Given the challenge of solving a problem like Bathsheba, Mulligan succeeds, more than Christie did, in providing an answer.

Allowing its subjects to bare their souls as much as their bodies, Exposed is as frequently moving as it is entertaining.

The city isn't the star of the film, nor is Lehane's excellent dialogue, and neither is Roskam, here making a sure-footed jump to America after his Belgian debut Bullhead. The picture belongs to Tom Hardy, whose astonishingly sensitive performance even the great James Gandolfini steps gently around.

It is a strange cross-breed between an old-fashioned WWII epic full of genre cliches and a modern update whose meticulous historical recreation is frighteningly real.

Director Won Shin-yun delivers a seemingly non-stop series of exciting set pieces that are only slightly marred by occasional visual incoherence.

Dominating it all is Cumberbatch, whose charisma, tellingly modulated and naturalistic array of eccentricities, Sherlockian talent at indicating a mind never at rest and knack for simultaneously portraying physical oddness and attractiveness combine to create an entirely credible portrait of genius at work.

The story is a jigsaw puzzle in which all the pieces are of an indistinguishable gray, making fitting them together a tricky matter.

Binoche and Stewart seem so natural and life-like that it would be tempting to suggest that they are playing characters very close to themselves. But this would also be denigrating and condescending, as if to suggest that they’re not really acting at all.

Facing the physical challenges of depicting Hawking’s disability, Redmayne pulls it off with enormous grace and endurance.

The picture is deeply weird, with an entrancement factor almost entirely dependent on the performance of Michael Parks.

A great true story is telescoped down to a merely good one in Unbroken. After a dynamite first half-hour, Angelina Jolie's accomplished second outing as a director slowly looses steam.

On his first trip behind the camera, the British-Iranian Amini shows his skill at working with actors and sensing the way they can fill out literary characters. His screenplay generally feels more naturalistic than Highsmith, the dialogue less spare.

A more mature work from actor-director-producer Zach Braff that feels like a Garden State for grown-ups.

Abu-Assad and his cinematographer Ehab Assal have every shot under control and rarely need to go overboard to convey a strong emotion.

Simien intensifies the impact of both action and dialogue with a self-reflexive directorial style that creates a marginally heightened sense of reality, revealing more about characters' motivations than would conventionally be expected.

Engaging characters and the persistent appeal of dinosaurs benefit the doc, whose Byzantine legal content might otherwise be off-putting.

Always interesting, frequently explosive, but also sprawling and unfocused.

Swanberg's modest script lays out some fairly mundane domestic situations, which the actors elevate with a collaborative style characterized by gentle humor and authentic, frequently overlapping dialogue.

More structure and polish doesn't keep Lynn Shelton's latest from being recognizably hers.

Technically and in his work with actors, Philip represents a great leap forward for Perry; a subsequent jump might involve presenting a central character with whom viewers could legitimately engage.

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.

The film succeeds in that it provides a more vivid sense of this sort of 19th century childhood -- and Lincoln’s youth in particular -- than most people would have had before.

Genre comparisons aside, the expert timing and clever setups that were exhilaratingly employed in You’re Next are mostly absent here... Fortunately Barrett and Wingard haven’t lost their ironically humorous touch, as most of the film’s uneasy laughs revolve around upending typical thriller expectations.

Kikuchi manages to make Kumiko interesting company no matter how far the character recedes into herself, using subtly expressive body language that would have been at home in silent movies to create a very strange self-imposed social outcast.

The film comes off as more of a succession of self-contained comedic vignettes than as an incisive portrait of a woman vainly trying to have it all. But Plumb’s plucky, eccentric character is so winning that you find yourself rooting for her nonetheless.

What is most endearing is the delicacy with which writer-director Ritesh Batra reveals the hopes, sorrows, regrets and fears of everyday people without any sign of condescension or narrative trickery.

Enjoyable heist pic is more talk than action.

The film's impact is greatly enhanced by the superb performances by the young lead actors who handle their characters’ complexities with impressive skill.