If you're going to make a documentary about Leonard Cohen, the singer-songwriter, you should have him perform some of his better-known melodies, like "Suzanne."

Let’s say you wanted to have another go at “Red Dawn” but you think more like Redford. Voilà: You’d have The East, a cockamamie valentine to eco-terrorism.

The house itself - which walks down the street in one impressive scene - is memorably voiced by Kathleen Turner.

While highly entertaining and sometimes inspired, Black Mass is more like Scorsese lite. In perhaps the most memorable sequence, Bulger sardonically tests a childhood friend (Joel Edgerton) for loyalty by teasing out a “secret” steak sauce in what’s basically a reworking/homage of Joe Pesci’s famous “I’m funny, how?” scene in “GoodFellas.”

The Wave, competent as it is, lacks the heart-rending power of the similar 2012 tsunami movie “The Impossible.”

Only sporadically entertaining.

Powerful, important and refreshingly straightforward documentary.

The result is a charming mix of Walter Mitty and "About Schmidt."

Very funny. It's also heartbreakingly sad.

If you're looking for substance in a Hong Kong movie, stick with Wong Kar-wai ("In the Mood for Love"). But if brainless, predictable fun will do, check out Shaolin Soccer.

That's all laudable - but Perry, a longtime filmmaker, should have given the doc more urgency and punch.

There are many funny lines and situations, accompanied by strong performances all around. Sadly, Good Bye Lenin! falters at the end, when it loses its edge and lapses into sentimentality.

Kari successfully meshes comedy, ennui and tragedy, much in the manner of Jim Jarmusch and Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismaki.

Dong, who is gay, does his best to stay objective. Just how these families interact may surprise you.

You can sympathize with both sides in their ideological battle, which ends in a most unexpected way.

Could do with a tad of editing itself. Other than that, there's nothing bad to say about this cool homage to the film world's unsung heroes: editors.

Unfolds as meditatively as a game of go. Cinematographer Wang Yu shifts easily from tranquility to violence, and he is able to turn something as simple as a man walking outdoors into a visual feast. Chang Chen, a star of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," provides a strong yet understated portrayal of Wu.

We also begin to suspect that Deraspe is putting us on - that this is a mockumentary, not a documentary. About the time that a bunch of grown men and women - stoned and drunk - start playing spin the bottle (spin the bottle!), we're certain that she's tricking us. Or is she? It's anybody's guess.

The director-producer, Nicole Opper, has known Avery's Brooklyn family for years, which no doubt accounts for the film's intimacy.

It’s sprightly, funny and at times piercingly sad.

The Hateful Eight is basically an expensive vanity project allowing Tarantino to expound on his bizarre theories about race relations.

We learn very few specific details about this somewhat monotonous guy, and yet that vagueness makes him and his quest more relatable.

Deserved an end-of-the-year prestige release, is a true work of art in a marketplace filled with velvet paintings. It's positively magical, the reason we loved movies in the first place.

Pleasantly free of blood and guts, with Kurosawa using instead the mighty power of suggestion to give Pulse an invigorating aura of menace.

Una Noche is intriguing enough, however, to make you hope that both Mulloy and her actors are heard from again, sooner rather than later.

Mostly, the gorgeously shot Queen and Country depicts Bill and his more rebellious mate Percy pursuing beautiful women with varying degrees of success — and pulling pranks on their exasperated superiors, hilariously portrayed by David Thewlis and Richard E. Grant.

"Babe" was a classic because of its gentle simplicity. Charlotte's Web, with its insistently "magical" theme music, an overbearing climax and a trough full of bad jokes, is merely adequate.

For Your Consideration isn't quite in a class with Guest's earlier films like "Waiting for Guffman," "Best in Show" and "A Mighty Wind," which is not to say it isn't uproariously funny.

Though its resolution is a bit pat, most of The Girl in the Book is a smart and pointed look at abuses of power and roles women too often play in the literary world.

It’s an ambitious, often arresting film, but it lacks cohesion, and the seesawing plot and motivations seem more indecisive than mysterious.

Hustle & Flow promises gritty street drama but delivers "Pretty Woman" with crunk instead of Roxette.

