Farrell feels like a weak link here, never quite as masterfully manipulative or brutish as the role calls for.

The writer-director of Dying of the Light is Paul Schrader, screenwriter of “Raging Bull.” The star is Nicolas Cage — Raging Tool.

Fogel’s focus is female friendship, and the challenges presented by growing older and pairing up. It all makes for a rocky road, regardless of the romantic rival’s gender.

Laura Dern — only nine years older than Witherspoon’s fresh-faced 38 — could also net a Best Supporting Actress nod for her outstanding work as Cheryl’s spunky and nurturing mothe.

Turing’s tale needs to be more widely known, and while The Imitation Game may not be a great film, it is an important one.

A lazy, noisy ADHD-addled collection of animated clichés guaranteed to give anyone older than 5 a headache, even if you don’t see it in optional 3-D.

The three friends do things that venture beyond entertainingly dumb and into exasperatingly unbelievable.

The film’s slightly confusing ending doesn’t spell anything out, but that’s all right: We’re left sitting in the dark shivering, reassured there are still some directors who can leave us well and truly creeped out.

Played with enormous charm by Samuel Lange Zambrano, Junior is a handsome kid.

Yes, it’s gross, and no, it’s not remotely original.

The surreal images, offbeat jokes and pointed human-rights allegory make this an altogether different experience from most American animation. It’s dreamy, poetic and not to be missed.

Imagine “The Graduate” as rewritten by a golden retriever, and you’ll have some inkling of the intelligence level in the rom-com All Relative.

This crowd-funded — and overcrowded — collection of interwoven stories, directed by John Herzfeld, plays like an amateur-acting exercise in which each participant picks a name and a couple of defining props.

Hopefully Jennifer Lawrence will actually be given something worthwhile to do next time around. That would actually be worth paying to see.

From time to time, it works.

Mesmerizing, eerie and unpredictably weird.

The film’s mix of elements of “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” and “Bad Santa” is amusing.

The teary-eyed sincerity of the music-industry drama Beyond the Lights is at times too much, but despite its cliche elements, the film at least has the feel of a passion project.

The Soviet era is more interesting than the NHL years, but still, the film is entertaining even for ardent nonfans.

Jon Stewart’s filmmaking debut Rosewater has much in common with “The Daily Show” — it’s blaringly obvious, it’s naive, it plays to the cheap seats and it’s enamored with cheap jokes.

Very much a feminist Western — one painting a vivid picture of how difficult it was for even a strong and determined woman to survive in frontier days.

Visually imaginative, The Theory of Everything is an unusually compelling true-life story about an extraordinary couple triumphing over adversity. It’s my favorite movie so far this year.

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.

Less tiring than a three-hour tramp through the halls, and considerably less expensive than a plane ticket, National Gallery gives the feeling of having seen everything there is to see.

The single theme is “Isn’t this cool?” And if your response is, “Well, it’s certainly loud,” then On Any Sunday probably isn’t for you.

Big Hero 6 even has a title that sounds like a product ordered off the takeout menu of the type of restaurant that recombines a few elements in many ways. That could work fine, if any of the ingredients were particularly flavorful.

Rendering the life of young Abraham Lincoln as a tone poem, The Better Angels sags under the weight of its own resolute earnestness.

The script’s by Robert Ben Garant, also behind last year’s scary-movie spoof “Hell Baby,” and this one teeters right on the edge of laughable, with its V.C. Andrews-like series of goth twists.