you know they were crafted under false pretenses? It's a question worth chewing on even if the film asking it stacks the deck.

The movie earns your attention and respect by digging deep, by finding the fear and self-doubt inside a man who'd never accept being defined as a hero. It's an eye-opener.

It's a shallow, melodramatic device that would sink most actors. But Lewis is not most actors. In fact, despite age and illness, he remains a mesmerizing star in front of the camera, compelling to watch even (and especially) when sitting perfectly still.

It's important to note what Portman the filmmaker is doing here. She is most assuredly not providing CliffsNotes to Oz's book, letting us see what Amos sees and only partially understands.

Life mirroring nature in all its wayward ferocity. Too much? You bet. But Fassbender (Magneto in X-Men) and Vikander (an Oscar winner for The Danish Girl), who fell in love during the making of the film, fully commit to their roles and hold us in their grip. The movie, sad to say, can't keep its head above water.

Is there anything less shocking than a movie that thinks it's shocking? See White Girl and discuss — and you should see it, if only for the all-stops-out performance of Morgan Saylor.

The Venezuelan-born writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz (Secuestro Express) knows how to muscle up momentum and bring the best out of actors.

What makes this so memorably nerve-frying is the way Alvarez and cinematographer Pedro Luque use night-vision and every trick in the book and ones not invented yet to trap us in their vise. Claustrophobics, you've been warned.

John Krasinski, as actor and director, tackles the most clichéd genre in the movie business — the dysfunctional family dramedy. The big difference is he pulls it off with uncommon humor and compassion.

Both Sawyers and Sumpter are terrific, world-class charmers who suggest the powerhouses they're playing without undue mimickry.

The last of the summer's movie epics is a digitalized eyesore hobbled in every department by staggering incompetence.

War Dogs is that rare contemporary comedy that knows how to make a laugh stick in your throat.

That’s the power of My King. It sees that passion creates an unholy mess. Maïwenn doesn’t want to warm our heart, she wants to rip into it, and turn the concept of the Hollywood happy ending on its head.

Of all the World War II movies about the plots to kill the architects of the Third Reich, Anthropoid is guilty of being the dullest.

You leave the f--ked-up funhouse of Sausage Party thinking: Did I see this movie or hallucinate it? I mean that as high praise.

Chris Pine proves he can act. Ben Foster, well, he always could. And Jeff Bridges shows them both how it's done. Those are just three riveting reasons to pony up for Hell or High Water.

Thanks to Lowery's humanizing magic, Pete's Dragon is that rare family film you really can take to heart.

So, you're probably asking, what kind of a movie is this? A damn fine and funny one, thanks to the way the estimable director Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters, The Queen) conducts the piece.

At 87 torturous, laugh-free minutes, the film could change the most avid cat fancier into a kitty hater.

Little Men, with its two boys racing at life with the brick wall of maturity still at a distance, is funny, touching and vital. It's truly an exhilarating gift.

Suicide Squad wussies out when it should have been down with the Dirty Dozen of DC Comics. Audiences complained that Batman v Superman was too dark and depressing. So director-writer David Ayer (End of Watch, Fury) counters with light and candy-assed. I call bullshit.

It promotes an awareness of ALS that goes beyond the best-intended any ice-bucket challenge — and ranks as a profound achievement.

The movie cops out by going soft in the end, but it's still hardcore hilarity for stressed moms looking for a girls night out. Guys should also check out Bad Moms — you just might learn something.

Rozema's minimalist approach pays dividends until a final third hobbled by overdone effects and a thrashing musical score. Too bad. The story being told on the faces of Page and Wood had eloquence and power enough to hold us rapt.

To the credit of this scrappy, admirably femcentric film, crisply directed by Meera Menon from a tightly wound script by Amy Fox (with Reiner and Thomas also doing double-duty as producers), Equity refuses to paint a rosy picture of women at the top.

