You’d never know Theeb was a debut feature from Mr. Nowar’s confident technique, and I found it astonishing, given the perfection of the performances, that all but one of the actors were Bedouin villagers who had never acted before.

The psychodynamics may well be sound, but the problem is that Léa and François, whether in or out of bed, are much more appealing than Roland and Vanessa. The camera is in the wrong room.

Watching this film is like being trapped inside a snow globe — no air, no warmth, no life — while the death of drama unfolds.

Brooklyn grabs us, holds us and moves us on its own. Emotionally it’s a killer.

Perhaps some of the goofiness was intentional — you can’t always tell from this production’s wavering tone — but Spectre is full of not-good things, and some oppressively bad things that may come to feel like drill bits twirling in your skull.

To turn a spotlight fittingly on Spotlight, it’s the year’s best movie so far, and a rarity among countless dramatizations that claim to be based on actual events. In this one the events ring consistently — and dramatically — true.

It’s film as a fugue state, a Buddhist flow, a collection of memory fragments that drift together into a haunting evocation of Lola’s and Laurie’s intertwined lives.

This satire, directed by David Gordon Green from a screenplay by Peter Straughan, suffers from deficits of wit, wisdom, focus, filmmaking expertise and appropriate tone. It’s a case study, if nothing else, of starting with a dubious idea and making it downright awful.

No one doesn’t love Bill Murray, but his melancholy torpor can wear thin in the best of circumstances, and these circumstances are pretty close to the worst. The cast includes Bruce Willis, Kate Hudson, Danny McBride and Scott Caan. No one escapes unscathed.

I disliked it at first — the camera is as jittery as the characters — and kept disliking it until I realized that I’d been drawn in, if not exactly captivated. The film itself is alive with random energy that foreshadows a surprise ending without blowing the surprise.

The movie does well to shine a light on the venerable struggle, but its beam is narrow, and often pallid.

I also know The Assassin to be so ravishingly lovely that tracking the plot is far less important than luxuriating in the images.

This is a harrowing film to watch. In spite of the vibrant jungle greens and the searing sun, it’s as bleak a vision of modern warfare as has ever been put on screen.

Bridge of Spies isn’t conventionally exciting, and isn’t intended to be. Instead, it’s satisfying — thoroughly and pleasurably so.

This drama is as big as all outdoors in scope; poetic and profound in its exploration of the senses; blessed with two transcendent performances, by Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay; and as elegantly wrought as any film that has come our way in a very long while.

In many ways the film reflects its hero’s brilliance. It’s a scintillating construction, though one that sometimes feels like a product launch in its own right.

The other remarkable aspect of Mr. Schipper’s film centers on the title character, who is played by an extraordinary Spanish actress named Laia Costa. She’s full of energy, and effortless grace.

What’s so fascinating about the film is that it truly turns on the solving of problems, and its chief solver, stuck on Mars, manages to be so funny, interesting and infallibly likable that you’re invested in his predicament at every moment.

As a work of nonfiction, it deserves its own nomenclature. "Docu-poem" is too inelegant; "masterpiece" works, although it's been used before.

As horror upon horror unfolds in Prophet’s Prey, Amy Berg’s shocking documentary about the mad polygamist Warren Jeffs and his followers, one may marvel, in horror, at the elaborate forms that deviancy can take.

This clumsy comedy, written and directed by Nancy Meyers, turns an implausible but intriguing premise into a tale of generational collision that reflects dimly on old and young alike.

A relatively small, tough-minded drama about pitiless people doing unprincipled things, proves to be one of the most interesting, elegantly crafted and — paradoxically, given the dark subject matter — elating films to come along in recent memory.

I can tell you that Ms. Laurent’s direction is astute and economical, that both of the film’s young stars give fine performances, and that Breathe is a very good title for a film that ever so gradually takes your breath away.

The director was Baltasar Kormákur, a gifted filmmaker from Iceland who shouldn’t be blamed for a case of industrial filmmaking gone wrong — the culprits in elaborate clunkers like this are usually the producers and the studios.

The film, directed with exceptional flair and elegant concision by Scott Cooper, even comes from Warner Bros., the studio that specialized in psychopathic monsters played by such stars as James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson during Hollywood’s golden age.

As Tiberius, who seems not to have been based on any Tiberius of history, Mr. Brody brings to the film a combination of heroin-chic and Basil Rathbone. Also, an extraordinary level of sadistic cruelty. People are burned alive, crushed like insects, hurled from rooftops. They may not deserve all this. But neither do we.