Off-screen, Oyelowo moves the camera elegantly, and he creates a few cool moments in the woods.

A Quentin Tarantino knockoff from Japan, Why Don’t You Play in Hell? has some of the master’s nutty energy but little of his cleverness.

Like most of Eastwood’s work (with the exception of last year’s disastrous “The 15:17 to Paris”), it’s a tightly paced feature, with strong performances all around. It’s also one of the season’s most politically polarized films.

A cold, emptily stylish exercise -- and one that sorely lacks the speed and vigor that made "Lola" run.

An utterly beguiling tale.

Turns out to be an exercise in flatulent pretension, puffed up with a bogus, empty "spirituality" and dependent on a plot filled with implausibilities.

A lean, deftly shot, well-acted, weirdly retro thriller that recalls a raft of '60s and '70s European-set spy pictures. There are even moments when you hope it could turn into a modern "Charade."

The feel-good finale -- an ending even less in doubt than that of the most predictable Hollywood fare -- is as rousing as you'd hope and the fast-paced, on-ice action is satisfyingly authentic.

Things move so swiftly and confusingly that there's little time to explore any of the people in depth. Less style and more substance is definitely called for.

American Animals takes an appropriately wild approach to its subject, biting off a little more than it can chew, but nevertheless coming up with a truly novel entry in the overcrowded heist genre.

It's an uneasy tonal mix that wants to have it both ways - this is a difficult way to pay the rent, but look at how charming the Fokkens are.

The trouble is that the film also wants to make Kev at least partly sympathetic, despite his monstrous treatment of his son, and nothing we learn about him ever does, or could, accomplish that.

A movie that sets out to make boy bands look silly. The conceptual error is obvious. There’s low-hanging fruit and then there’s fruit that’s already on the ground, rotting underfoot.

Canadian actor Kirby's bedroom-eyes shtick is infused with just the right amount of creepiness, as Polley's film plays with the blurry line between soulful romantic obsession and just plain stalking.

This is one of those nature documentaries that’s pretty much solely interested in being entertaining, and so is cleverly edited to look like the linear story of a mother (dubbed Sky) and her newborns (Scout and Amber).

A beautifully acted if fairly poky coming-of-age story.

A refreshingly naturalistic depiction of the dynamic of traveling companionship — at any age.

Where Zhao excels is in the range of emotions she gets from a mostly nonprofessional cast.

A thoughtful drama which sags when it tries to shoehorn its characters into by-the-numbers plot points.

The praise for this static, overlong, stagebound work is a mystery to me.

The real treat here is the science, not the fiction. The film’s sleek aesthetic was developed in consultation with NASA about what such a mission would actually require, and look like as viewed on surveillance cameras.

Mark Becker's Romantico is beautifully realized on old-fashioned film. And that's only part of its charms.

Highly entertaining.

Yes, The Secret Life of Words owes much to Lars von Trier's 1999 "Breaking the Waves." But Coixet's riff stands on its own thanks to thoughtful performances by Polley and Robbins.

The documentary is much too conventional -- lots of boring talking heads, etc. -- to do the subject matter justice.

All the past decade’s Marvel movies have been heading toward this showdown. Turns out the payoff was worth the wait.

The film manages to be both hopeful and devastating — and recommended viewing for anyone who subscribes to the facile notion that abused women should “just leave.”

Hard-core Hollywood haters will best appreciate Maps to the Stars, a campy poison-pen letter to Tinseltown that makes “Sunset Boulevard’’ look like a tourism infomercial by comparison.

Is “F1” too long? Absolutely. But not once did I say, “Are we there yet?”

Aside from the very occasional stab with a dagger, John prefers to shoot people at point-blank range. It gets old fast.

The Way, Way Back is balanced, satisfying, wholesome. Dig in.

He’s great as a celebrity chef who’s forced to re-examine his priorities in this extremely funny and big-hearted comedy that Favreau also wrote.

Let us return to reality (all this happened less than three years ago; do documentarians think we don't read the papers?).

This rehash of familiar pacifist arguments offers neither heat nor light. It's "Fahrenheit: Room Temperature."

The collection is a mixed bag, although there are no clunkers.