Through it all, Damon keeps us glued to the war going on inside Bourne's head. It's a brilliantly implosive performance; he owns the role and the movie. It's a tense, twisty mindbender anchored by something no computer can generate: soul.

There's a killer idea circling this tricked-up teen thriller, which is more than you can say for most summer movies. But the idea never lands because Nerve lacks the, well, nerve to follow through on its convictions.

Indignation is one of the few adaptations of Roth's work to make it to the screen with its claws intact — Schamus reveals his gifts as a filmmaker who respect the words and the space between them in equal measure.

The fifth entry in the Ice Age series is a loud, lazy, laugh-starved cash grab that cynically exploits its target audience (I use the term advisedly) by serving them scraps and calling it yummy. Even two-year-olds can see through the hustle.

Saunders and Lumley are all about keeping the party going. So grab your Bolly, darlings, and party on.

It feels lived it, honest and painfully funny.

Predictable stuff, energized by some spiffy scare effects from cinematographer Marc Spicer who works wonders with underlighting. But the on/off tricks would grow tiring without actors who perform well beyond the call of fright-house duty.

Despite the futuristic tilt in the title, Star Trek Beyond works best when it boldly goes retro.

Equals is really about possibility in a world gone cold from insisting that things can't change. Sound like any place you know?

Café Society isn't peak Allen, in the manner of such recent high points as "Midnight in Paris" (2011) and "Blue Jasmine" (2013), but the film — which could be helpfully subtitled Manhattan v Hollywood — feels lively, lived-in and fallibly human.

Sadly, Furman keeps shoving the movie into the box of clichés he thinks the audience wants. We don't, and you can tell that Cranston doesn't want it either.

The big surprise here is McKinnon, also an SNL MVP (her Hillary is already iconic). She's a live-wire whose every gesture, reaction and line-reading seems fresh and off-the-wall — a spontaneous eruption of hellfire hilarity.

It's a bummer that the jokes don't land often enough, especially in the final third when the tone takes a turn for the tame. WTF!?!

The film doesn't take sides, but it does fairly, subtly and movingly represent them. Captain Fantastic takes a piece out of you.

An animated fluffball that does everything to drive you crazy and ends up by being totally irresistible.

In no way does Owen's story claim to be a cure-all. Instead of false hope, it offers up possibility, the chance of a stimulus that might get past the blocks of developmental disorder. That's more than encouraging. Life, Animated is truly inspirational.

No knock on McGregor and Harris — fine actors both — but they never hold us rapt the way the plot demands.

It's a heavy thematic load for a single movie to handle — especially this one, which nearly collapses from its burden. But it's hard to fault director David Yates, who captained the last four Harry Potter movies, for having ambition.

For special effects alone, there's no problem: They're spectacular. And there's no faulting Mark Rylance, a newly-minted Oscar winner for Spielberg's Bridge of Spies, whose motion-capture performance as a 24-foot giant is both subtly nuanced and truly monumental.

Independence Day: Resurgence pretends there's fresh ground to cover. There isn't, but director Roland Emmerich makes a good show of faking it.

What happens to the film's title character — and the audience — shouldn't happen to a dog.

While this nailbiter sure as hell ain't swimming in the same classic waters as "Jaws," it gets the jolting job done.

Like the worst civics lesson, this movie bores away at you till your reactions are dulled.

Les Cowboys pulls in with no intention of letting you go. It's a workout worth taking.

There are times when this mindbending bromance actually achieves a twisted tenderness. There are also times when you'd like to ride Manny's farts to the nearest exit. It's your call.

What I can't buy is that Refn has made a movie this lifeless and devoid of human interest.

The Fits is more than a transporting film experience. It's cinema poetry in motion.

If Finding Dory lacks the fresh surprise of its predecessor, it still brims with humor, heart and animation miracles.

Central Intelligence always takes the lazy way out. You go along for the ride because Hart and Johnson promise something they can't deliver: a movie as funny as they are.

