Tirdad Derakhshani

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.