Based on the memoir The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot stars Tina Fey as Kim Baker, an American journalist who becomes unsatisfied with her tedious desk job and spontaneously decides to take assignment as a war correspondent in the Middle East. She begins in Kabul, where she is eagerly welcomed by fellow female reporter Tanya Vanderpoel (Margot Robbie) and not-so-subtly wooed by Scottish photographer Iain MacKelpie (Martin Freeman). When the initial two-week time frame of her assignment passes, Baker finds that she’s actually grown accustomed to potentially perilous nature of her new job and stays in hopes of chasing down a career-defining story.

The primary aim of the screenplay, written by previous Fey collaborator Robert Carlock, is to intersperse bits of pair’s formidable brand of 30 Rock-style sitcom wit within the confines of a traditional war movie setting. There are countless ways that this strategy could have gone awry, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only has Carlock maintained a high level of humor with numerous laugh-out-loud moments in the script but he also tells Baker’s story with the kind of intelligence and humanity that it deserves. The sharp-tongued dialogue also has a streak of affable self-deprecation to it, as when Baker explains why she left the States for Afghanistan and another reporter replies, “That’s the most American white lady story I’ve ever heard.”

Co-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who also collaborated on recent films Focus and Crazy, Stupid, Love, bite off a bit more than they can chew thematically but they do a great job of establishing a playfully irreverent tone without seeming distasteful or flippant towards the subject material. They also wisely steer away from cheap scapegoating or political posturing, instead favoring a more genuine and refined approach to their storytelling. There are also some inspired music choices that liven up some crucial scenes, the most memorable involving a covert, Marine-led hostage rescue set to Harry Nilsson’s “Without You”.

It’s no secret that Tina Fey has had mixed results when trying to translate her comedic success from television to the big screen, which is why it’s so encouraging to watch her hit this role out of the park. By both dramatic and comedic standards, this is far and away her most satisfying film performance to date. She’s such a perfect fit for this character, it’s not hard to imagine that the film wouldn’t have been made without her involvement. Perhaps her work here will be enough to convince other directors to reconsider her dramatic range as an actress and lead to more challenging roles in the future.

The rest of the actors, including FX’s Fargo favorites Martin Freeman and Billy Bob Thornton, are just as well cast and lend an added layer of authenticity to the story in both large and small roles. A notable standout alongside Fey is Christopher Abbott as Baker’s Afghani handler, who gives a performance filled with quiet humility and an unstated empathy that I found to be magnetic in each scene that he appeared. So many smart choices were made for Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and it’s quite rewarding to see a studio film, especially a comedy, that doesn’t feel the need to dumb itself down.

When a teaser trailer was first released two months ago for a new JJ Abrams production, it was difficult to believe that such a promising movie could have been kept so thoroughly under the radar. Pitched as a “blood relative” and “spiritual successor” of the 2008 found footage monster movie Cloverfield, it was intentionally left unclear what this new film’s connection was to its “predecessor”. Now that 10 Cloverfield Lane has finally arrived, the relationship between the two still eludes me but what I can say with confidence is that I was ultimately let down by this entry in an apparently burgeoning franchise.

After surviving a severe car accident when driving through rural Louisiana, the newly engaged Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) wakes up chained to a pipe with a man named Howard (John Goodman) claiming to have saved her from the wreck. They, along with another man named Emmett (John Gallagher, Jr.), are in a doomsday bunker that Howard spent years building and his efforts seem to have paid off, as he also claims that a widespread attack has decimated the entire population of the world above. Fearing Howard’s questionable motives and deteriorating mental state, Michelle and Emmett plot to escape the bunker and discover the truth for themselves.

With any kind of mysterious setup for a psychological thriller like this, the payoff not only has to match the quality of the preceding story but it should ideally exceed it. To say that 10 Cloverfield Lane doesn’t stick the landing would be a vast understatement, as it veers wildly in a direction that feels incredibly tacked on and frankly betrays the mostly well-earned tension of its narrative. Rarely is a producer’s influence so obvious on a film but it’s not difficult to spot the exact moment when Abrams forcefully grabs the reins from first-time director Dan Trachtenberg and gleefully sneers “I’ll take it from here.”

Though I can’t say that I was fully on board with the film before that point anyway, at least there was reason to believe that things were headed in the right direction. The foundation of solid acting, particularly by Winstead and Goodman, and the slow-burning character moments build nicely on the initial disorientation of the situation that the main character finds herself in. The film’s most effective scene, likely to inspire bouts of nervous laughter throughout the theater, revolves around the surprising prompts in a quietly revealing game of Taboo that rides a perfect median between frightening and funny.

As a whole, though, the movie just didn’t work for me but I do sincerely hope that it finds an audience and that it’s rewarded handsomely at the box office. With a “modest” $15 million budget and a killer ad campaign behind it, this could prove to be an overwhelming surprise hit like Deadpool was last month. It’s important for Hollywood to learn that pays to invest wisely in smaller scale features rather than to throw $200 million at tent-pole movies that seem destined to under-perform. Even if the experiment of 10 Cloverfield Lane came up short in the end, I hope its production principles go on to inspire other like-minded projects in the future.

