The Hunger Games franchise, both in print and onscreen, has been exceptionally clever about cozying away imaginative space for fans to fill in the blanks and cast themselves in the rich drama. That this latest film leaves us hungering for more only means that it’s working.

Dallas Buyers Club is an indelible story about one man’s unwillingness to go gently into that good night, and the personal growth he experiences along the way.

High spirits mark the first half of the film; quite simply, these guys are just fun to be around – most especially Howard, all half-lidded, cat-who-got-the-cream coolness.

Audience fortitude aside: This is compulsively watchable stuff, a masterstroke of thoughtful direction and thought-provoking performance.

Having unfettered access to Armstrong during the 2009 Tour and a face-to-face sit-down with him in Austin hours after his national confession to Oprah, The Armstrong Lie comes across more a good save than a muckraking piece of journalism.

After the recent rash of superhero end-spectacles as long-winded and self-serious as a term paper, the limited ambition of The Dark World’s climax is a relief. It scuttles all term paper aspirations and instead humbly lobs a thesis statement-slash-open invitation: Let’s have some fun, shall we? And so we did.

Suffice to realize that Reeves’ opening salvo is an ambitious and heady mix of the glorious (if overtold) past, the tense present, and the imperfectly perfect realm of Chen’s fighter, his conscience, and blow upon blow upon blow. The concoction works, despite – or maybe because of – its unjaded, fantastical familiarity

Blue Is the Warmest Color has its wobbles, but Exarchopoulos will knock you sideways.

This sugarcoated Christmas tale is reminiscent of an old Roy Rogers movie, a musical Western with a moral message – except that this version features Willie Nelson as a modern-day singing cowboy and saint (aptly named Nick).

Brutal yet elegant, 12 Years a Slave is a beautifully rendered punch to the gut about the most shameful chapter in American history.

Free Birds falls flat, despite its good intentions, ideological cuteness, humorous polish, and skillful computer animation. The fine voice talents of the almost-ideal cast are wasted.

Hood's realization of Card's novel is a tightly constructed, thought-provoking meditation on adolescence trapped by permanent war footing, alloyed with some of the best CGI effects work I've seen since, uh, "Gravity."

It’s delightful to see these acting pros hamming it up in this movie. They look as though they’re having a blast. The same can’t be said for the audience.

The movie moves episodically, leisurely, through roughly a decade, and that feels like a gift: to nestle in with these extraordinary, ordinary people and get to know them.

Perhaps viewers of the TV show will find more depth in The Snitch Cartel than newcomers to the drama. But without character definition, the film feels like a constant swish pan from one violent event to the next.

There’s tension as the two hole up in Santa Fe to work on the book, but the bottom-line feeling is of two old friends, now two old men, who have found their place in each other’s complicated lives.

I’m in Love With a Church Girl is not unambitious: It crams into its two hours terminal illness, money laundering, a DEA sting, clubbing, a prolonged coma, and lots of Bible study. But the action – punishingly turgid, spread-it-on-a-cracker cheesy – feels inauthentic, ginned up only to promote the film’s come-to-Jesus messaging, and to call the acting amateurish does a disservice to hard-working amateurs everywhere.

It feels like a veiled apology for Babs Johnson and other exercises in bad taste. In my book, the filthiest person alive will always win the prize.

Ultimately, the story becomes one of personalities, which seems inevitable but narrows the accomplishments and ambitions of its focus.

The film is eventful and full of suspense, but also obvious and completely contrived.

Carrie has proved itself to be a remarkably resilient tale that’s not likely to be plugged up anytime soon.

An almost sweet sensibility emerges by the end of Bad Grandpa. Young Jackson Nicholl is a real find: The kid can really hold his own against Knoxville’s master pranker.

Fassbender, though, gets the kudos (again) as the man who has everything but loses it all – thanks partly to a slyly cast Bruno Ganz (Wings of Desire) and, more important, to the character’s moral compass that points wherever he feels it should, until, of course, it points due south of heaven.

It’s still a hellish glimpse into one of climbing’s worst days ever, and there’s no way to resolve the unresolvable, but as it is The Summit, like K2 itself, remains an icily beautiful and altogether deadly mystery.

Muscle Shoals may not appeal to every generation’s musical tastes, but for those of you who love that sweet soul music and crave that ol’ time rock & roll, believe me: It’s just the ticket.

If Wadjda, this Muslim girl, calls up film memories of adolescent Marjane Satrapi in "Persepolis", whose Western-loving lifestyle is uprooted by Iran’s Islamic Revolution, or the young women in Jafar Panahi’s "Offside," who countermand the rules that forbid them from entering stadiums to watch men’s soccer matches, you wouldn’t be far off the mark.

The film finds some momentum once the bodies start dropping – but maybe that was only the sweet relief in knowing the end was nigh.

A certain amount of honest, down-home flavor mixes with an excess of melodramatic schmaltz in this Texas-made movie.

An American remake of Jorge Michel Grau's 2010 Mexican shocker, this Sundance and Fantastic Fest fan favorite is undeniably creepy stuff that’s been given a dusty, American Gothic anti-sheen courtesy of cinematographer Ryan Samul.