What makes The Conjuring 2 play deeper and darker than a warmed-over version of The Exorcist is director James Wan (Saw, Insidious, Furious 7). This Malaysian-born filmmaker can make his camera do terrifying tricks that are almost supernatural.

Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow, filmmakers themselves and De Palma fans to the bone, haven't gathered a bunch of talking heads to debate De Palma's significance. They just put the man himself on camera, mic him up and let him rip. The result is heaven for movie lovers.

If you fell for the 2013 original — and surprisingly, many did — then Now You See Me 2 has got your number. For the rest of us, however, this longer, louder sequel adds up to what one character calls "a sack of nada."

What's onscreen is a godawful mess, leaving the actors to suck wind while the film collapses around them. If you've never played the game, you might as well watch the movie stoned.

Cowabunga, the vigilante demi-gods on a half shell are back, and more inane and irritating than ever. Their antics make the 112 minutes it takes to watch this frenetic followup to 2014's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles a torturous mindfuck for any sentient being over the age of infancy.

It also doesn't grapple deeply enough with the core questions it raises, settling for telling a sob story that will go down easy at the box office. Still, you can't blame audiences too much for being seduced by two shining young stars in a movie romance that hits the spot, bitter and sweet.

Popstar mixes the hilarity with a surprising amount of heart. 4Real.

The script by Linda Woolverton stays surface faithful to the characters created by Lewis Carroll, but the film has lost its soul.

Director Bryan Singer, who started the whole thing in high style with 2000's "X-Men," returns for a fourth time. Singer shows a lot of energy, but he and screenwriter Simon Kinberg (Fantastic Four, yuck) let the movie get way overcrowded.

This spellbinder about a politician in free fall would be hilarious if it weren't so agonizingly true. OK, it's still pretty funny because Anthony Weiner — the subject of this documentary — can't stop shooting himself in the foot.

There's no denying the movie's high spirits or its irresistible invitation to shake your sillies out.

Without pushing or showing off, Miller creates a breezy comedy that pulls you up short. Buoyed by faultless actors who mesh beautifully, Maggie's Plan tickles you with laughs that can — suddenly or even days later — choke you up with emotion.

There are even times when Black seems to be letting Crowe and Gosling make the whole thing up as they go along. Not a bad thing.

Rogen and Byrne are crazy fun company.

Wheatley and screenwriter Amy Jump (his wife) have energized Ballard's parable of class warfare in the technology age with a daring approach that will touch a nerve or have you bolting for the exits.

The Lobster, with a score that samples everyone from Beethoven to Nick Cave, comes at you with images that burn and laughs that stick in the throat. Take the challenge of this movie — it'll keep you up nights.

I can't think of a more wickedly modern romantic comedy.

Foster's film doesn't doubt that money rules our lives. But it does wonder, provocatively, why we're dumb enough to let it.

Many a road to movie hell is paved with good intentions. To that list of lost causes add Being Charlie, a well-meaning study of addiction that hits too many banal beats to snap us to attention.

Everything in this movie is so ripe and voluptuous that watching it doesn't seem enough, you want to take a bite out of it.

Kudos to the Russo brothers, Joe and Anthony, for directing the hostilities for maximum impact and without neglecting character. Their thundering epic is also smart, snappy, politically savvy and blessedly fast on its feet.

As a movie, Papa improves every time it shuts up and allows action to define character.

Kidman and Bateman make a potent team in a provocative film that questions the limits of art in a world that forgets to be human. The result is funny, touching and vital.

Director Garry Marshall is a menace. He keeps killing holidays with all-star comedies in which a laugh would die of loneliness.

Even when the laughs don't always snap, Key and Peele are ready with another one or a dozen that do. These dudes really are the cat's meow.

There's no denying the ambition in A Hologram for the King, but a struggle does not add up to a satisfying movie — or even a reasonable facsimile of the beauty and terror Eggers evokes on the page.

