Richard Roeper

This movie soars on the strength of the screenplay. Monahan gives Hedlund and in particular Isaac dozens upon dozens of rich, intricate lines, and they’re both up to the task and then some. Isaac is an actor who is not afraid to go big or go home, but in Mojave, his finest moments are relatively quiet and sublime. Every inch of his performance is pure excellence.

More times than not, The Benefactor takes the less interesting fork in the road.

This is a cheeky, madcap romp, with exaggerated views of 1960s American stereotypes about Brits and vice versa, featuring terrific performances by Perlman and Grint, a most unlikely and most likable buddy duo.

This is no “Zero Dark Thirty” or “The Hurt Locker.” Lacking in nuance and occasionally plagued by corny dialogue, “13 Hours” is nonetheless a well-photographed, visceral action film, and a sincere and fitting tribute to those secret soldiers.

Ride Along 2 is the movie equivalent of a cover band. We’ve seen it all before, and often in much better films.

It’s a well-photographed story with an intriguing setup, but soon we’re mired in a meandering, stilted story with forced dialogue and some surprisingly subpar performances from the talented cast.

Even though it is a highly stylized, stop-motion animation film featuring puppet-like human characters, it is a pinpoint-accurate encapsulation of some of the most banal AND some of the most exhilarating moments virtually all of us have experienced at some point in our lives.

The Revenant is a visceral sensation, filled with unforgettable visuals and memorable set pieces.

The problem with Ferrell’s character is he goes from bland to desperate to off the rails — and very little about that transition is genuinely funny. The problem with Wahlberg’s character is he never seems all that dangerous or mysterious.

Director Haynes has a knack for framing his characters with just the right touch. There are no throwaway shots in this film.

While it’s not as audacious or as provocative or as brutally violent as “Django Unchained,” it’s still an exhilarating moviegoing experience, filled with wickedly dark humor, nomination-worthy performances and a jigsaw puzzle plot that keeps us guessing until the bloody, brilliant end.

Even though they look nothing like sisters, they’re believable as sisters. Every once in a while when we take a break from the thuddingly unfunny slapstick stuff, there’s a nice and genuine moment.

What a beautiful, thrilling, joyous, surprising and heart-thumping adventure this is.

It’s not in the same league as “Playbook” or “Hustle,” but thanks to some memorable set pieces and the best performance by Jennifer Lawrence since her breakout role in “Winter’s Bone,” the sometimes-bumpy journey is worth your investment.

The Ridiculous Six is sunk by a terrible script by Sandler and Tim Herlihy and some truly cringe-inducing work by a few of the players.

Concussion is a good movie that could have been great without trying so hard to be great.

This is a lovely movie.... So lovely a film, in fact, as to be nearly tame.

Though stylized and eccentric and non-linear in its narrative path, and filled with dazzling non-sequiturs and oddly cryptic storylines, Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth is indeed set on this Earth, and these characters are very much alive.

It’s impossible to fathom how writer-director Adam McKay has turned this material into one of the funniest and yet most sobering, not to mention one of the most entertaining movies of 2015.

Movement and Location has some clear-cut parallels to the stories of immigrants who are in the States illegally and are trying to live quiet, productive lives without anyone asking too many questions. But it also works as a Rod Serling-esque sci-fi adventure of the mind, devoid of special effects but convincing us of its dimension-breaking elements through the use of dialogue, performance and music.

Dane De Haan’s borderline-irritating portrayal of James Dean, with all the self-conscious cadences and high-pitched deliveries, almost dares you to reject the work — until you realize he’s encapsulating Dean’s charisma AND his selfishness as an actor.

[A] richly textured, sometimes flat-out hilarious and at times sobering documentary.

Tab Hunter Confidential is a well-crafted if not particularly deep bio-documentary.

The good news: Hardy creates two memorable characters, making some bold and always entertaining if not entirely successful choices. The bad news: Somehow, the fictionalized version of the terrifying, violent and twisted Krays manages to be pedestrian and derivative for long stretches.

The Good Dinosaur is wildly uneven, but you have to give it points for trying to be something different.

It’s a shattering, thunderous wake-up alarm, a call to lay down arms, a gutsy social satire and a highly stylized work of fiction that sometimes feels as accurate and sobering as the crime reporting you see on the front page of this newspaper.

Thanks to a charismatic, natural performance from star-in-the-making Michael B. Jordan, a script from writer-director Ryan Coogler that expertly navigates paying tribute to the franchise while creating an effective stand-alone film and fine work from Stallone...Creed is a terrific addition to the “Rocky” canon.

What DOESN’T get lost in translation is what made “El Secreto De Sus Ojos” so effective: the visceral, devastating empathy we feel when a horrible injustice is committed and it ruins multiple lives; the haunted looks in the eyes of a trio of characters who will never be able to shake off the events of long ago; the lush and lurid film noir touches; and the air of melancholy hanging heavy over a pursuit of justice because we know there’s no such thing as true justice, not in these circumstances.

At times, it’s really funny. More often, it’s “shocking” for the sake of shock value, gross for the sake of being gross, and stupid-goofy without much of a payoff.

