MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION

Before a recent screening, I saw one of those previews in which a Hollywood star welcomes you to your local Cinemark chain, and as soon as that star said, "Hi, I'm Tom Cruise," a woman in the front row let out a loud, seemingly involuntary "Yech." The preview, of course, was for Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, and perhaps the best solace I can offer that woman is that while I frequently find Crusie yech-y, too, the movie itself is a lot of fun. It's even more fun if you can forget that Cruise is starring in it. But, y'know ... good luck with that.

Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth in Avengers: Age of UltronAVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

Whatever your feelings about Avengers: Age of Ultron, even if your feelings can be summed up in a succinct "Meh," you can't say that writer/director Joss Whedon is merely giving audiences an exact replica of 2012's comic-book behemoth The Avengers. There's some romance here, for one thing. There's also a lot more plot, now that we're spared its predecessor's hour-plus of super-team origin story. And rather than being granted all of his film's best, most thrillingly unexpected moments, that rampaging mass of CGI id known as the Hulk is instead stuck with the worst scene in the movie - which, unfortunately, also happens to be its most prototypical one.

Wei Tang and Chris Hemsworth in BlackhatFriday, January 16, 10:05 a.m.-ish: My first and final quadruple feature of 2015 (yeah, right) begins with the Michael Mann thriller Blackhat, which opens with the camera racing within a computer module and deeper and deeper into the internal workings of binary code, like a burrowing reverse of Robert Zemeckis' introductory shot in Contact. At its climax, we discover that we've been watching the process by which a faraway cyber-terrorist sets off an explosion at a Chinese nuclear facility, and it's a juicy, unsettling prelude - so good, and so promising, that it probably takes longer than it should to realize the movie is goofy as hell.

Stanley Tucci and Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games: Catching FireTHE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE

My unfamiliarity with its source material was, I'm convinced, a large part of why I enjoyed last year's The Hunger Games movie so much. To be sure, I dug the film itself, with its exciting and moving survival-of-the-fittest encounters, and its fierce Jennifer Lawrence performance, and its bevy of grandly outré supporting figures (and, in the Capitol sequences, beyond-outré production design). But not having read any of the three books in Suzanne Collins' seminal young-adult adventure series, what I was most taken with was the surprise of the experience. Hunger Games newbies such as myself were allowed to take in Collins' richly imagined dystopian saga with gradual understanding and horror, much the way (I'm presuming) the books' readers did, and while we had every reason to expect Lawrence's teen warrior Katniss Everdeen to survive, the storyline was just spiky and unpredictable enough to make us wonder how, exactly, she ever would.

Tom Hiddleston and Chris Hemsworth in Thor: The Dark WorldTHOR: THE DARK WORLD

As the comic-book demigod Loki, the nefarious thorn-in-the-side to the Avengers and adopted brother to Thor, Tom Hiddleston, in the Marvel Studios movies, exudes a teasing, seductive malevolence. With his sharp, angular features and chilling gaze that suggests he might prefer eating you to killing you, he's a wonderfully unstable and hypnotic screen creation. Yet the brilliance in Hiddleston's interpretation is that his Loki is also so damned charming. The character may forever be planning destruction or plotting revenge - specifically against the golden-haired preferred son with the red cape and hammer - but Hiddleston's bearing is so smooth and relaxed, and his wide grin so infectious, that you almost can't help rooting for him, especially because he also, generally, gets his movies' best jokes.

Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Bruhl in RushRUSH

While experiencing the technical craftsmanship of director Ron Howard's Rush, with Slumdog Millionaire cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle working at peak ability and the sound effects and editing exquisite throughout, I was frequently tempted to say, "Wow." Too bad that the film's overall presentation more often had me asking, "Why?"

Suraj Sharma in Life of PiLIFE OF PI

Some 45 minutes into director Ang Lee's Life of Pi, there's an image that's so deeply resonant and beautiful and sad - one that's presented with so little melodrama or fuss - that I immediately welled up and felt compelled to stifle a sob. I remember the image clearly because I rarely stopped feeling that way for almost the entire hour-and-a-half that followed.

Charlize Theron in Snow White & the HuntsmanSNOW WHITE & THE HUNTSMAN

The first words heard in Snow White & the Huntsman are "Once upon a time ... ," and for the next 125 minutes, the movie unfurls like a malicious, exhilarating fairytale for adults - or a bedtime story for really, really naughty kids. In an age when most screen adaptations of familiar childhood stories quickly descend into camp - either intentionally (Mirror Mirror) or unintentionally (Red Riding Hood) - the intelligence and violence and emotional hunger of debuting director Rupert Sanders' Snow White saga feel utterly welcome, and even somewhat revolutionary. By the film's finale (and I presume this isn't a spoiler), good has triumphed and evil has been vanquished, but the weight of the characters' horrific experiences hasn't been forgotten; it's clear from their serene yet exhausted expressions that while Snow White and her kingdom's subjects get their Happily Ever After, they'll more likely be living Happily, Hesitantly, Ever After.

Scarlett Johansson, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner, Robert Downey Jr., and the Hulk in The AvengersTHE AVENGERS

Prior to its national release, the scuttlebutt on The Avengers seemed to be that the Hulk totally stole the show. Having now seen director Joss Whedon's long-awaited, cinematic commingling of Marvel superheroes, I'm inclined to agree, because the angry green giant has been granted two fantastically unexpected, legitimately great moments in the film, and that's at least one more than anyone else has been given.

Fran Kranz, Chris Hemsworth, and Anna Hutchison in The Cabin in the WoodsTHE CABIN IN THE WOODS

Hollywood's been leading toward it for decades, and with the blithely enjoyable, exceedingly clever The Cabin in the Woods, it's finally happened: A movie has been released in which practically everything about it - its plot, its twists, its performers, its characters, its themes, its jokes - could be considered a spoiler.

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