Freeheld is certainly timely, though, given its ponderous approach, less than invigorating.

Entertaining as the movie often is, this all-American, can-do attitude is also the source of its shortcomings. Given the enormousness of its subject, there is a radical lack of awe in this movie.

As a piece of filmmaking, Becoming Bulletproof is haphazard and overloaded with talking heads. But as a window into the lives of some of these actors, it’s often moving.

At least the film brings up a disturbing piece of history without sensationalizing it. And it does believably portray why so many Germans, with the war at last over and the economy beginning to boom, preferred to forget what many claimed they never knew.

Overall this is a film in which, as the end credit documentary footage attests, the real story overwhelms its dramatization.

Black Mass is like a playlist of greatest hits from other, better movies.

Gere is believable enough, and so are his costars (Steve Buscemi and Kyra Sedgwick turn up in small roles). Vereen is best – he creates a full-bodied character using the sparest of means. It’s a magnificent cameo.

At first I thought Breathe would play out like a Gallic version of “Mean Girls,” but it’s more troubling than that.

The film, refreshingly, is less concerned with how Nathan performs in the competition than in how he navigates his way through the bramble of human interactions leading up to it.

The accounting of his life story, as it unfolds in the film, is grounded in the brutal realities of corporate skulduggery. I’m a big fan of Balzac’s maxim that “behind every great fortune is a great crime,” and if nothing in Jobs’s history qualifies as a great crime, there is certainly a long trail of extreme misdeeds.

More than awe, the film provokes gratitude for what this man did.

The film’s wrap-up, in which Jessica reveals some family secrets of her own, seems too engineered, too pat. Muylaert doesn’t do justice to the potential complexities of her premise. The film ends on a note of forced sunniness, but the outlook actually looks more like cloudy with a chance of showers.

This should all be risible except that Dowdle, who has worked in the horror genre, knows how to amp the action and keep the terror taut.

The ongoing tragedy in Africa is too nefarious, too complicated, for any one film to do it justice, but We Come as Friends opens a wide window into this mansion of horrors.

The cast is uniformly good, although Tomlin overdoes the crusty-crone routine. She scowls a lot, but we all know she’s a secret softy.

As the pushback to Gerwig’s force field, Kirke may at times be too mousy for her own (or the film’s) good, but her stillnesses are often a welcome respite in this whirligig.

Directed by James Ponsoldt from a script by Donald Margulies, the film gets at the wariness and competitiveness inside the journalist-interviewee dynamic and, in Segel’s performance, captures the quandary of an immensely gifted and immensely troubled writer who disdained the celebrity he also, without fully fessing up to it, sought.

It’s not that this material is, or should be, off limits in a movie. But The Diary of a Teenage Girl isn’t exactly “Lolita.” Heller must think that taking a moral stance is tantamount to selling out. Commercially, she may be right. In every other respect, she’s wrong.

Strutting around for most of the film in her leather rocker duds, Streep’s Ricki Rendazzo is almost as much of a concoction as her witch in Into the Woods. She wears her uniform as a taunt and also as a way of defining herself. She’s a woman out of time – a superannuated hippie.

The result is an unprecedented voyage into the tortuous life of our greatest actor, with the actor himself serving as narrator and navigator, as dissembler and penitent.

I also wonder if the film’s central thesis – that the debates kicked off the subjective TV news slant we have today – is a bit oversold. If these debates had never happened, I think we would very likely still have exactly what we have today. Partisan hollering sells.

Once you accept the fact that “Rogue Nation” is not going to be the wingding of the franchise, it becomes a lot easier to enjoy.

I wish the film, which is mostly a standard-issue talking-heads-and-clips affair, had showcased more of her performing, but what we see still justifies her fleeting fame.

Oppenheimer may have thought that by giving these murderers center stage they would expose their bestiality for all to see (except themselves). But what comes across instead is something far more insidious: a showcase for depravity.

Gyllenhaal is one of the most gifted actors of his generation and, along with Joaquin Phoenix, he takes more chances than just about any of them. He deserves a movie that risks as much as he does.

Allen isn’t doing anything terribly deep-dish here, just gussying up the standard crime-movie tropes. To what end? His point, I think, is to demonstrate that human beings, no matter how educated, are capable of justifying the most awful acts.

The script by Jeffrey Hatcher is overburdened with plot complications, but Bill Condon, who worked with McKellan on “Gods and Monsters,” has a real affinity for this actor’s capabilities. He brings out his best.

The overlong Trainwreck would have been better if it had derailed more often.

I wish the film had gone even further into loopiness. Like Ant-Man, the film, directed by Peyton Reed, comes in two sizes – it’s sometimes big on laughs but often small on risk-taking.

Given what this film is about and the dangers hindering its fullest accounting, a dramatic rendition, rather than a documentary, might have been more emotionally satisfying. Still, there’s nothing like seeing some of this stuff up close and for real.

A powerful, and powerfully sad, experience.

