Even with all this sparkle, the film staggers through its third act. By then, the script has rubbed the rough edges off the villains and made whatever point it was going to make several times over.

It’s the best film of this trilogy, but truthfully, none of the “Hobbit” thirds have been any better than middling “Hunger Games” or “Harry Potter” installments. Considering the vaunted reputation J.R.R.Tolkien enjoys, this overdone “There and Back Again” never quite got us there.

A handsome production, its few settings (indoors and outdoors) painterly and period-perfect. It’s entirely too long for a filmed chamber drama of such limited stakes. But Ullmann’s adaptation reminds us that the gap between “those people,” now called “the one percent,” and the rest of the world will always be ripe for conflict, drama and tension, no matter how much we evolve.

Get Santa is an at-times adorably daft holiday farce.

For all its stunning and stark wilderness settings (Spain and the Canary Islands), its stunning effects, technical proficiency and scriptural cleverness, Exodus is a chilly affair... It’s still an exciting, entertaining epic.

Rock is more a genial presence here than an actor playing an addict tested by a bad day. He never lets us see the strain that could make him fall off the wagon. He scores laughs, but generously leaves the outrageous stuff to his legion of supporting players.

Anderson loses his way, failing to thin out the novel and its overload of characters, piling scene upon scene that neither amusingly complicates the plot, nor advances it. Phoenix, however, is never less than fun.

Moore makes us root for Alice, not for a cure, which still seems a reach, but for a completion of her life’s goals, a chance to control her fate as long as she has the wherewithal to do it.

And as long as it is, it would be a pity to cut one moment of Spall’s immersive, utterly convincing portrait of this common man with an uncommon gift.

The setting and old fashioned structure of the story won’t be to every taste. But The Physician is quite good at recreating its era and reminding us that once, long ago, it was the West that was backward and always looking East for enlightenment, education and a way out of the Dark Ages.

As he did with “The Dallas Buyers’ Club,” director Jean-Marc Vallée covers this inner and outer journey with a minimum of fuss. The flashbacks and their revelations, filling in the puzzle, are sparingly doled out. The stunning scenery Cheryl hikes through is barely noticed.

It does a poor job of showing the tragedy of Turing’s hidden life but a better job at making a bigger case — unconventional people make unconventional thinkers.

The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness is a great name for a documentary about Hayao Miyazaki and his animation house, Japan’s Studio Ghibli.

As “cute and cuddly” as ever, and often downright hilarious.

Manages to pop the hairs on the back of your neck more than most repetitive, predictable and gory Hollywood horror films these days.

Ptacek, as she was in the short, makes a great foil. And the addition of Rossum and Perlman to the cast adds pathos and paranoia, guilt and menace.

In a cinema recently overrun with combat documentaries, Marshall Curry’s Point and Shoot manages a first. Here’s a film that captures the romance of war amongst today’s young and testosterone-fueled. Want to know why young men from all over the world have flocked to fight for ISIS? Point and Shoot explains it.

A bloody, violent and yet grimly comic tale.

Beyond the Lights is another pain-behind-the-music romance. But it’s so well written, cast and played that we lose ourselves in the comfort food familiarity of it all.

Carell, though, is the real shock to the system here. He is quirky, queer in the old fashioned sense, and pathetically funny.

Rosewater was the name Bahari gave his persecutor (Kim Bodnia), a cunning, perfumed older man charged with getting a confession from this Westernized Iranian, a confession that discredits his reporting and the bad light Iran is in since the election, with its ensuing violent government crackdown on protesters.

Writer-director Karen Leigh Hopkins has lots of fun with this surreal set up, and only really loses the thread when reality intrudes.

Jones tells this story with care and a lack of hurry, a pace to fit an age when people traveled no faster than two mules pulling a wagon could carry them. It’s “True Grit” and “The African Queen” with a moment of “Lawrence of Arabia,” period-perfect and a total immersion in this world.

