This is a tremendously well written piece of work, with impressively developed characters, with scene after scene that further enriches and deepens our comprehension of their actions, yet never judges any of them. It certainly helps that Farhadi gets quartet of excellent, pitch perfect performances.

It’s an offbeat, fun, and frequently very funny film, lifted out of disposability by some wonderfully rich production design, music cuts and photography, and by the cherishable performances of the leads.

The Immigrant is contained, restrained, thoughtful filmmaking that satisfies on nearly every level, except for the desire for a little chaos.

La Grande Bellezza washes over you in series of scenes, visages, sensations and impressions, and although in this case it doesn't quite gel into a cohesive whole, it's nonetheless a journey worth taking; a travelogue through memory and dreams, in which life is greatest fiction we could ever create.

The problem is that the movie becomes more focused on diagnosis than character, and so what eventually unfolds is a meandering picture that only too late in the game leans toward highlighting any kind of thematic undercurrent while introducing romantic interests for the leads that do little but pad out an already too long running time.

For every moment of comedy that lands or drama that touches a nerve, there are ten of “why the bloody hell should I bloody care?” or “cry me a river, you had to sell your Brueghel.”

With pitch-perfect performances across the board, and boasting crisp photography and editing, the film never ceases to twist, turn and surprise, taking wicked joy in constantly switching us back on ourselves and our expectations of the characters.

A couple of shootouts and chases are impressive, giving the film a little bit of momentum it sorely lacks, but it’s heartbreaking that ultimately the film doesn’t work.

The Bastards feels like what happens when an undeniably great filmmaker stoops to sensationalism -- it’s a smarter, odder film than someone else would make with the same material, but it’s still smart, odd sensationalism.

As I Lay Dying is another Franco lark that is more of an experiment with form than a fully realized movie. One almost gets the sense that Franco is working out ideas with As I Lay Dying, with the goal of creating a cohesive film as a secondary ambition to simply capturing the feel of Faulkner's prose.

All Is Lost is a taut, superbly crafted addition to the survival story genre.

Nancy, Please begins as a deadpan slacker comedy with existentialist undertones, and Will Rogers' Paul is a ball of unsettled twentysomething nerves. It's a subtle shift in Semans' first feature, both in tempo and in Rogers' performance, that we don't realize the film taking on a slightly more diabolical undertone.

Nebraska is a small-scale quixotic adventure about the importance of dreams, no matter how pie-eyed, in which the outlined flaws could all be forgiven, if it just went somewhere a bit more surprising.

A b-movie potboiler at best, and indebted to countless other and much better films, this tedious, dumb, so-bad-it's-almost-funny procedural is an overstuffed thriller that offers one single idea, and proceeds to beat it to death, without much of anything to say.

Hirokazu has crafted a warm and lovely film that suggests the easiest thing about raising a child is embracing how complicated it can be.

Heli is a despairing, bleak watch. It's a slow, but unrelenting look at one young man's punishing loss of innocence amongst a society that has already decayed beyond understanding.

Overloaded with too many ideas, it does scant justice to the more interesting ones that crop up, while regularly diverting from any sort of central narrative to follow tenuous and ill-explained threads that end up in a foggy limbo. But just when it threatens to wholly frustrate, someone cracks an enjoyable inside-baseball meta movie-making joke and we're back on side for a bit.

It would be unfair and an exaggeration to say 'Part III' ends with a whimper, as there are a few moments to savor, but there's hardly a climatic bang and, sadly, absolutely nothing epic and explosive about this rather tepid and forgettable trilogy closer.

Refn has consistently delivered films that have subverted our expectations, and has proven himself a master at stylistic self-reinvention, but this feels like the first time he’s gone back to any particular well.

Despite a lack of access to Manning and Assange, We Steal Secrets is a vital document of a pivotal moment in world history that we’re still experiencing as we speak.

Burshtein has devoted most of the last 20 years teaching and making film in that world, but here makes her international feature debut with a curious comedy-drama that has its strengths, but ultimately proves somewhat disappointing.

Inside Llewyn Davis isn't about someone trying to make it big, but someone just trying to make it, and the Coens celebrate the hard road that can inspire great art.

While those looking for a few midnight movie scares will find themselves very disappointed, the film is funny, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not.

V/H/S/2 is a whole lot of fun.

Fruitvale Station is impressive for a debut, and displays the unimpeachable intent to involve us all in the human story behind a headline. And it certainly displays great promise from its director and accomplished performances from its cast.

It's the picture's lack of focus that eventually diminishes whatever little The Bling Ring has to say.

Black Rock isn't going to become the sort of classic that "Deliverance" was, but if you like your scares smart, and like them to happen to people you actually care about, then Aselton's island of friendship and fury is a nice place to visit.

While there's a lot of fun to be had, Furious 6 doesn't quite hit the insane heights of "Fast Five," but we're sure it'll delight franchise fans who mostly want to see bald people butt heads, and moving vehicles crash into other moving vehicles.