Miss You Already, Spectre, Trumbo, Spotlight, Welcome to Leith, What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy

Miss You Already

Spectre



Trumbo

Spotlight



Welcome to Leith

What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy








The first four-star film of 2015 highlights a mostly good week at the movies:

Enough Said

Nicole Holofcener made my top-ten list in 2010 with "Please Give," but her new film, "Enough Said," falls well short of that standard. Too often, the writer-director's insights into human nature and behavior are obscured by a plot barely above the level of "Three's Company" and an overly diffuse script populated by too many characters.

The Way Way Back

I call bullshit on every frame of "The Way Way Back," the kind of ersatz coming-of-age comedy that wants to be petted like a dog but makes you want to kick it instead.

Mental

I'm dumbfounded that P.J. Hogan, whose "Muriel's Wedding" was so sweet and charming, has directed the loathsome lost-in-translation Aussie comedy "Mental," about a family of wackos (or are they?) saved from the bin by a homily-spewing hitchhiker (Toni Collette). "Mental" is tawdry and trashy, with a cheap, oversaturated look and nobody to like or to laugh at or with. Collette, Liev Schreiber as a shark hunter (?!), and Anthony LaPaglia as the preoccupied patriarch will all want to edit this insta-bomb out of their career retrospectives.