Tirdad Derakhshani

The story is simple, illogical, mysterious, strange, and, of course, very, very sparse.

I’m Not Your Negro is an unforgettable work. Baldwin’s words – eloquently spoken by Samuel Jackson – will haunt you.

A mildly charming, if singularly unoriginal, comedy.

At its satirical best, Things to Come takes aim at some of the sacred cows of French academia, showing how the posturing of today’s radical kids seems to repeat the attitudes their parents had in the '60s.

An immensely rich, deeply felt exploration of human relationships that draws you in and holds you fast for nearly three hours.

Gold never settles on a coherent point of view. Is the film supposed to be a critique of capitalism or is it a Horatio Alger story about a self-made man preyed upon by wall street?

I should put in for worker’s comp for the extensive injuries I sustained watching the insulting, abysmal 3-D action thriller xXx: Return of Xander Cage, which left me deeply traumatized and suffering from injuries to my eardrums, my eyes, my mind, my soul, my aesthetic sensibility, and my sense of decency.

Michael Keaton has this incredible, I’m-at-the-edge-of-the-abyss look that should be taught as "the hangdog" in drama school.

A remarkably weird and wonderful exercise in psychological terror featuring a virtuoso performance by Scottish actor James McAvoy.

It's intriguing enough to suck you in, but confusing, fragmentary, frustrating.

Paterson is easily one of Jarmusch’s most accomplished films. He portrays the life of the mind and the workings of the creative soul as a kind of secret love affair, a deep, hidden well inside the most ordinary, mundane existence.

If you’re looking for great, realistic action, it’s just the thing. Berg is a masterful action director, and his Patriots Day is every bit as engaging and exciting as "Lone Survivor" and "Deepwater Horizon."

Scorsese’s adaptation is overlong and at times insufferably self-indulgent, but contains sublime moments of transcendent beauty and a wealth of beautiful performances.

A Monster Calls is an engrossing tragic fantasy, sustained by genuine sentiment.

Child actor Pawar is extraordinary as Saroo during his terrifying odyssey, and Davis portrays the streets of Calcutta, teeming with homeless children and adults, as if they were one of the rings of hell from "Dante's Inferno."

An enjoyable (but long) romcom that's like "Meet the Parents" on LSD, laced with rat poison.

It's a small, intimate chamber piece with beautiful camerawork and gorgeous art direction ... until it loses its way in a wrongheaded bid for sci-fi greatness.

Fences is also very much an actors' movie, with breathtaking performances from Washington and his costars, including Davis, Stephen Henderson, Jovan Adepo, Russell Hornsby, and Mykelti Williamson.

Its positive message about education, the value of hard work, and the power of social commitment make it a must-see for parents and kids alike.

It also has great momentum, good set pieces, and so much frothy nihilism it’s just plain fun.

Rogue One is a minor little story with a likable cast and familiar Star Wars themes. But it tries so hard to be an epic masterpiece – with self-important speeches and an insanely outsize orchestral score – that it ends up a laughable parody of itself.

Lean, mean, and utterly compelling, Ma’s beautifully paced and remarkably understated 80-minute thriller Old Stone is a Kafkaesque satire about the soul-crushing effects of bureaucracy.

A disquieting and ultimately disappointing political thriller.

At 120 minutes, The Love Witch is too long. Biller has too much material on her hands and too many non sequitur scenes.

The film is too formulaic and far too prone to melodrama, with outsize emotions as ridiculous as its comic-book villains.

Strictly speaking, Elle is a comedy, a blacker-than-death social satire about bourgeois values, set in contemporary Paris. It’s viciously, demonically funny in parts.

At turns elegiac, absurdist, and gently satirical, Lonergan’s drama is a deeply affecting chamber piece that features an outstanding performance by Casey Affleck.

Allied comes off like a highlight reel that mimics the look and feel of a whole school of great films, from "Casablanca" to Hitchcock's "Suspicion" and "Notorious."

Moana 's great heart and great humor actively subvert the violent, egocentric, macho mind-set that dominates so many popular stories. It can hardly be expected to change prevailing attitudes on its own. But it’s a start.

Like Clint Eastwood’s masterful 2006 WWII drama "Flags of Our Fathers," Lee’s film is as much about how we spin war stories as it is about war itself. Both involve a group of heroic soldiers sent home by the Pentagon to help drum up popular support. Both are made by filmmakers keenly aware that stories have the power to justify a war or turn the public against it.