The Meddler belongs to Sarandon, a famously no-bull actress who digs in deep, showing us how moms aren't one thing, they're all things. How else can they make you laugh from love and cry from crazy? The Meddler knows how. Listen up.

Onscreen, Nina barely scratches the surface much less draws blood. For the essence of a legend, listen to the real Simone sing "I Put a Spell on You." She sure as hell does. This movie emphatically does not.

It ain't fact, but it is damn entertaining fiction.

Nothing can match seeing Theron and Blunt try to out-camp each other, providing the only glimmer of entertainment in a film dedicated to being ponderous. No one sings "Let It Go," but my advice to audiences is to do just that before mistakenly buying a ticket.

Barbershop: The Next Cut is stagey, often simplistic and it talks too damn much. But, hell, the talk has flavor and snap and a real-world sense of a community in crisis. Not bad for an escapist romp.

Green Room is way more than crass exploitation. It's a B movie with an art-house core.

Sing Street is the most romantic movie you'll find anywhere these days, brimming over with music, fun and the thrill of first love.

A visual marvel that cuts a direct path to the heart.

When humor is served black, they call it dramedy. When it's done in this movie, I call it indigestible.

The result this time is just as hit and miss. But when it hits, yowsa.

It's all about the ride, the relentless wallop and whoosh. But, hey, sometimes that's all a cine-junkie needs for a fix.

Like "Born To Be Blue," Miles Ahead is allergic to all things biopic, especially the cheap psychology and the effort to tie up a complex life with a neat bow.

It'll slap on a smile on your face that won't quit.

What once bubbled up from a sincere love of Greek family has now congealed into the all-too-familiar Hollywood tale of milking a cash cow until cries for mercy.

Hiddleston is not what's wrong with this movie. But damn near everything else is.

Everything that makes Ethan Hawke an extraordinary actor — his energy, his empathy, his fearless, vanity-free eagerness to explore the deeper recesses of a character — is on view in Born to Be Blue.

Better than Man of Steel but below the high bar set by Nolan's Dark Knight, Dawn of Justice is still a colossus, the stuff that DC Comics dreams are made of for that kid in all of us who yearns to see Batman and Superman suit up and go in for the kill.

Yes, it's in French with English subtitles. Don't worry. Nothing gets lost in translation as this coming-of-age tale brims over with humor, heartbreak and ravishing romance.

If only their stuff had a spark of life it might be forgivable, but Allegiant plods along like a franchise on its last legs. Who remembers where we left off last time in Insurgent? My point exactly — no one.

Go with it. Let Nichols turn your head around. He sure as hell will. One caveat: Nichols drops you into the action, no backstory road map. What you see is what you get. Luckily, what you get is extraordinary.

Even when the film fails her, Field never loses her focus.

In essence, City of Gold is a celebration of a critic who helped define a city by what it eats. And at a bargain price. So take notes, and dig in.

Creative Control goes its own playful, provocative way. For a film about technology's growing dehumanization, this stylized beauty is a frisky, formidable temptation.

It's the strafing satire that's MIA.

The suspense is killer as military minds in the US and the UK come together only to lock horns on a drone operation in Nairobi.

10 Cloverfield Lane comes loaded with everything a psychological thriller needs to shatter your nerves — and then kicks it up a notch.

Make American movies great again. You can start by boycotting this one.

Must all films about alienation be themselves alienating? Take a walk on the beach and ponder that one. There's a line between artful and arty, and Malick has crossed it.

There's a lot going on here. Maybe too much. The filmmakers can't draw coherence out of chaos. But Fey does.

A tour through the byways of Zootopia is a bracing blend of color and richly detailed design.

Some movies are so effing awful they're hilarious. Gods of Egypt falls short of that lofty goal. Not because it isn’t effing awful — it so is — but because it pretends to be in on the joke.

