At its best, Ron Howard’s In the Heart of the Sea is an engaging look at life on the seas and a thrilling tale of survival
Steve Jobs is essentially a three-scene movie but it’s so rat-a-tat compelling that we’re glued to the screen throughout
By the Sea certainly won’t be for everyone, and many seem to be dismissing it outright merely for being the product of its celebrity star
The Bard gets the Game of Thrones treatment in 2015’s Macbeth, a full-blooded, and fully bloody, adaptation of the classic play
In Mexico, Sicario means hitman, the opening title scrawl of director Denis Villeneuve’s latest film tells us
Youth is a little bit of a mess – and certainly not as on-target as the director’s previous film, the Oscar-winning The Great Beauty
The Martian has a great cast, and a great cast of characters, and every angle here is carefully explained and understood
Everest is a stark, non-nonsense account of the ill-fated 1996 expedition that has been previously told through numerous non-fiction novels and films
Love is a surprisingly tender and affectionate film that attempts to explore the relationship between love and sex
Ricki and the Flash is good-enough as it is, but Streep’s performance makes it something special
The Gift subverts expectations by going to some new and interesting directions, with twists and turns in plot, tone and theme
Amy is a disarmingly revealing inside look at how it all went down behind the tabloid headlines
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation is the best film in the franchise since the 1996 original, sleek and tight with no-nonsense scripting and direction
Sadness can be good, Inside Out tells us; that’s not the kind of thematic material we typically see in a children’s film
Marvel’s Ant-Man is a fast, funny, often flippant comic book outing that, refreshingly, dials things back a bit from recent studio outings
he majority of Magic Mike XXL is a laid-back, low-burn, mostly plotless road movie exercise about the Kings of Tampa
Shaun the Sheep Movie might be primarily targeted to younger audiences but it has plenty to offer adults, too
It Follows is the latest highly-praised horror film to work better as an all-too-obvious metaphor than a scary movie
Irena Pavlásková’s new Jan Saudek biopic Fotograf claims to be “loosely based” on events in the famed Czech photographer’s life
Chappie is the latest piece of thoughtful science fiction filmmaking from District 9 director Neill Blomkamp
Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper tells the story of Chris Kyle, the deadliest sniper in US history with 160 kills verified by the US government
Birdman is fluidly directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, who keeps the action moving at a fever pitch even though we’re essentially watching a stage play
Finding Vivian Maier tells the story a lifelong nanny who posthumously became recognized as one of the greatest street photographers of the 20th century
Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, one of the most anticipated films of 2014, is not the masterpiece some may be expecting, but a rare visionary head-trip nonetheless