Despite its apparently sincere identification with its protagonist, Entertainment feels like a sick joke.

Just as Brenda lives by a credo never to judge another woman, so too does the film, which creates an uplifting portrait of redemption and acceptance.

Even with all its familiar action tropes, less-than-fresh special effects and loopy plotting, the most depressing element in the Wachowski siblings' latest sci-fi mash is that, as they conceive it, human society has been around for more than a billion years but is still presided over by a rivalrous British-style royal family that treacherously behaves as if it were the 1550s.

This impeccably assembled and argued film represents a brave, timely intervention into debates around the organization that have been simmering for some time.

There’s a sense that the goings-on are more quirky than comical.

A potentially fun premise soon turns into no fun at all in Cop Car, a seriously imagination-challenged low-end action thriller.

[An] accessible and informative close-up documentary.

For American viewers of an intellectual/historical persuasion, there could scarcely be any documentary more enticing, scintillating and downright fascinating than Best of Enemies.

More lightweight than its ample talk of weighty subjects suggests, the film is nevertheless enjoyable.

Despite a number of trenchant scenes and some startling depictions of sexual degradation, the film has little that's particularly original or enlightening to say about living with a chemical, genetic or emotional imbalance, making its primary function as a showcase for the lead actress to stretch her range.

Impressive in parts, but wildly uneven as a whole.

Garcia’s take, however beautiful physically, is intellectually opaque and creatively cautious, leaving the interested viewer, whether or not a believer, with much to wonder about but little to actually chew on.

A superb, comically gifted cast helps writer-director Jim Strouse lift this quite a few cuts above his previous work as well as above the general run of films about modern life and relationships.

Maclean's screenplay is unshowy but keen.

For all its flaws it’s a rich, thought-provoking film which, while challenging, is not without humor and visual pleasures, particularly in the restrained but bang-on period production design.

Sleeping With Other People is a brittle, bawdy, frequently funny romcom that might be too smart for its own good.

A perfectly chosen cast sells this unhurried comedy, which flows unconventionally but is still, by a long stretch, the most mainstream-friendly picture Bujalski has made.

There’s a breezy spirit and an agreeable touch of tenderness to the movie that makes it hard not to like, even if it never accumulates much substance.

Pleasantly involving and sometimes annoying throughout most of its running time, this is also a vibrant, thoughtful piece about modern life in a very particular gentrified neighborhood.

The film has nothing if not great vitality and an active creative spirit, but it has all been channeled here in a way that comes off as erratic and sometimes ill-judged.

Classily and classically crafted in the best sense by director John Crowley and screenwriter Nick Hornby, this superbly acted romantic drama is set in the early 1950s and provides the feeling of being lifted into a different world altogether, so transporting is the film’s sense of time and place and social mores.

performances from Saoirse Ronan and Cynthia Nixon keep Stockholm, Pennsylvania intense and absorbing, but Nicole Beckwith's initial impulse to tell her confinement story as a stage play feels as if it might have been a sounder choice.

Awash with ripe, voluptuous summertime imagery and brimming with aborning adolescent female sexuality, The Summer of Sangaile is an appealingly simple, poetically conceived teen coming-of-age tale.

Despite its sharp visuals and evocative sense of place, the unevenly acted film never quite builds enough atmospheric dread to distract from its characters' somewhat implausible behavior.

The film's smart craftsmanship is ultimately less noteworthy than its humanizing, prejudice-challenging immersion into the lives of people who inhabit L.A.'s low-end drug and sex industry.

Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's Ten Thousand Saints offers both a premise and a setting ripe for nostalgic sentimentality but indulges in little of it.

Rather than further expanding those seemingly limitless SpongeBob horizons, the live action/CG stuff never satisfyingly jibes with the traditional nautical nonsense down below.

Goold's work never feels stagey; a smart and varied visual sense opens up even settings as basic as a jail's visiting room. But what happens in that room isn't as convincing as might be expected from these actors.

Swanberg and her co-writer Megan Mercier do an assured job of coaxing the minor-key humor and conflict gently from the naturalistic situations.

A Walk in the Woods serves as a terrific showcase for two exceptionally durable stars.

Craig Zobel effectively sets all its surface parts in motion but, crucially, doesn’t sufficiently develop that turbulent undercurrents of tension and intrigue that are called for in the hothouse circumstances.

What Happened, Miss Simone does its job well, proving especially treasurable for its wealth of rare archive film footage and audio material that captures Simone’s fierce talent, fiery temperament and fragile mental health. But it is unlikely to be ranked up there with the best music-themed bio-docs.

Benefitting from likeable, good-natured subjects and the peculiar pastimes with which they fill their cooped-up hours, the doc certainly gets us interested in and rooting for the Angulo boys.

Erotic thrillers are a time-tested genre, but this effort, scripted by Wesley Strick, is neither erotic nor thrilling.

With filmmaking roots in horror and other genre fare, Taylor invokes some interesting cinematic choices but sometimes seems to be uneasily straddling the line between serious, intense drama and outright exploitation.

