Monkey Kingdom tugs our heartstrings to the top of the trees. With a lot of patience, and perhaps a little trickery, directors Mark Linfield and Alastair Fothergill have produced a simian “Cinderella.”

While the movie sometimes seems like faux Fincher, the symbiotic acting, artful imagery and punchline ending turn True Story into credible entertainment.

Finally the film tips its hand and becomes a bet-the-house warning about climate change.

The movie is more of a character study than a biography, as Bernstein dispenses his gentle wit and wisdom for the camera and for an elite class of student.

The Woman in Gold works, largely because of the odd-couple chemistry between Mirren and Reynolds. It just goes to show that broad strokes are appealing when they’re in the right frame.

Only an artist at the midpoint between the maypole and maturity could concoct a comedy as potent as While We’re Young.

The lesson of this likable little movie is that it’s never too late to reclaim your integrity.

If you don’t crave the taste of motor oil on your popcorn, Furious 7 can’t end fast enough.

The documentary offers undercooked subplots about Gruber’s mostly Hispanic staff and his romance with a health-conscious Catholic acupuncturist, but Deli Man is best when it sticks to the menu.

Home delivers like a mailman on Valentine’s Day. But when we scratch beneath the sugary surface, there’s something tart inside that’s difficult to digest.

This mess is guilty of being both racist and homophobic. And it’s as shamelessly lazy and crude as its title suggests.

Based on an acclaimed novel by Ron Rash, Serena is like a towering tale that’s been fed into a woodchipper.

One of the best films of the year, Gett: the Trial of Viviane Amsalem is bound to be compared to the Oscar-winning Iranian drama “A Separation”; but if anything, Gett is an even more artful evocation of a bureaucratic nightmare.

The movie Timbuktu is as fresh as today’s headlines, but it’s paced and photographed like a timeless slice of life. It’s an exquisite, wise and even funny film, easily the best of the year.

The best excuse for watching The Gunman is Penn. His first mainstream leading role in a decade is worthy of comparisons to Matt Damon in the “Bourne” movies; yet it’s also disappointingly shorn of the humor and humanity of which this great actor is capable.

There is such a thing as an infinitely bad movie, and this is it.

Cinderella is so scrubbed of personality, it’s not even worth calling a mess.

If you’re a fan of the “Taken” movies and tend to give action-hero Neeson the benefit of the doubt, our advice here is simple: Run away!

For the hour or so it’s on screen it’s a harmless, little chiller that doesn’t scare much but serves as a holdover until something truly scary comes along.

If you can’t guess that the whole thing ends with a big dance number, you’ve been snoozing in your samosas.

An entertaining tour of Tinseltown served with poisoned popcorn.

After some overly talky revelations, the cornered writer/directors are forced to shatter their absurd shell game with a final act of violence that spoils the breezy, capering mood that prevailed for much of the movie.

Cotillard gets so persuasively inside Sandra’s skin that it’s not at all surprising that this performance has earned her another Oscar nomination. And she does so without resorting to shameless, award-baiting grandstanding.

Kingsman is like a high-speed collision between a Jaguar and a jaywalking soccer hooligan. It’s ridiculously out of balance, and when you’re stuck in the middle, it doesn’t seem so funny.

The movie version of Fifty Shades is better than the book. It's still awful, but when a filmmaker starts with stupid source material, he's handcuffed.

Squeezes plenty of color and noise from a thin concept, then runs with it until non-fanatics can’t keep up.

Channing Tatum is a lot of things, but he’s not a stoic Superman like the role he plays here, which is made more laughable by prosthetic pointy ears.

A far more interesting film than its title implies. And a film you’ve never seen before.

A textured and unexpectedly entertaining drama about the human toll when racial assumptions crash.

It’s unashamedly of the B-movie variety — a quick and easy time-killer.

Taking potshots at American Sniper is like shooting fish in a barrel. So why should war-weary Americans see it? Because Eastwood remains a masterful action director, and this may be his last hurrah. Because Cooper is one of our best young actors, and he poured a lifetime of craft into stilling his character’s heartbeat.

For modern moviegoers, the earthy Mr. Turner may seem like slowly steeped tea with an unpleasant aftertaste. But while some are impatiently waiting for the paint to dry, astute viewers will see a cinematic landscape bloom.

