Black Mass, Everest, Sicario, Pawn Sacrifice, The New Girlfriend, Breathe, Peace Officer, A Reunion

Black Mass

Everest



Sicario

Pawn Sacrifice



The New Girlfriend

Breathe



Peace Officer

A Reunion






The fall film season kicks off in earnest:

Into the Woods

Rob Marshall, who directed the Oscar-winning adaptation of “Chicago” (2002), again gives moviegoers a Christmas gift with the disproportionately enjoyable “Into the Woods,” with book by James Lapine and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

Arthur Newman

"Arthur Newman" is a strange, dreary movie about Wallace Avery (Colin Firth), a professional golfer from Florida whose mental fragility has kept him from success on the tour.

The Best Films of 2012: #4

Director Lynn Shelton allowed the cast of "Your Sister's Sister" to improvise much of their dialogue. The result was an unexpected treasure that delighted me with its emotional acuity and pitch-perfect humor.

Looper

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis star as younger and older versions of the same man in “Looper,” a time-travel action adventure that starts out interesting and becomes less so as it goes. It’s one of those futuristic movies in which, only thirty years from now, American life has become unrecognizable. The country is divided into five “zones” (it’s always zones in these pictures). Time travel is possible, but has been banned by the government. Oh, yeah, everybody’s downtrodden, but you knew that, right?

Your Sister's Sister

Lynn Shelton’s “Your Sister’s Sister” is the best American feature film so far this year, an unexpected small treasure that delights you with its quietly perceptive emotional acuity and pitch-perfect humor.

The Five-Year Engagment, Safe

Safe

The Five-Year Engagment

"The Five-Year Engagement" is the kind of movie you'd walk out of on a plane. You'd have to go a ways back in romcom history to find a more mismatched pair than schlubby Jason Segel and (upper-)crusty Emily Blunt. They're trapped in a movie of cringe-inducing vulgarity and meanness in which nobody behaves remotely like a human being. And that's just the half hour we made it through.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

The laughs are mostly unintentional in Lasse Hallstrom's "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen," a threadbare outline of a bad romcom aimed at the type of Kaballah-practicing Westside woman who found meaning and insight in "Eat Pray Love." Ewan McGregor plays a prissy ichthyologist in a loveless marriage entered into too young. Emily Blunt is typecast as the personal assistant to a Sana'a sheikh with billions to burn on the titular pipe dream. She taps McGregor to spearhead the project.