The Story: God lives in a small Brussels apartment, splitting his time between tormenting humanity with petty suffering and antagonizing his wife and daughter — until that daughter decides to follow in her brother's footsteps by taking matters into her own hands. The Lowdown: A subversive comedy, with a heart of gold, that may alienate some. But those open to…

The Story: The daughter of one of the Death Star's chief architects must steal its plans, allowing the Rebels a chance to destroy it, while redeeming her father in the process. The Lowdown: The bleakest Star Wars film since The Empire Strikes Back, Rogue One is a great film that doesn't quite ascend to perfection.

The Story: A New York ad exec struggles to find meaning in the sudden death of his young daughter by addressing his anger in a series of letters to Love, Time and Death, while his friends try to exploit his downward spiral into psychosis for their own financial benefit. The Lowdown: Treacly, exploitative melodrama with an accomplished cast, this…

The Story: An emotionally repressed loner in the Boston suburbs must confront a painful past when his brother's death drags him home to care for his teenage nephew. The Lowdown: An almost incomprehensibly moving portrayal of anguish and resilience that gracefully avoids maudlin contrivance, Manchester by the Sea is unquestionably among the best films of the year.

The Story: The cast of a rare flop by Broadway royalty Stephen Sondheim and Harold Prince, leaning on the benefit of 35 years of hindsight, reflect on the ups and downs of their lives leading up to and following their disastrous work with their idols. The Lowdown: A moving and well-constructed documentary that will play to fans of musical…

The Story: A ruthless D.C. power broker picks a fight with the gun lobby over a set of ill-defined moral principles when she's asked to convince females to vote against gun control. The Lowdown: A passable political thriller that avoids the assurance of complete obscurity thanks solely to a bravura performance from Jessica Chastain.

The Story: A frivolous man-child and his hypercompetent underling concoct a harebrained scheme to save their struggling corporate branch with a massive Christmas party after the boss' sister, the company's newly minted CEO, threatens them with closure. The Lowdown: A trite and predictable entry into the holiday raunch-com subgenre that fails to deliver laughs and doesn't seem to…

In Brief: The second installment in Thursday Horror Picture Show's three-week celebration of Santa slashers, 1980's Christmas Evil, has been described by illustrious schlockmeister John Waters as "the best Christmas film ever made." While I wouldn't go quite that far, it is a shamefully underseen cult classic. Originally titled You Better Watch Out, director Lewis Jackson's only feature was critically…

The Story: An L.A. art gallery owner reads a novel dedicated to her by the ex-husband she abandoned, and its violent imagery prompts her to reevaluate their relationship. The Lowdown: A twisty thriller hiding a deeper significance, Tom Ford's second film is stylish, dark and irreverent in all the right ways.

The Story: A young girl on an isolated farm suffers a tragic loss that will lead her to address her loneliness through decidedly unorthodox means as an adult. The Lowdown: Nicholas Pesce eschews traditional horror genre tropes while showcasing a deep knowledge of classical cinema in this exemplary debut feature.

The Story: A thirteen-year-old Kazakh girl defies cultural gender roles by excelling in eagle hunting, an avocation traditionally only engaged in by the men of her isolated mountain community. The Lowdown: An aesthetically stunning documentary that presents a powerful feminist message but falls prey to its filmmakers' influence.

The Story: Two actresses find their friendship torn apart by interpersonal rivalries and society's expectations of women when their vacation takes an unexpectedly surreal turn with fatal consequences. The Lowdown: Director Sophia Takal's lofty ambitions are undermined by an ideologically conflicted script, but exceptional performances save the production from outright failure.

In Brief: 'Tis the season for holiday horrors with the THPS, so for the next three Thursdays we'll be showing a selection of seasonal slashers sure to sate the sadists. We're kicking things off with the film that started this surprisingly replete subgenre, 1972's Silent Night, Bloody Night. This may well be one of the earliest examples…

In Brief: As far as two-tissue tearjerkers go, they don't get much weepier than George Stevens' 1941 Cary Grant, Irene Dunne dram-com, Penny Serenade. Grant and Dunne play a couple whose marriage deteriorates following the loss of a child, and the melodrama doesn't come anywhere close to ending there. For all its emotionally exploitative holiday-set heartstring tugging the…

The Story: Timothy Leary and Ram Dass reconcile their fractured friendship and recall their long, strange trip in the months leading up to Leary's death in 1997. The Lowdown: Documentarian Gay Dillingham finds an affective new angle on an extensively covered chapter of counterculture history by using the two men's mythology to address weighty existential dilemmas surrounding mortality.

The Story: In order to save her island community from ecological collapse, a young girl must reconnect with her culture's seafaring past and enlist the help of a trickster demigod to right an ancient wrong. The Lowdown: A slightly more considerate and ethnically inclusive variation on the virtually unassailable Disney model of family-friendly story telling, Moana hits all…

The Story: An ambitious young driver and a naive starlet, both under the employ of Howard Hughes, fall in love while struggling with their employer's eccentricities. The Lowdown: A passion project long in the making for director-writer-producer-actor Warren Beatty, Rules Don't Apply is very clearly the singular vision of its creator — with all of the contingent benefits and pitfalls…

The Story: A Canadian intelligence officer and a French resistance fighter try to start a family under the shadow of suspicion during WWII. The Lowdown: A better concept than the film that resulted, Allied wears its influences on its sleeve but fails to live up to its Classical Hollywood antecedents.

The Story: Original "Bad Santa" Willie Soke returns for more misanthropic holiday high jinks, this time with his malicious mother in tow. The Lowdown: An unnecessary sequel to a film that should've been allowed to stand on its own, Bad Santa 2 falls short of its potential — if not of reasonable expectations.

In Brief: When the AFS showed the original Godzilla last year, I brought a date who called it the worst movie she had ever seen. We are no longer on the best of terms, and needless to say, she will not be invited to our screening of Gamera. While it's not a great film in the classical sense of…