Rene Rodriguez

A flamboyant but hollow exercise in glitz and pizzazz.

This is pure Disaster 101 formula, although distilled to the minimum amount of dialogue and characters possible.

The main thing writer-director Michele Jouse, who was close to Shepard, wanted to do with her intimate documentary Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine was to give a voice to those who are still mourning him and allow them to share their stories.

Tomorrowland is a crazy, disjointed mess. But it’s the good sort of crazy, and it’s the sort of mess you want to lose yourself in.

With Mad Max: Fury Road, director George Miller delivers the sort of jumbo-sized entertainment that makes you spontaneously break out in appreciative laughter: The breadth of his imagination and showmanship makes you giddy.

The clownish humor is imbued with a great, genuine pain. Unfortunately, the twist proves too much for the filmmakers to handle. The second half of The D Train collapses into a series of plot curlicues and narrative dead-ends. The picture loses its nerve and opts for a pat, wan resolution.

A revealing and bluntly honest portrait of a previously unknown filmmaker.

Like "A Separation," which used the story of a dissolving marriage to illustrate the unexpected consequences of a rigid, inflexible society, About Elly turns what starts out as a breezy comedy into an engaging and substantial exploration of human nature and how sometimes, without intending to, we hurt the ones we love most — including ourselves.

Today, you can see it for yourself and bask in all its insane glory.

Whedon knows this is all nonsense, but it can be great fun, too. Age of Ultron is all rush and sensation with little substance. But what a feeling.

The fact that Garland manages to cram in speculative ideas about the perils of a society that relies too heavily on technology is a bonus. In Ex Machina, love hurts, big time, for man and machine alike.

The Salt of the Earth is a celebration of the power of art to change the world, as well as an exploration of the considerable toll gifted artists sometimes pay for their talents, and their courage to push forward regardless.

True Story marks the directorial debut of Rupert Goold, a respected British theater veteran who also co-wrote the script and knows how to engage the viewer with simple scenes of two people talking (with a few modifications, this could have easily been a play).

In the movie’s best scene, Bisset lays into Depardieu with the rage and anger of a woman who has tolerated bad behavior for too long (there’s a fiery spontaneity to their verbal sparring that makes you wonder if the scene was improvised).

While We’re Young starts off as an empathetic, funny look at middle age and winds up as profound and schematic as a Neil Simon play — or, for the younger set, an episode of "The New Girl."

White God is the rare sort of movie in the era of computer-generated special effects where you can’t believe your eyes, because what you’re looking at is real.

Eastern Boys explores whether these lost boys are damaged beyond repair or are still capable of being saved.

One thing nearly all the anecdotes in The Hunting Ground have in common is their resolution: A lack of justice.

Here is a film in which nothing is at stake: Cars crash into each other head-on at high speeds, vehicles sail off cliffs and tumble down rocky mountainsides, people jump out of buildings and fall six stories to the ground, then characters just dust themselves off and continue as if nothing had happened. Even Wile E. Coyote wasn't this resilient.

The screenplay is fiendish, clever and airtight: Like a magician, Coimbra uses sleight-of-hand, but he never cheats, and the film is even more engaging on second viewing, when you really know what’s going on before your eyes.

The infectious dark comedy Wild Tales (Relatos salvajes) argues that payback is more satisfying when it’s doled out in fiery, bloody and outrageous doses.

A marketable counterpoint to last year’s "Boyhood."

With a script co-written by Penn himself and based on a well-regarded novel by the late French crime writer Jean-Patrick Manchette, this one has to have some meat to go along with the gunplay, right? Sadly, no.

Despite the lack of substance, Run All Night is far better than those clunky "Taken" movies with their timid PG-13 ratings. If you’re gonna cut Neeson loose against the mob, a bloody R is the way to go.

Maps to the Stars is haunted by ghosts, the way the film industry is haunted by its past, and Cronenberg gradually tapers down the dark humor and starts to amp up the ugliness of these blank, superficial lives.

Not all of the characters in the movie get just and fair send-offs, but Virzi’s stylish picture argues that’s the price we pay when a capitalist society trains us to place our own selfish interests above everything else. It’s a rat race that ultimately has no winners.

The movie is a furious, in-your-face whirlwind of emotions, but it’s never tiresome or bellicose, and its raucous, messy energy is invigorating.

Sadly, Jupiter Ascending turns out to be the exact opposite: the worst movie the Wachowskis have ever made.

It’s a cry of despair and soul-shaking desperation, leavened with shades of Dostoyevskyan angst.

Abel is a man with ideals in a world that has no use for them: If he’s going to succeed, he’s going to have to use his wits instead of bullets, and although the odds against him are formidable, watching his struggle is riveting entertainment.

With Moore’s formidable, Oscar-bound performance, the picture transcends the usual cliches of the genre to become something far more moving and profound.

Cotillard, who earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance, plays the character as a woman hanging on by the barest of threads.

The film is so gleefully ridiculous that you start to suspect the filmmakers were in on the joke and forgot to tell the actors.