Mr. LaBute is not a moralizer as much as a lamenter — his people usually bring unhappiness upon themselves. In the gently joyous Dirty Weekend, though, they are capable of finding a flight path to contentment.

The filmmaking is fluid and electric; the acting, precise; the archetypal storytelling, seamless and brutal. What happens in “La Jaula de Oro” might enrage audiences, and probably for a variety of reasons. But there’s no getting away without it leaving a mark.

The worst thing I can say about Rosenwald, a wonderful documentary by Aviva Kempner, is that it tends to ramble. I say it, though, in the spirit of the joyous New Orleans funeral march “Oh! Didn’t He Ramble.” How could Ms. Kempner’s narrative follow anything like a straight line when her subject is so rich and varied?

Ms. Muylaert’s guiding principle seems to have been fearlessness, and her film, which was shot by Barbara Alvarez, is superb on all counts.

I won’t make a case for No Escape being a good film; the first half is pretty good and the second half ranges from pretty bad to truly awful. Nor will I deny having enjoyed quite a bit of it as a zombie film, never mind that it’s supposed to be an international thriller with contemporary political significance.

Z for Zachariah asks us to suspend a good deal of disbelief. Ann is absurdly beautiful, and Ms. Robbie emerges as a full-fledged star, even though her performance is precise and understated.

Goes by pleasantly enough as you come to understand where it’s headed, but this romantic comedy, directed by Isabel Coixet from a screenplay by Sarah Kernochan, wears out its welcome, and energy, through unswerving conformity to its dramatic scheme.

Dud notions abound. So do belabored situations, misguided performances and ritual salutes to other films. Even the cinematography is ill-advised, since it’s literally off-color; warm tones meant to evoke romantic feelings come off as a jaundiced homage to Woody Allen, from whom many of this film’s tropes have been not-so-piquantly purloined.

It’s a paradox worth noting, and savoring, that the most dramatic movie of the week doesn’t have a script.

An off-kilter romantic comedy in which everything turns out the way you might have hoped it would if you hadn’t been kept in a state of happy suspense along the way.

Ms. Gerwig’s performance is a comic diamond, and not in the rough. Her timing is flawless, her delivery is droll. The character she has created — from a remarkably smart and supple script, plus her own unerring instincts — may have spiritual connections with Cate Blanchett’s delusional Jasmine or Diane Keaton’s blissed-out Annie Hall (Brooke solemnly and absurdly consults a spirit medium).

With a running time of 147 minutes, the film not only runs low on energy toward the end — internecine battles can’t compete with the early excitement of gifted young kids making it big on a national stage — but turns ploddingly sentimental in its sudden focus on Eazy-E’s painful decline, and death, from AIDS.

Seeking spontaneity and release for her character, Ms. Streep gets stuck in a laboriousness that I don’t want to belabor, since her efforts are gallant — she does her own singing and playing — and there are fleeting moments of real fun. Still, it’s hard not to wonder why so much in the movie went so wrong.

Anyone who doesn’t have a grand time watching Shaun the Sheep Movie is suffering from a fractured funny bone that needs to be reset.

You may know Mr. Edgerton as the actor who played the cocksure SEAL squadron commander in “Zero Dark Thirty,” and Tom Buchanan in “The Great Gatsby.” Who knew, though, that his debut feature would be so stylishly crafted, intricately psychological and genuinely thrilling?

Mr. Petzold, directing from a screenplay he and Harun Farocki based on a novel by Hubert Monteilhet, has made a film of light and shadows that sometimes looks like a color version of “The Third Man,” and sometimes feels like a somber ode to Hitchcock. But Phoenix has no precise peers; it’s an original creation, and a haunting one.

Although movies about celebrities are often fatuous and superfluous, that’s anything but the case with Stevan Riley’s Listen to Me Marlon. This feature documentary about Marlon Brando needed to be made, and Mr. Riley made it extremely well.

It’s amazing, and genuinely touching. At the age of 53 Mr. Cruise continues to give his all to these films, and his all in this latest episode is more than enough.

A must-view film for our media-besotted age.

But Samba’s personality, intriguingly volatile for a while, turns unpredictable, with no coherent center, as suspicion grows that the film’s stylistic shifts — including a genial parody of a well-known Coke commercial — are little more than pretexts for showing what its multitalented star can do.

His film makes it clear that these monstrous humans are very much a part of our species. In a way, I wish I’d never seen The Look of Silence, because now I won’t be able to forget it. But that’s the point, and the film’s purpose—calling attention to the cost of staying silent, and willfully forgetful, in the face of implacable evil.