The virtue of Inherent Vice is that we can stop chasing the tale and just enjoy the sunset of the ’60s dream.

Oyelowo takes full advantage of his close physical resemblance to King, but he wisely avoids mere impersonation, delivering a performance that’s as sensitive as it is spellbinding.

Many of the people reading this review are doing it on a computer. And all of them are reading it in English. It’s not much of stretch to say that you could credit both of those things to a man named Alan Turing.

Indeed, most of the famous faces are surprisingly adept at singing. Even when the actors are not lip-syncing (which seems to be about half the time), the dense, clever lyrics are intelligible.

If you can take it, Unbroken will lift you like the classics of adventure cinema.

Within the bloodshot-eye perspective of their other stoner comedies, it’s bluntly funny and ever-so-slightly sweet.

Throughout his career, Burton has always been capable of surprising audiences. Big Eyes is no exception.

Wahlberg is merely OK. Unfortunately, the film’s effectiveness turns on whether we buy into his angst. And Larson has very little to play. But Goodman and Williams are believably menacing, and Lange is perfect as Bennett’s mom of steel.

If you don’t know the true story, we won’t spoil it for you except to say that it’s not the expected outcome. But if you’re willing to be thrown for a loop, you’re in good hands with this medal-worthy cast and crew.

The special effects remain good, but the jokes are creaky, the sentiments are forced and the pop-historical lessons are obligatory.

Annie is not a great movie musical — but it’s a fun time at the movies.

Whose story is this? There’s an old saying that history is written by the winners. The screenplay for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies must have been written by elves.

Because VanDyke wasn’t embedded with the American media, Point and Shoot has some priceless front-line footage, including a chilling scene where he must decide if he’s willing to kill for someone else’s cause. But without a rigorous editor, it’s “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.”

While the wilderness vistas are starkly beautiful, there’s no tangible sense of Strayed’s ultimate goal. (Why Oregon?) And the flashbacks, which include scenes of sexual misadventure and heroin use, are too brief to provide answers.

With Top Five, Rock has finally made the transition to true movie stardom.

A handsome movie with a handsome leading man. Christian Bale is widely considered the finest actor of his generation. Yet here he’s adrift in the bulrushes. This might be the most indifferent performance of Bale’s career.

The message of the movie is as clear as Siberian ice: Whether you’re a Tea Partier, an Occupier or just an ordinary Joe, you might be the next citizen who’s stranded in limbo.

Strives to be entertaining, but for much of its run time it is so emotionally uninvolving that even the smallest children might find themselves bored.

Further proof that likable actors have to take an occasional sick day.

A brainy bio that exerts a gravitational pull on the heartstrings.

Although it doesn’t make a lick of sense as a stand-alone story, Mockingjay — Part 1 is the first “Hunger Games” movie with meat on its bones.

Bernal (“Y Tu Mama Tambien”), an actor of Mexican heritage, brings to the role a charismatic resolve. It’s an impressive and impassioned performance.

Mbatha-Raw continues to be a true revelation in a role that could be not be any more different from her star turn in “Belle” this year.

Laggies is the kind of indie film that gives the genre a bad name.

The storytelling is solid, propelled by characters that you come to care about.

This is epic cinema that begs to be compared to "2001: A Space Odyssey." But unlike Stanley Kubrick's psychedelic joyride, this journey is powered by a human heart.

In a stunning performance, Teller resists the impulse to sugarcoat Andrew’s egocentricity. Simmons is equally impressive, lending Fletcher just enough humanity to render his monstrousness all the more shocking.

Despite its intriguing premise, the film amounts to little more than tedious, clichéd melodramatics.

Most biographical docs contain a montage of old footage, but this one is especially haunting. As Campbell watches home movies, he has to ask Kim to identify the people on screen, including his ex-wives, his children and his younger self.

Gilroy vividly evokes both the LA exteriors and newsroom interiors, and the action sequences are fraught with tension.

Directed by and starring Mathieu Amalric, it’s a deceptively low-key riff on a Hitchcock whodunit. It’s both sexy and inscrutable, a cold-blooded puzzler to the very end.

Although the characters don’t lapse into stereotypes, neither are they sufficiently funny or fierce to engage us in the issues they raise.

