Riding that fine line between misjudged and deliberately anti-p.c., Get Hard is lewd, crude and rude but, despite its disastrous reception at SxSW, not entirely unfunny.

As for Hawke’s own filmmaking skills, it’s hard to find much wrong with this film, itself a meditation on art and the practice of craft. His touch is delicate, and let’s not worry too much if the tone is occasionally fawning.

With escape as its theme, this thin-plotted pleaser comes hard and goes fast, its rush premium but fleeting.

Sean Penn smokes, glowers and shows off his knotty naked torso in this vain, risible misfire of a thriller about a reformed killer, from "Taken" director Pierre Morel.

In the battle between dystopian science-fiction movies about butt-kicking young heroines, the new Divergent movie, Insurgent, is actually slightly more believably glum than the third Hunger Games movie, "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1."

The French director’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning silent movie comedy, "The Artist," is everything "The Artist" was not: long, unoriginal and heavy-handed.

Stop the Pounding Heart is the last of Minervini’s “Texas trilogy,” so this isn’t his first rodeo. Indulgently, he explores a world that is near-fascinating for its insularity, but one that probably calls for photographs instead of this film.

Republicans or loyalists, Catholics or Protestants – this film is not about political or religious trenches. People died, but it’s more than the bombs, bullets and bodies. The more fascinating damage was done to psyches and souls, and Demange, with ’71, comes for yours.

The Hunting Ground’s film’s biggest journalistic “get” is the first on-camera interview with Erica Kinsman, the Florida State student who accused star quarterback Jameis Winston of drugging and raping her.

The film is visually bland, with only a couple of bookending outdoor sequences around a handful of interior sets.

Like its titular fairy tale heroine, Cinderella is sincere, not an ironic bone in it.

An overqualified cast (including Vincent D’Onofrio and an uncredited Nick Nolte) brings more gravity than required to repeated “this is me staring you down” confrontations.

The problem with Kidnapping Mr. Heineken, which is the second movie in four years about the sensational 1983 crime (the other was a Dutch production with Rutger Hauer as the dapper snatchee), is that it follows the kidnappers out the door instead of sticking with the coolly composed man behind it.

What really distinguishes it from the art-film crowd is that it’s also food-spittingly funny.

The Babadook is too deliberately calibrated to prove truly terrifying.

Not without charm, Unfinished Business mixes the cute with the raunchy. Penises adorably happen. But besides the schlongenfreude, there’s a subtext about how-did-I-get-here lives, and righting oneself before it’s too late. Is the star himself listening?

A movie about a robot policeman given a childlike conscience, Chappie is one of those incongruous Franken-films that’s simultaneously bombastically brutal and treacly. Like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial crossed with Transformers, or RoboCop starring Jar Jar Binks, it’s a recipe guaranteed to produce aesthetic indigestion.

Once again, a first-rate cast helps slightly elevate this sentimental Britcom.

The ultimate question in An Honest Liar is whether it’s possible to know so much about the method behind the magic without being fooled into believing your own act.

Sciamma (Water Lilies, Tomboy) gets unaffected performances from her non-professional cast.

There’s voyeurism, fetishism, bondage, lingerie and high-flown naughtiness galore, but that’s hardly the movie’s most conspicuous achievement. Also at work in this transfixing account of a sado-masochistic relationship on the ropes (so to speak) are a probing intelligence, a catalogue of inspirational cinematic references and – perhaps most impressive – a big, sad, beating heart.

Ballet 422 is narrative without the heavy structural imposition of much plot, and the small, captivating tensions that are framed by the film seem to parallel current innovations in contemporary ballet.

While the monster Wilde is scary enough, the directing and writing is lazy, relying on “boo!” tactics and insinuating a religious subtext by cutting to close-ups of crucifix jewellery. The ending is slapdash.

Focus, which was co-written and directed by "Crazy Stupid Love" creators, Glen Ficarra and John Requa, is drunk on its perfume-ad cinematography and doesn’t know when to quit with its double-double cross plotting.

The boorish, juvenile Hot Tub Time Machine 2 is the proverbial turd in the Jacuzzi – you can’t pin down who’s responsible, but it’s a floater that ruins the party.

Costner is Coach White, in every way imaginable.

Josue’s film is not consistently effective in bridging her personal story with Shepard’s well-known legacy, but there are striking moments that explore the limits of forgiveness.

Simple but engrossing.

Think of this stylish, quirky and quite grisly feature from Marjane Satrapi as a meeting of "Psycho," "Dexter" and "Dr. Doolittle."

The enlightening and necessary film, narrated by an adoring Denny, is very much in the vein of 2002’s "Standing in the Shadows of Motown," a documentary that celebrated the Funk Brothers, the criminally unheralded house band at Berry Gordy Jr.’s hit-making studio in Detroit. But where "Standing in the Shadows" of Motown used re-enactments and new live performances, The Wrecking Crew is composed mostly of archival footage and newish interviews.

The film belongs to Whitman, who, fresh off a five-year stint on the now-defunct TV series "Parenthood," infuses her first big-screen leading role with a unique charm. If Whitman looks familiar, but you can’t quite place her, that’s about right.

