There are no hard truths to be found in Finding Vivian Maier (really, how could there be?), but it’s an engrossing doc nevertheless – a portrait of an American artist hiding in plain sight, a mystery with too few clues, and a sincere inquiry into how best to divine the wishes of the dead.

Although Eska’s story is fairly simple (and created prior to "12 Years a Slave"" and "Django Unchained," which made slavery-era films part of our contemporary dialogue), it’s an emotionally rich tale.

Although handsomely mounted, this latest star in the Marvel Universe is not a leading light. But it probably has enough juice to keep the galaxy spinning until something more original comes along and knocks it out of orbit.

It’s hard to take your eyes off Walker in his penultimate film appearance, cognizant of his mortality and the way he was gracefully aging much in the same way as another fair-haired, blue-eyed actor named Paul.

There’s no sense of trepidation in The Quiet Ones, because suspense requires a cogent storyline to either create or defy the viewer’s expectations. This lack of plausible narrative is either the result of lazy filmmaking or shortcut editing. Either way, you lose.

A well-meaning but misshapen movie about the folly of pursuing answers to unanswerable questions.

The film is hypnotic, which lends it an addictive sensibility that complements the need Adam and Eve have for their bloody fixes.

Screenwriters Andy Paterson and Frank Cottrell Boyce (who wrote many of Michael Winterbottom’s early films) adeptly shift the action back and forth between these two timelines, and the drama – exterior and interior – is engrossing in both tracks.

Granted, femme-centered film comedies are a thing to cherish, but The Other Woman only gets it half right.

Appearing in almost every frame of Blue Ruin, Blair – who previously starred in "The Man From Orlando" and writer/director Jeremy Saulnier’s first feature, "Murder Party" – owns this film.

Alan Partridge is one of the more satisfying comedies in recent memory, and with rumors of a sequel, let’s hope that this is the beginning of Alan Partridge, movie star. He definitely wouldn’t have it any other way.

While very funny, The Final Member is also a compelling examination of society’s concept of masculinity and male identity, and an empathetic portrait of three men in the fading decline of their lives, staring at their own mortality. In the end, their obsession with leaving behind a legacy illustrates a universal truth for us all, and that’s no joke.

If there were anything approaching narrative coherence, the film might have rested on Law’s performance alone. As it stands, Dom Hemingway the character is eclipsed by the inability of Dom Hemingway the movie to decide what it wants to be.

This is a movie tailor-made for cheering on the not-so-little guy to find his self-esteem, dazzle the judges, and win the girl.

What makes Under the Skin such a mind-blower has everything to do with Johansson’s chillingly unempathetic turn as the, well, whatever she is, coupled with cinematographer Daniel Landin’s disorienting, hallucinogenic visuals.

A bright idea, disappointingly dulled in the execution.

All singing, all dancing, all color: Rio 2 is a modern, studio animation blockbuster spilling all over the place, rather than arching into the sky.

The Raid 2 doesn’t so much raise the bar for action filmmaking as it pummels that bar into a mangled piece of metal that resembles nothing if not the gauntlet that’s been thrown down here. Just don’t forget to breathe.

Oculus never quite resolves into the image of horror it clearly wishes to be. Kudos, though, to cinematographer Michael Fimognari and score composers, the Newton Brothers – all of whom provide a fertile audiovisual background for Flanagan’s film.

The promising-sounding football movie would turn out to be a movie about men talking on phones.

As for the Austin-based Green, the director’s characteristically understated style is well-suited to this material. Joe recalls, in many ways, the filmmaker’s earliest features – "George Washington," "All the Real Girls," and "Undertow" – not to mention his heavily wooded last feature, "Prince Avalanche," films that capture a poetic sense of bewildered young people in the rural South.

Not an easy film to love and politically incorrect to the hilt, it nevertheless leaves its mark on you – and it’s rarely, if ever, dull.

Director Roger Michell and his frequent writer Hanif Kureishi (their last film together was Venus) regularly dance to the very cliff’s edge of despair, and only for the grace of good casting do you not wish they’d just jump and get it over with.

At over two hours, The Winter Soldier could have easily been trimmed by a good 20 minutes, but if it’s spectacular imagery and duplicitous goings-on that you crave, the film will not disappoint.

The film's messages of accepting others and following your dreams are well-worn tropes to be sure, but the pace and the style of E&C, not to mention it's wonderful attention to detail, lift the film from being merely sweet to being something special.

Aronofsky’s story of Noah and his ark is far-removed from our collective recollections of Sunday school pageants and Cecil B. DeMille extravaganzas. Instead, this film opts for the sort of human-scaled realism that almost allows us to smell the dank stench of a menagerie cooped up for 40 days and nights on a water-swept barge.

Any just God would likely recoil from the ham-fisted and spurious defense put forth in this film.

Teenage is an art film – an engrossing one at that – so it isn’t required to respect Queensberry rules vis-à-vis documentaries.