While there are implicit references to the horrors of the Soviet and post-Soviet state and to the 20th century in general, this monstrously overflowing film seems to aim even higher.

Ponderously paced and mostly flat in its dramatic effect, this wooden period piece is slow going indeed.

Alien Outpost doesn't even manage to do justice to its thematic conceits, failing to weave in its current day parallels in sufficiently thoughtful fashion.

Above and Beyond pays well-deserved homage to these men who helped create the Israeli Air Force and ensured the survival of the burgeoning nation. It's a wonder that it took nearly seven decades for the story to be recounted in feature documentary form.

Director Stephen Kijak, who previously explored far more compelling musical territory with Scott Walker: 30 Century Man, has delivered a behind-the-scenes portrait that should please the band's diehard fans but offers little of substance to the uninitiated.

While Disney’s Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast might not ever be accused of risk-taking, the new adventure does feel a shade or two darker than previous installments.

The filmmakers' reluctance to over-explain character motivations has mostly kept their films out of the mainstream and will continue to do so here, but there's no shortage of impressions that resonate. And the performances of both Reynolds and Mendelsohn are fortified with deep feeling, working in admirable tandem.

A smart-ass charmer, merciless tearjerker and sincere celebration of teenage creativity.

Thankfully, the screenplay doesn’t portray the story in simple terms of good or evil, but that doesn’t mean that there’s quite enough nuance or insight to constantly elevate the material above the level of a well-made-but-TV-ready biopic.

Begins as a marginally fun diversion before proving to have nearly no interest in the possibilities of its premise.

Bouncy, with snappy dialog to spare and a great young cast headed by breakout star Shameik Moore, this is a crowd-pleaser from start to finish.

The dark and sometimes funny The D Train is a feel-bad comedy, in that one feels bad for what happens to every character in the film and bad for sometimes being taken to places that feel more implausible than just transgressive.

The film’s combination of psychological drama -- cue the childhood trauma -- with blood-splattered limb-cutting, talking heads in the fridge and talking pets on the couch is a risky one that finally works because Perry and Satrapi find the right tonal mixture for the material.

Mond's skill at working with actors is equal to his fully developed visual style and assured modulation of atmosphere and tone. This may be a small movie, but it's an impressively rigorous one without an ounce of flab.

Sunada has managed the incredible task of editing all these anecdotes into a flowing whole, an unfettered celebration of cinema as a concoction of vision, persistence, collective faith and, of course, some canniness about how the world operates. Rather than diminishing the seventh art's magic, Sunada's documentary enhances it.

Co-director Starzack was one of the guiding hands behind the series version of Shaun the Sheep, and that experience in the kind of brisk, skit-based comedy that makes the series so charming shows through here in stand-alone scenes.

Writer-director Robert Eggers' debut feature impresses on several fronts, notably in the performances, historical feel and visual precision, but the overall effect is relatively subdued and muted, probably too much so for mainstream scare fans.

Essentially, this is a film about existential emptiness, and yet it’s beautiful and alive, as filled with humor as it is with melancholy.

A remarkably vibrant and frank look at one precocious teen’s emerging sexual life — a film with the stuff of life coursing through its veins and sex very much on its brain.

The Bronze is a strident comedy made in accordance with the sole guiding principle of, when in doubt, go even more vulgar.

The film contains numerous stylistic flourishes... But none of these elements advance the story, prompt a deeper emotional response or suggest something new about the characters, reducing them to meaningless window-dressing for what little story their is.

Rambling and unfocused but not without its moments.

The movie plays quite well for a while but begins to run out of steam in its second half, its occasional laughs not coming quickly enough to keep us interested in the unfolding lore of 19th century murders.

Having downplayed its love story at the start, the picture swells romantically in an unexpectedly pleasing way. It may not be enough to convince audiences that Starr should be Hollywood's next romantic lead, but for these two characters, the chemistry is just right.

It's a wonderful idea with good crowd-pleasing potential and, had the story-telling been more credible, this could have been a major coup for all concerned.

Though the film’s European scenes carry too little dramatic weight and might be confusing for those unfamiliar with the novel, the Morocco-set opening 40 minutes are beautifully and quietly observed.

Proceeding at a glacial pace, the film bearing no small resemblance to the far superior "Girl, Interrupted."

Mortdecai is an anachronistic mess that never succeeds in re-creating the breezy tone or snappy rhythm of the classic caper movies that it aims to pastiche.

A shrill, garish hodgepodge of familiar elements from other animated vehicles (most evidently 2013’s Epic), there’s virtually nothing about this forced, fractured fairy tale that feels remotely fresh or involving.

Lynskey's performance is sympathetic, but the movie doesn't fully convince us in its dramatization of her responses to Quinn's large and small blunders.

It offers January moviegoers some guilty-pleasure thrills and laughs, while falling way short of its potential on both the dramatic and the camp fronts.

Director Macdonald, in his sixth outing of the decade including documentaries, likewise handles proceedings with a self-effacing, uninspired competence.