It’s a win for Mr. Gyllenhaal, while the movie loses out to its clichés.

Ms. Stone is a consistent delight, whether thanks to or in spite of the script’s flirtations with self-parody. But Irrational Man isn’t funny either. It’s a Woody Allen film that the next one will make us forget.

The plot has an intriguing twist, and the production, in addition to Mr. McKellen’s commanding presence, has fine work by Laura Linney as Holmes’s housekeeper, Mrs. Munro, and by Milo Parker as Roger, Mrs. Munro’s son. The boy is vividly intelligent, ferociously angry and a force to be reckoned with.

Mr. Rudd, whose overall performance as the former con-man Scott Lang is fairly pallid, confines himself to genial winks and nods in a film that will surely be popular, given Marvel’s marketing might, but one that’s woefully short on coherence and originality.

Amy the writer has tried to reconcile her gift for whip-smart, razor-sharp comedy sketches with the demands of a feature film. On the whole she hasn’t pulled it off — the movie veers sharply off track toward the end. Still, the sum of its most memorable parts is great fun.

Even when the masks are dropped, though, it’s all but impossible to tell the good guys from the bad. Both sides are corrupt, both sides do terrible harm. Although the film has its shortcomings and simplifications, it’s a bleakly persuasive view of a decades-long combat that respects no boundaries, and seems to hold no prospect of surcease.

The film is clearly not for everyone; sometimes it wasn’t for me. But it’s steadfastly nonjudgmental and wonderfully tender toward two searchers for new versions of old-fashioned love.

What Minions does have is abundant if relentless cuteness, which audiences are sure to accept in lieu of content; people love these little guys.

What could anyone have said of the finished film except that it was finished? Terminator Genisys plays like the worst of all outcomes.

The Tribe is one of the most disturbing films I’ve ever seen. It may also be among the most memorable — not only for its pitch-black view of human nature, but for the devilishly instructive way in which it turns the tables on us. As we watch in anxious confusion, it’s as if we are profoundly deaf, trying to understand what’s going on and striving to break out of isolation.

This fine and welcome piece of family entertainment, directed by Boaz Yakin from a script he wrote with Sheldon Lettich, gets to a sweet spot by way of a smart premise, patriotic undertones and a coming-of-age story that’s downright stirring.

In a movie devoted mainly to making you laugh, it’s a plea for tolerance that takes your breath away.

Mark Ruffalo is yet again a revelation in Infinitely Polar Bear, and he’s not the only one. This is a first feature by Maya Forbes, yet many of its accomplishments put far more experienced filmmakers in the shade.

If Dope were as earnest as Malcolm seems to be, you might expect it to be a bit of a bore. No worries on that count, though. Mr. Famuyiwa has a sleeve full of aces.

The level of invention is so high, and the density of detail is so great, that it’s impossible to absorb everything in a single viewing.

This brilliantly funny, casually profound and deeply affecting coming-of-age chronicle, directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon from a screenplay by Jesse Andrews, even manages to be life-enlightening—it’s a fresh take on contemporary adolescence as a journey from ironic detachment to openhearted feeling.

Mr. Pratt’s charm is no match for the crude filmmaking or the stupid plot that keeps him running around in a constant state of artificial animation.

Both Mr. Dano and Mr. Cusack, by contrast, find as many notes as they can in portraying their troubled character, though they’re clearly limited by the schematic writing and insistent direction.

Charm has curdled into smarm in the big-screen version of Entourage. The jaunty style of a hit TV series has been replaced by huge spasms of false energy and a sense of barely concealed flop sweat.

Thanks to this new film, though, any questions about her potential have been dispelled. Alicia Vikander has fully and memorably arrived, a luminous presence with a gift for tenderness, an instinct for understatement and formidable reserves of passion—she not only rises to the challenge of Vera’s climactic speech, but elevates the pacifist rhetoric into furious poetry.

This pretty slip of a film, in French and occasionally English, draws boldface parallels to Emma Bovary and the Flaubert novel to no particular purpose, though it sometimes gives the impression of being profound.

All three sides of the love triangle are appealing, and the movie as a whole might have been winning if it weren’t for the absurdist style that was clearly dear to the filmmaker’s heart. Sometimes Aloha reminded me of John Huston’s cheerfully unfathomable “Beat the Devil.” More often than not, though, it left me yearning for simplicity and sweet clarity.

San Andreas changes all too quickly from satisfyingly foolish to dismayingly dumb to genuinely stupid.

