Michael Sragow

(John Crowley, Ireland/U.K./Canada, 2015)

A semi-slapstick political satire starring Sandra Bullock—what can’t David Gordon Green do? Well...

Pitch perfect: Bill Murray and Zooey Deschanel create comedic harmony in Barry Levinson's latest film, as a music agent-manager and his assistant

Father knows best: Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg bring a little too much sentiment to this espionage (and civil liberties) thriller

Ghost in the machine: Aaron Sorkin's portrait of Apple's equally enigmatic and unkind co-founder remains in the realm of conventional

Pioneer spirit: Matt Damon brings life (and heart) to Mars in Ridley Scott’s suspenseful piece of quality entertainment

Ramin Bahrani’s insistent drama about the scandalous housing loan crisis pushes its issue harder than its filmmaking

The star-studded biopic of Boston gangster Whitey Bulger tries to run on faith alone but trips up

The invisible man: Oren Moverman’s drama about homelessness has the power of its performances deflated by a deluge of aesthetic tricks

Taking a hike: Robert Redford and Nick Nolte leave the civilized world (and the Bill Bryson book) behind

Brazilian filmmaker Anna Muylaert's superlative domestic comedy-drama has political savvy, visual intelligence, and a delightfully deft cast

Tailgating on sincerity: Isabel Coixet’s feature-length adaptation of a Katha Pollitt essay squanders the distinctive flavor and bite of its source

Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig's latest collaboration applies wit and fleet-footed technique to its lopsided relationships

Jon Watts’s high-concept joyride gets the job done, but it’s Kevin Bacon who drives it home

David Foster Wallace's bromantic intellectual journey with a journalist yields a finely tuned literary road movie

Rigged: Antoine Fuqua’s boxing picture could have had a contender in Jake Gyllenhaal, but its routine melodrama is locked into place

Mystery man: Ian McKellen plays Arthur Conan Doyle's famed detective, searching for answers of a different sort

Strength in numbers: the backstory of Kevin, Stuart, Bob, and their fellow banana-loving hordes yields comedy gold (or yellow)

It's a bug not a feature: the latest installment of the Terminator series repeats the main programming error of the franchise

(Pete Docter, U.S., 2015)