What saves it all from being sordid is the open desire of the director, Gregory Jacobs, and his writer, Reid Carolin, to make sure the women in the film, not the male dancers, are ultimately the ones who are celebrated.

I think the film overreaches in casting Simone as a standard-bearer against racism and sexism, but it’s filled with mesmerizing clips from throughout her performing career as well as numerous interviews with Simone, both audio and on film.

Slaboshpytskiy doesn’t attempt to get inside the psychology of these people, or expand the meanings, political or otherwise, of their descent. There’s a stolidity to the filmmaking, with lots of overlong takes, that is meant to be ruminative but often just seems negligent.

The most perplexing thing about this portrait is that, against all odds, the kids mostly seem outlandishly resilient and good-natured. I say “seem” because, again, I don’t entirely trust this portrait. Too much of what Moselle shows us looks tenderized.

Despite some occasional moments of real sadness and terror, the turmoil in this movie is decidedly on the upbeat.

There’s real verve in the animation and wit in the byplay.

A winning movie about losing. I didn’t always warm to its coy quirkiness, but it’s the rare American movie about contemporary teenagers that rings more true than false.

The Normandy locations are evocative, but director Sophie Barthes compresses Emma’s multiyear rise and fall into what seems like a month or so.

Trevorrow and his co-screenwriters (Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, and Derek Connolly) do bring some nice low-key touches to the thudfest, and action is satisfying, if not galvanizing.

This slick doodle of a movie is nothing so much as an advertisement for itself.

Dano and Cusack never let us forget that Wilson is human before he is anything else – genius, icon, legend. The film provides him with the succor that was so lacking in so many aspects of his life. I would like to think that the real Brian Wilson, looking at this film, would be OK with it.

Has the stately picturesqueness of old-fashioned “quality” British cinema. At its center, though, is a performance that cuts right through the decorum.

Boenish’s wife, Jean, who trained to jump with him, is interviewed extensively, and, although Strauch doesn’t provide much backstory for her, she emerges as that rarity – a perfect matchup to a seemingly unmatchable man.

Crowe is deft at keeping the various plots spinning, but there are too many of them, and they don’t intersect pleasingly.

The CGI effects in this film, directed by Brad Peyton, are quite remarkable and help take one’s mind off the cornball disaster-brings-families-together underpinnings.

This is Téchiné’s seventh film featuring Deneuve, and it’s not one of the better ones. (The best is probably 1986’s “Scene of the Crime.”) Still, it has its true-crime fascinations, and, until its misbegotten 30-year flash-forward to Maurice’s trial, it has a silky allure of sun-kissed depravity.

From scene to scene The Connection is never less than watchable, although it is also never less than predictable.

Tomorrowland is a rather sweet excursion into speculative sci-fi, and, wonder of wonders, it doesn’t even seemed primed for a sequel. But this movie about the thrill of the visionary is, alas, mostly earthbound.

Although I Am Big Bird is no great shakes as a piece of filmmaking, and skews into treacly inspirational terrain, it’s still worth seeing to make the acquaintance of a man who, although he would probably be the last to say so, is an artist of the first rank. And a nice guy, too. What a rare combo.

The film is too artsy for its own good, but it has some marvelous Coen Brothers-style black humor.

The action sequences, at least as feats of engineering, are mightily impressive. But Miller is so caught up in all his hardcore allegorical hoo-ha that he never lightens up. Does he think maybe he’s Homer?

His (Hamer) new film, 1001 Grams, is almost as good as “Kitchen Stories,” with a story equally unpromising – but only in theory.

The action sequences aren’t especially well designed, and the plot, such as it is, is essentially one catastrophe after another.

It’s always gratifying to see a movie in which an ostensibly closed-off community is depicted humanely rather than voyeuristically.

There are some touching interactions between the players, but the film’s humanism is too predictably calibrated.

A sloggy, heartfelt piece of quasi-magical realist storytelling.

Director Rupert Goold keeps things appropriately creepy, but True Story is no “Capote.” It’s all buildup with little payoff.

This is one of the few films that captures the complex intensity of the diva/personal assistant dynamic.

The dense interweave of relationships, a Farhadi specialty, is continually compelling.

An extension, temperamentally if not altogether thematically, of such earlier films of his as “The Squid and the Whale,” “Greenberg,” and “Frances Ha.”

Wise, who is noticeably older than the 29-year-old Ruskin was at the time the events occurred in real life, gives a tense, implacable performance, and Fanning is touching. The movie, however, directed by Richard Laxton, could use a lot more oomph.

The only grace note in this otherwise determinedly graceless movie is the classy way Walker’s exit is handled.

Most of the photographs on view in The Salt of the Earth bear witness to great suffering, and what they exalt is not the photographer’s eye but the fearful humanity that binds us all.

Director Susanne Bier and screenwriter Christopher Kyle (no, not the man depicted in “American Sniper”) aim for a tragic monumentality but hit very wide of the mark.