It works extremely well as a drunken, date-night midnighter or film-fest entry, all madcap bloodletting and surrealist non sequiturs.

As a surrealistic depiction of the mental disintegration of Jim (Abramsohn), a seemingly ordinary family guy, while visiting “the happiest place on Earth,” it’s a prank and a spit in the eye of Disney’s relentless cheerfulness. But director Randy Moore’s pièce de résistance goes far beyond flipping the bird to the mouse that roars.

The issue of late-term abortions tends to inspire polemics from both sides of the debate; Shane and Wilson’s approach – sensitive, measured, workmanlike – is a welcome one.

With Captain Phillips we get a viable thriller whose conclusion is already known, and a character who reacts to circumstances rather than a personal, heroic code. And now, it’s a story preserved in brine.

Thrillers don’t come much more nondescript than this: If Runner Runner were a color scheme, it would be beige, with an accent wall in taupe.

The film is absolutely charming if a bit too predictable and glued more to sit-com narrative strategies and aesthetics than is healthy.

There isn’t a false step from the quietly devastating Farahani; her tour-de-force performance carries the film through its rocky stretches.

Parkland adds no significant knowledge to history or conspiracy theorists, but such details as the way Zapruder’s scrunched-up eye pops wide open when he witnesses what will be forever imprinted on his retina and amateur film are vivid.

Mickey Rourke's narration provides an appropriate level of drama and importance as it details the men's training, adversities, failures, and triumphs.

Call it odious, call it repugnant, call it downright nasty – just don't call it dumb.

Gravity is a major filmmaking accomplishment, no doubt, although it would have been interesting to see how it might have played sans dialogue. Unthinkable to Hollywood, sure, but still … Kowalski and Stone’s backstories and banter are, in the end, secondary to the film’s jaw-dropping visuals.

Inequality for All creates a framework in which all this heavy material is easily digestible, and refashions Reich, the policy wonk, into an inspirational figure who argues that “history is on the side of positive social change.”

It’s the movie’s love story that will grab your heart however. Despite inevitable comparisons to "Away From Her" and "Amour" – other recent films about the challenges of love in old age – Still Mine is distinctive.

Rush, a film about two real-life titans of Formula One racing in the Seventies, splits its narrative between these oil-and-water personalities, which feels about right: It's only half of a good movie.

The Song Remains the Same. There, said it – as will every other rock & roll fanatic considering Metallica: Through the Never.

Alternating between color footage and the genius interplay of startlingly lovely sequences of Stanton singing and playing harmonica in granular black-and-white, Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction perfectly captures the essence of the man.

Although the film’s character portraits are vividly drawn, they remain largely one-dimensional.

For both kids and adults, CWCM2 is little more than a vague memory as soon as it’s over.

Although there’s a strong likability quotient for everyone onscreen here, which ought to keep the movie minimally afloat among its target audience of black viewers starved for a new Tyler Perry offering, Baggage Claim should be left behind at the carousel.

It's a veritable shoo-in for an Oscar nod this year, and one of the more disturbing films to come out of a major studio in ages.

Few characters are well-drawn, rivalries substitute for real group dynamics, and the dancing is chaotic, showy, and confusing.

It’s a bold and certainly credible move, but the execution is something of a belly flop. Thanks for Sharing isn’t really about a disease, only the cure, and that bias makes it a plausible picture of the Friend of Bill community-based recovery, but kind of a sham as a portrait of actual human beings.

Salerno spends more time talking to photographers with telephoto lenses who, over the decades, laid in wait for Salinger in the hope of capturing a grainy picture, than he does talking to literary analysts and historians.

Brie Larson is a revelation as the linchpin of Short Term 12. An industrious young actress, her performance here is remarkably natural and understated.

It dispassionately plays like a video game with a high body count.

Insidious: Chapter 2 is perhaps an even more scattershot mess than its predecessor. Whannell's script is so rife with portentous backstory, third-act goofiness, and a denouement that practically screams "Insidious 3: Same Old Shit," that the film as a whole is jarring, and not in a good way.

Spark, however, is the best of the lot when it comes to attempting to grok the burn and the burners.

The handful of redeeming moments in Jayne Mansfield’s Car belong to Duvall in the role of a septuagenarian who finds himself more and more at odds with a changing world.

Afternoon Delight has many small pleasures but falls far short of reaching the G spot.

Much has been made of the fact that Swanberg has cast for the first time bona fide movie stars and not just his mumblecore pals: In fact, it's the making of the movie. If you're going to build an entire film on microexpressions, then a certain innate magnetism is required. Swanberg gets it in spades from his top-shelf cast.

While "The Chronicles of Riddick" was an overstuffed melange of CGI and unnecessary subplots, Riddick is a far more streamlined affair, and all the better for it.

Again. Via Red’s experiences as a young man and wildcatter, Jason learns that money cannot buy happiness. What the viewers learn is that money can’t buy a good movie either.

For such a deft wit, Jane Austen sure has inspired some nitwitted entertainments. Actually, the Austen influence here is negligible.

