But ultimately this is Crowe’s showcase and his alone, and as such The Water Diviner, while not without its faults, still makes for a fine directorial debut and is thus worthy of a look.

5 to 7 might be slight, but it is so in ways that matter, and like a piece of delicately elating pulp romantic fiction it ends up being a page turner worth reading all the way to the mushily agreeable end.

An astonishing science fiction opus, Ex Machina is a smartly constructed three-character drama that deftly asks complex questions with marvelous, disquieting intimacy.

The Harvest is a movie I come very close to loving. Unfortunately, there are some climactic speedbumps that frustratingly keep me from doing so, some oddly disjointed and annoying script contrivances that end up being impossible to overlook. At the same time, somehow, someway, director John McNaughton (Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) and screenwriter Stephen Lancellotti keep things more or less on track, their creepy, unsettling endeavor building to a gut-wrenching conclusion I found wonderful.

Monkey Kingdom is awfully enjoyable, and I definitely hope parents make the decision to schlep their kids to the multiplex to give it a look.

Monsters: Dark Continent is in many ways an attempt to transpose Full Metal Jacket or Black Hawk Down levels of realism into what initially appears to be nothing more than a B-grade riff on elements drawn from science fiction stalwarts as diverse as Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds and “The Twilight Zone,” and for my part at least I found this particular meshing of genres and ideas continually fascinating.

Unfriended chooses the easier, more generic supernatural route, and as such becomes simple to disconnect from and, in the long run, even easier to forget.

My chief suggestion here is to experience both That Man from Rio and Up to His Ears blind, with little to no information about either before doing so as the only thing a person truly needs is knowledge that these two Philippe de Broca directed stunners – both featuring a charismatically sexy Belmondo – are fairly close to perfect pieces of escapist entertainment.

Backcountry devours terror, chews it up and spits it back out at the audience as if it were a gourmet meal, all of which makes it a dinner I can’t wait to partake from again.