Only Yesterday comes from a quieter, less demonstrative place. As he did in his most recent and reportedly final film, "The Tale of the Princess Kaguya," Takahata has built Only Yesterday to go gently and to last. Mission accomplished.

The filmmakers don't trust us to understand what Eddie is feeling about the Olympics without blaring a musical message from Hall and Oates on the soundtrack, "you make my dreams come true."

Triple 9 is no "Reservoir Dogs," but it is a twisty, terrific ride.

So Risen joins the swelling ranks of faith-based films that pander to audiences instead of serving them.

Race is at its best when it fills in the corners of a story we only thought we knew.

A crafty calling card brimming with beauty and terror. Eggers pulls us into the supernatural with subtle cunning and meticulous attention to detail.

Following his surprisingly subtle work in "Sleeping With Other People," Sudeikis again shows real skills as an actor.

Though Wilson is always reason enough to see a movie, she’s stuck here in a fluffball that plays like warmed-over subplots from "Sex and the City."

No laugh in this doc – and there are plenty – goes out without a sting in its tail.

Zoolander 2 sweats its silly ass off to please. The results are scattershot. But when it works — oh, baby. There's a bit with Justin Bieber and a selfie that, well, no spoilers.

This movie's junky feel is part of its charm. Sure it goes on too long and repetition dulls its initial cleverness. Still, Deadpool is party time for action junkies and Reynolds may just have found the role that makes his career.

Funny? Sometimes. Scary? Almost never. PP&Z spins merrily and menacingly along for about half an hour. Bad luck that the movie's running time is 107 minutes.

Hail, Caesar! is basically a day in the life of this studio cop, whose job is his religion. And Brolin, in a heart-and-soul performance, takes this crazy quilt of a movie about a man surrounded by nut jobs and plays it for real. He's just tremendous.

On the waves, The Finest Hours finally finds its sea legs and delivers an old-school adventure based on a heroic deliverance that deserves its day in the sun.

Despite the strong presence of Kick-Ass star Chloe Grace Moretz as Cassie, the movie is selling the same old YA yada yada yada that made phenoms of "Twilight" and "Divergent."

It's simply a retread of the first Ride Along, a 2014 box-office hit, and proof positive that a bigger budget doesn’t buy bigger laughs.

Is there an audience for this? Sadly, yes. There’s nothing wrong with a movie that cheers American heroes. But this one does so by reducing everything else to cardboard.

Look, it's fun to watch Shepherd hate on bratty children, classical music and liberal pieties. Smith's acid tongue makes any line sound better. But the subplot about a blackmailer (Jim Broadbent) who terrorizes Shepherd in the dead of night adds nothing, least of all a purpose.

A mesmerizer that will creep into your dreams whether you let it or not.

Filtered through Kaufman's searching mind and soulful brilliance, the result is a masterpiece.

The film goes slack when its screws most need to tighten. Luckily, Smith — flawless in accent and commitment to Omalu's worthy cause — grips you from first to last.

You could gripe about the excess of carnage and lack of philosophical substance. But surviving nature is Iñárritu's subject, and he delivers with magisterial brilliance.

The 25-year-old supernova (Lawrence) again proves she can do anything, moving from comic to tragic without missing a beat.

At three hours, this Western whodunit can feel like too much of a good thing. But Tarantino writes like a flamethrower. His incendiary dialogue feels like profane poetry. And the dude thinks big.

There's nothing trivial about this Hungarian masterwork from first-time director László Nemes. You don't merely witness horror, you feel it in your bones.

The action, from lightsaber duels to X-wing dogfights with TIE Fighters, is explosive and buoyed by John Williams' exultant score. And the movie is also funny as hell. Abrams knows how to build a laugh and fill the emotional spaces between words.

Only landlubbers would resist the rousing action of man versus leviathan. Sure it's old-school. So what. Howard puts heart, soul and every computerized whale trick in the book into crafting a seafaring adventure to rock your boat.

