The film is at its best when the storyline gets dangerously real and Bullock’s character struggles to justify the back room king making of a campaign with the needs of the country’s poor majority.

Considering Redmayne’s achievement it’s almost shocking that you can argue Vikander gives the more memorable performance.

At its best, the film has moments that are creepy and that work on some strange primal level.

The movie suffers from being the same shape as so many modern blockbusters, and the plot in the second half of the film is basically another riff on the “reach the glowing doodad on a roof to prevent the end of the world” structure. But the focus on the Turtles and the film’s overall amiable sense of goofball humor carries the day.

A lushly conceived, exhaustively realized debut feature that'd be pretty formidable stuff coming from a more practised filmmaker -- and derided in some quarters as a self-impressed knock-off.

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.

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.

Mr. Turner's passions and neuroses feel more peculiar to Leigh and his own work. It's tempting, even, to view the film as biopic-as-self-portrait, revealing shades of one life through another.

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.

It's a gentle, amiable, sincere little movie, and we could use about a hundred more Lynn Sheltons in this business, making movies that feel this lived in, this true.

There are probably funnier satires out there, but They Came Together is laser accurate in the way it skewers its targets.

Its sweet nature combined with its strong messages about responsibility and empathy make it feel like something family audiences in particular should enjoy.

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

As much as the action stuff works and would indicate that any other property Marvel entrusts to the animation side of things is in good hands, Big Hero 6 gets by more on the charms of its comedy.

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.

Kill Me Three Times is a confident smaller film, and if you enjoy this sort of chess game with bullets, you'll probably get a kick out of it, and for Pegg fans, it's pretty much continuous pleasure throughout.

If you enjoy thrillers, Flanagan expertly turns the screws here, and Kate Siegel makes a very appealing and capable hero.

Wes Ball's background is in animation and effects, and he certainly has an eye for composition. Thankfully, he doesn't just lean on visual flash in his debut feature, the adaptation of the first of James Dashner's four books, and his skills allow him to build a convincing world around his appealing cast without losing them in it completely.

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.

It sounds far sexier, just based on the synopsis, than it actually plays, though, so hopefully people aren't sold the wrong movie. For those in the mood for a throwback to the doomed romanticism of mid'60s art films, this feels like about as sincere an homage as anyone could produce.

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

Niccol is working in a very stripped down and direct mode, and I think overall, it works. Good Kill is unsettling, and the entire cast does spare, unsentimental work.

A documentary is about storytelling and Private Violence is structured very much like a law-and-order procedural, so an investigation and a build-up to a trial that can't be featured on-screen is anti-climactic storytelling.

When it comes to this particular story, I find myself unconvinced in the end. Unbroken looks like the real thing, but evaporates upon closer scrutiny.

In the broad strokes, I think The Bronze is okay. I laughed at some things, I sat stone-faced during some things that don't work, and at the end, I could tell what I was supposed to feel, but it was more like I'm being ordered to feel this way instead of the film actually earning it.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a film of modest pleasures, but what I liked about it, I liked a lot. I hope more filmmakers figure out how to write to Fey's strengths, because she's really engaging here.

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

The Good Dinosaur is fine. I found myself moved by it on a very direct level. Technically speaking, it's a gorgeous film in many ways, but I'm still not a fan of the super-cartoony style of the characters over the photo-realistic world, which is genuinely jaw-dropping.