Mockingjay — Part 2 is a grim, dark, trippy, violent and sometimes just plain bizarre journey, which makes for a fitting if uneven conclusion to a film series that’s always been weird.

The great Bryan Cranston sinks his teeth into the title role and chews the scenery with such gusto I half-expected him to spit out a chunk of period-piece furniture before we were through. There’s a lot of ham and cheese in the performance, but it’s great fun to watch.

The screenplay is so clunky, not a single cast member manages to sound believable. Familiar, likable actors from Kate Bosworth to Gina Carano to Morris Chestnut are buried under an avalanche of awful. You’ve been warned.

It’s not easy to make an emotionally involving film in which some of the most pivotal moments are about phone calls and making copies of documents and a source circling names on a document — but save for a few overly dry moments, Spotlight prevails.

Writer-director-star Angelina Jolie Pitt’s By the Sea is awfully pretty and mostly dreadful. It’s pretty dreadful.

Director Adam Salky wisely allows the writing and the performances to do the heavy lifting, using his camera in a decidedly low-key, indie style without drawing too much attention to stylistic flourishes.

An artfully shot and occasionally provocative but ultimately underwhelming and self-indulgent film.

This is a sweet, funny, smart, genuine all-ages movie with simple, timeless messages.

This is the 24th Bond film and it ranks solidly in the middle of the all-time rankings, which means it’s still a slick, beautifully photographed, action-packed, international thriller with a number of wonderfully, ludicrously entertaining set pieces, a sprinkling of dry wit, myriad gorgeous women and a classic psycho-villain who is clearly out of his mind but seems to like it that way.

Truth is a strange interpretation of events, in which the visuals and the music sometime seem to be nudging us in one direction, even as the screenplay and the performances are telling us something quite different.

As an often cliché-riddled tale of redemption on the big screen, Burnt is the equivalent of a sleek, well-lit, trendy restaurant serving up a mildly creative dishes on an otherwise predictable menu.

A mixed-bag satire with ambitions that veer wildly from sharp political insight to slapstick farce to inspirational semi-autobiography. It never finds solid ground in any of those genres.

The filmmaking is sure-handed, the performances authentic.

It just might be the most impressive piece of filmmaking I’ve seen in 2015, and it features a great lead performance by a rising star, a memorable supporting role by a familiar veteran — and one of the most amazing acting jobs by a child I’ve ever seen.

This is an unholy mess — a jumbled, tone-deaf satire in which seemingly vital characters are introduced and then inexplicably disappear, never to return; superb actors disappoint by relying on old tricks they’ve used to much better effect in much better films, and every attempt at political commentary comes across as ham-handed and naïve.

It’s just deadly and dreadful, loud and obnoxious, convoluted and irritating, horrible and dumb.

In a way (and maybe it was a conscious choice), some of Almereyda’s flourishes mirror Milgram’s flamboyance — but in both cases, when you have such a provocative foundation and such rich material to work with, pushing it to the next level isn’t necessarily the best choice.

Fukunaga is a dazzling stylist, and at times the shifting palettes of the cinematography and the brilliant camera moves (he’s also the DP on this film) are so impressive as to be marginally distracting.

Crimson Peak is a gorgeous mediocrity.

Spielberg has taken an important but largely forgotten and hardly action-packed slice of the Cold War and turned it into a gripping character study and thriller that feels a bit like a John Le Carre adaptation if Frank Capra were at the controls.

As can be said of most Apple products, it’s a wonder to behold — despite a few irritating glitches.

The intended charms of the down-home period piece/Southern comedy/romance/drama Big Stone Gap were utterly lost on me.

One of the most entertainingly ludicrous movies of the year.

Freeheld is a classic example of a well-made, well-acted film with the best of intentions — but a disappointingly heavy-handed method of delivering its message.

Douglas Tirola’s Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead is a frenetic, rough-edged, unapologetic tribute to the Lampoon, featuring some amazing archival footage, nifty bits of animation and dozens of straightforward talking-head interviews that crackle and pop.

The mystery is muddled, the romance is tepid and scenes that should be electric with tension are almost dull.

A provocative, visceral, sometimes heartbreakingly relevant drama/thriller.

Mississippi Grind is the cinematic equivalent of the unassuming, quiet player at the poker table who allows you to believe you have him pegged — and that’s when he springs the trap on you and shows you something you never saw coming.

Damon is terrific. The movie lives and breathes on his performance, and he comes through in every scene.

As breathtakingly gorgeous and well acted as The Walk is, if you had to choose between the doc and this solid fictionalized version, I’d say go with the documentary.

Goodnight Mommy is the kind of movie you should experience without watching the trailer or learning too much about it — and then experience again with the full knowledge of what happened, so you can admire the ways in which the puzzle was put together.

With some genuinely insightful dialogue, a number of truly funny bits of physical business, and small scenes allowing us to get know and like a half-dozen supporting players, The Intern grows us on from scene to scene, from moment to moment.

The last act of A Brilliant Young Mind is undeniably moving but not entirely believable and a little too neat and clean. Still, long after you’ve seen the film, you’ll remember the wonderfully nuanced work of the cast.

