The Imitation Game is vibrant and lively, engaging you on three levels: The fascinating way the Nazis managed to outwit the rest of the world until Turing came along, how his giant contraption (essentially the world’s first computer) will work, and what will happen to him and everyone he knows when the truth about him is finally revealed.

The new version uses addiction as a vehicle to tackle larger themes, eloquently explored by Monahan’s dialogue, which sings in a way uncommon to tough-guy crime-dramas.

Marshall, who established himself as a great movie musical director with 2002’s Oscar-winning Chicago, has done a masterful job of collaborating with Sondheim and Lapine to transform their 1987 Tony Award-winning, two-act musical into a film that flows seamlessly as it juggles its intertwining storylines.

The bigger problem is that neither Jolie nor the script bothers to flesh Louis out as a fully formed person with faults and fears and regrets, which keeps the film from ever capturing you emotionally.

Wild may sound like a film about redemption, but it’s more about learning to live with what you can’t control — and accepting what you can control, which is sometimes just as difficult.

Foxcatcher is too cold of a movie to love, but that chilliness is intentional and transfixing, a parable about the darkest corners of the minds of men that dares to whisper instead of shout.

This is a dark and shivery story about motherhood, a common subject for horror movies, but one that’s rarely treated with such intelligence or seriousness of intent.

The problem is that hardly anyone in the cast can sing or dance on a level that’s more than passable (Foxx is a fine exception). And that’s a problem when the movie is a musical.

OK, Mr. Jackson, you proved your point by landing the finish. Now please, no more Middle-earth, ever.

The first half of the movie, which alternates between hilariously vulgar, gross gags and some electric improvs and riffs by Rock and his cast of all-stars, has the crackle and pop of a live performance — it energizes you.

In Exodus: Gods and Kings, Scott settles for sticking (mostly) to the Book, skipping the boring parts in order to dish out the razzle-dazzle. This is spectacular entertainment, practically a theme park ride, that could have used more spirituality and soul.

The Homesman, director Tommy Lee Jones’ drama about the hardships of pioneer life in 1850s Nebraska, goes from deathly dull to shocking to intriguing to “Look, there’s Meryl Streep in a bonnet!”

Using a buzzy, unnerving score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Citizenfour makes you share the same sense of shock and paranoia as Snowden spews damning information that implicates the White House in transgressions that extend beyond our borders into other countries.

Like "The King’s Speech" or "Shakespeare in Love," The Theory of Everything sometimes feels a bit too polished and precise, leaving no room for ambiguity and always staying easy to digest, like elegant pap.

Dark, grim and exciting entertainment.

With a film this funny, exciting and visually stimulating, who cares if you know exactly what's going to happen next, and when.

This is Nolan’s unabashed tribute to "2001: A Space Odyssey," the first movie he ever saw at the age of 8 and the one that made him decide to be a filmmaker (there are homages to that earlier film everywhere).

The film’s true subject, though, is innate talent — for music, writing, painting, sculpture, plumbing — and the superhuman lengths we sometimes have to go to in order to wring it out of ourselves.

Birdman takes advantage of every facet of Keaton’s talent, from his knack for absurdist comedy to his seemingly effortless ability to tap into graceful profundity without making a big show of it.

John Wick reminds you this actor deserves better. Reeves makes the movie entertaining in a background-noise way, but he can’t give it any gravity, even when the filmmakers pull the cheapest trick in the book to get the audience to root for the hero and hiss at the Eurotrash villains. Someone get this man some good work, quick.

The problem with Men, Women & Children — and it’s a big one — is that the movie isn’t telling us anything we don’t already know.

Fury aims for history, and the contrived resolution shows a timidity by Ayer that is uncharacteristic of his previous work. Still, the action sequences, which use actual vintage tanks and little CGI, are pretty extraordinary and, at times, incredibly gruesome. War is hell. That’s entertainment, folks.

The less you know about Gone Girl going in the better, but even knowing what’s ahead doesn’t prepare you for the movie’s tone, which is funny yet curdled and cynical and black. This is a satirical antidote to the feel-good pap most Hollywood movies about relationships push on their audiences - here’s the perfect date movie for someone you want to break up with.

Unfortunately, Life After Beth starts feeling more conventional the wilder and darker it gets, and the laughs become more sparse as the movie winds to its bizarre and but unsatisfying conclusion.

Sometimes, love can feel like hate or annoyance — it is, as the title states, strange. But sometimes, more often than not, it can be a wonderful thing.

Filmed around stunning County Sligo on Ireland’s west coast, Calvary is a thoughtful, atmospheric movie despite the awkward parade of suspects and the fact that everyone seems a little too conveniently hostile.

There was, however, another question the screenwriter should have asked: Why does the script focus on the wrong couple?

A trifle bland, but with enough virtues to make it palatable to audiences who want comfort food, not a challenge, when they go to the movies.