This bare-bones adaptation is more of a sop to the musical’s fans than a fully imagined movie musical.

Sissako’s point, while never heavy-handed, is hard to miss: Traditional Muslims are among the world’s biggest victims of Islamic militarism.

Like a Christopher Guest movie with a widow’s peak, What We Do in the Shadows depicts a supposed “New Zealand Documentary Board” film gone gruesomely, hilariously awry.

A lively, dashing and amusing motion picture that smartly spoofs and slyly celebrates the James Bond spy-film franchise.

Much was made about how, with respectable director Sam Taylor-Johnson at the helm, Fifty Shades was going to be a legitimately good movie. It’s not, and it’s also not over-the-top enough to suggest future cult-classic status. What it is is a movie best saved for at home viewing, both because there is no compelling reason to see it on the big screen, and mostly because the pause, rewind and fast-forward controls are sure to come in handy.

Ultimately the ham-fisted Outcast shares less in common with Eastwood’s "American Sniper" than it does with his "Unforgiven" from 1992 and that western’s regretful killers.

Love, Rosie’s early charm fades by the end, given that, as time (and the movie) wears on, neither Rosie nor Alex get any more mature when it comes to matters of the heart.

Torching “witches” is the one part of the story that has some historical basis, and adds an uncomfortable edge of misogyny to this otherwise empty fantasy.

Save for some halfway inventive touches, such as a meta-turn that evokes Chuck Jones’s surrealist Merrie Melodies short Duck Amuck, Sponge Out of Water coasts on its 3-D CGI shtick, sacrificing the giddy whimsy that recommends the SpongeBob series for more boringly Hollywood whiz-bang action.

A beautiful muddle.

Red Army ends with Fetisov back in Russia, as a politician. Despite the sometimes shabby way in which he was treated by an authoritarian hockey regime, he says he “never had more fun than playing with those five guys.” Once a comrade.

Like that camel-hair coat Abel wears, A Most Violent Year is classy and commands respect, but a stronger pulse under the lapels would make us care much more.

There’s a modern noir story struggling to get out of Wild Card, just as there was in "Heat," and you can feel it every time Statham – a fine actor even when he’s not rearranging people’s skeletal structure – has to sit down, stare into yet another tumbler of vodka rocks and contemplate the miserable life sentence of his habit.

A Michael Bay-branded time-travel fiasco, made for teens and seemingly by them, too.

A refreshing take on vampire lore.

Call it what you like – a modern Russian epic, a crime drama, a black comedy or a scream in the dark – Leviathan is a shaggy masterpiece.

An unusually charming dark comedy about an actor teetering on the edges of reality, fantasy and career. The subject of dementia is explored and mined, not made fun of.

Still Alice is being called a career performance for Moore, and although it may be one of her most poignant roles (it has earned her a fifth Oscar nomination), the part barely scratches the surface of her ability.

Between a string of post-Friends dismal rom-coms, Aniston has succeeded in these kinds of grownup roles every few years. Here, she negotiates the character’s quirks and contradictions competently, but nothing short of a rewrite from scratch could make Cake palatable.

While the movie is narrow, it has a deep, melancholic resonance.

Interminable techno-dud.

This so-called comedy unfolds with embarrassing desperation and mind-numbing vulgarity.

This is not only a dandy, playful movie about a talking bear, but one that gives pause for thought, too.

Faithful to Chekhov, Ceylan spells out nothing except that unhappiness unrecognized is unhappiness compounded, and despite the film’s wintry chill, there’s a thrilling warmth in this struggle to shine a light on life.

Taken strictly as a movie, though, Selma is an uneven yet generally skillful effort that has probably drawn more praise and criticism than it warrants.

Elevated to some vague level of importance, not on merit but by circumstance.

Performances are still the heart of Leigh’s work, and at the heart of this film is an extraordinary performance by Leigh’s frequent collaborator, the British actor Timothy Spall.

A beautifully shot, well-acted, and worthy-to-a-fault Second World War survivor story that only intermittently achieves the kind of emotional impact for which it aims.

What is celebrated is the art of storytelling and the bedazzling attraction of a killer cast, uninhibited acting, giddy escapism, attractive visuals and an extroverted score.

Full of post-hippie fatalism and cynical macho barroom existentialism, the original film feels very much of its era, and the remake anachronistic.

Voice cast member Lisa Hannigan, an Irish songstress who sings here in a Celtic-ethereal style, features on a soundtrack that is mystic, eerie and freeing. Yeats is whispered: ‘Come away, human child/To the water and the wild.’ Inviting? Very much so.

These confident women care less about what comes off the runways – ‘money has nothing to do with style,’ says one – than with what can be assembled from thrift-shop finds, homemade items and imagination.

The SFX set pieces are pretty lame, mostly involving a lot of weary running around and tense, ticking-clock urgency. What elevates Secret of the Tomb is the classicism of its humour.

Of the movie’s dozen musical numbers, only three are relatively unmangled versions of their predecessors.

