If this was someone's first film, I'd be okay with the small signs of life that make this merely an annoying film instead of a completely dreadful one, but for this to be the latest work by a guy who made his first impression on the general public by sticking to his guns and refusing to compromise his voice… unthinkable.

Fukunaga not only directed the film but also co-wrote the screenplay and served as director of photography. His efforts have resulted in a brazenly confident piece of cinematic art where every image immerses you deeper and deeper into Agu’s horror.

Despite Depp’s seemingly flawless efforts, less may have been more in conveying just how bloodthirsty Bulger was. Where “Mass” excels is with a stellar cast whose spot on performances keep your interest as the film moves along.

Sorkin’s voice dominates the discourse and the film rarely has a chance to catch its collective breath. While you have to give the duo credit for attempting an unconventional structure, it’s a choice that arguably only works thanks to the contributions of a stellar ensemble.

Room is simply a movie about mother and son trying to adapt to the outside world after years of forced captivity. And the surprise is how succinctly it captures this drastic life change from the perspective of five-year-old.

Like any creative endeavor a film is the sum of its parts. In the most elementary terms it needs a screenplay as a base, a cast to bring the script to life and a director to orchestrate the pieces into something of considerable impact. Excuse the hyperbole, but Tom McCarthy's Spotlight is an example of when all those pieces fit together almost perfectly.

What makes “We Are” worth your time is Joseph’s skill in conveying the euphoria of dance music in the context of an actual movie.

The fact Tomlin is so good also highlights the film's biggest problem. Too much of what works in Grandma comes from the subtle touches Tomlin, Elliott and Harden bring to their characters, not Weitz’s script.

Clement is the reason that Will is tolerable, because if you look at the character's on-the-page actions, he's not an especially well-developed man-child.

If you have a fondness for the genre and a particular love of '60s pop, The Man From UNCLE is the summer's big fizzy drink, all bubbles, and while it may be gone the moment you walk out of the theater, the smile it puts on your face will likely linger.

Neither the disaster the fanboy nation seems to be itching to attack nor a significant improvement over the Tim Story movies, Fantastic Four seems doomed to please no one.

Watts co-wrote the screenplay with Christopher D. Ford (“Robot & Frank”) and, frankly, it’s not as clever or compelling as it wants to be.... The filmmaker does deserve credit, however, for conjuring up some nicely tense cinematic moments.

If you’re wondering whether you’ll believe Streep is a convincing rock musician, please. It’s Meryl Streep here. She sounds like she’s ready to open for Bruce Springsteen.

For all of Heller's impressive direction, she could have delivered something soulless without Powley's contributions.

I think Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is the most consistently entertaining, most laser-focused entry in the series so far, and while I would argue that it is very much a sequel to the third film and not just a disconnected piece of a flexible franchise, it is also a great rollicking self-contained spy movie adventure on a grand scale, and it's preposterous fun.

Both of its time and of the moment, Straight Outta Compton is potent and largely successful, and makes a hell of a case for why this was a story worth telling.

The biggest problem I have is that the film seems determined to push the outrageousness as far as possible, and there comes a point where it just stops working because it's all so outrageous.

I would argue that this may be the funniest of the films overall, and with Robert Elswit shooting it, it's absolutely gorgeous, with crisp, clean action choreography that you can actually see.

The film feels 30 minutes longer than its 109 minute run time mostly due to the fact that “Paper” seems distinctly like three different films.

Even though The Amina Profile works as a cyber-thriller of sorts, I think it's much more wide-reaching than that, a story about online identity, but also about the danger of media-constructed narratives, one that manages to salute both citizen journalists, but also establishment outlets like NPR.

I think Sandler's miscasting leads to a real deficit of energy at the center of the film, and then the conceptual misfire is so dire that I just don't know what to say beyond that.

Edgerton, who also wrote the screenplay, shows a masterful touch in playing with conventional expectations.