Although Hill failed to derail Thomas’ career, she seems to consider her testimony a success: She remains a highly sought public speaker about workplace sexual harassment, which in large part thanks to her is much less tolerated than it once was.

There’s a superficial resemblance to the Dardenne brothers’ “Two Days, One Night,” and like that film it has a strong lead; Gosheva’s Nade is prickly, and no suffering saint.

It's full of funny stuff, from a hitman forced to drag along his 3-year-old when he can't get a sitter, to one of the goons being asked, "Do you have a Web presence?"

A huge hit in China — where it was released in 3-D IMAX — the handsomely filmed Journey To the West deserves better than the token 2-D theatrical release it’s getting in the United States to support its simultaneous arrival on video-on-demand.

They probably should have called it "Beneath the Dignity of the Planet of the Apes," but Rise of the Planet of the Apes is tolerable if you'll just keep in mind that the original feature was an overachieving B-movie.

Visually gorgeous despite its low budget, The Terrorist is a haunting film.

Kelemer doesn't offer anything that hasn't been done before in documentaries of this type. Still, Won't Anybody Listen makes for interesting viewing as a study of true-life underdogs.

Has some truly touching and funny moments. But it goes on for too long and bogs down in a surfeit of characters and unnecessary subplots.

Stands in stark contrast to the quickie political documentaries that have flooded into specialty venues since last year.

Doesn't sugarcoat the difficulties faced by this family, but this small gem has a very satisfying ending.

According to rumors swirling on the Internet, an English-language remake is already in the works, possibly directed by David Cronenberg.

Aniston's best on-screen performance since "The Good Girl."

Doesn't always make sense, and you cannot always tell what is real and what is imaginary, but viewers will be having too much zonked-out fun to care.

It’s a slickly plotted ticking-time-bomb thriller with a crisp look and one standout debut performance, by Hitham Omari as a ruthless leader of a terrorist cell.

As irresistible as movie-theater popcorn - a lavish, reasonably intelligent, well-acted sequel with kick-butt effects that outdoes its predecessor, 2000's "X-Men," in almost every department.

Despite some plot holes, Delirious, hits the bull's-eye with razor-sharp performances and dialogue.

Strel's 2007 adventures on and in the Amazon are detailed in John Maringouin's fun documentary Big River Man.

Like legendary producer Val Lewton in the '40s, director Oren Peli, who shot "Paranormal" in seven days in his own home, understands that what's most frightening is what you don't see but merely suggested.

Cary Joji Fukunaga was the right choice to direct “No Time To Die,” even if he wasn’t the first in this rocky road of a production. His Bond feels reverential and classic, but not campy, and he makes bold choices.

In an effective touch, Kisses opens in black and white, changes into color for its Dublin scenes, then returns to monochrome.

The movie is well-acted, but it's as talky as if it were written for the stage, with fatally slow pacing. Strictly for hard-core Sayles fans and maybe for lovers of American roots music.

Based on a lesser-known Dostoyevsky work, Brit director Richard Ayoade’s breathtakingly realized oddity will appeal to fans of David Lynch and the comic surrealism of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil.”

Judging by this passionate film, the medical community -- has no clue about what causes this awful malady and, worse, doesn't seem to care.

So it's not only how they dance, or even what they dance, but why they dance. And that makes Tavernier's movie muddled, simplistic and more than a little pretentious.

Debbie, for better or for worse, is the high point of the entertaining but lightweight film, which is better suited to public TV than the big screen. Oh, yes. If anybody should decide to open another beauty school in Kabul, be sure to leave Debbie in Indiana.

As the wife, pixie-ish Kanako Higuchi provides the perfect accompaniment to Watanabe.

Profoundly moving and, at times, almost unbearably sad.

Don't let the quiet, indie stylings of The Place Beyond the Pines fool you. This is a big movie with a lot on its mind. Slowly, it unfolds into a kind of epic.

The frothy, feel-good Notting Hill is about as enchanting as movies get these days.

Director Lou Ye, who gave us the lilting "Suzhou River," doesn't care much for dialogue. He lets Wang Yu's pulsating camerawork do the talking.

Basically a carefully airbrushed and authorized portrait of the Gray Lady during 14 months when there was serious speculation about the paper's impending demise.