A hell of a hilarious time at the movies if you're up for laughs that stick in your throat.

From "The 39 Steps" and "The Lodger" to "Rear Window," "Psycho" and all stops in between, this film gets us drunk on Hitchcock's movies again. My only problem with Hitchcock/Truffaut is that it's too short at 80 minutes. More please, and soon.

If you haven't seen Marion Cotillard play Lady Macbeth, you really haven't seen the role inhabited with the glorious fire and ice it needs to haunt your dreams.

Youth is superior cinema, ardent and artful. Sorrentino, an Oscar winner for The Great Beauty, fills every frame with ravishing images that evoke his idol, Fellini. Gloriously shot by Luca Bigazzi and scored by David Lang, the movie engulfs you like a dream.

Here's Spike Lee at his ballsiest. Who else would take Aristophanes' Lysistrata, set in ancient Greece, and prop it up in present-day Englewood, Chicago, where violence is so prevalent the locals call it Chi-Raq, a mash-up of "Chicago" and "Iraq."

What Hooper has crafted is a work of probing intelligence and passionate heart.

The good news is that Coogler puts his own stamp on it. You can feel this fine indie talent stretching his wings in the mainstream.

It's rowdy fun with a dash of sweetness.

The Americanized version is miscast, misguided and misbegotten.

Helgeland's script is hit-and-miss, not on the Oscar-winning level of his L.A. Confidential. Still, Hardy is a show all by himself, an actor flying without a net and having a ball. You will too.

Haynes' commitment to outcasts, then and now, makes Carol a romantic spellbinder that cuts deep. It's one of the year's very best films.

The good news is that Mockingjay – Part 2, the big finale, has quit the ass-dragging in favor of what made the book a page-turner. There's the visual fireworks, for sure. But there's also the darkness of the theme.

Some movies are so good and true and tough-to-the-core they should just sneak up on you. James White is one of them.

Inspiration is what The 33 is selling. And it's hard not to get caught up in the rescue. You forgive the movie its faults, or most of them, because its heart is firmly in the right place.

Writer-director Angelina Jolie's attempt to emulate European art cinema is a slow, sodden, stupefyingly dull take on a 1970s marriage gone bad.

Luckily, Trumbo has a powerhouse Bryan Cranston to light a fire under the moldier clichés in John McNamara's script.

This landmark film takes a clear-eyed look at the digital future and honors the one constant that journalism needs to stay alive and relevant: a fighting spirit.

Brooklyn is easily the year's best and most beguiling love story. The surprise is that it also goes deeper, sadder and truer.

Craig puts heat and heart into Spectre, as if he's taken Bond as far he can. The movie is a fever dream of all the Bond villains and all of Bond's efforts to see a life past them.

A cheerless and unappetizing plate of piffle that deserves to be smashed against a wall or at least sent back to the kitchen.

Director David Gordon Green and screenwriter Peter Straughan sometimes stumble over this vast terrain of self-serving scoundrels (Trump trumps anything they can make up), but the laughs keep firing.

Silverman, digging so deep into her character that we can feel her nerve endings, is like nothing we've seen before. She's fierce and unerring. No showing off; she just is. This is acting of the highest caliber.

What makes Suffragette a relevant rabble-rouser, besides Mulligan's fierce, affecting performance, is the way it won't bow to the kind of Hollywood formula that tsk-tsks about how bad it was then — only to wrap everything up with a comfy banner that says, "You've come a long way, baby."

Director Barry Levinson and screenwriter Mitch Glazer lucked out getting Bill Murray to play Richie Lanz, a loser who makes losing hilarious. Murray just kills it.

Nonstop mayhem follows in a stampede of comic terrors ready made for Halloween. Sure it's exhausting. But Goosebumps, knowing its audience, lets it rip.

A ghost story in which superior camerawork, costumes and production design work together to put the audience in a trance. It's tough on actors not to get swallowed up in the scenery.