The movie becomes, perhaps inadvertently, a celebration of selling out.

I doubt The Gunman will do much to advance Penn’s foray into action-hero bankability, and that’s probably a good thing. He’s too fine an actor to be mired in nonstop shootouts while flashing his pecs and looking scowly.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a movie that better conveys the sheer passion both performer and listener have for great music.

The result is more of an illustrated storybook of a cherished classic than a living thing in its own right.

The film targets the spinmeisters, hired by or associated with corporate interests, whose job, despite their lack of scientific training, is to discredit the science of climate change doomsayers. The fact that some of these spinmeisters proudly base their method on the machinations of tobacco-industry lobbyists is doubly damning.

If Hollywood must have franchises, we could do worse than one highlighting people who have lived a long life and are not on altogether friendly terms with technology. But imagine what this cast could do with something less tutti-frutti!

For western fans, watching this movie is like encountering an old friend after a long absence.

Within its limited compass, ’71 packs a punch, and the lack of political bias does give it a more encompassing feel.

This is the kind of movie where we’re not supposed to know at any time who is playing whom, but since the characterizations are glossy and paper-thin, it’s difficult to get worked up about who gets fleeced.

The saving grace of Queen and Country is that its nostalgia is not laced with sentimentality. Even working in this conventional mode, Boorman doesn’t try to strong-arm us into blubberiness.

If you’ve ever fantasized about busting up somebody’s nuptials, this movie is for you.

The fact that it's based on a true story doesn't alter the fact that, like most such Hollywood movies, it seems fabricated.

Essentially a Harlequin Romance with pulleys, E.L. James’s novel is not exactly “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” but the movie, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and written by Kelly Marcel takes itself so seriously that it almost cries out to be lampooned. I’m sure the “Saturday Night Live” crew is already on the case.

Sissako, a Muslim, frames his story as a cry against religious intolerance. One of the characters, speaking of jihadism, says, “Where is piety? Where is God in all this?” It is the central question of this movie – and of much more now than this movie.

I suppose the relationship is Oedipal or primal or something or other, but mostly it’s just an excuse for Dolan to stage a series of gaudy shout-fests.

I enjoyed this movie more than the last two films from the Wachowskis, the interminable "Cloud Atlas" and "Speed Racer." On the other hand, "The Matrix" it's not.

Audiences knowing nothing about hockey will still be able to appreciate this movie as a somewhat jaunty take on the cold war and its aftermath – and resurgence. A curious kind of cold-war nostalgia can be felt in the West these days; President Vladimir Putin is the kind of comprehensible villain Americans feel comfortable with.

A standout is Ben Mendelsohn’s Aussie nutcase.

Winter Sleep, winner of last year’s Palme d’Or in Cannes, runs almost 3-1/2 hours. These will be some of the best three-plus hours you will spend at any movie this year. I’ve seen movies half that length that felt twice as long.

One of those movies designed as an Oscar make-over for its star. It didn’t work in this case. Aniston was not nominated for Best Actress, perhaps because the film is so obvious about what it’s up to.

Pacino still gets a blast out of acting. His performance in this film about a blocked performer is gloriously unblocked – a valentine to vanity.

Watching actors tap out code as big buzzing screens of digital data flash on the screen just doesn’t cut it.

The plot may be a bit too busy, but a great wash of transcendent imagery floods the screen. If I had to recommend the best children’s film out there for all ages, this one, and “The Tale of Princess Kaguya,” would easily top the charts.

In a series of deft vignettes, the Dardennes offer up a microcosm of an entire working-class contingent, and each vignette is a universe all to itself.

Leviathan is, in the widest sense, a horror film.

It’s a gangster movie that tries to be more than that, not always successfully. In his own small-scale way, Chandor wants to expand the reach of his vision to “Godfather” status, with Abel as his shining (tainted) knight.

The best thing about the movie is David Oyelowo’s performance as King. He doesn’t simply portray King; he inhabits him.

We’re left with an enigma that is insufficiently probed: How does art this banal nevertheless capture us?

Clint Eastwood’s second film this year, American Sniper, about the late Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, is considerably better than his first, “The Jersey Boys.” As a piece of direction, it’s as taut as anything he’s ever done.

Zamperini’s life story is genuinely inspirational, but the movie seems fashioned as a standard-issue profile in courage, with Zamperini, after a troubled youth, transformed into an almost saintlike figure. He would have been every bit as inspirational, even more so, without the halo.

Although its first hour is more stunning than its second, this is a movie musical that, for a change, never degenerates into a false wholesomeness. It’s one of the rare musicals that both children and adults can enjoy, though for somewhat different reasons.

It’s a painfully uneven movie, but its best moments are ravishingly good.

Even if the film were sharper, even if it was made by satirists on the order of Stanley Kubrick and Terry Southern in their “Dr. Strangelove” days, I would still argue that greenlighting such a film is a blunder. The exercise of free speech does not exempt one from the consequences of stupidity.