In the end, it’s hard not to find plenty to like about Cop Car, and as minor as this little thriller might be Watts directorial talent is still undeniable, and as such for those who tend to like this type of thing the movie offers up a ride potentially worthy of the taking.

Final Girl is a fairly tedious enterprise and watching it start to finish is something of a major chore. It’s bad, but is so in ways that have more to do with forces arguably outside the filmmaker’s control so coming down hard on this is awfully difficult to do. That doesn’t mean I think anyone should watch it, mind you, I just think it’s best those that accidentally do are prepared for the obscene levels of mediocrity they’ll end up witnessing if they end up doing so.

[After] all these years, after so many bad movies and disappointing misfires, I still like to be the critic who feels any movie, any movie at all, could potentially be awesome. Hitman: Agent 47 is the type of disaster that can kill those sort of aspirations, this lethal killing machine nothing more than a dream assassin making it the most heinous type of misfire there possibly is.

There is a joyous, devil-may-care enthusiasm to this big screen adaptation, the filmmaker reveling in the humor, the charm and the characters instead of focusing on the requisite whiz-bang and over-the-top action theatrics this sort of production typically revels in. In short, it’s excellent, and for my money the best television-to-movie adaptation since 1993’s The Fugitive.

Playing with false identities, constantly keeping things anchored on Nelly and all that she is thinking and feeling, the movie builds with pinpoint precision as it moves towards its destination. Never what I thought it would be, [Phoenix (2015)] plays on convention and expectation, flipping the script and dropping the mic going out with a bang that echoes with nothing less than greatness.

Right now, with all they affectingly put voice to suddenly back into the zeitgeist once again, with police violence against minorities being documented in a way it never has been before, it feels like this couldn’t have been released at a more appropriate moment. Straight Outta Compton isn’t just a great musical biopic, it’s a great movie, period, and as such seeing it should be at the top of everyone’s list no matter what their racial, social, political or gender background might be the entire world over.

But, not only is the villain’s reasons for seeking the end of the world as we know it exceedingly lame in a Greta Garbo I-want-to-be-alone sort of way, the fashion in which the heroes unite to stop him is even more nauseatingly ill-advised. [Fantastic Four (2015) is] a dimwitted descent into dullsville, the only clobbering going on the wallop delivered to the audience’s jaw as they sit there watching things fall apart right in front of their collective eyes.

If you think you know where The Gift (2015) is headed from there you’d be dead wrong, Edgerton taking things into far more disturbing and devastatingly insidious psychological terrain than anything I could have anticipated beforehand.

In the end, though, it’s Streep who elevates things to the heights they ultimately ascend to. Demme cannily keeps her in the center of the stage, so even when others are shining it is Ricki we’re thinking about. It’s as terrific a performance as any the veteran four-time Academy Award-winning actress has given over the last handful of years, Ricki and the Flash topping the charts in large part solely because of her.