Lots of films claim to be different. Birdman is.

Sorry, Keanu, but you stole my time and you murdered my brain cells. By the sacred oath of WHOA, there will be blood, and this time it’s personal.

Directed by Stiles White, whose credits lean more heavily in the special-effect arenas, Ouija is bland, safe horror for those who like their scares nonexistent.

The iconic actor may be too gruff for sainthood, but Murray still retains a secret stash of soul.

Sparks would be delighted if this movie were compared to his other story about reunited lovers, but compared to “The Notebook,” The Best of Me is the coffee-stained outline of a sales pitch for sleeping pills.

A flawed but intriguing new chapter in animation.

There’s a good movie to be made about the alienating effects of modern technology. In 2013, a little-seen indie called “Disconnect,” starring Jason Bateman, came closer than this well-intentioned failure, which has virtually no heart, humor, sense of place or central point of view. In trying to be a big, important movie, Men, Women & Children is about none of the above.

Fury is a guided tour through a manmade hell.

While the chronological details and social significance of the story Webb reported get shortchanged, Kill the Messenger is a vital reminder that a free press must be free to press the powerful for answers.

One one level, Pride is as fake as a lip-sync revue, yet the emotions it arouses are real.

Despite playing with a stacked deck, The Judge is guilty of exceeding expectations.

This toothless attempt is just dead on arrival.

A genuinely touching and occasionally powerful film, not least because the boys are so disinclined to pity themselves.

Ultimately what makes Gone Girl so watchable is the three-headed monster of Fincher, Pike and Affleck. The director bathes the B-movie scenario in the queasy-green hues of a morgue, while Affleck flashes his million-dollar smile like a dime-store Dracula and the beautifully inscrutable Pike absorbs the light like a wax mannequin. If it’s true that Nick and Amy were made for each other, they were made in a fiendish lab.

Annabelle is so lazily coat-tailing on Roman Polanski, they should have called it “Rosemary’s Barbie.”

In a poignant and potentially depressing film, it’s redeeming to see that when they are with their kindred spirits, even the saddest skeletons can dance.

The Equalizer, loosely based on the TV series of the late ’80s, is a guilty-pleasure platform for Washington’s slow-cooked, kick-butt heroism.

So stupid and hateful, it needs to have a stake driven through its heart before it can spawn a franchise.

It has a game cast, it’s watchable, fun, sick, sad and has to be seen to be believed.

What makes Love Is Strange so special is that the challenges the couple face are more mundane than menacing.

Although the ratio of comedy to drama becomes increasingly weighted toward tearjerking, few of the emotional moments are realistic or effective.

While director Michael Roskam lays the groundwork for a heist thriller, The Drop is fueled by character, not plot.

A family flick that punches the right buttons like a trained seal.

He’s like a globe-trotting Richard Linklater. And with Winterbottom’s first-ever sequel, his “Trip” films now rival Linklater’s “Before” series in charting how a twosome evolves over time. Plus, they’re bloody hilarious.

Although The November Man shows us some attractive people in motion, the cumulative effect leaves us neither shaken nor stirred.

The settings and supporting roles suggest that If I Stay started out as someone’s passion project, but the final product only requires its star to sleepwalk through buckets of schlock.

Alba is a showstopper in a fringed cowgirl outfit. But nine years wiser, we know that pretty things aren’t always worth killing for.

Land Ho! is a tepid little movie that goes almost nowhere, and if I had to sit in that rental car for one more boob joke, I’d rather jump into a volcano.

Gleeson is great as the troubled, conscientious priest, but until an abruptly shocking finale, his fatalism turns the ticking clock into a congested hourglass.

Co-directors Andrew Droz Palermo and Tracy Droz Tragos let the painful stories emerge naturally, without prodding questions or talking-head experts who place the boys’ grim lives in the larger context of the post-industrial economy.

Not all of it makes sense, but for disaster movie fans, Into the Storm has enough destruction to go around.

Although the outcome is as predetermined as a prix-fixe menu, the storytelling is as smooth as goose-liver pate through a pastry nozzle.

Cameos from actors portraying Little Richard, Mick Jagger, Frankie Avalon and Alan Leeds add up to some fun.

Surrender, earthlings. It’s the Guardians’ world and you’ll be happy to live in it.