Unfortunately, Southpaw descends into a tedious exercise of formulaic filmmaking that leaves you feeling worse for Gyllenhaal and Whitaker than the characters they play on screen.

It is a singularly unpleasant experience, not because it is scary or extreme or even interesting. It is unpleasant because it is a dull story filled with characters that are so poorly drawn as to be forgettable even while you're watching them.

Ant-Man has its own voice, no doubt thanks to all of the talent involved, and it stands as a surprisingly sturdy success for the studio, a delightfully weird little movie that has no business working this well.

It is rowdy at heart, but smart about it, and it is one more reminder that Channing Tatum is really not like anyone else working in movies right now. It is also celebratory in the way that the first film was sad, concerned more with self-acceptance than running from something.

There is nothing about Terminator: Genisys that suggests that this film was a compelling, urgent, essential dream for anyone involved. This is all about squeezing cash out of people who are fond of the original films, calculated and without any of the soul of Cameron's films.

Minions lives and dies on its sight gags and luckily for Coffin and Balda they are almost non-stop.

Like most comedy sequels, it is too long and too indulgent in calling back to the original film.

There's a slightly muted quality to the film, though, which keeps it from being a complete pleasure, but considering how rarely we get a new film from Dante, I'll take something slight over nothing at all.

Trevorrow seems to be genuinely enjoying what he's doing, and it's that sense of someone having fun behind the camera that ultimately won me over.

There is a faith that the story and characters will keep the audience engaged, even if there isn’t a bright and shiny thing to distract them in a every single scene.

There's nothing particularly wrong with the ghost story itself. It makes sense, there's an internal logic to the way things happen, and Whannell does his best to keep a certain pace up so there are near-constant ghost attacks punctuated by scenes of the characters trying to figure out how to handle them. Quinn's just not a very interesting character.

The way an Entourage story works is that they establish what it is that Vinnie and his friends want, they challenge them a little bit, and then they get what they want. And while that's something I find unsatisfying, it is the exact reason that fans watch the show and it's why they'll watch the film.

Whimsy's hard, honestly motivated romance is harder, and when you get both of those things wrong in the same movie, the result is almost too much to take.

The reason you go see San Andreas is to see what the state of the art looks like when you destroy an entire state, set piece after set piece, and Brad Peyton delivers on that.

In terms of filmmaking prowess, "remarkable" may not do Laszlo Nemes' holocaust drama "Son of Saul" justice.

Beyond the performances, this new “Macbeth” benefits from Kurzel’s inspired eye, the increasingly impressive talents of cinematographer Adam Arkapaw (“True Detective”) and Fiona Crombie’s period-loving production design. The world they have created for this tragedy may overwhelm, but it's certainly impossible to forget.

The resulting film is yet another example of a Black List script that does not work on the screen. And, frankly, we're not sure an auteur other than Van Sant would have fared any better.

Sicario starts and ends with Blunt’s impassioned performance (and she's spectacular in her final scene), but it’s Del Toro who is the real standout.

Youth has some significant points on frustration of fame, ageism and our natural inclination to lose perspective, but it’s primarily about finding peace and happiness in your life. That may sound painfully obvious. It may even sound cliché. But somehow Sorrentino is able to fashion the film's diverse elements into an emotional narrative that makes it all feel fresh and new. And that’s truly worth celebrating.

Hou and cinematographer Ping Bin Lee (“Renoir”) produce some stunning images on location (one conversation takes place as a fog beautifully emits from the bottom of a valley), but it’s hard to find a thematic connection between the directing style Hou has chosen and the story.

Jia probably made a mistake directing the 1999 sequence in such an over-the-top and stilted tone (it also feels more like 1989 than the turn of the century), but the rest of the film is incredibly well done.

Demoustier is charismatic enough to almost help Donzelli pull it off, but Elkaïm is so stiff as Julien you never understand why Marguerite is willing to risk her life in the first place.

It's good stuff and, in a perfect world, will prompt Hollywood execs to take Winocour's directing skills very seriously.