The story ends in a muddled rush, leaving many unanswered questions. Like a newly launched high-end smartphone, Ex Machina looks cool and sleek, but ultimately proves flimsy and underpowered. Still, for dystopian future-shock fans who can look beyond its basic design flaws, Garland’s feature debut functions just fine as superior pulp sci-fi.

The fragile film’s bid for poignancy is so aggressive and its sensitivity so studied that it eventually drowns in syrupy banality.

The immigration-themed messages of acceptance and encouragement are clearly spelled out, often in heavy-handed fashion, and an overriding blandness mutes the drama. But there’s also something apt in the straightforward telling of the against-the-odds adventure.

It all adds up to somewhat less than the sum of its parts, but it's made palatable by the well-evoked rural atmosphere and the typically expert performances by the two leads.

The plot is diffuse and disjointed, but theater director Andrea Pallaoro’s feature debut scores highly with its exquisite beauty and fine performances.

The ultimate effect of [Östlund's] studied techniques is more restricting than beneficial, which, combined with a protracted running time, faintly self-righteous air and a perplexing, misguided coda, produces a sense of letdown at the end despite the strength of much that has come before.

We expect these stories to intersect, but instead they are completely self-contained narratives that rarely reach a potent dramatic conclusion. More irritating is Ostlund's shooting style, which consists of very long takes from an unmoving camera, often from the backs of the heads of important characters.

A beautifully animated tale of the growing friendship and occasionally rather cloying emotional travails of two 12-year-old girls.

A certain derivative, deja-vu quality isn’t the only sin this lazy, numbingly routine, very occasionally amusing comedy commits.

By doubling down on a movie that yearns to be both introspective and bone-crunchingly cool, Wild Card overplays its hand.

While it offers some provocative moral quandaries, it serves mostly as a showcase for Patrick Stewart.

At its best, the movie achieves a broody dazzle, even as the narrative proves less memorable than one would have hoped. But the fluency of Mann’s direction and the slow-burn chemistry between Chris Hemsworth and Tang Wei counterbalance the more ordinary, and not always involving, procedural elements.

An extraordinary ride through Bollywood’s spectacular, over-the-top filmmaking, Gangs of Wasseypur puts Tarantino in a corner with its cool command of cinematically-inspired and referenced violence, ironic characters and breathless pace.

The pic works best when it's least self-referential, focusing on romantic attractions in many stages of development. Though it won't do for its authors what Swingers and Good Will Hunting did for theirs, Loitering is smartly written enough to further their off-camera careers; thanks to predictably winning performances from Marisa Tomei and Sam Rockwell.

Technological updating and a few clever narrative twists are the sole saving graces of the otherwise pedestrian Preservation.

The longer the proceedings go on the more wearisome they get, with Perry's character quickly wearing out his satirical welcome. By the time it's over, you'll almost wish that La Ultima Pelicula would live up to its title.

There's no denying that this is a fascinating story, albeit one that raises far more questions than it answers.

The plot reversals of the third act happen rather abruptly, perhaps unbelievably, in comparison to what precedes them. But those who've been in Margaret's shoes may find this appropriate — an honest acknowledgement of the false starts that can result when a newly hatched idealist tries to apply abstract principles to messy human emotions.

While unlikely to change anyone's stances on the hot-button issue, the film emerges as a deeply moving portrait that makes palpably clear the desperation of women for whom attaining legal abortions is impossible.

Effie Gray is an exquisitely dreary slice of middlebrow armchair theater which adds little new to a much-filmed story.

In the film’s exquisite handling of death as the ultimate – or in some cases the only – conduit for love, it arrives at an unmistakable final note of hope and renewal.

There’s something strange, wonderful, troublesome, brave, bonkers and completely watchable about Predestination that separates it from the scores of other time travel adventures that have come down the pipe in the past few years.

Despite its laudable intentions and important social message, Black November is far too ineffective to have the desired impact.

The film's saving grace is its fine performances.

Making the most of its low budget with its necessarily claustrophobic setting, the film displays a technical competence at least. But the rote performances and uninspired screenplay by Mike Le will inevitably consign Dark Summer to VOD viewing by undiscriminating consumers.

The film’s bucolic mood is constantly threatened by the prevailing reality of violence and injustice in the region, a creeping tension that Syeed carefully calibrates to emphasize the tenuousness of his characters’ relationships.

The third feature of Romanian auteur Corneliu Porumboiu that again takes a clichéd-seeming premise and carefully proceeds to turn it on its head through logic, absurd humor and the consumption of vast quantities of cigarettes.

Cantinflas hops from cliche to cliche with lazy thoughtlessness.

As an above-average adrenaline-driven roller-coaster ride, which offsets its multiple cliches with raw, controlled energy, it works.

A straightforward spectacle motored by relentless high-octane action sequences between simplistic heroes and grotesque villains.

Reliant on suspense rather than gore, this is functional middle-brow psychological horror and screenwriter Joe Croker finds plenty of tired haunted house tropes he’s happy to recycle in adapting material from Susan Hill’s original novel.