Room deserves to be seen unspoiled. All you need to know is that the performances of Larson and Tremblay will blow you away.

Blanchett burns on a high flame, and Redford finds the wounded dignity in Rather.

It's the remarkable Attah, whose young face reflects a hellish journey, that makes this fierce movie a blazing, indelible achievement.

Bridge of Spies may be a snooze to the ADD crowd allergic to historical drama, but it's dished out by experts.

Joe Wright's origin story of Peter and the lost boys has to be the dimmest, deadliest take ever on J.M. Barrie's Pan myth.

If you're going to interpret on film the searching mind of an indisputable genius, it helps not to make too many dumbass moves. On that basis, score a triumph for Steve Jobs, written, directed and acted to perfection, and so fresh and startling in conception and execution that it leaves you awed.

If Freeheld cuts corners to get its point across, Moore and Page never do. You'll be with them all the way.

Ignore the tell and focus on the show, spectacular in every sense.

This suspenseful survival tale, smartass to its core, slaps a smile on your face that you'll wear all the way home.

Before it goes off the rails in the final stretch, 99 Homes is a riveting rabble-rouser that thinks it can make a difference. In these days when Hollywood typically dulls our wits, Ramin Bahrani's 99 Homes has a fire in its belly. It's spoiling to be heard.

The movie needed great performances, and it gets them from Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn.

It's not much of a movie. But raging bull Robert De Niro, suited up to play for humor and heart, proves he can be a world-class charmer.

The film offers few answers about Fischer's descent into derangement. But you watch Maguire and slowly, with pity and terror, you understand.

In Spanish, "sicario" means "hitman." In film terms, Sicario is sensational, the most gripping and tension-packed spin through America's covert War on Drugs since Steven Soderbergh's Traffic 15 years ago.

There's only one star in this movie: Everest. Kormákur couldn't shoot higher than base camp, around 14,000 feet, without sickening the actors. But a crew traveled to the top to get footage, while much of the climbing was shot in the Dolomites. No matter. You watch Everest and you believe.

Ice-cold. Dead eyes. Demonic laugh. His face a mask you can't read until he's up in yours. Then run. That's Johnny Depp giving everything he's got in a riveting, rattlesnake performance as South Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger in Black Mass.

It makes you laugh till it hurts.

Gere, who has shockingly never been nominated for an Oscar, gives the performance of his career, intuitive and indelible.

No spoilers, except to say that cheap thrills can still be a blast. Not enough to make up for Shyamalan's awful "After Earth," but it's a start.

The three actors work wonders. And Zobel, as he did in 2012's mindbending "Compliance," nails every nuance of intonation and posture.

What hurts is that filmmaker Mia Hansen-Love did it better just a few months ago in "Eden," about the French house movement since the 1990s. In this movie, James tells Cole the ideal EDM track would work up the heart-rate of the crowd to 128 beats-per-minute. We Are Your Friends never even gets us to break a sweat.

This movie really moves. But a fleet of tanks couldn’t help the brothers Dowdle push past the plot holes in this rancid mess.

The movie steps lively with buoyant humor and palpable sexual tension, but keep an eye out for the dark places.

Lily Tomlin works miracles. She's comedy royalty whose best films (Nashville, The Late Show, All of Me, I Heart Huckabees) always cut deeper than a smile. But no Oscar. Maybe Grandma will do the trick. It's a Tomlin tour de force.

Eisenberg and Stewart stay appealing to the last. The movie, not so much.

Gerwig is the mistress of all things funny and fierce, and her byplay with Kirke (Gone Girl) is killer. You won't know what hit you.

Vikander, the sexbot in "Ex Machina," is having a hell of a year. And you can see why. Gaby isn't much of a part, but Vikander makes her a live wire. Her impromptu dance with Kuryakin that ends in a wrestling match is, well, something to see.