Lanthimos presents a fully formed original vision that hits a perfect tone even when the narrative begins to get away from him a bit.

Trier is far too talented for there not to be some good things here, but it just doesn’t add up to much.

Poltergeist is professional and slick and entirely fine. It's also unnecessary in every way.

Love may not be as erotic as many expect. The gratuitous sex may eventually start to bore many viewers. Some may even take off their 3D glasses because they simply aren't necessary. Yet, for all its faults, Love is a film that somehow still resonates.

A slightly bumpy two hours of storytelling, but it's peppered with wonder and unexpected humor.

Only the combined talents of both Blanchett and Mara can make the film's powerfully realized finale work.

His characters may spout Kant and debate the ethics of different human interactions, but it's only sugar coating on top of what is effectively a simple and familiar story.

Co-directors Pete Docter and Ronnie Del Carmen have told a very, very small-scale story when you look at what happens in the actual physical world. But in doing so, they've done something very powerful, because they have paid full respect to just how turbulent and important the inner life of a child can be.

Tomorrowland may be well-made, but whether you're talking about it thematically or dramatically, this is a profoundly mixed bag.

Amy also turns the camera back on the viewer who saw, mocked and ignored Winehouse’s descent as it transpired across the media landscape. How could the world collectively denigrate a woman whose addiction was destroying her? In this era of reactionary social media it’s a warning to all of us to be wary of stoning the next Amy in the digital town square.

There is nothing easy or predictable about what George Miller delivers with Mad Max: Fury Road, a stone-cold action master class, beautiful and brainy and startling in the ways it throws off the current definition of the blockbuster.

Where Banks truly excels is in directing the film's musical numbers.

The film feels very tiny, and intentionally so. This isn't a horror film at all, which is an odd thing to say when you're talking about a movie with zombies in it.

It would be a lot easier to give the film a soft pass if it wasn't so aggressively lazy.

This is a movie that is almost exhaustingly large-scale, and Ultron's ultimate plan involves a crazy visual idea that Whedon makes sort of beautiful and eerie. It's got so much action that I'm going to bet some audiences go numb after a while. But in scene after scene, there are beats and stunts and poses that suggest that an army of comic book fanatics worked on this movie.

I'm baffled by the screenplay credit. Richard Price is a muscular writer, and he's done some great work in the crime world over the years, but this feels like a screenplay by someone who has never written a film before, full of first-draft dialogue and weird structural and tonal issues. It's almost amazing how tone-deaf it is.

I'm giving this an "A" letter grade because I find it utterly absorbing, start to finish. I don't know if I think it's a good film, but it is a powerfully compelling film. Perhaps my favorite kind of strange or insane film is the personal passion project, and "Roar" is one of the most remarkable examples of this.

It's obvious that they're aiming for something more fun than genuinely haunting, and it helps that there is a good deal of humor used to punctuate the horror. It doesn't all land, but there's a fair amount of wit in something as simple as watching what someone types, deletes, then retypes.

It would not surprise me if most reviews for this film are openly hostile. It is a wretched piece of writing, and an absurd final product. It almost seems pointless to pile on, though. The audience who loves Sparks is going to go see this film and they'll no doubt walk away satisfied.

Tim Johnson gets the character stuff right, and the animators do an amazing amount of subtextual work with color and with texture ripples on the various Boov characters.. It's lovely work overall, and it might be the most cheerfully benign conquering force we've ever faced on film.

There is a giddy sense of glee that runs through most of this movie, making it feel like Feig can barely contain himself with all of the things he wants to do and show you in the movie.

This is a film that suggests that Morehead and Benson have something important to share with their work.

Visually uninteresting, dramatically inert, and remarkably silly no matter how seriously it tries to play things straight, Insurgent is franchise management and little more.

Competently made but morally repellent, Get Hard may be my least favorite Will Ferrell feature film.

It's hard for any actor or director to pull off love at first sight, but Branagh is lucky enough that James and Madden have just enough genuine on screen chemistry to make you at least want to believe it's possible.