It’s an unusual mix of big-picture issues, grindhouse pulp and pure, rough entertainment, bolstered by one of the better ensemble casts of the year. This movie is not, um, fussing around.

This clunky dud about a same-sex union would have come across as trite and behind-the-times 20 years ago, let alone in 2015.

Sudeikis and Brie make for one of the most endearing pairings of the year, and Headland has delivered one of my favorite romantic comedies in recent memory.

Edward Zwick’s Pawn Sacrifice is an enthralling piece of mainstream entertainment that captures the essence of Fischer’s mad genius, perfectly re-creates the tenor of the times AND works as a legit sports movie about the great game of chess.

This is a good, solid, well-executed crime story. Nothing more, nothing less.

Based on true events, filled with stunning visuals and featuring more than a half-dozen of our best actors delivering solid performances, Baltasar Kormakur’s Everest is a high-altitude roller coaster ride that will leave you drained.

It’s a dopey, only mildly chilling, uneasy mix of horror and dark comedy, scoring few points in either category.

Always nice to enjoy a little comfort-food movie in which almost nothing surprising or particularly fresh happens, but we’re happy to spend time with the characters and we wish them the best as the credits roll.

The climbing sequences, the storms, the drama of broken equipment and nearly broken men — all great stuff, made even more compelling because the film does a wonderful job of letting us get to know and like each of the three adventurers.

A middling sitcom.

At times Grandma overdoes it with the stand-alone scenes in which crusty ol’ Elle causes a scene or sticks it to some jerk. It’s a little too neat. Mostly, though, Weitz’s screenplay strikes sharp note after sharp note.

Zipper might be entertaining enough in a campy way for you to watch it on demand as long as you’ve got a really big bowl of popcorn and an even bigger glass of wine (or the non-alcoholic elixir of your choice) to get you through. Might. Be.

In the lurid and cheesy and sometimes unintentionally funny political thriller Runner, one of the most intriguing and eclectic casts of the year is wasted in a murky cesspool that comes across as a third-rate version of “House of Cards” with a little bit of “Scandal” thrown in for bad measure.

Strives hard to replicate the screwball comedy but ends up being a lot more screwball than comedy.

Talk about a mediocre mash-up. Much of We Are Your Friends plays like an Electronic Dance Music update of a very good John Travolta movie — “Saturday Night Fever” — with a liberal sprinkling of plot elements from a quite terrible Tom Cruise movie called “Cocktail.”

There’s no denying director/co-writer John Erick Dowdle’s skill set for creating almost unbearably tense and quite twisted suspense pieces in which you’ll find yourself laughing at the sheer unapologetic insanity of it all.

Equal parts film noir, relationship drama, dark comedy and mood piece, Digging for Fire is a movie made by someone who clearly loves the art of movies.

Gerwig is a magnetic actress, but it feels as if she’s overplaying it here. Even in Brooke’s best moments, she’s not all that charming or interesting.

The plot is just high-tech Swiss Cheese, filled with holes and smelling like last week’s refrigerator contents.

Watts achieves a kind of early Coen brothers, early Tarantino feel.

This is one of the better musical biopics of the last 20 years.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. plays a like a lower key, vintage edition of a “Mission: Impossible” movie. It’s a good movie with a great look.

This is a tense, nerve-wracking thriller of the mind, with first-rate performances by Bateman, Hall and Edgerton — a tightly spun thriller with a wicked sense of humor and a wonderfully warped take on long-range karma.

It’s often fascinating stuff, but the whole thing comes across as a film new employees would watch on their first day of work, right after filling out all the packets of forms in Human Resources.

Though this is the cinematic equivalent of an album of cover tunes by artists who have created much more dazzling original work, it’s a sweet, smart and funny confection.

A lightweight and basically unnecessary attempt to once again bring some cinematic life to one of the lesser teams in the Marvel Universe.

It’s a brilliant slice of life.

The Stanford Prison Experiment is the kind of movie that raises as many questions as it answers. It’s also the kind of film where you want to budget some time for discussion afterward. You won’t be able to shake this one off easily.

At times the deception and the intrigue and the twists and turns make it nearly impossible follow every detail of the plot, but even when things get muddled, we know Ethan’s our hero.

I’m all for bawdy, politically incorrect, wildly inappropriate humor — when there are consistent and genuine laughs to be mined from the material. This stuff just sits there like a steaming pile of stuff you walk around.

Smulders gives one of the most natural performances of her career, and Bean’s subtle, strong work announces her as a young actress to watch.

The nice thing about Paper Towns is it’s as much about the friendship between Quentin, Radar and Ben as it is about Quentin’s love for Margo, and his quest to find her after she disappears yet again.

While Southpaw will surprise almost no one who has seen a fair amount of boxing movies, Fuqua’s direction and the excellent performances keep the action humming.

Pixels has a few inspired action sequences and a handful of laugh-out-loud moments, but overall the special effects are surprisingly average — and the lazy acting by Adam Sandler, the shameless mugging by Kevin James and the hammy performance by Brian Cox don’t help. Not even Peter Dinklage in a mullet can save the day.