Expertly shot and choreographed in Eastwood’s clean, unfussy style, the Iraq sequences are taut, harrowing and at times excruciatingly suspenseful, particularly a setpiece in which Kyle faces off against his Iraqi counterpart, a superb sniper who has made it his mission to take down the American sharpshooter.

Instead of a history lesson, Selma plays like suspenseful, absorbing drama.

The Imitation Game is vibrant and lively, engaging you on three levels: The fascinating way the Nazis managed to outwit the rest of the world until Turing came along, how his giant contraption (essentially the world’s first computer) will work, and what will happen to him and everyone he knows when the truth about him is finally revealed.

The new version uses addiction as a vehicle to tackle larger themes, eloquently explored by Monahan’s dialogue, which sings in a way uncommon to tough-guy crime-dramas.

Foxcatcher is too cold of a movie to love, but that chilliness is intentional and transfixing, a parable about the darkest corners of the minds of men that dares to whisper instead of shout.

This is a dark and shivery story about motherhood, a common subject for horror movies, but one that’s rarely treated with such intelligence or seriousness of intent.

OK, Mr. Jackson, you proved your point by landing the finish. Now please, no more Middle-earth, ever.

The first half of the movie, which alternates between hilariously vulgar, gross gags and some electric improvs and riffs by Rock and his cast of all-stars, has the crackle and pop of a live performance — it energizes you.

In Exodus: Gods and Kings, Scott settles for sticking (mostly) to the Book, skipping the boring parts in order to dish out the razzle-dazzle. This is spectacular entertainment, practically a theme park ride, that could have used more spirituality and soul.

The Homesman, director Tommy Lee Jones’ drama about the hardships of pioneer life in 1850s Nebraska, goes from deathly dull to shocking to intriguing to “Look, there’s Meryl Streep in a bonnet!”

Using a buzzy, unnerving score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Citizenfour makes you share the same sense of shock and paranoia as Snowden spews damning information that implicates the White House in transgressions that extend beyond our borders into other countries.

Like "The King’s Speech" or "Shakespeare in Love," The Theory of Everything sometimes feels a bit too polished and precise, leaving no room for ambiguity and always staying easy to digest, like elegant pap.

Dark, grim and exciting entertainment.

With a film this funny, exciting and visually stimulating, who cares if you know exactly what's going to happen next, and when.

This is Nolan’s unabashed tribute to "2001: A Space Odyssey," the first movie he ever saw at the age of 8 and the one that made him decide to be a filmmaker (there are homages to that earlier film everywhere).

The film’s true subject, though, is innate talent — for music, writing, painting, sculpture, plumbing — and the superhuman lengths we sometimes have to go to in order to wring it out of ourselves.

Birdman takes advantage of every facet of Keaton’s talent, from his knack for absurdist comedy to his seemingly effortless ability to tap into graceful profundity without making a big show of it.

John Wick reminds you this actor deserves better. Reeves makes the movie entertaining in a background-noise way, but he can’t give it any gravity, even when the filmmakers pull the cheapest trick in the book to get the audience to root for the hero and hiss at the Eurotrash villains. Someone get this man some good work, quick.

The problem with Men, Women & Children — and it’s a big one — is that the movie isn’t telling us anything we don’t already know.

Fury aims for history, and the contrived resolution shows a timidity by Ayer that is uncharacteristic of his previous work. Still, the action sequences, which use actual vintage tanks and little CGI, are pretty extraordinary and, at times, incredibly gruesome. War is hell. That’s entertainment, folks.

The less you know about Gone Girl going in the better, but even knowing what’s ahead doesn’t prepare you for the movie’s tone, which is funny yet curdled and cynical and black. This is a satirical antidote to the feel-good pap most Hollywood movies about relationships push on their audiences - here’s the perfect date movie for someone you want to break up with.

Unfortunately, Life After Beth starts feeling more conventional the wilder and darker it gets, and the laughs become more sparse as the movie winds to its bizarre and but unsatisfying conclusion.

Sometimes, love can feel like hate or annoyance — it is, as the title states, strange. But sometimes, more often than not, it can be a wonderful thing.

Stories about scientists doubting what they know to be true — "Contact," for example — can be provocative and engaging, on an intellectual and emotional level. But I Origins challenges too little and ties up things too neatly for it to register as anything more than well-made, well-intentioned hogwash.

Once the premise has been established, the film goes absolutely nowhere.

Gunn makes this huge entertainment accessible to the converted and the neophyte alike, and he has only has one goal: To send you out of the theater with a fat smile on your face. Mission accomplished.

Like most of le Carré’s novel, A Most Wanted Man has a veracity most spy thrillers lack, and the suspense is of the intellectual, not visceral, kind.

The good news is you’re feeling stuff, you know? And you’ve got to hold on to that. You get older, and you don’t feel as much, your skin gets tough.” This remarkable, wonderful movie helps you remember.