This delightful and inspiring drama succeeds the way Hawking has, even as he fails to deliver that “one theory” that explains “everything.” It’s reaching beyond your grasp, in life, in science and in film biographies, that achieves greatness.

It’s manipulative and overlong, too loud and “Incredibles” action-packed for the very young. But the manipulation errs on the side of mercy, compassion, sacrifice and humanity.

Whatever its length and melodramatic third-act touches, Interstellar is a space opera truly deserving of that label, overreaching and thought-provoking, heart-tugging and pulse-pounding. It’s the sort of film that should send every other sci-fi filmmaker back to the drawing board, the way Stanley Kubrick did, a long time ago in a millennium far away.

An old fashioned Japanese folk tale beautifully rendered in old-fashioned hand-drawn animation.

Whatever twists this puzzle tosses at us, the film reminds us that a great actor, in close-up, telling a story with just her or his eyes, is still the greatest special effect the movies have to offer. This cast telling this story ensures us that nobody will be dozing off Before I Go to Sleep.

Rene Russo is spot-on as Nina, an aging TV news director who is the only person Bloom will sell his footage to.

That miss-or-hit collection of horror shorts, “The ABCs of Death” becomes more hit or miss with its sequel, ABCs of Death 2.

Workman’s film feels exploitative, and the filmmaker cannot help but make Carbee look a little creepy and a bit pathetic. The only thing that eases your conscience watching Magical Universe is the difficulty in deciding, “Who was using whom here?”

I just wish there’d been more to this allegory, something more than Radcliffe’s Ig explaining his protrusions to one and all with “They’re horns. It’s a crazy story.”

Reeves animates the action and the filmmakers surround him with wonderful co-stars; the quietly menacing McShane, the chop shop operator (John Leguizamo), the dapper “cleaner” (David Patrick Kelly of “The Warriors”) and the spitting, hissing Nyqvist.

First-time writer/director Peter Sattler finds a few surprises to throw at us in this somewhat conventional “Stockholm Syndrome” story.

“Cheerful” and “triumphant” aren’t words that come to mind when you think of Alzheimer’s, the debilitating illness that destroys memory, mind and body. But darned if country star Glen Campbell doesn’t manage that in Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me.

Moretz is as real as ever, and Knightley manages Megan’s transition from annoyingly naive to adorably confused. But for that she has help, and for that she and we should thank Rockwell. In this case, the actor most accomplished at playing slackers is the one who gets everybody — and the movie — to grow up.

Chilling, cruel and funny — in an icy, Swedish way.

Serious and silly, self-aware and ironic, it’s the movie that questions stardom, fame and celebrity, built around a role Michael Keaton had to become a has-been to play.

A Mexican-accented kids’ cartoon so colorful and unconventionally dazzling it almost reinvents the art form. As pretty as a just-punctured pinata, endlessly inventive, warm and traditional, it serves up Mexican culture in a riot of Mexican colors and mariachi-flavored music.

It’s good, not great, and it’s not Ayer’s fault that the rarer these B-movies become, the more we expect from them.

A clever and claustrophobic thriller that will trip you up and leave you with a wicked, blood-stained grin.

Simien focuses too much on the character played by his star, Williams, which seems a mistake. Scenes are underscored with classical music chestnuts, a trite way of suggesting “academia.” And the ending is an eye-roller.

The script and Simmons, known for TV’s “The Closer” and as tantrum-tossing editor J. Jonah Jameson in “Spider-Man,” make Fletcher a monster, and then look for ways of explaining him.

It’s just competent, light entertainment.

Murray and writer-director Theodore Melfi play us like a music box, manipulating and charming our socks off even as the Vincent for whom the film is named curses, gambles, drinks and cheats — all in front of an impressionable 10-year old.

Renner’s performance — beginning with bluster and descending into twitchy paranoia — sells it and makes us fret for every “messenger” suddenly the target of the spotlight himself.