In the end, I Declare War is both enthralling and a little frustrating in its refusal to fit neatly in any box. Its unpredictable tone clicks back and forth between the comical and the serious like the safety catch on a firearm.

Heinzerling allows us to read whatever we want into this picture. The endless struggle for money and professional recognition is either a curse or a raison d’être.

The U.S. cut, which Wong endorses, runs a slim 108 minutes, and has by all accounts been reshaped for American audiences, who, by and large, don’t have the same foreknowledge of Ip Man, or martial arts, as Asian audiences do.

The World’s End affectionately takes a page from our Fifties sci-fi films.

Wingard’s film is its own subset of fractious family crazy.

Not only have we seen this all before, but we were probably hoping to not see it again.

Amounts to little more than a big, wet kiss to the group’s worldwide legions of young, female fans.

Still, the revelations of evildoers clogging the corridors of power pack very little punch; we're all too aware that such malfeasance and malignity have become the status quo in the real world.

This is not a remake of Sam Peckinpah's "The Getaway," but a new effort. The film is loaded with action and violence, although not in any logical or accessible way.

An ambitious comedy with not-negligible dramatic depth, but Bell, a first-time feature writer and director, is frankly too generous with her large cast.

It’s a query with no answers, a period piece about the present. It’s idiosyncratic, actively noncommercial, and doesn’t follow the rules – like playing a game of chess on a board with no squares.

The balance between the slight, near-mythic narrative and the eye-wateringly beautiful cinematography (courtesy of Bradford Young), as well as the aching, spare score by Daniel Hart, create a movie that’s a more lovingly crafted tone poem than anything you’re likely to see on Texas screens this summer.

You could drive an 18-wheeler through the substantial number of plot holes in Paranoia.

It fails to rise above the inherent limitations of the traditional Hollywood biopic and it's about as insanely great as a Mac "low cost" LC model – which was, to be fair, pretty cool.

The film entertains, puzzles, and strays outside the lines.

An outstanding cast have crafted a delicate, eloquent picture of believable humans in so many gradations of hurt, but it stops just shy of catharsis.

A host of A-list stars have been enlisted to play small roles in a bid for viewer engagement. See Mariah Carey in a blink-or-you’ll-miss-her role as Cecil Gaines’ maltreated mother.

Kick-Ass 2 returns with the original’s rollicking sense of vulgarity and bodily trauma fully intact, but the story has more plot lines to string together than absolutely necessary.

What a clunker.

Ultimately, Elysium ends up with explosions, running gun battles, and summer non-blockbuster tedium. The outcome is never in question, and while Blomkamp has proven himself to be a master of sci-fi social commentary in the past, this dull wheel in the sky just lands with a resounding thud.

The saga unfolds in a fairly charming fashion, and only Allen’s abrupt ending breaks the spell. Clearly, the filmmaker has no more ideas than Jasmine about how to resolve her predicament.

It comes as little surprise that Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, both masters of sly documentaries in which the subjects nail themselves with their own words, are the executive producers of Oppenheimer’s film.

Sea of Monsters most bizarre and apropos-of-nothing moment comes when the half-blood kids find themselves stuck on – I kid you not – what appears to be the Civil War ironclad ship Monitor, captained and crewed by a host of Confederate zombies.

With the exception of Roberts, who blends into the background in every scene in which she appears, the cast comprising the Millers keeps this sweetly crude comedy afloat.

Maybe it’s just an expression of relief after a summer of superheroes and fantasy scenarios, but 2 Guns is a refreshing blast.

It’s fun, gore-drenched, and even touching at times. All that’s missing from the toothy chaos and broad comedy on display here is Dame Judi Dench and the kickass title that could have been: "The Best Necrotic Mandible Hotel."

At its best when making the political personal, the film’s exposure of a husband’s enduring mystery about his wife’s motivations has a universal appeal.

Does the world need another movie about a bunch of miniature, blue-skinned humanoids with bulbous noses and perky bobtails; gnomelike creatures who wear floppy caps, live in mushrooms, and use the word “smurf” in every other sentence? Someone apparently thinks so.

Michael B. Jordan (The Wire, Friday Night Lights) delivers a brilliant, sensitive performance as Oscar and is one of the primary reasons Fruitvale has such resonance.

As emotionally devastating as it is, The Hunt is nevertheless rather schematic and pat.

Even though I’m So Excited! doesn’t soar, the film is a fun flight. Maybe it needs a central character in whom the audience can invest themselves instead of flitting among a rogues’ gallery of kooky archetypes.

V/H/S/2 is for gore hounds exclusively.

This is Jackman’s show entirely, and he’s as forceful and charismatic as ever as the walking, talking hurt that is Wolverine. If only he had something more interesting to do here.

Maybe someday there will be a better commercial comedy about a girl taking charge of her sexual education, but for now, this is the only one we’ve got, and it’s a filthy-fun charmer.

R.I.P.D. never creates a believable universe, interesting action sequences, or dynamic characters. It’s a paint-by-numbers approach in which the film’s comedy and drama both fall flat.

By the time Turbo reaches the finish line, this new iteration of the fable about pursuing one’s dreams no matter how unlikely they seem joins the winner’s circle without quite nabbing the trophy.