a) Straight Outta Compton

I have a deeply entrenched dislike of biopics, and especially music biopics, that I try to suppress to keep an open mind every time one with potential comes out. And Straight Outta Compton was one of the biggest music biopics, in box office terms, ever, and easily the most acclaimed since Walk The Line (which wasn't that great, but hey, they're all not that great). And I get it, in some ways they knocked it out of the park. Casting is half the battle in these things, and they did a great job on that front. In fact, they got so many people down so well that it was kind of startling and hilarious how bad the movie's Snoop Dogg is. But like most biopics, the narrative unspools in these contrived little moments to compress the real messy story into something simpler, which wouldn't be quite so bad if there wasn't a lingering sense that Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, the wealthy winners who got to write their own historical record, didn't sanitize so much of what made them mean, brilliant gangsta rap superstars to begin with. I also felt really bad for MC Ren, who rapped on most of NWA's best known songs and wrote many of Dre and Eazy's verses, and was basically reduced to a footnote in this movie because he never got big and famous outside the group. 

b) Love & Mercy

c) Jane Wants A Boyfriend

I was a little anxious about how this movie would handle a main character with Asperger's, and I have mixed feelings about Louisa Krause's performance. But I came away from the movie really impressed by how well it navigated that sensitive material and ended up with a pretty sweet little story that addressed how complicated it must be for someone on the spectrum to try and start having an adult life and date, and how much difficulty a sibling would have in knowing whether to remain protective or give them some freedom.

d) Sisters

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have such a well honed duo dynamic that I thought this movie did a good job of tweaking it by kind of swapping each into the role that the other would usually play; Fey is the loud raunchy character, and Poehler is more or less her straight man. And I have no complaints, I am the target audience for 'slutty Tina Fey.' It was a slight little movie, though, just had really low stakes and barely any story even by the standards of a goofy comedy, which I really appreciated, a lot of comedies take themselves way too seriously now.

e) The Night Before

The Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg assembly line keeps cranking out comedies that are okay but nothing special. I appreciate that Rogen is trying to mix things up with guys outside his usual pack of co-stars, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anthony Mackie are basically just dramatic actors who are capable of levity, they're not actually funny enough to help Rogen carry a comedy. They could've spread more of the dialogue around to the underused funny women in the cast (Lizzy Caplan, Jillian Bell, Mindy Kaling, Ilana Glazer). Still, it had a few belly laughs.

f) Jem And The Holograms

If you're going to adapt a cheesy old cartoon into an all-girl band into a live action film about the contemporary music industry, you'd think the only way to go is something wacky and satirical like the 2001 Josie And The Pussycats movie. But no, they decided to go the painfully earnest route with this movie, with a brief role from Ryan Hansen ("Veronica Mars," "Party Down") getting whatever little laughs there were.

g) A Walk In The Woods

My wife is a fan of Bill Bryson's books, and I've read a couple myself, although not A Walk In The Woods, and he's really a sharp, charming writer. I was surprised to see a Bryson book adapted with Robert Redford playing him, though, he's just not who you picture when you read Bryson. And although there were a few moments when you get a bit of Bryson's voice in there, it mostly just felt like a light, pointless movie about old Redfored and old Nick Nolte hiking around.

h) Sleeping With Other People
I will watch anything Leslye Headland directs just off the strength of her being a writer on "Terriers," and this is one of the best rom coms I've seen in years that unfortunately kind of flew under the radar. Jason Sudeikis and Alison Brie are great leads but I guess not famous enough to get this thing into megaplexes, the movie is a little dirtier than it needed to be but it was a nice balance to the wordier wit and sentimental moments. 

i) Interstellar

I am neither a Christopher Nolan stan nor a skeptic, I like his movies more often than not and can usually bring myself to just go along for the ride on a pretentious movie like Inception. So the first time I saw the trailer for this, I really thought it was going to be something I'd love. But I dunno, I kinda came around to it by the end but it was just so slow and portentous, it kinda collapsed under its own weight in a way that even Nolan's most ambitious movies usually don't.