[A] dark and wickedly funny and sometimes flat-out wiggy little number.

Highly entertaining high camp.

Davis (who was an executive producer on the film) gives a strong performance, as if she were acting in one of those many prestige projects lighting up her resume. It’s a noble try, but this dreck is beyond saving.

Trainwreck is my favorite romantic comedy of the year, and despite (or maybe because of) all its sharp edges and cynical set pieces, it’s a movie you want to wrap your arms around, or at least give a high five.

This is a lightweight, cliché-riddled origins story that veers between inside-joke comedy, ponderous redemption story lines and admittedly nifty CGI sequences that still seem relatively insignificant compared to the high stakes and city-shattering destruction that take place in most of the “Avengers” movies.

The deeper we go into Dana Nachman’s unquestioning, feature-length cheerleading film, the more uncomfortable I felt about the reaction of one person to that magical and overwhelming day. Miles.

The satire is broad and forced and unfunny, there’s no cadence to the setups and visual punch lines, and the likable cast is hopelessly lost. Some disasters should remain forgotten.

Maybe the dingo ate their screenplay.

This is the kind of movie where you can anticipate the next big shock and it usually arrives right on cue, and yet it still gets you right in the gut.

This is a conventional-looking films with a screenplay from brothers David and Alex Pastor that raises some fascinating issues and offers a tease or two of a better movie before devolving into a medley of chases and shootouts.

This movie is so excruciatingly dumb I felt as if someone had shaved 10 points off my I.Q. by the time I bolted for the exits.

The best thing in the movie is Schwarzenegger, who delivers the Guardian’s lines with perfect timing and creates an empathetic character, because as we know, nearly all the best movie robots somehow become just a little bit human as time goes on.

We veer close to the edge of Precious, Indie-Hipster Cliche so often in Infinitely Polar Bear, but thanks to a gifted filmmaker and two brilliant lead performances, the voice-over narration and the home-movie footage and the flights of fancy aren’t as off-putting as they might have been in lesser hands.

This is one terrifically twisted parental play date.

Big Game never once feels credible, and that’s why it’s so entertaining. Almost nothing that takes place in this movie could occur in the real world, and there’s something comforting about that.

Ted 2 feels like far too many other sequels: born of box office expectations more than a bona fide reason to return to the characters we loved the first time around.

Occasionally Winterbottom delivers a haunting, effective moment, giving a hint of a different, more compelling film. But then it’s back to the self-righteous, self-indulgent, muddled metaphors.

At times this is a beautifully shot film — but the Safdies never glamorize Harley’s world or turn her character into some gloriously tragic heroine. We feel for Harley and we like her, but only a fool would want to spend five seconds in her tattered shoes.

Directed with great flair and pitch-perfect timing, brimming with sparkling visuals, filled with first-rate voice performances, thrilling adventures and unforgettable moments, Inside-Out is an instant classic.

Bujalski’s script is smarter and much weirder (in a good way) than the standard romantic comedy. His characters are funny without ever trying to be funny.

Live From New York! is a solid, pleasant 82-minute walk down memory lane. But given that we’ve just been through the 40th anniversary celebration, cresting with that marathon of a TV special, it just doesn’t feel particularly necessary.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl has those handkerchief moments, but the laughs far outnumber the hard and sad punches. This is a movie that’s grounded in reality, has just enough whimsy and soars to the stars. It’s one of the best films of 2015.

Jurassic World is pure, dumb, wall-to-wall fun. When they hand you your 3-D glasses, you can check your brain at the door and pick it up on your way out.

Rarely have two actors been so effective playing the same character while taking totally different approaches.

Spy is a foul-mouthed, often hilariously disgusting, slightly padded comedy that soars on the strengths of writer-director Paul Feig’s wonderfully idiotic script and nimble camerawork, and the bountiful comedic talents of Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne and Jason Statham.

There’s gratuitous nudity, lots of partying, zippy camera moves, plenty of product placement and did we mention all those celebrity cameos? It all feels more like a rerun than a fully formed, stand-alone movie.

There ARE times when Aloha doesn’t work — and yet I’m recommending it for its sometimes loony sense of wonder, its trippy spirituality, its brilliant cast and because I seem to be a sap for even the Cameron Crowe movies almost nobody else likes.

Good Kill is never subtle and occasionally veers into implausibility....But the visuals pack a visceral punch.

Animals is a stark, brilliant, uncompromising, beautifully acted piece of work that deserves to be mentioned with “Panic in Needle Park” and “Requiem for a Dream” as a cautionary tale about drug addiction that doesn’t glamorize but also steers clear of proselytizing.

Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland is a great-looking, old-fashioned, at times soaring adventure ultimately brought down by a needlessly convoluted plot, some surprisingly casual violence and heavy-handed lectures about how we’re our own worst enemy and we’re going to destroy the planet if we don’t get it together.

Every Secret Thing is a small, well-crafted film with a few chilling moments and some fine performances, but it’s a muddled, pedestrian crime thriller.

