Though at times it threatens to become too generic to be original, or too original to be generic, it retains enough indirection to frustrate those looking for thrills and to engage those willing to be challenged. And by the time the bottom drops out in a characteristically enigmatic ending, Night Moves distinguishes itself as a genuine Reichardt movie.

A triumph — a messy, qualified triumph that even at 138 minutes makes an incomplete case for Brown’s meaning to American life and culture, but a triumph nevertheless.

In a year when black filmmaking has surged with Oscar-touted films such as “The Butler” and the upcoming “12 Years a Slave,” Murray’s Things Never Said has a quiet eloquence of its own.

Seemingly limitless access is what makes the movie interesting.

What Stranger by the Lake lacks in suspense and back story it makes up for in atmosphere: It’s a subtle exercise in the pathetic fallacy.

The result is an extended home movie that is also a sociological experiment.

Beneath the period décor and lamp-lit elegance, this is a story of a profound emotional crime prompted by profound love.

It’s a solid debut, and it gets to the heart of suburban adolescence in ways that slicker, more ostensibly mature movies don’t. That includes Aunt Sofia’s “The Bling Ring.”

The Armstrong Lie is one for the time capsule, because it preserves for future generations a very particular modern response to scandal: confession without remorse.

Cinderella — the new, live-action Cinderella, that is — is an attempt by the Mouse House to revive one of Walt’s oldest fairy-tale adaptations with care and class and modernity and timelessness.

That’s the key to this movie — the way Thérèse looks at things; it’s a rare film that focuses on a woman actually looking and how she responds to what she sees.

It’s also a movie that further establishes Vaughn as one of the edgier and more underrated genre voices of the moment, and that makes us wonder why Colin Firth hasn’t indulged in an action sideline all along.

The character is sweetly sympathetic — less “Tammy” than “Mike & Molly” — and the laughs and chaos are all the more infectious for it.

Rogue Nation unfolds with fluid, twisty, old-school pleasure — you settle into it like a favorite chair.

True, a lot of marmalade gets spread around, and at times the zaniness gets a bit too slap-sticky, but it’s all good clean fun.

As pointedly as The Punk Singer looks at the past, the movie’s uncertain where the energy of that original moment has gone. Where are the riot-grrrls of today? Take your daughters to the movie, then ask them.

This IMAX spectacular largely does what it’s supposed to fascinate, educate, and visually wow the audience, in 45 minutes or less.

It’s all ridiculous and enjoyable, and at the movie’s center is an actress creatively guessing at what omniscience might feel like.

Presents enough teasing glimpses into the dancer’s personal and inner life to demand a fuller picture.

Vol. II is less focused than “Vol. I” — less funny, too, although there are a few dank laughs — and you feel Von Trier’s inspiration and energy start to flag during the final laps.

Director Baltasar Kormákur (“2 Guns”) and his cast craft a lean narrative tone that humanizes the action without an excess of gloss.

Nightcrawler is about TV news-video parasites, but the freakiest thing in it — the biggest bedbug of all — is Jake Gyllenhaal as the movie’s hero, Lou Bloom.

Far From the Madding Crowd is a Masterpiece Theatre version of Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel, shot with sumptuous taste and care, rife with emotions repressed and unbound, and featuring expertly nuanced performances from a tony, mostly British cast. It will greatly please discerning audiences while causing Hardy to spin discreetly in his grave. That’s a fair trade-off, especially if the movie sends you back to the book.

If this blend of community service, innovative teaching, and creative approach to design and construction sounds idealistic, the film’s final scenes deliver enough stress and sweat to show that idealism takes hard work, too.

A very entertaining romantic comedy, conventional on the surface while standing all sorts of genre clichés and gender assumptions discreetly on their heads. Its subversions are lower-case, embedded in the laughs, but they’re there and they matter.

This odd, ungainly western is harsh in its details, wayward in the telling, yet increasingly powerful as it wends its way back East toward civilization.

“If we die, let it be for a cause, not a spectacle,” the heroine barks at one point. If such a statement sounds fairly insane coming from a series that has grossed (to date) $2.3 billion worldwide, Mockingjay — Part 2 is sturdy enough to render it moot while you’re watching. After that, it’s up to you whether to swallow the irony or choke on it.

The truth is that this is a mystery movie, and the mystery is trying to figure out exactly what the heck is going on here.