Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a better film than its predecessor in almost every way, and, somewhat shockingly, comes amazingly close to equaling the brilliance of the original 1968 Charlton Heston favorite.

Begin Again is noticeably safer than his Oscar-winning debut Once. At the same time, that doesn’t make it any less joyous, Begin Again having an innate hardscrabble authenticity to its layers.

Deliver Us from Evil is a compendium of a number of exorcist-themed features melded with a police procedural, everything moving along as anticipated building to a conclusion that’s hardly surprising.

For all the talent involved, and there’s a stupefying ton of it, Tammy is half-baked at best, making watching the finished product as tedious and as arduous a process as anything I’ve experienced this year.

Willow Creek isn’t new, it doesn’t break the mold, but the honest truth is that it doesn’t have to. Goldthwait has made a seriously great scary movie.

While not the dystopian existential sci-fi masterpiece many hoped for, Snowpiercer is a solid, visually inventive and at times breathlessly exciting epic.

I didn’t like Transformers: Age of Extinction, have no wish whatsoever to ever watch it again, but I can’t say I hated it in the same breath, either.

While certain elements do indeed fall a little flat, overall Eastwood’s adaptation of Jersey Boys manages to pack quite the melodious punch.

Make no mistake, Obvious Child is a stunning debut. More than that, it’s also a terrific piece of cinema I’ll be thinking about and extolling the virtues of for a heck of a long time to come.