I Am Big Bird is a loving, respectful (if at times shamelessly sentimental) portrayal of Spinney.

Pitch Perfect 2 strains to find some plot conflicts while balancing the line between satire and rousing musical numbers.

It’s all perfectly, wonderfully, fantastically crazy. Amidst all those ingenious, power-packed road warrior sequences, Fury Road contains a surprising amount of depth and character development.

Sometimes you see a play and you can imagine it being a movie. Sometimes you see a small movie like this, and you can imagine it working better as an intimate stage play.

Nothing about The D Train feels the least bit authentic, and worse, little about it is funny.

Here’s proof two females can make a bickering-opposites-action-comedy that’s just as lousy and sour as any clunker starring two guys.

Wiig manages to make Alice funny as hell, endearing, sad and sometimes a little frightening. There’s not an ounce of condescension or preciousness in the performance.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is a sometimes daffy, occasionally baffling, surprisingly touching and even romantic adventure with one kinetic thrill after another. It earns a place of high ranking in the Marvel Universe.

Adult Beginners has a casual, comfortable, low-budget authenticity, though it loses some of its edge near the end with some overly predictable and familiar resolutions.

In Abel Ferrara’s lurid, sometimes grotesque, train-wreck-watchable Welcome to New York, Depardieu almost literally fills the screen as an enormous bear of a man with insatiable appetites for money, sex and power.

Even with a terminally ill teenage son character, a pill-popping absentee mother and a crotchety grandpa character, The Forger is consistently ineffective as a sentimental tearjerker — and an even bigger failure as a heist movie.

A first-rate post-World War I drama with a heavy dose of sentiment and a gripping storyline.

A stunningly wrong-footed journey that begins with an attempt at bittersweet magic and ends on a series of sour and increasingly dopey notes.

If you’re going to go all-in with the gorgeous and chilling and sometimes ludicrous Ex Machina, if you’re going to buy into the lofty debates and the wiggy humor and the borderline misogynistic notion of the perfect woman, you’ll have to check your logic at the ticket counter.

The acting is actually pretty solid. These characters are never in the same room, so the performances amount to a collection of solo scenes. But these kids aren’t likable. Perhaps director Gabriadze and writer Nelson Greaves intended to create a Social Media “Scream” and a commentary on cyber-bullying, but Unfriended comes across as disdainful of millennials.

The courtroom scenes are unapologetically over-the-top and sometimes excruciatingly exact in the details of the murder, but you won’t soon forget Franco’s expertly nuanced performance. It’s as good as any work I’ve seen in a film in 2015, and True Story is one of the better movies to come along this year.

Clouds of Sils Maria is an expertly filmed insider’s look at the film business, the trappings of fame and the unstoppable, sometimes bone-chilling march of time. It’s complex and wickedly funny and dark, and it features the best ensemble acting of any film I’ve seen so far this year.

The numerous sex scenes are so uninteresting and devoid of creativity or plot advancement, even the actors participating in said encounters seem bored.

The Longest Ride” treats us to a twist that’s so ridiculous I think we’re almost supposed to laugh. It’s not quite on the “Are you KIDDING ME!?” level of awfulness as the big reveal in “Safe Haven,” but it’s close. It’s close.

If While We’re Young hadn’t gone quite so broad at the finish line, it would be a contender for my favorite movie of the still-young year.

This is one of the most ridiculous thrillers I’ve ever seen, and yet even with a running time that stretched well beyond two hours, with so many repetitive moments I almost began to wonder if I had missed something and the movie had started again, I have to admit I was entertained by the sheer audacity of the car chases and battle sequences — and there were even some genuinely touching moments.

Simon Curtis’ Woman in Gold is a shamelessly sentimental fictionalization of this true story, but it’s a fascinating story nonetheless, beautifully photographed and greatly elevated by a brilliant performance from the invaluable Helen Mirren.

It’s hard to imagine anyone seeing this film and not feeling the weight of the heartbreak when a young girl’s life is destroyed by bullying, and outrage that even with all the awareness and all the campaigning, bullying remains an epidemic in schools everywhere.

Al Pacino sells the heck out of his performance as Danny Collins.

Lawrence, obviously a talented actress, is monumentally bad here. There’s no nuance to her performance as Serena, no gradual descent for the character. She’s a conniving, criminal nutball, and Lawrence overplays her as if she’s a villainess in a mediocre silent film.

From its juvenile double entendre title to its fascination with prison rape and homophobic humor, “Get Hard” practically announces itself as an offensive, tired and unimaginative comedy in nearly every scene. And yet I didn’t hate it because Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart had such terrific comedic chemistry.

The problem is, the story lacks originality and zest.

Even with my misgivings about some of Randi’s methods, anyone who can challenges faith healers, psychics and mediums who claim a special bond with the dead — and often wins those challenges — deserves a standing ovation. An Honest Liar is an honest portrait of just that man.

The Gunman veers dangerously close to camp in the final scenes. If you make it that far without walking out.

The problem is, the plot wavers from nearly indecipherable to semi-ridiculous to … I stopped caring.

