EYE IN THE SKY

Eye in the Sky concerns an impending act of drone warfare on a seemingly peaceful village in Kenya, and it’s one of the few films of its type released since 1964’s Fail-Safe: a pulse-pounding, nerve-racking inaction thriller. One scene after another finds individuals or cloistered rooms of military officials doing little more than staring at screens – in governmental war rooms, in flight simulators, on iPhones – and awaiting orders from higher-ups before they themselves can make any decisive moves. Yet the experience of director Gavin Hood’s thoughtful nail-biter is nonetheless spellbinding. The seconds feel as though they last many minutes (in the best way), and the cumulative 100 minutes feel like they’re over in a flash.

BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice never gets better than its wittily imagined, narratively essential scene of mass destruction five minutes into the movie. It never gets worse than the thunderously oppressive, soul-draining two hours and 20 minutes that follow.

MIRACLES FROM HEAVEN

If you’ve seen its previews, which appear to give away every nanosecond of its plot, you’d be right in guessing that the inspirational drama Miracles from Heaven is not for those who like surprises. (Although you won’t realize it until you see the film, even the narrative’s climactic shot is given away in the preview.) But as wholly surprise-free outings go, director Patricia Riggen’s adaptation of Christy Beam’s memoir is an earnest and effective tearjerker, and sometimes even more than that. On at least three separate occasions, my stomach muscles were aching from withholding those trying-not-to-audibly-sob sobs that can make movie-viewing indistinguishable from a lower-ab workout.

WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT

Two of my favorite repeat-viewing movies, for wildly different reasons, are Broadcast News and The Hurt Locker. But as much as I love them, I would never have dreamed they’d wind up loving each other, getting married, and having a baby – which is kind of what we have in the new Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. On the surface, it would seem an uneasy, if not unholy, blend: James L. Brooks’ snappy workplace comedy meets Kathryn Bigelow’s intense war thriller. In the hands of directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, however, what results is a humane and thoughtful entertainment that, blessedly, doesn’t sentimentalize or cheapen the subject of Middle Eastern conflict. It’s the film last fall’s Rock the Kasbah could have been if it had a brain in its head.