Its patchy tone, plot, characters and sympathies make for a film that’s difficult to wholeheartedly endorse.

Kumiko The Treasure Hunter is a striking film, a bizarre joy and a beautiful delight.

Forbes’ script simply cannot make the things she lived through alive for us in anything but the most glib, shallow and contrived way.

It’s a heartwarming story of a father and son bonding, one which highlights that nothing is more powerful than family.

I Origins is a fascinating examination of belief, spirituality and otherworldliness through the skeptical lens of science, however, it's not always perfect.

The film does possess ample charms and insights, though admittedly, they do take quite a long time to coalesce.

Warm, soulful, funny and quietly insightful, Boyhood shines in its engrossing, experiential understanding and it’s a special achievement that should be cherished and acknowledged.

This terrific and sublime experience, and strikingly original film, is mandatory watching for the adventurous viewer.

24 Exposures has a handful of interesting ideas, and a lot of cute topless girls, but it doesn’t add up to much.

This movie is a corpse in desperate need of reanimation.

Calvary may not be for all audiences, with its pitch-black heart and sober existentialism not exactly commercial stuff, but its unwavering commitment to the intelligent thorniness of its themes, and the masterful control McDonagh exerts over the shifts in tone are worth cherishing, bringing it soaring close to something divine.

A major gaffe, God Help The Girl finds a great artist taking on a huge challenge and stumbling painfully on its ambition almost every step of the way.

It’s a sequel that, over a tighter running time, kicks against the law of diminishing returns, and only succumbs to it after a fight.

The Raid 2 brings the noise, but length, repetition and too much space also make it a slightly reduced echo of its predecessor.

Van Damme’s an arresting presence in his old age... His performance is a wonder, showcasing a man who has never found his physical equal, and how amuses himself by telling stories that ultimately mock opponents.

For being a kids-centric film, the picture is relatively slow and joyless.

The problem isn’t quite that the film is short on thrills (there is a paucity; the first adrenaline racing sequences don’t arrive until about an hour in), it’s that it’s not quite a character piece either.

The quest to be the best is a familiar film story, but if director-writer Chazelle has achieved anything here, it’s a deeply and richly different take on that journey—not only examining the cost of struggle but the reward of it, showing both what it takes to be great and what happens when you don’t have it.

Batra's film is ultimately less about love than about the vulnerability relationships place us in emotionally, and courage required to move past pain, and experience life again after we've been hurt.

Calling Love Is Strange a great gay love story is both precise and inaccurate; I doubt I’ll see a more finely performed and beautifully crafted love story, with or without any mere modifiers, up on the big screen this year.

Despite the affecting drama and performances, Run and Jump just never feels more that perfunctory in this regards.

Maidentrip ends up being not necessarily about the amazing feat that Dekker accomplished, it’s about finding one’s true self, and enjoying the ride along the way.

Wanting to create a leading character worth rooting for, and experiencing the schadenfreude that comes from her failure, is a complex balancing act, one that Adult World simply cannot pull off.

If there's a problem that gets in the way of some genuinely scary moments, it's that the filmmakers (all four of them) don't ever give you enough information to invest in the characters.

A genuinely sweet, charming and funny tale of identity lost and found.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit refashions the character (this time played by Chris Pine) into a man of immediate action, and in doing so drains him of anything that made him a relatable human being.

Eventually settles into a dull routine much like the dissatisfied characters of the film, which will make for an easily dissatisfied audience.

He (Fishburne) rips into his dialogue like steak, savoring every word as if he were paid by the syllable. For a moment, we’re in a different movie, one where someone has decided to singlehandedly deconstruct a cliché. It’s a very short moment.

Less a polemic than a portrait, If You Build It celebrates the flinty spirit that spurs problem solving and creativity (sometimes at the same time) with people not dedicated to a cause, but to people.

Chun admirably attempts to make each thriller-y motion mean a little bit more. But oftentimes he fails, and the back half of the movie is filled with perfunctory suspense set pieces, doused in blood and full of trauma, that leave little impact.

A movie so ugly and woeful that you'll wish you had superhuman strength to pluck your own eyeballs out of your head.

The picture isn’t plotted with story beats, only shock moments.

Franco has finally delivered a side project that does at least some justice to his eclectic artistic ambitions.

It’s a strong and eye-catching debut, but one that doesn’t quite mark its ground as the next big thing in Israeli cinema.

While it’s an occasionally funny film with good performances from its stars, it’s poorly and cheaply made.