Yates and Rowling skillfully weave their bleak – and very blunt-edged – message into the fabric of the story. It might be wildly out of place in a fantasy aimed at tweens, but it’s a welcome change from the usual vapid blockbuster.

His pictures cover familiar territory. Yet Nichols is blessed with a talent for telling stories from fresh, surprising perspectives.

A richly observed coming-of-age drama about two teenage boys who are drawn to each other with a complicated mix of attraction, repulsion, tenderness, and aggression.

Garfield melts into his Doss character in a performance that seems impossibly still and tranquil. He’s mesmerizing. It’s almost impossible to imagine he ever played Spider-Man.

It’s a true American masterpiece and one of the best films of the decade.

Far too good to be watched in one sitting.

The film is surprisingly engaging. It’s fun.

Despite the competent animation, the great tunes, and funny voice work by costars Russell Brand and John Cleese, Trolls is a lackluster entry. The story is clichéd and predictable. Overall, the film has no real magic.

Set against the backdrop of Montana's stunning wilderness, Certain Women portrays women at work and women in desire with the quiet confidence, simplicity, and directness of a true artist.

Rebecca Hall is wondrous as Christine, delivering a sly performance that brings out her character's extraordinary intelligence. Her Christine has a peculiar brand of dry, subversive humor that takes aim at various absurdities of modern life and mass media.

The more movie magic Howard piles on, the less we care. And, boy, does he pull out all the stops, stocking the pic with a tub of red herrings, half a dozen plot twists, and more complex set pieces than a comic-book flick. I felt relieved when it was finally over.

While it's not entirely successful, this stylish shocker is a big step up from the earlier film.

Somehow, Reacher gets under your skin with his mordant wit, razor-sharp intelligence, and existentialist intensity.

Part of the problem lies with the venue. When it comes to standup, bigger is not better. One-man shows work better in smaller spaces. In his bid to proclaim his giant stature as an entertainer, Hart loses himself.

On the whole, it's a mess of action clichés built on top of a shaky premise that's so out-of-this-world that it'll either enrage you - or make you laugh. I chose the latter. I'm not ashamed to admit that I had a lot of fun at this movie.

A charming, warm-hearted Swedish dramedy about the redemptive power of neighborly love.

A startling, powerful biopic.

With its female heroines and its uncertain, constantly shifting view of reality, The Girl on the Train is a bit like a cubist, feminist episode of "Law & Order." But not much more.

It's the stuff of nightmares.

Tries - far too hard - to replicate the Alice effect and falls short.

Masterminds is filled with the sort of idiotic bathroom humor that has become standard in big-screen comedies, but it is enlivened by the surreal slapstick touches that made Napoleon Dynamite so good. Even though it isn't the sharpest comedy, it had me in stitches.

I've rarely encountered such pure poetry of action as in the opening minutes of Deepwater Horizon, director Peter Berg's exciting and emotionally wrenching thriller.

This terrific film and its inspirational message have been filtered through an individualistic, American point of view, suggesting that anyone can make a better life for themselves if they are willing to work. And that's not the case everywhere.

Storks feels way too much like a belabored and mediocre SNL sketch. Each character has some neurotic tic or crazy fixation, which they expound upon in monologues that feel like material for a stand-up act or a sitcom.

Despite a great cast and several terrific action sequences, Fuqua's film is largely forgettable.

At once a shocking, baroque freak-out and a finely tuned, brilliantly paced surrealist black comedy.

It's nothing more than a sophisticated clone of the original, and it really overdoes the shaky-camera thing - even more than in some of the worst found-footage movies The Blair Witch Project spawned.

Chilling - and very chatty. Snowden is a seriously talky film. Yet it never feels tedious, thanks to Stone's tremendous sense of story construction, the film's razor-sharp editing - and Gordon-Levitt's masterful performance.

In Order of Disappearance has an utterly unique feel, a certain Scandinavian crispness that's impossible to duplicate.

An uneven, perpetually redundant comedy-drama.

Anya Taylor-Joy, who delivered a heartrending breakout performance in "The Witch," is entrancing as this exotic being, Morgan.

With its clever structure and pacing, its range of emotional notes, and its remarkable use of magic realism, The 9th Life of Louis Drax makes for an absorbing and memorable mystery.

Relative newcomer Parker Sawyers (Zero Dark Thirty, Survivor) is terrific as Barack, embodying the character in each line and gesture without mimicking the real Obama.

This should have been an easy knockout. Yet the pieces just don't fit together. Hands of Stone lurches back and forth between well-crafted dramatic scenes and shabby, cliché-ridden sequences that sap the viewer's energy.