Frame by frame, ’71 is one of those intense war thrillers where you know it’s fiction, you know it’s not a documentary, and yet every performance and every conflict feels true to the history and the events of the time.

The Cobbler goes from bad to you-have-to-be-kidding in that final act, when we’re given a big reveal that makes no sense, even in the context of a bat-bleep crazy fable.

Even though it feels as if we’ve seen this movie before, Run All Night is a stylish and kinetic thriller, with Neeson at his gritty, world-weary best, some of the coolest camera moves in recent memory and a Hall of Fame villain in the great Ed Harris.

The world didn’t need yet another Cinderella story, but the one we got is one of the best versions ever put on film.

Is it a hard-R road trip comedy that makes no apologies for politically incorrect humor — or a sweet family film with a message about tolerance and acceptance? It’s both, I suppose. And neither element is particularly convincing or particularly funny.

I found Road Hard to be a low-key gem, a consistently funny albeit conventional story about a guy who’s almost always the funniest person in the room, and is almost always his own worst enemy.

It’s well-made and well-acted, but it’s also a grotesque, self-indulgent and ultimately tiresome satire that leaves behind an unpleasant stench.

The true story of Freddy Heineken’s kidnapping is fascinating, but Kidnapping Mr. Heineken is a disappointingly superficial film in which neither the kidnappers nor their captives are particularly interesting.

The Lazarus Effect is nothing but a cheap horror film cloaked in scientific mumbo-jumbo.

This is just sheer, escapist entertainment from start to finish.

While both have Broadway-level pipes, neither has a particularly distinctive, knock-it-out-of-the park voice. It doesn’t help that the songs, while solid, become repetitive in melody. And there’s not a home run in the bunch. I walked out humming … nothing from this movie.

This is a well-intentioned and sometimes quite sharp high school movie that falls just short of the mark due to a few way-off-the-mark scenes and too much heavy-handed preaching.

Hardly the sporting-movie equivalent of a Hail Mary touchdown pass or a homer in the bottom of the ninth, yet McFarland, USA still has plenty of moments where you find yourself rooting hard for these kids, even though you know you’re watching a re-creation of events from the mid-1980s

Given the considerable comedic talents of Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, Adam Scott et al., and the ragged, what-the-hell charms of the original “Hot Tub Time Machine,” it’s surprising how rotten this movie is from start to finish.

The Rewrite is hardly shattering new ground, but the familiar path is strewn with a steady stream of smile-inducing moments, two terrific performances from the leads and a first-rate supporting cast.

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus is a bold but wildly uneven, bloody mess of a film, sunk in large part by the subpar performances by nearly every major character in nearly every major role.

Firth is brilliant. He’s playing a veteran super spy in a very violent but very silly movie, but even when Harry is explaining why there’s a dead stuffed dog in his bathroom, Firth gives a disciplined, serious performance.

The long-awaited, highly anticipated, much-discussed film adaptation of the first segment of E L James’ inexplicably popular "Fifty Shades" trilogy is a tedious exercise in dramatic wheel-spinning that doesn’t have the courage to explore the darkest elements of the characters and doesn’t have the originality to stand on its own merits.

In Gabe Polsky’s Red Army, the Iron Curtain surrounding the Soviet dynasty is pulled back to reveal an immensely effective but dehumanizing machine in which hockey served as an important propaganda tool, resulting in some of the most impressive teams ever to take the ice.

The Voices is a deeply warped, darkly funny and thoroughly depraved horror comedy... and whether you find this sort of thing walk-out-of-the-theater distasteful or wickedly subversive, I’m fairly confident we won’t see another movie like it for quite some time.

Seventh Son moves at a fairly quick pace and has a sense of humor about itself. That doesn’t mean it’s thrilling, or funny. Just that it’s a quickly forgotten pile of junk.

There’s no defending Jupiter Ascending. There’s no explaining Jupiter Ascending. There’s no way Jupiter Ascending isn’t making an appearance on my list of the Worst Films of 2015.

There’s some first-rate camerawork aboard the sub, that strong lead performance from Law and one nifty plot twist. It’s a shame the script gives us one of the most incompetent and ridiculous submarine crews this side of “Down Periscope.”

Costner’s performance is filled with memorable moments.

True, Aniston does maybe her best film work to date in Cake. But it’s definitely not her best film.

The Humbling is a jumbled collection of scenes in which fantasy and reality intertwine in a manner I found more maddening than intriguing.

Everyone in The Boy Next Door has to behave like an idiot at least once or twice, just so the movie can keep going. It’s an act of mercy when it finally grinds to a halt.

A loud, dopey chase film filled with substandard shootouts.

Moore delivers a performance that should win awards. We believe every inch of the performance, every movement of Moore’s eyes when she gets the news of her condition, every scene in which she experiences another level of deterioration. It’s beautiful work.

Nearly every scene in A Most Violent Year is pitch perfect. Chandor the writer comes across as a big fan of David Mamet’s, and Chandor the director invokes stylistic touches reminiscent of Sidney Lumet, among others, but Chandor is no cover artist.

