An exceptional cast of three Oscar nominees, with some wins between them, work hard to elevate a plodding script to more than a TV movie of the week, but it's a tough ask.

Any film about Malala Yousafzai, the courageous Pakistani girl shot by the Taleban in 2012, would be inspiring.

The first fruit of a co-production agreement between Australia and India, this cross-cultural love story follows a formulaic and predictable path.

Dynamic and passionate, thrumming with barely suppressed anger, this sleek American indie has the brains of a documentary, the soul of a moral fable and the beating pulse of a thriller.

Calling this latest collaboration, by director Noah Baumbach and star and co-writer Greta Gerwig a whirlwind of witty observations about the entitled middle class, is an understatement; it's a tornado.

The Ghost Dimension is set in 2013, when a new family move into a house and find a 1980s-era video camera and tapes.

Bridge of Spies is a dialogue-driven, handsome and detailed period piece, which also features conversations about America's constitution and civil liberties.

Burnt is not a film to watch on an empty stomach, writes Francesca Rudkin.

The Walk, a film based on Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the World Trade Center towers, is more gimmickry than poetry, writes Peter Calder.

In the new version of the Kray twins story, the notorious gangsters spring to life fully formed.

French writer-director Oelhoffen parlays a 1957 short story by Albert Camus into a quietly riveting quasi-Western, set in the sere rocky uplands of Algeria in the 1954, at the start of the bloody war against the French colonisers.

The presence of Sharma (from Ang Lee's The Life of Pi) and Revolori, the bellboy stuck on fast-forward in Wes Anderson's mystifyingly popular The Grand Budapest Hotel, may improve the fortunes of this straightforward family drama.

Depp's intense, quietly disturbing portrayal of cold-blooded killer Jimmy "Whitey" Bulger proves the actor is back on form.

The sobbing and sniffing in the theatre would indicate this emotionally manipulative story about lifelong friends dealing with one of them having cancer hits the mark - but it's a close-run thing.

Auckland University's Professor Richard Easther, one of the world's leading cosmologists, gives his scientific verdict on the movie of the moment.

Matt Damon and Ridley Scott's adaptation of the bestseller about an astronaut stranded on the red planet is the interplanetary geek gardening thriller of the year.

The Scottish play is Shakespeare's leanest tragedy, barely 2500 lines as against Lear's 3500 and Hamlet's 4000.

Filmmaker Nancy Meyers has produced a catalogue of lighthearted, fun films, with mature actors and made for mature audiences; think Something's Gotta Give and It's Complicated.

Adam Sandler leading a crew to save the world against an invasion of 80s videogame arcade characters created by aliens who got hold of one of those Nasa space probes with a recording of what we did for entertainment in 1982.

Occupying the most improbable of genres, the musical thriller, this feature-film version of a 2011 National Theatre hit takes an unusual angle of view to explore the effect on the small Ipswich street of the title of a wave of murders in 2006.

Internationally acclaimed South Auckland hip-hop superstar Parris Goebel turns this classic follow-your-dreams dance story into something special, thanks to her electrifying, unique style of choreography and incredible troupe of dancers.

Sicario is less a typical FBI thriller than something akin to Michael Mann's Heat or a Zero Dark Thirty substituting the War on Terror for the War on Drugs.

As slight in scope as it is modest in subject matter, the second-to-last film by Albert Maysles, who died in March, is a charming if occasionally too-reverential portrait of New York identity and self-described "geriatric starlet" Iris Apfel.

If you see only one film this year shot on an iPhone 5s and focusing on transgender hookers in LA, make it this one.

This understated and delightful New York-based comedy starring Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement as a guy grappling with single fatherhood is less weighty than writer/director James C. Strouse's earlier films.

In Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials the fight for survival now takes place among demolished cities and desert landscapes.

Even those familiar with the famous July Plot of 1944, in which a group of German officers led by Claus von Stauffenberg tried to kill Hitler, may not be aware that it was the last of more than a dozen planned or attempted assassinations.

Inoffensive, unremarkable and mostly just a bit naff, this adaptation of Bill Bryson's memoir of walking the Appalachian Trail is about as good as it could possibly have hoped to be, which is to say not very good at all.