Five Armies only feels truly entertaining when it embraces the arch silliness of its material; like when 92-year-old actor Christopher Lee whirls about in combat with a handful of ghosts.

Although sturdy enough in the middlebrow entertainment department, and handsomely mounted in a stiff upper-lip, prestige period-piece sort of way, The Imitation Game is ultimately a frightfully ordinary sort of seasonal ritual.

The fascination of the film is to see his anti-Semitic development and how matter-of-factly and self-righteously he carries out his monstrous race-cleansing.

Top Five finds Rock in an elevated form, at 49. Things change, sometimes for the better.

While the pale skin tones (bronzer is selectively applied) and haphazard mix of American and British accents is distracting, it barely scratches the surface of Exodus’s ungainly artificiality.

A film that should be shamelessly soaked in passion and thrusting erotic delirium is instead posed and prettified, to the point where “camp” comes to mean more than the place where lumberjacks work – it’s also the movie’s defining vibe.

It’s a movie in which you can feel the spirit of the material infusing the filmmaker both as an artist and as a human being, and what results is that thing that occurs when even the simplest of songs sends sparks to the soul.

The triumph of Foxcatcher is not in the subject but in its art. The clear-eyed compassion and moral intelligence of Miller’s film brings sense to the senseless, and finds the human pulse behind the tabloid shock. It’s not a movie to make you feel good, but, at moments, it reminds you what goodness is.

Any kids’ cartoon that opens with narration by the mondo eccentric German filmmaker Werner Herzog is bound to bring comfort to hearts of certain parents in the house.

Dumb, dumber, dumbest.

Two jazz films won awards at Sundance this year. One of them was "Whiplash"; the other was Low Down, an expressive but somewhat lacklustre first feature from Jeff Preiss. Neither movie is about jazz.

While it’s true that landscape is character in most westerns, it’s also true that the character played by director/co-writer/star Tommy Lee Jones in The Homesman is landscape itself.

Point and Shoot is a riveting documentary and a disturbing portrait of a pampered American’s “crash course in manhood.”

That makes Mockingjay – Part 1 an experience to be endured, like a prison sentence, rather than enjoyed. By all means, bring on the revolution: It has to be more exciting than this.

These are simply incredible performances, captured stunningly on film.

In an irony, Godard’s certainly aware of (after all, he constructed it), Goodbye is noteworthy for being shot in 3-D, a calling card of the cookie-cutter Hollywood movies it couldn’t have less to do with.

Sandburg’s "The Prairie Years" is a source behind The Better Angels, a gorgeous look at the raw, wooded Indiana of the early 1800s and a dreamy study of the boy Lincoln who was destined to leave it behind.

Rosewater is far too eager to please to play tough.

Terry produced some of the happiest sounds in the history of jazz; Keep on Keepin’ On keeps the smiles coming.

Over all, the movie is just funny enough to make you wish it were much better than it is.

Even if you were never the sort who cared what goes on behind others’ closed doors, the Hawkings’ drama is catnip. And if you’ll excuse the pun, you could say it was only a matter of time before Hollywood came calling.

The documentary of the year may also be its most hair-raising thriller.

The pitch on Dear White People is that it’s “Do the Right Thing for the Obama generation,” which is both an oversell and a disservice to Justin Simien’s witty satire about race relations on a fictional Ivy League campus.

Consider it a more family-friendly "Guardians of the Galaxy," with the added kiddie appeal of a big, inflatable windbag to laugh at and love.

While it’s technically eye-popping and intricately structured, Interstellar is at its most fascinating when it struggles hard to communicate those things we human beings call “emotions”. Instead, we get something like a freeze-dried approximation of Steven Spielberg at his most sentimental.

The creepiest haunted Hollywood movie since "Mulholland Drive," David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars is working an even deeper graveyard groove than David Lynch did.

There are those trying to position "Gone Girl" as the date-and-debate movie of the season, but it isn’t half the unsettling thriller Force Majeure is.

Throbbing musical crescendos and flickery flashbacks abound but apart from some outlandish plot machinations, nothing here is good or bad enough to be memorable.

Horns is allegorically cluttered, unsure of its tone and outrageous with its snakery in a half-serious supernatural thriller about good, evil and redemption in a garden of Eden.

The trouble is that absolutely nothing about the movie feels like news.

Whiplash is an intense, unmelodious, highly amped and probably unrealistic drama set in the fictionalized Schaefer Conservatory in New York.

Yes, at its best, Birdman soars, swoops and flutters with life and invention, but it parrots more than it speaks. You long for a writer as reliably, elegantly witty as Tom Stoppard, whose dramas are typically “backstage,” or if not Stoppard, at least a verbal speed-puncher like Armando Iannucci, or if not Iannucci, someone as relentlessly inventive and obsessive as Charlie Kaufman to make you feel like somebody is trying to say something, rather than a writing team filling in the intelligent-sounding words to support the boisterous performances and the virtuosic camera dance.

It is harmless, frighty fun for teenage audiences, but adults will leave theatres with their bejeebers intact.