Spotlight is that rare journalistic procedural that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as “All the President’s Men,” and while the movie never glamorizes or makes saints of its hard-working newsgatherers, it does stand as a reminder of the power and importance of a free press, particularly in ferreting out local corruption and malfeasance.

The action’s accent on Russian rogues, lethal ladies and Rivera-set car chases makes The Transporter Refueled feel less like a film and more like the world’s most violent Vanity Fair fashion spread, all poses and pouts instead of the two-fisted, rough life of the originals.

This is one of those cases where fictionalizing a true event, or at least fusing two or three real people into one composite character, might have resulted in tighter storytelling.

Z for Zachariah feels like a genuine rarity: an American movie that doesn’t tell you what to think or how to feel when the credits start rolling. Contemplating our doom doesn’t seem like a bad idea when it’s done this skillfully.

Besides Bentley’s performance, the only thing “We Are Your Friends” has going for it is the occasional directorial flourish, with words on screen or characters addressing the camera or that painterly drug trip. These jolts are few and far between, but they’re most welcome when they arise.

Between the script and the superior editing by Elliot Greenberg (“Chronicle”), there’s an enormous amount of tension and thrills to be found here; unfortunately, they’re all in the service of a movie that’s reprehensible to the core.

Grandma is both smart and sweet, mature and bawdy, knowing its characters’ flaws yet open to the possibilities of people acting upon their best instincts. It is without a doubt one of the year’s best films.

Visual stakes are heightened here, to an absurd, laugh-inspiring degree, the deaths sliding into the realm of “Saw”-style ridiculousness.

For all its cheap talk about the importance of innovation, Agent 47 just feels like a copy of a copy of a copy.

Nourizadeh and Landis are clearly going for a Tarantino level of blood-soaked dark humor, and while their cast is game, the film’s bursts of violence grow tiresome as its plot gets more and more ludicrous and hard to swallow.

Anyone looking for an introduction to Gibran’s poetry can find it in any bookstore; Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet is achingly well intentioned, but not especially well executed, and its failings as a film can’t be overlooked.

Made of equal parts mourning and melancholy, mystery, and possibly madness, the striking Tom at the Farm showcases Dolan’s abundant talents at turning seemingly simple material into a taut, tough film.

What makes Mistress America so lovely — and so of a piece with “Frances Ha,” my favorite film of 2013 — is its balance of compassion and scrutiny: Baumbach and Gerwig don’t let these characters get away with their shortcomings, but neither does the film condemn these people or present them as irredeemable.

The film confidently switches gears into a moving character study of how life passes by while you’re busy looking like you don’t care. More interesting than the growing fissures in their friendship are the increasingly ruinous consequences of thoughtlessness as a way of life.

This new Man from U.N.C.L.E. would be an instant masterpiece if it were consistently as good as its best parts, but even as a hit-and-miss affair, it’s a bracing bit of late-summer fun for anyone who has given up the notion of a major studio offering anything truly revelatory until at least October.

Most elements of Samba sound mockable, and are. Yet it does have oodles of charm, plus a cast of characters that feels like an impromptu family circle.

There should be more Crimmins performance footage and fewer interviews that only reiterate points already made several times. Crimmins is preaching to the choir, and the film, while fascinating and inspiring, is at least a half-hour longer than it has story to tell.

In a movie culture with near-inescapable CGI, old-fashioned animation like Shaun the Sheep is always a treat — and a romp this ambitiously aimless is an all-too-rare marvel.

Director Josh Trank, whose debut feature “Chronicle” put a smart new spin on superhero tropes, has assembled a quartet of engaging, charismatic performers and stranded them in a miasma of exposition and set-up that sinks the movie.

It’s fine to forfeit elements like stakes or suspense for a character piece, but when the characters are this vague, there’s nothing on which to hang your hat (or headband, for that matter).

Even with the film’s mild flaws and arms-wide-open approach, it tells a powerful, engaging and compelling story of how America challenged and changed five young black men, and how they in turn challenged and changed America.

The news is only important insofar as it helps us understand the world. Best of Enemies, though, is only interested in zooming in to gaze lingeringly at the media’s navel.

End of the Tour refrains from depicting the process of writing, but what it has to say about the act of creation, not to mention the act of talking about it to an interviewer, is rich and fascinating.

Vacation does occasionally spring to life, delivering the kind of ouch-inducing humor of personal humiliation and bad luck that we’ve come to know from the ongoing adventures of the Griswold family. But while those laughs are welcome, there aren’t quite enough of them to sustain the experience.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation never pretends to be anything but a solidly entertaining collection of fighting, chasing, driving, falling and going-to-the-place-and-getting-the-thing. But at that level, it delivers completely. Choose to accept it.

Nothing here feels cheap or hasty, which is why the horror, when it comes, is all the more chilling and grim. Slick, sharp and legitimately terrifying, The Gift is a truly brilliant thriller — and, one hopes, the first of many features from Edgerton to come.

Pixels is ultimately a thoroughly numbing experience, not least because all the characters are doomed by a psychological flatness more two-dimensional than any arcade-game screen.

A lovingly crafted B-level melodrama elevated by its remarkable central performance, Lila and Eve feels like Viola Davis’ “Still Alice.”