One of the most suspenseful, terrifying, and devilishly original horror pics in recent memory.

An elegant survey of the origins of the information revolution and a shrewd analysis of how the internet has reshaped the world. It's one of the director's best docs.

If you want to expose your children to a work of art with real soul, you could do a lot worse than Kubo and the Two Strings.

The new Ben-Hur isn't much of an improvement. Dominated by CGI effects, it's a soap opera better fit for basic cable.

An intensely intelligent, well-written, and mature exploration of the unwritten rules women have to follow if they want to succeed in high finance.

Directed with tremendous style and vibrant, buoyant energy.

A violent, sexy, crazy actioner about supermarket products that rebel against their human consumers, Sausage Party is one of the funniest and most deeply offensive movies of the year (it's obscenely funny), which lambastes America's most sacred of sacred cows: religion.

An extremely delicate, quiet, and stunningly understated chamber piece.

An immensely enjoyable, warmhearted, and gentle showbiz dramedy.

Suicide Squad does have quite a few tremendously entertaining sequences of high action and low comedy. It's a shame it never rises beyond that.

Phantom Boy will appeal to children who have the patience and imagination to immerse themselves in the film's wiggly animation.

Nerve gives moviegoers everything they'd want from a teen romance. It's a little less successful as a critique of life in the age of Instagram.

A well-shot, gore-free psychological thriller about our elemental fear of darkness, Lights Out has a good deal in common with "The Babadook." While it can't touch Jennifer Kent's masterpiece, it does mark the arrival of a major new talent.

Four film sequels and 14 years later, the best I can say of Ice Age: Collision Course is that it has nice coloring and good picture contrast.

Breaking a Monster is a revealing window into the industry. But it lacks a certain human component.

It seems another member of Clint Eastwood's brood is ready for stardom. Francesca Eastwood, 22, his daughter with actor Frances Fisher, is one of the bright lights in writer-director JT Mollner's otherwise uneven feature debut.

A cross between François Truffaut's sometimes-harrowing dramas about childhood and a Steven Spielberg fantasy, Gondry's film abounds with sentiment - without falling prey to sentimentality.

Wiener-Dog has a satirical edge as sharp as any Solondz has fashioned, but it is also filled with disarming moments of absurdist humor.

Our Kind of Traitor strains credulity: The world it attempts to depict - international organized crime - is too large, too unmanageable and too easily caricatured.

It's fun, exciting, freakish filmmaking.

The photography is lush, the dialogue uproarious, and the crazy action sequences unforgettable.

The Purge: Election Year tries to show that what counts isn't firepower but compassion, not egoism but community. But frankly, it can't help but shoot itself in the foot: The violence is too tantalizing, too stylized, too fetishistic - the film features killers dressed in fanciful Halloween costumes who dance and sing as they dismember people.

A stylish, painterly picture that evokes classic horror films from the 1930s.

Mixing elements from documentaries, biopics, war flicks, and Hallmark romances, Ross' film is a living history tour, but with gory special effects and a smoldering smattering of sex appeal.

Well-written, gorgeously shot, and expertly edited, the film is also an exasperating exercise in good intentions gone wrong. For all its strengths, Genius often trades in tiresome clichés.

Central Intelligence is actually funny.

A complicated, multi-segmented narrative that's much longer, more elaborate, more dramatic, and more packed with chilling moments and hair-raising visuals than one could anticipate, even from Wan.

Just because you can come up with names such as Azeroth, Durotan, Orgrim, and Grommash Hellscream doesn't mean you're J.R.R. Tolkien, people.

A subpar 3D action comedy featuring four giant motion-capture animated turtles and a raft of human costars, including the dreamy-eyed Fox, wide-shouldered Perry, a remarkably slender Will Arnett, and Laura Linney, who looks tired and uncomfortable throughout the proceedings.

Americans seem uncommonly uncomfortable discussing our own class struggles. But, boy, do we love to watch the Brits do it. I think that's one reason the inspiring and joyful Dark Horse is such an appealing film.

While its rather formulaic second half relies on clichés about underdogs' triumphing against the odds, The Idol opens with a terrific look at Assaf's childhood that has the feel of "Stand By Me."

A dull, formulaic theme-park ride whose only purpose is to make more pots of money.

Don't get me wrong. Angry Birds doesn't depict any on-camera violence against person, bird, or pig. But there's a darkness at the heart of this movie that's hard to reconcile.

Its historical influence aside, Dragon Inn delivers pure cinematic pleasure. I'm not sure it can be overpraised.