Despite the considerable charisma of Kevin Hart and Josh Gad and a strong supporting cast, The Wedding Ringer has only one or two genuinely inspired bits of comedy, a few dopey moments when you laugh in spite of yourself — and long, long stretches of pointless montages, loud and unfunny physical shtick and far too much reliance on gay “humor."

American Sniper isn’t some flag-waving political movie. It’s a powerful, intense portrayal of a man who was hardly the blueprint candidate to become the most prolific sniper in American military history. And yet that’s what happened.

​I’ll tell you what got Taken. A hundred and twelve minutes of my life got Taken.

A meticulously crafted, sparse but beautifully photographed full-length feature film with strong work from a reliable veteran and a breakout performance from an actor you might not have heard of before.

Working from a script by Paul Webb and aided by stark, beautiful, sometimes startlingly realistic cinematography by Bradford Young, DuVernay has delivered a powerful and moving portrait of Martin Luther King Jr.

The Interview sticks to the anything-for-a-laugh plan for nearly the entire journey, with far too many jokes about things going in and coming out of rear ends.

Wahlberg has grown so much as an actor we can pretty much buy him as a college professor/author. There’s just not enough depth to the character of Jim, and not much of a story arc.

As eccentric as his subjects are, Burton plays things relatively straightforward. This is one of the most mainstream movies he’s ever done. It’s also one of the more entertaining movies of the year.

Into the Woods rumbles on for too long and has some dry patches here and there — but just when we’re growing fidgety, we get another rousing musical number or another dark plot twist, and we’re back in business.

Unbroken is an ambitious, sometimes moving film that suffers from a little too much self-conscious nobility, and far too many scenes of sadistic brutality.

This is the scariest movie of the year.

The dialogue is schmaltzy and often painfully unfunny. The special effects are often so 1980s-bad... Time and again, terrific actors sink in the equivalent of cinematic quicksand, helpless against the sucking sound of this movie.

This is a smart, savvy film with sabre-sharp one-liners, a half-dozen terrific supporting turns, one of the best scores of the year, a winning romance and a heartfelt and authentic performance from Rock.

As a fictional, big-budget, 3-D, epic interpretation of Moses’ journey, Exodus: Gods and Kings is spectacular.

As for Witherspoon, there’s not a shred of her America’s Sweetheart persona in this work. She strips naked, literally and otherwise, in a raw, brave performance.

Every once in a while there’s an inspired montage, or a one-liner that made me laugh out loud. But how can you have the great Christoph Waltz playing a villain in a comedy, and you get almost nothing out of it?

This whole movie is crazy, with all sorts of well-known folks stumbling and bumbling about in search of a character. At times Reach Me is undeniably intriguing, mostly because it’s just so weird and disconnected. Eventually, though, it just becomes tiresome.

This is one of the most irritating movies of the year.

The Homesman is not an easy, comfortable viewing experience. That’s part of what makes it unique.

Foxcatcher is a disturbing and memorable film.

Ultimately, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 serves as solid if unspectacular first lap around the track of a two-lap race.

This is a well-made, well-acted but unexceptional film about one of the most exceptional figures of the last half-century.

Carrey and Daniels throw themselves into the characters they inhabited 20 years ago, whether it means allowing their crotches to be doused, using their rear ends as comedic weapons, or just saying really stupid things. Sometimes it’s pretty damn funny. Almost always, it feels just a little bit desperate.

Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me is a poignant, stark, lovely and sometimes devastating film — a tribute to one of the great crossover stars of his time, and an unblinking look at how Alzheimer’s relentlessly chips away at one’s memories and thought process, brick by brick. It is worthy of an Academy Award nomination.

What a beautiful and epic film is Interstellar, filled with great performances, tingling our senses with masterful special effects, daring to be openly sentimental, asking gigantic questions about the meaning of life and leaving us drained and grateful for the experience.

This is one of the worst movies of the year.

It’s a brilliant performance by Gyllenhaal in a film that veers from dark satire to tense crime thriller before the tires come off near the end, leaving the entire vehicle just short of worth recommending.

Philip is one of the most unlikable but also one of the most fascinating characters of the year.

Although there are moments when the characters in Dear White People sound as if they’re reciting different sections of a thesis, overall Simien’s screenplay is tight, funny, smart and insightful, and his direction has just enough indie feel without becoming too self-conscious or preachy.

This is a strange and beautiful and unique film, one of the best movies of the year.

While The Good Lie certainly doesn’t shy away from scenes designed to make us shake our heads at man’s inhumanity to man and scenes designed to make us dab at our eyes, it’s the kind of movie that earns those moments.

Regardless of Crudup’s ranking as a box-office draw, he’s every inch the movie star in Rudderless, a rather strange but engrossing film with one of the more jarring twists of any film in recent memory.

Pitt is at the top of his game, playing a man who has forgotten whatever he used to be and has wholly embraced his role in this war.

Nearly every scene is contrived, but Melfi has a nice way with dialogue, and the cast is uniformly outstanding.

The music is brilliant, Chazelle’s writing and directing are something to behold, Teller is really good — and Simmons delivers one of the most memorable performances of the year.

I Am Ali serves as further testimony Ali wasn’t simply a great boxer, he was a great man who happened to be a great boxer as well.