Rambles a bit and telegraphs its ending. But its earnestness in reminding us of this story and just what America represents to the world’s rising tide of refugees, and why, makes it a winner, a valuable history lesson wrapped in a feel-good bow.

It’s good, but we’ve come to expect more from the guy who gave us “Fight Club” and “The Social Network.” This is more on a par with “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” The calculated shocks feel like a movie we’ve seen before, though at least in this case, that’s not true.

The Liberator may be a Cliff Notes version of South American history, but Ramirez breathes life into it and makes us care.

Through it all, Washington’s stillness is emphasized, so much so that the film slows down just to make sure we appreciate the presence and the talent behind it.

Start to finish, it’s a delight.

The Notebook makes for a grim but utterly fascinating parable.

Maybe Jimi: All is By My Side is as good a Jimi Hendrix bio-pic as we’ll ever get, at least so long as there are legal entanglements strangling the late guitar god’s legacy.

None of it adds up to much more than a chuckle or two, a smile or three and a lot of slow, poetically drawn-out moments of mild anguish or the simple delight of walking through Greenwich Village in the spring.

Like “Brazil” and “Twelve Monkeys,” it’s about human connections in a technologically warped world rendered lonely and unlivable by the lack of those connections.

Fort Bliss is a solid tough-adjustment-coming-home melodrama built around a superb performance by Michelle Monaghan.

A big, broad dysfunctional family comedy, sort of a “Parenthood” pushed into R-rated “Adulthood” territory.

It’s visually lovely, and the performances are subtle, sunny and sympathetic. Camara lends a playful touch to Antonio’s Beatle-mania.

The most valuable thing about the film, implied in the shared narration by Terrence Howard and director Martin Shore, is capturing these legends one more time before it’s too late.

The Drop is a simmering thriller from the writer who gave us “Mystic River” and “Gone, Baby Gone,” a tale heavy with the weight of violence we know is coming.

Skeleton Twins may not be a wholly fleshed-out character study, and nobody here takes a flying leap out of his or her comfort zone. But the timing of this tale of depression, suicide and how vulnerable we all are to our past, our demons and our shortcomings, is enough to recommend this engagingly melancholy comedy.

The thing that “Disappearance” does perfectly is, unfortunately, its most anti-cinematic trait. Grief and a romantic break-up have never been more deflatingly, depressingly captured.

The venerable acting firm of Smith-Kline & Scott Thomas make certain that this Paris trip is anything but a waste.

Radice has delivered an engaging portrait of a loose cannon back when professional sports still produced such unfiltered creatures, a man who lived by his own rules, said what he thought and wore curlers to practice when he felt like it.

The considerable charms of Jason Bateman and Olivia Wilde get a considered workout in the lightly charming New York romance The Longest Week. It’s a droll comedy, with a droll narration.

Life of Crime is lesser-Leonard, an all-star kidnapping comedy that manages to “Be Cool” even if the filmmaker never quite finds the grim faced grins that the best Elmore noirs boast.

Manipulative, contrived, melodramatic — all labels we slap on that most perfectly titled movie genre, “the weeper.” All fit If I Stay like original packaging.

“Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner takes his act to the big screen with Are You Here, which turns out to be the most quotable Owen Wilson comedy since “Zoolander.”

The setting and various religious rifts are unfamiliar, if the domestic/romantic melodrama isn’t.

While The Giver scores points for being smarter and deeper than “The Hunger Games” or its inferior photo-copy (“Divergent”), coming after all those other versions of this plot does neither it, nor us, any favors. The Giver has nothing new to offer.

A leg up on the first “Trip,” an altogether more delightful vacation with two blokes who might wear us and each other out along the way. But then, that’s half the fun.

Here’s an eccentric tragicomedy, with music, built to play like gangbusters at Austin’s South by Southwest music-movie fanboy/fangirl festival.

Kazan, as she proved in “Ruby Sparks,” has a whimsical, quirky girl-next-door appeal. Radcliffe, wearing post-Harry Potter stubble and delivering toothy, jaw-jutting grins, makes it easy for us to believe he cannot get her out of his head.

