considering the subject matter, it’s almost impossible not to walk out of Everest (2015) without being moderately impressed. Director Baltasar Kormákur (2 Guns, 101 Reykjavík) stages the majority of the key climbing sequences with dazzling eloquence, things achieving a devastatingly haunting quality at times that’s notable. But without a core connection to the characters involved in the chaos and heartbreak I find it difficult to embrace the film as fully as I’d honestly like to, and while the spectacle is impressive the dramatics at the heart of it all are sadly anything but.

The anchor is Tomlin. Delivering a performance that by all rights should garner an Academy Award nomination, the veteran actress encapsulates an entire career, maybe even an entire life, lived under the public microscope brilliantly. There are layers to Elle that are revealed bit-by-bit, Tomlin refusing to overplay her hand even when her character revels in her outspoken, larger-than-life personality.

But as a movie, as a centralized story where characters grow, evolve and learn things about themselves they potentially did not know, Ball’s second descent into author Dashner’s ravaged world is a good one, and considering my ambivalent reticence to the first The Maze Runner that isn’t a statement I make at all lightly.

Culminating with the 1972 chess championship, focusing particularly on the game six match many aficionados consider the best ever played, [Pawn Sacrifice] is a not-so-subtle reminder about how genius and madness oftentimes go hand-in-hand, and as such is an absorbing drama of psychological deterioration impossible to dismiss.

Brie and Sudeikis shine, and as for laughs they are undeniably plentiful. Sleeping with Other People might be too familiar for its own good, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t entertaining, and as romantic comedies go it’s one of the more enjoyable ones I’ve seen this year.

Bloodsucking Bastards is basically the odd, overlong, fitfully funny love child of Office Space and Fright Night. The story of a corporate office taken over by vampires looking to streamline the workforce and maximize profits while also stockpiling a cubicle full of human-sized foodstuffs, director Brian James O’Connell’s silly little undead B-grade supernatural frolic is happily a great deal of fun.

More than that, though, I just got a kick out of the gruesomely playful tone Shyamalan establishes, things playing like a whimsically knowing twist on the adventures of Hansel and Gretel only with a modern day surveillance age digital bent.

Kerb and Holderman’s screenplay rarely digs all that deep, maintaining an air of erudite profundity that’s more for show than it is anything else. While Bryson and Katz do evolve, while lessons are learned, I can’t say their changes are surprising. More, they’re not passionately presented, their emotional revelations more ho-hum and insignificant than they are anything else.

Acclaimed indie director Alex Ross Perry’s (Listen Up Philip, The Color Wheel) latest Queen of Earth is the idiosyncratic auteur’s best film yet. It’s also one of the better motion pictures I’ve had the good fortune to see so far this year.