A movie about this subject matter is a tough sell, but Swank and Rossum are brilliant, and in its own unique way, You’re Not You is one of the best buddy movies of the year.

Jeremy Renner doesn’t put much movie-star mustard on his performance as a newspaper reporter in Kill the Messenger, and that’s one of the reasons the work is so strong.

The actual case isn’t all that complex or compelling, and the eventual explanation for what happened is almost an afterthought. By the time all the ghosts and feuds have been put to rest, it’s surprising how little we care about these characters.

For the most part, thanks in great part to Benson’s rich screenplay and Chastain’s nomination-worthy work, I was immersed in this story no matter who was telling the tale.

For the most part, thanks in great part to Benson’s rich screenplay and Chastain’s nomination-worthy work, I was immersed in this story no matter who was telling the tale.

At times Reitman (adapting Chad Kultgen’s 2011 novel) can be a bit preachy and scolding about the pitfalls of surrendering one’s “RL” (real life) to one’s online existence, but just about any parent or any teenager seeing this film will empathize with any number of the interconnecting plot lines.

Everything about this film feels forced, clunky and overwrought.

The editing, with so many twists and turns and so many supporting characters needing their due, is without hiccups. And thankfully, there’s plenty of dark humor.

At times Jimi: All Is By My Side feels pure authentic. More often, though, it’s meandering and melodramatic, with far too many scenes of Hendrix jabbering and squabbling with two key female figures in his life, and not enough of the music.

The Equalizer features some gruesomely creative violence, but it’s equally memorable for the small, gritty moments set in that diner, or on the rough-and-tumble streets of Boston. And most of all, it’s got Denzel going for it.

Even though we’re trafficking in mostly melancholy territory about lost souls trying to regain their footing, it says something about the tender artistry of the filmmaking, and the beautiful work by the actors, that I’m actually keen to spend more time with these characters and see this story unfold from different perspectives.

This is not a movie you forget about as you’re heading for the exit. I’m not sure it’s a movie you’ll ever forget.

What a wasted opportunity.

Neeson is in nearly every scene in the movie, and he carries it well. Yes, he’s played this nails-tough, world-weary, scotch-loving, ex-law enforcement type again and again — but he’s as good as anyone in the world at playing those types, and in this case he has some rich material to work with.

This is a smart movie about complicated people in search of something approaching inner peace.

The Drop is filled with many such small, near-perfect moments where there’s so much more going on beyond the simple exchanges of dialogue.

It’s fascinating and boring, intriguing and exasperating, but ultimately it felt like a jambalaya of ideas that didn’t quite mesh into a satisfying experience.

Even most of the fine actors, including Aubrey Plaza, John C. Reilly and Cheryl Hines, at times seem lost as to whether they should be playing the material for laughs, or going for a more straightforward approach and letting the laughs come to them.

It lands just this side of camp, with a perfectly cast Kevin Kline hamming it up as the aging bounder Flynn, and Susan Sarandon really hamming it up.

To Be Takei is a celebration of a man of great resilience, infectious humor, a voracious appetite for the richness of the human experience, and the best laugh in the history of laughing.

Every once in a while Are You Here strikes comedic gold.

Working from Justin Lader’s smart script, Moss and Duplass expertly portray a very typical couple going through a rocky time — and they’re just as effective when the weirdness kicks in during their getaway weekend.

Director R.J. Cutler is fond of time-lapse establishing shots and rapid-fire montages, none of them particularly effective in conveying this bizarre dual world Mia now inhabits.

This is one badass movie.

The exploration of gender politics grows tedious as the gender dynamic between the two leads reverses, and the same points are hammered home again and again.

The Giver doesn’t seem entirely consistent about its own rules and races far too quickly to a thoroughly unsatisfactory conclusion that raises three questions for each answer it provides.

The Expendables 3 is proof a movie can be exceedingly loud and excruciatingly dull.

If you’ve seen “The Big Chill,” you’ve seen this movie, with older grown-ups. Even if you haven’t, you won’t be surprised by much.

If we don’t care a whit about the characters and their respective dilemmas, a multiple-vortex tornado ripping through a used car lot is just a multiple-vortex tornado ripping through a used car lot.

It’s the powerful, raw, energized performance by Chadwick Boseman that makes this film worth seeing.

It’s filled with a kind of giddy energy that leaps off the screen. It’s corny, it’s dopey, it’s sincere, it’s romantic, it’s thrilling and it leaves one anticipating the next adventure of these heroic goofballs.

Happy Christmas expertly captures the rhythms of a young couple’s life and how it changes enormously when a baby arrives.

And So It Goes is the cinematic equivalent of comfort food. The pleasure comes from experiencing the fine performances and semi-frequent smile-inducing dialogue, bolstered in no small fashion by the wonderful comedic timing of Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton.

A Most Wanted Man works as a crowd-pleaser and as a believable reflection of how these fictional events might well play out in the real world.

Firth and Stone, appealing as they are as actors, are so disconnected as potential romantic leads it sometimes appears as if they’re barely in the same scene together.