The Discoverers showcases Dunne in a part he was born to play.

Laugh-out-loud funny and production-designed to death, Guardians of the Galaxy pops off the screen.

Artistically, Get on Up rivals “Walk the Line,” with a lead performance on a par with the career-making turns of Angela Bassett (“What’s Love Got to Do With It?”) and Jamie Foxx (“Ray”). With this wonder of the summer, Boseman and Taylor deliver a piece of American cultural history every bit as important as the Jackie Robinson story, a story told with heart, humor, funk and soul.

Calvary is a compact and biting tale of a righteous man being tested by his faith, his peers and his predicament.

McGarry, with this slick, invigorating film, whose action is set to a pulsating James Lavino musical score, has broadened a national debate that anti-healthcare reform folks have narrowed via the courts and political demonization.

There are moments when you wonder if this CNN-produced documentary is telling the whole story, if there was cherry picking in points of view chosen.

Besson’s script may let her (and Freeman) down in the third act, but the 89 minute long Lucy is so brisk it’ll give you whiplash. Even marginal thrillers benefit from a director and star who have a sense of urgency and are as hellbent as this on not overstaying their welcome.

Hoffman is merely the first among equals in a stellar cast.

A true indie film roller-coaster ride, from moon-eyed romance to aching heartbreak, cerebral puzzle to incredibly moving, emotional resolution to that puzzle. In a season of the year where sci-fi is dumbed down and then dumbed some more for mass consumption, here’s a piece of speculative fiction that will stick with you long after the last Transformer’s battery has died.

If you liked “Scrubs,” and I did, for a few seasons, anyway, you’ll be happy Braff got to make his movie and happy that you got to see it.

Happy Christmas, which is set around Christmas, shares several plot and thematic points with “Neighbors,” but without the aggression or belly laughs.

It adds bubbles to the show, but doesn’t change the essentially deadpan, amusingly banal nature of this journey and the two charming old men who take it.

An action-packed epic, a moving sci-fi allegory rendered in broad, lush strokes by the latest state of the computer animator’s art.

"Way Down” veers towards cute and settles on “twee” far more often than it should.

Some of the profane hip hop acts seem dated in the sea of upbeat soul, pop and alt-rock acts presented here. But Pearl Jam and Run-DMC, inspiring joyous sing-alongs to their hits, just seem timeless.

Call it a vanity project or bargain basement movie mythos, but no hard-boiled biker picture ever looked or sounded like Road to Paloma.

Richard Linklater’s Boyhood is an amazing achievement in telling an unremarkably remarkable life story.

It’s more an instant cult film than a picture with any prayer of reaching millions.

Tammy, in the end, feels like a pulled punch. McCarthy promises a haymaker she never quite delivers.

An 'E.T.' knockoff that works.

Writer-director John Carney re-plays his greatest hit with Begin Again, a semi-successful attempt to recreate the magic of the Oscar-winning musical “Once” in New York with a big name cast.

Poehler and Rudd riff and banter like old marrieds, and make even the cheesiest lines funny, make even the cliched dating montages set to syrupy pop music feel — if not fresh and new — at least funny enough to mock.

Mumford and O’Leary get beyond the cardboard character “types” and make these people more interesting and conflicted than they first seem. And the claustrophobic milieu, just two people staring at long range video, punching buttons, maneuvering their Reaper and trying to make snap decisions that won’t haunt them, serve the movie well.

The fact that Bulger, at long last, is rotting in jail, is little consolation. Perhaps only a Hollywood version of this story, one starring Johnny Depp, can give it a satisfying conclusion.

As slight as Venus feels, it’s just titillating enough to matter, just twisted enough — Really, casting your wife and a guy who looks like you? — to suggest that even in his 70s, even with virtually no budget, Polanski can deliver a compelling walk on the kinky side.