Straight Outta Compton plays better when it's outside the box, showing us N.W.A power and the consequences of abusing it. Would the movie be better if it didn't sidestep the band's misogyny, gay-bashing and malicious infighting? No shit. But what stands is an amazement, an electrifying piece of hip-hop history that speaks urgently to right now.

The movie is a world-class winner.

Powley is sensational, expertly blending hilarity and heartbreak. Her scenes with Wiig, sublime in her hard-won gravity, are unique and unforgettable. Just like the movie.

It helps that Kevin Kline excels as Ricki's ex, and Mamie Gummer, Streep's real-life daughter, imbues the fictional version with rare grit and grace. Otherwise, too many wrong notes.

The latest reboot of the Fantastic Four — the cinematic equivalent of malware — is worse than worthless.

Nothing and everything happen in the movie. Director James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now), working from a fluid script by playwright Donald Margulies, does justice to the book without compromising his film.

Leslie Mann and wild-card Chris Hemsworth, as her cock-flashing hubby, get the heartiest hoots. The rest is comic history warmed over.

McQuarrie — an Oscar winner for his script for 1995's "The Usual Suspects" — has an ace to play. That's the indie sensibility he brings to the usual Hollywood FX.

Yikes! I saw Pixels as a 3D metaphor for Hollywood's digital assault on our eyes and brains. Not funny. Just relentless and exhausting.

Amazingly, Gyllenhaal never cheats on his character's sense of dignity. Against the odds, he keeps you in Billy's corner. That's a champ.

There may be nothing fresh left to find in teens coming of age, but director Jake Schreier (Robot and Frank) fakes it with genuine sincerity.

Don't think you can take another Hollywood version of Sherlock Holmes? Snap out of it. Apologies to Robert Downey Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch, but what Ian McKellen does with Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective in Mr. Holmes is nothing short of magnificent.

Allen has crafted a suspenseful mind-teaser that might feel too much like an intellectual exercise if Phoenix and Stone didn't infuse it with raw humanity. The conceptual bubble Allen creates in Irrational Man is potent provocation built to keep you up nights.

Sweet is not how Schumer wants Trainwreck to go down. She wants to explode rom-com clichés and replace them with something fierce and ready to rumble. Done.

The latest film franchise culled from Marvel's comic-book universe packs a ton of fun into a teeny package. Its low-key charm helps glide us over trouble spots in tone and pacing.

The questions is: Can the minions carry a movie all by their mischievous mini-selves? 'Fraid not. This origin story, while being utterly harmless and far from despicable, wears out its welcome way too soon.

A groundbreaking film that leaves you in stitches while quietly breaking your heart.

What makes Asif Kapadia's documentary a devastating don’t-miss dazzler — like the lady herself — is the way he lays out her story without editorializing.

We get bracing bro banter, pectoral flexing and the whole gang going wild on Molly. Good times.

Terminator Genisys fires on all action cylinders when director Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World) follows the model James Cameron set in the first two films, still the glory of the series.

If you're ready to go with the hit-and-miss flow, you'll laugh your ass off.

Brice, who made an impressive thriller debut with 2014's "Creep," has a knack for getting the most out of four people talking.

The movie is a small miracle, lifted by Ruffalo and these two remarkable young actresses. Refusing to soften the edges when Cam is off his meds, Ruffalo is a powerhouse. He and Forbes craft an indelibly intimate portrait of what makes a family when the roles of parent and child are reversed.

Just know that Famuyiwa keeps the action spinning with vibrant speed and rare sensitivity. He's made a comedy of social expectation that plays like an exhilarating gift.

The idea has been tried — remember TV's "Herman's Head"? — but never with the artful brilliance of filmmaker Pete Docter (Up; Monsters, Inc.).

The Wolfpack is frustrating in how much it doesn't tell us about the Angulos and the legal tangle that comes with their release. But once you've met these kids, you won't forget them — or the film that puts a hypnotic and haunting spin on movie love.