Trainwreck is more than funny. It's also wise, and that hard-won wisdom makes this a can't-miss for anyone who feels bruised by love, but never beaten.

Plot is unimportant. Family is everything, and Furious 7 is a blast.

Run All Night starts off on the wrong note and never recovers. It is entirely too serious and entirely too thin, and that combination turns what might have worked as a pulpy action romp into this po-faced, overly somber march from one unlikely plot point to another.

Chappie feels like Blomkamp and his co-writer Terri Tatchell had three or four different films they wanted to make, and instead of figuring out which one actually worked, they just made them all at the same time.

It helps that Gelb shoots this less like a horror film and more like a drama. When the film does finally kick into overt horror, it becomes more familiar and less overall effective.

Ficarra and Requa are good at creating a sense of momentum in their films that carries you along from scene to scene, and a film like this depends largely on chemistry. Smith and Robbie have bundles of it, so there is an easy pleasure to watching them circle each other.

Shira Piven, working from a script by Elliot Laurence, has directed a beautiful, sad, sweet and funny movie that deals honestly with mental illness while also earning big laughs and offering up some hard truths. And it helps that Kristen Wiig gives the best sustained performance of her entire career in the lead.

The best moments in this film are the moments where it feels like they're just throwing jokes at the screen. The moments that are toughest are the ones where they try to create some sort of emotional beat, because the moment we're supposed to invest in these guys at all, the movie crumbles.

It's a very slick film. But in the end, that slick becomes suffocating, and there's no real pulse here.

This is a case of all the elements lining up and pushing a potentially good film into the great category because of just how well executed it is.

Knock Knock has something genuine to say, and it uses some really dark dramatic beats to get there.

It is a staggeringly bad film, made up of lots of faulty pieces.

The film is frantic from start to finish, and I suspect it will wear some people down completely. I thought there was a point where it stopped being funny and started being exhausting, but my kids went positively ballistic for it.

Fast, frequently teetering on the cusp of the ridiculous, and eye-poppingly pretty, Jupiter Ascending is a wicked slice of entertainment, and a heck of an antidote to the typical February box-office blahs.

No one who sees I Smile Back will question if Silverman was right for the role, they will simply question whether this was a story that needed to be told in the first place.

Using real transcripts, and with the involvement of Dr. Philip Zimbardo, who was the psychologist who designed the project in the first place, Talbott and director Kyle Patrick Alvarez have opted to aim for something authentic and honest.

There is real wisdom and honesty in every moment of the film, and that's refreshing in a genre that is built largely on fantasy every bit as disconnected from our reality as any superhero film.

Much of the success of the film is due to the four leads who seamlessly work the one or two outrageous moments into the story without resorting to over-the-top characterizations.

Baumbach has cast a wonderfully talented group of up-and-coming actors around Gerwig and Kirke, but it's the screenplay and the leads' incredible chemistry that makes it all so entertaining. There are so many one-liners that you miss because the previous line of dialogue is just as smart and laugh-inducing.

It's a damn good movie.

Beyond the logistics of the screenplay, Beckwith makes some stylistic choices that hinder the story's cinematic opportunities.

The film's central conflict and Sangaile's arc's are, unfortunately, thin.

While Longo's actions were horrifying and his connection to Finkel is unique, Goold somehow can't make this material as interesting as you'd expect it to be.

Z For Zachariah may not be a faithful adaptation of a well-liked book, but as a film, it is a lovely, powerful piece of work.

When Garbus lets Simone show us why she's special What Happened, Miss Simone? is successful and vital.

One thing Mississippi Grind has in spades is soul, and that's a better bet than narrative mechanics any day.

It's a fresh, beautiful and heartbreaking achievement that continues to surprise until the very last scene. It's dangerous to call something an instant classic, but sometimes it's simply the truth.

As a theatrical experience, I Am Michael is fairly forgettable, but it does manage to pierce in places, and it carries a cumulative charge that is bigger than any of the individual emotional pieces.