Steven Rea

If we now take a woman's right to vote and to hold public office for granted, Suffragette reminds us that it wasn't that long ago when things were different.

Amazingly - and this movie is amazing - Room is a story of hope, of possibility. Sure, your stomach will be in knots, your fingers clenched, your heart racing. But it will also fill that heart with a sense of the goodness, the courage, the enduring love that is out there to be discovered - and to be held onto with the fierceness of life itself.

The Assassin is not "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and it is certainly not "Kill Bill". But Hou - a linchpin of Taiwan's New Wave movement, the director of "A City of Sadness" and "The Puppetmaster" - evokes the magic, the majesty, the artistry of the martial-arts movie tradition, and brings a Zen-like sense of observation to the proceedings

Singular and stunning.

Some projects are just too misguided for the star to mug and shrug his way out of. Consider Rock the Kasbah at the top, or the bottom, of that list.

Is Steve Jobs a great film? I don't think so. It's an achievement, certainly, full of Sorkin flourishes, breathtaking and brilliant one-liners that reveal a lot about the characters who deliver them.

The country goes unnamed, the warring factions aren't always clear, but the nightmarish exploitation of children is made specific in the most vivid, visceral ways.

Using a screenplay polished and honed by the Coen Brothers, Spielberg dips into John le Carré territory (you can't help but think of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold when Donovan looks onto the newly erected Berlin Wall, in the searchlights, in the snow).

A polished piece of advocacy filmmaking, He Named Me Malala begins - and is intercut with - beautiful animated sequences featuring Malala's 19th-century namesake, Malalai of Maiwand, an Afghani Pashtun poet who inspired her countrymen to rally against an onslaught of British troops.

In an extraordinarily inward and moving performance, Gere sheds every vestige of his silver-screen persona.

I'm not sure if leavening is the right word, but Brolin, as an enigmatic U.S. agent with a world-weary cynicism and a black-ops vibe, provides at least a dose of (very) dark humor to the proceedings.

As a celebration of agility, ability, and outlandish human behavior, The Walk is a winning thing. It may not get inside the head of its pole-balancing protagonist - it doesn't really even try - but Zemeckis' movie takes you skyward.

The Martian is never less than engaging, and often much more than that.

There'd be a lot less strife and starvation, disease and dread, if Nancy Meyers ruled the world.

Black Mass, a down and dirty crime drama based on the exploits of Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger, is thrilling for a number of reasons.

A story of companionship, loneliness, resilience. It's a small, artfully crafted thing, but it resonates in big ways.

Isn't the whole handheld "real-video" thing kind of old by now? Isn't the Shyamalanian-twist thing kind of old by now, too?

Chloe & Theo is a mess of a message movie, simplistic, sappy, silly.

There are some terrifically strong scenes and terrific actors contributing to them.

Brings home the complexities and contradictions of the man.

Digging for Fire, like last year's "Happy Christmas" (also with Kendrick) and 2013's "Drinking Buddies" (with Johnson and Kendrick), is not a film for fans of taut, crafted dialogue and definitive endings. Conversations drift and weave, as do the people having them. Narcissistic melancholy dukes it out with beer-and-pot-stoked merriment. There is longing. There is foolhardiness.

Although Mistress America is very much a New York movie, full of references to couture, pop culture, boutique hotels (to Antigone and Faulkner, too), its comic centerpiece is a brazen assault on a country compound.

A taut thriller about an American family touching down in an unnamed country just as a violent coup erupts, No Escape goes about its gut-churning business by playing (and preying) on our worst xenophobic tendencies.

Rosenwald tells the remarkable story of a remarkable man.

An honest and personal and unblurred examination (even through that druggy blur) of a tricky voyage into womanhood.

If you strip away all the gunplay, Hitman: Agent 47 would be about 10 minutes long.

Best of Enemies offers a bracing view of a pivotal time in our recent history, as Vietnam and race riots scarred a nation's soul, and as the Establishment and the Counter Culture exchanged epithets and blows.

A lot of energy and effort has gone into this endeavor, and I can't say some of it's not fun. But more of it, alas, is just tedious. Say uncle already.