“Movies are a machine that helps us generate a little empathy,” Ebert said about films. Life Itself is a lovely, eloquent tribute to a man who devoted his existence to showing us just that.

Watching an army of apes riding horses heading into battle is undeniably cool, but that’s the only thing the movie gives you: Neat eye candy. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is written at a level so low, even 8- year-olds will find it lacking.

Pay attention, Michael Bay: This is what thrilling summer movies look like.

[A] visually stunning, technically impressive and crushingly dumb and overlong picture.

After an exciting high-speed car chase reminiscent of the Mad Max pictures, The Rover settles into a two-character drama between Eric and Rey, but Pearce is so one-note that their relationship is never engaging.

Palo Alto is a pale imitation of the early novels of Bret Easton Ellis, who wrote about young ennui and misdirection from the inside out.

De la Iglesia’s knack for offending audiences while showing them a good time is stronger than ever: Witching and Bitching isn’t much on substance or logic, but man, is it fun.

The Signal is too ambitious for its own good: The movie is built on shells of ideas and concepts that haven’t been fully thought out, and once it’s over, the movie collapses the more you think about it.

The movie offers just the right amount of spectacle.

The movie wouldn’t work, of course, without the chemistry between Hill and Tatum, an unlikely duo who share a tremendous charisma.

The Dance of Reality, which deserves a place along Amarcord as a fantastical take on coming of age, is the work of a wise and experienced old soul with the heart and curiosity of a young man in love with life.

Edge of Tomorrow isn’t good, but it’s also forgivable. Just please stop the "Top Gun 2" rumors, Tom. Please.

Don’t expect Hitchcock or De Palma here — Reichardt is much too low-key and modest for such crowd-pleasing pyrotechnics — but one long, sustained shot near the end seems to suggest that people who are convinced they are doing the right thing are capable of great evil.

By film’s end, everyone has been transformed for the worst. Heli is a troubling and upsetting picture, a portrait of a broken country that seems to be beyond repair and a depiction of how violence and corruption, when left unchecked, taints saints and sinners alike, sparing no one.

The things that stay with you are the dull, boilerplate love story, the laziest performance of Liam Neeson’s career as a murderous gunslinger and the distracting amount of makeup Seth MacFarlane sports in the film.

The result is a rare live-action Disney movie that merits comparison to its beloved feature-length cartoons.

This is the first film Gray has made with a female protagonist — he wrote the part specifically for Cotillard — and he gives the character the same resilience and resourcefulness usually reserved in movies for men.

The deep cast (look out for a slew of crowd-pleasing cameos) play this borderline-silly stuff so well, there isn’t a single unintentional laugh in the entire thing.

As intriguing as Hardy is to watch, the picture can’t overcome its cinematic-stunt vibe.

Here, finally, is a giant monster movie made in the anything-goes CGI era still capable of making your jaw drop.

A wan gloss on a horrific nightmare.

The casting of Hiddleston and Swinton was a stroke of genius: They emanate a particular sort of cool only they seem privy to, accentuating their alienation.

Efron makes you believe he’s capable of anything. Neighbors is rude, brazen and merrily offensive, and the movie mines the homoerotic undertones of fraternities to fine (if lowbrow) comic effect. But Efron, of all people, gives the film a curious edge.

In Fading Gigolo, writer-director John Turturro turns what could have easily been a crass and unpleasant comedy into something soulful and substantial — with a lot of laughs, too.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 grows stronger and more engrossing as it unfolds.

Grandly entertaining documentary.

Dom Hemingway is often viciously funny in unexpected ways, and every time you think the movie has run out of steam, Shepard spins things in a new direction, keeping the energy from flagging (including one of the most startling car crashes I’ve ever seen in a film).

Transcendence is "Her" for dummies.

Green’s movies rarely play out in conventional ways, and Joe, too, surprises in the end.

One of the problems with director Mike Flanagan’s occasionally involving but ultimately dull thriller is that the whole movie hinges on a reflective piece of glass.

Miraculously, the new picture makes the old one feel like Evans was just warming up.

Although the premise sounds gimmicky, Rob the Mob is based on a true, incredible story, and the sense of mortal danger is palpable every time Thomas goes in to score some loot (these men were not to be trifled with).

Much like the first film, Nymphomaniac Vol.2 isn’t remotely erotic or a turn-on — it’s a curiously intellectual experience that doesn’t move you below the neck, including the heart.

The movie, however, is the sort of picture in which people run around doing everything except the most logical thing to do, because that’s the only way to keep the nonsensical plot spinning.

Will Noah anger some rigid purists and scholars because of the liberties it takes? Perhaps. But the point to take home is the message the movie leaves you with, which works regardless of your faith (or lack thereof). Humans are inherently flawed. How we deal with those defects is what truly matters.

Like most movies about the Middle East conflict, Omar is ultimately about the futility of violence and how it feeds on itself.

The movie is so grand in scale that you can’t help surrender to the spectacle, even if the stuff that’s going on with the people in the film is often close to risible.