Mordaunt’s eye indicates a thoughtful filmmaker able to listen to the winds of what a movie needs. Effortlessly natural, his workmanlike craft carries the capacity to keep an ear open to happenstance.

You get the feeling that if there were less fighting and more character work, not only would Bell knock it out of the park, but Raze would be a better, more interesting movie.

Strangely old-fashioned in its construction and requiring a Golden Gate-level feat of engineering to achieve the suspension of disbelief necessary to unironically enjoy it.

It’s easily the most suspenseful American film of the year, a thriller that feels like lightning across a quiet night sky; sudden, terrifying, and excitingly singular.

An expertly timed, painstakingly assembled and endlessly engaging game of cat and mouse, Grand Piano succeeds as a whole for the same reasons that Selznick does—namely, because Mira brings all of its elements to work together in concert, and then executes them like a virtuoso.

Patchy as often as its outright hilarious, fantastically outrageous just as frequently as its forgettable and flatlining, the sequel winds up a bit better than a second tier Ferrell outing.

As an sensory experience, 'WOWS' is mostly a terrifically visceral one, a full throttle fast and furious bacchanalia of drug-fueled madness. But as a scathing indictment of American rapacity, it isn't particularly deep or resonant beyond the exterior.

It's all very cheap, wholly unconvincing, and loaded with dull narration.

Heisserer is able to keep the thrills coming while maintaining an emotional tether to the character and the situation. While occasionally the movie veers into the realm of implausible melodrama, it's a well-modulated affair and knows exactly when to pull itself back from the brink.

The Crash Reel can never be accused of being dry or boring, but Walker brings an energetic style that also complements its subject.

It’s bold, beautifully told, and surprisingly funny.

The tension really is beautifully ramped up in these early scenes and gets an audience well prepped to watch carnage unfold around people you've truly come to care about. Then, when the thing goes off, it's not with a bang but with something more like a a whimper.

The Punk Singer brings dimension and real shape to a band, era and scene that is often compartmentalized into one or two categories. That it'll get you wanting to start your own musical rebellion is a bonus.

After years of being a long-lost gem, Cousin Jules has finally been found and is receiving its due as an innovative, meditative case study of rural life.

Caught In The Web grows slack as its premise evolves.

Bloodless, far too genteel, and perfectly content to continually tell where a little showing would be nice; Night Train to Lisbon ends up a deeply unadventurous adventure story.

The Peter Jackson-directed Hobbit sequel might be the more vigorous, action-packed, darker and more (superficially) engaging version of the series thus far, but that doesn’t actually mean it’s a keeper of any sort.

For the most part, the most shocking thing about Swerve is how utterly straightforward it is.

All around, the performances are fine, but they can’t move past the script from first-time director Jessie McCormack. She’s created a group of people that you’d avoid at a party, and being stuck with them for an hour and a half makes you feel like you’re being punished for doing something really awful.

With its broad, ambiguous title, S#x Acts reminds us, with heartbreaking power, that sometimes vigilance just isn't enough, and all it takes is an "act" or two to change a life forever.

An unprecedented take on the holiday film, but not an entirely successful one.

The film’s undoubtedly a gorgeous look at the Australian outback, but those looking for deeper nourishment will be left a touch disappointed.

A film that, while often beautiful to look at, feels oddly bloodless in execution.

Although movies like “Goodfellas” are indisputable forebears for Russell’s decadent tale of crime and punishment, the filmmaker distinguishes himself by creating a complex and compelling web of manipulation between the characters that eventually supersedes any of their scheming or con artistry.

We can't help but feel that by comparison with the meaty and compelling issues he takes on so fearlessly, so scabrously in the other entries, Paradise: Hope ends up somewhat toothless.

As with real life, there aren't any stock characters, clear morals, or easy solutions in These Birds Walk.

While Lee edges in enough unique elements to argue a second look at the brutal revenge tale, his lean, blackly comic result is transcendent only in fits and starts, stripping away much of its thematic and emotional heft into one of the most frustratingly accomplished disappointments this year.

The proximity, orientation, and monumental nature is what makes Levitated Mass the piece so powerful, and Levitated Mass the film not only captures that but puts those ideals forth as something culturally and socially important, something that happened when the mass met the masses.

Ultimately of course, this is Statham’s show, and as always he doesn’t disappoint.

This film has all of the pieces to be a great and thorough documentary (a cult turned popular subject, new and old footage, interviews with admirers, friends and colleagues, authorization by the lady herself), but misses the mark.

