Sadly, this big budget special effects driven comedy exists more than it does anything else, achieving a form of bland, barely interesting mediocrity that’s not terrible enough to be risible yet nowhere near imaginative enough to make up for its readily apparent shortcomings.

Featuring a number of exemplary performances, not the least of which is Gyllenhaal’s haggard ferocity in the lead role, filled with a number of stripped-down, nakedly raw emotional beats that take the breath away, the film is nonetheless an over-stuffed muddle that embraces every cliché the genre has ever known. [Southpaw (2015)] throws in so much stuff that one can’t help but want to throw in the towel and end things halfway through, the body of the viewer nearly as battered, bruised and bloodied as Billy Hope’s is by the time the climactic fight has reached its conclusion.

Shot on the fly using an iPhone 5S, featuring a pair of loose, energetically bouncy performances from newcomers Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor, [Tangerine (2015)] is an exuberantly original shot of comedic adrenaline, building to a cathartically touching coda that’s as distinctive as it is genuine.

Ant-Man proves to be one of the more enjoyable entries in Marvel’s so-called Cinematic Universe (MCU). Unlike Avengers: Age of Ultron, the script by Rudd, Wright, Adam McKay (The Other Guys) and Joe Cornish (Attack the Block) is beautifully self-contained, rarely utilized to set up coming events that are going to transpire inside Thor: Ragnarok or Avengers: Infinity War – Part I. It runs less than two hours, tells its own origin story and, while acknowledging the bigger comic book world it is a part of, isn’t beholden to it.

Cartel Land is Traffic but for real. Documentarian Matthew Heineman’s prize-winning Sundance sensation is unlike anything else we’ll see this year, non-fiction filmmaking as visceral, edge-of-your-seat thriller utilizing the medium in ways seldom done before.

He finds corners and angles to Holmes other current portraits of the character haven’t discovered, and as impressive as Benedict Cumberbatch, Robert Downey Jr. and Johnny Lee Miller have been, McKellen surpasses them with ease. I felt each beat of the journey, took every step, and by the time final decisions are made I was so caught up inside of the great detective’s headspace it was almost as if we were making them together in some sort of symbiotic tandem.

It Follows is a stunning, thought-provoking smash that gets more devastatingly profound the more times I watch it. Anchored by a performance from Monroe that’s one of the year’s absolute best, this is a stunning motion picture that’s only going to grow in stature and import with each passing year. As I’ve already stated, see it at once.

Ex Machina is a mesmerizing mind-bender of a science fiction drama that asks some pretty big questions letting the audience figure out as many of the answers for themselves as they can. It gets better with each viewing, Garland crafting a spectacular directorial debut worthy of multiple looks.

But when the balance does work the results are sublime, the filmmaker hitting it out of the park with a crackerjack final 20 minutes that had me sitting on the edge of my seat in white-knuckled joy, my eyes popping out of my head in glee. More, as outlandish and over the top as things become the story itself fearlessly remains emotionally grounded, keeping the grieving parents front and center while never forgetting what the house needs and wants for a single solitary second.