The film, like its subject and everyone who talks about him, is frustratingly short on analysis or insight. It’s as if BASE jumping had been invented and psychology had not.

The whole film is an argument about nothing less than the future — can we fix our troubled world or not? But for all of its vaulting ambition, its sumptuous eye-feasts and its leapings back and forth in space and time, Tomorrowland never comes together as coherent drama in the here and now.

I’ll See You In My Dreams, has its shortcomings as drama, but she’s (Danner) the heroine, Carol Petersen, and she takes advantage of every resonant moment the role offers her.

Compelling as the subject may be, its abstract nature would challenge the most skillful of dramatists, and Mr. Niccol’s script seldom rises above slogans, argumentation and standard-brand domestic tension.

The loveliest part of Mad Max: Fury Road is its grungy, quasi-Gothic imagery — the production was designed by Colin Gibson and photographed by John Seale. And the fullest flowering of its images can be found in its muscle cars, muscle trucks, muscle trailers and muscle buggies.

Consistently daffy, consistently amusing.

As pure comedy, The D Train is far more cringe-worthy than outright hilarious. But as a study in human nature, it’s beyond provocative — and maybe even instructive.

Hot Pursuit is about two women finding sisterly common ground despite ethnic, religious, philosophical, temperamental and/or phonetic differences. It also seems an inevitable stop on Hollywood’s perpetual recycling drive, which caters to an audience perfectly content with the creaky and familiar.

The visuals are kinetic, the pacing frenetic; the violence, or at least its aftermath, doesn’t just border on the excessive, it makes major incursions. But given the criminal milieu at hand, nothing less would have seemed plausible, or equal to the heightened, sordid sensibility Mr. Johnson creates in the film’s opening moments and maintains right up to an ending that is among the more perverse in recent memory.

For those more concerned with what “The Avengers” movies do best — outsize spectacle and wry comedy — Age of Ultron has to be declared a victory.

Adult Beginners presents itself less as humor than as a study in Gen-X sociology and psychology. What happens when people raised in relative ease and who expect to live an even better life than their parents are left emotionally unequipped for reality? It might be touching. It might even be important. But it’s not exactly a lot of laughs.

“Montage” is about expression. As such, it’s a more honest tribute to Mr. Cobain than any conventional documentary could pretend to be.

The problem for Mr. Krieger is that his film has been trying to dazzle us with all manner of sleight of hand and hokum and now undertakes the construction of a conventional romance. The movie starts spinning its wheels.

A fascinating procedural with a fitting climax.

Far from rising to the level of truthiness, let alone truth, True Story rings false from start to finish.

No, it’s therefore a movie to be seen, if you can endure it — as a shrewd commercial venture, as an online opus that undoes your self-composure and, last and foremost, as a window on a mode of thinking that equates to a state of being.

This remarkable piece of antiwar cinema honors its theme, and the movie medium.

In the 1980 movie “Urban Cowboy,” John Travolta rode a mechanical bull. In The Longest Ride, Scott Eastwood rides real bulls, but everything else is mechanical.

Clouds Of Sils Maria. swirls with provocative ideas, but they’re talked about more than dramatized

Sizzlingly smart and agreeably sententious, Mr. Garland’s film transcends some all-too-human imperfections with gorgeous images, astute writing and memorably strong performances.

The whole production speaks well for the power of film; it’s a serious stunner.

Never lacks for extravagance — the film looks as striking as it sounds — and some of the tales certainly seem outlandish. Yet they’re part of a truly remarkable origin story that the film and its subjects explore with uncommon thoughtfulness and depth of feeling.

In the wake of Walker’s death, it constitutes a farewell of fitting elegance.

Funny bits come along every now and then, and the co-stars work desperately hard for their salaries. But the spectacle is depressing for what it says of mainstream studio standards. Grinding on with dim humor and grim purpose, Get Hard gets ever harder to take.

Any kind of acting requires courage. Great acting requires formidable courage. Then there’s the dogged courage, spawned by devotion to duty, of wonderful actors like these, doing what they’re asked to do even though they must know that it’s no damned good.

Stunning and, in the aggregate, almost overwhelming. This is not a feel-good travelogue, and Mr. Salgado has never pretended to be a cockeyed optimist.

Youth may be wasted on the young in this muddled movie. But age is equally wasted on the aging.

Had anyone recognized the signs and done something about them, the picturesque fable would have gone up in smoke, or snow, and Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter would have become a different picture. I’d prefer that one, though, sight unseen. This one is a closed system about a closed system.