Narco Cultura is gripping, gruesome and arresting; a disquieting look a pop (sub)-culture phenomenon that is mushrooming all over the United States and Latin America.

To his credit (and without affectation), Gondry doesn’t cloak the fact that he is often perplexed by his subject. Because of his confusion though, we are able to learn quite a lot.

There are themes of familial connection and responsibility drenched across every frame of it, but aside from a few performances and amusing asides, “Delivery Man” is a bland translation of a sweet, but already flawed original.

It’s kind of a blast, with fully enough plot to fill a two-hour feature crammed efficiently into less than half that time in a manner that demands nothing from you except that you enjoy the ride.

Lenny Cooke isn't a documentary, it's an autopsy, detailing exactly why Cooke vanished off the map and why he struggled to get back into the game, a focus that goes micro where other sports docs go macro.

If there are strokes of genius in this film, they are buried deep under the grime of the aesthetics and the unrelenting dialogue that never seems to stop for air.

Laced with familiar tunes and faces, 12-12-12 isn't revelatory, but it is a fun watch, paced well with a great soundtrack.

What makes “Misfire” so powerful is that it isn’t just the story of the Shooting Gallery — which is tragic but one that doesn’t resonate all that well today because their output was often iffy and unmemorable — but the story of independent cinema of that period.

Though the ambition is commendable and the genuine depth of study should be applauded, Stan Pleskun is a character we'd ultimately scratch off our list after meeting him in Zachary Levy's Strongman.

By time the third act arrives, the film turns harshly toward cliché, convenience and melodrama to disastrous effect.

The 90-minute documentary doesn't pretend to be anything more than it is: a love letter to a great comic, providing a digestible version of its history with an eye to its legacy.

Together, all four cast members help draw a line across the narrative—separating when we were watching a mildly engaging depiction of names, dates, and locations, and a hellish, immersive situation with no easy outcome in sight.

The Square gives us the context of Egyptian uprisings, full of heart and hope, but the crux of the Revolution remains muddy.

It might be overlong, overstuffed, and occasionally operatic, but that doesn't mean that it can wring the tears out of you.

It may not strike the political notes it wants to hit completely, and may fall just short of the impact it would like to achieve, but Medora provides a sweet, small tale of survival, not just of a high school basketball team, but of a town trying not to get eaten up by supposed progress.

Catching Fire is a monumental achievement, a massively entertaining crowd-pleaser that is thought-provoking and personally inspiring in all of the ways that it aspires to be.

The Starving Games is the sixth directorial effort from Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, and they are nothing if not consistent.

The film is luckily powered by a powerful trio of performances at its core, and a unique, unpredictable structure that constantly reframes the action in a compelling way.

As far as animated movies go, it doesn't get that much better than Frozen. It's a new Disney classic.

While it doesn't reinvent the wheel, or revolutionize the genre, it achieves its modest ambitions affectingly well, in no small part due to a clutch of cherishable performances, especially from leads Emile Hirsch and Stephen Dorff.

The Book Thief covers a large span of time, but the film's episodic nature, often moving from one incident to the next with little time to pause or reflect, often obscures that fact and hinders an evocation of the cumulative effect the war has on the psyche of not just the Hubermanns, but their neighbors, too.

There are shades of “Lars & the Real Girl” here, but where that film skewed towards dark comedy (which helped temper its outlandish premise), "Emanuel" is almost completely humorless.

LaBute has consistently made intriguing, often idiosyncratic films in his career, but he hasn't made anything this unsettling and unforgettable in a very long time.

The movie is zippy and funny...and more emotional than the man himself would ever allow himself to be. It’s a triumph.

Big Sur rises and fades, shifts and moves, through movements and melodies, singing a beautifully sad song for an era and a man who lost his way.

That the structure consistently undermines its own storytelling is frustrating when the story to be told is a vital and interesting one.

Takes the standard gangster movie template and blasts it out of the water.

A visionary, thrilling work.

A thoroughly dull, conventional tale of two people who can't find a compromise on their individual priorities to be together.

Our Day Will Come is the kind of polarizing, in-your-face movie that we too rarely see in cinema these days.

The characters are so two-dimensional that a meaningful connection with the material isn't elusive; it's downright impossible.

As a mainstream sci-fi film, this enjoyable, occasionally poignant effort too often feels messy in the wrong ways.

There’s a restless inventiveness to many of the gags that are matched only by the outrageousness of their surroundings.