Walt Disney Animation Studios builds on the overwhelming success of recent hits Frozen and Big Hero 6 with their latest effort Zootopia, which largely takes place in the titular city inhabited by anthropomorphic animals who have learned to peacefully co-exist with one another. When new rabbit resident Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) joins the city’s police force, she crosses paths with cunning con artist fox Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) and the two team up on a desperate search for a missing otter. As it turns out, the initial case runs deeper than they both realize and they slowly uncover a conspiracy to divide their seemingly tranquil society.

The most immersive animated films are those that seek to create an entirely original world for their characters to inhabit and this is no exception. The implicit challenge here lies in how these mammals of varying shapes and sizes could plausibly interact with one another despite their differing circumstances. Clever solutions, from the partitioning of different living sectors based on their corresponding climates to appropriately sized pneumatic tubes designed for transportation of smaller creatures, crop up throughout the movie and remind us that the creators put loads of thought into how to make this world work logistically.

By this token, a great deal of attention is paid not only to how the varying species physically co-exist but how they view one another from a cultural perspective as well. After all, this is a world where the traditional food chain has been narrowly circumvented but that doesn’t mean they’re still free from the kinds of nuanced divisions inherent in every civilized society. The prejudices and microaggressions (Judy rebukes Nick at one point for calling her cute, as only bunnies can call other bunnies cute) that pop up between the prey and predator factions are incisive bits of humor that cut deeper than the typical slapstick fare that pervades the animated genre.

With these topics in mind along with sprinkles of overt allusions to other high-minded entertainments like The Godfather and Breaking Bad, this is a film that is clearly aiming for an adult audience but even if taken at face value, Zootopia is plenty entertaining for all ages. The action scenes have a vibrancy and brisk pace to them, while the animation is consistently breathtaking and full of rich detail. Despite having likely recorded their vocal parts completely independent of one another, Goodwin and Bateman still manage to form a palpable chemistry among their witty banter.

The film’s story, which is a great throwback to film-noir inspired mystery, is surprisingly involving for the first hour, until it gives way to predictable contrivances that split characters up just in time for the third act. For as smart as it is for most of the running time, Zootopia does dumb itself down more than it should have and more than it really needed to towards its ending. Still, this is a consistently enjoyable movie with plenty of laughs for kids and enough social commentary to keep their parents engaged too.

Over the past few years, there has emerged a new class of intelligent horror films that favor pacing and setting over cheap jump scares and bombastic music cues. Films like The Babadook and Goodnight Mommy are able to create a kind of tense and unnerving mood by way of patient storytelling and I’m happy to say that first-time director Robert Eggers has added another memorable entry to the collection. Subtitled “A New England Folktale”, The Witch is a one-of-a-kind 17th century-set supernatural tale that uses authentically archaic dialogue and a stark color palette to create a chilly and disorienting atmosphere of slow-building dread.

We follow William (Ralph Ineson) and his deeply religious Puritan family as they are banished from a plantation and forced to relocate to a remote area seated right at the edge of a large forest. When his daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) is watching her infant brother one morning, he is swiftly and mysteriously abducted by a figure that the family concludes to be a witch from the woods. This news devastates their mother Katherine (Kate Dickie) in particular and after additional suspicious events occur, the seeds of mistrust are sown within the family and they begin to suspect one another of conspiring with the new forces of evil.

There’s a meticulous craft (dare I say witchcraft?) that went into the production of The Witch and much of that credit has to go to writer-director Robert Eggers, who allegedly committed years of research to uncovering what 17th century life was really like. The attention to detail in the costume design and the set design contributes heavily to the sense that we’re actually being transported back to this time. Even a majority of the film’s dialogue was sourced directly from period journals, diaries, and court records of the time, which almost makes it a scarier proposition than the “based on true events” claims of its genre peers.

This level of staid commitment is also carried out by the performers, who may be familiar to zealous fans of the HBO series Game of Thrones but will likely be new faces for the rest of the audience. Ineson plays the tortured patriarch William with humble conviction and Dickie is fearlessly compelling as the grieving mother with insurmountable misfortune cast her way. But the real revelation is the haunting, star-making turn by Anya Taylor-Joy as the oldest daughter Thomasin, who showcases a maturity well beyond her years and proves in only her second film role to date that she has a promising career ahead.

The final piece to this pernicious puzzle is the eerie, skin-crawling music scored by Mark Korven that makes use of dissonant string parts and haunted choir vocals to brilliantly demonic effect. It all adds up to a singular cinematic experience that may be too dour and self-serious in patches but still casts quite the spell during its lean running time. Few horror films have the certitude to look evil so nakedly in the eye but The Witch manages to weaves its unholy elements into something unshakable and unmissable.

Stop motion animation in film is a genre that has long been geared towards children, with a pervasive emphasis on fantastical creatures and otherworldly backdrops for surreal effect. Recent highlights like Coraline and ParaNorman utilize traditional horror elements and gothic imagery to tell creepy bedtime stories in a non-conventional way. What’s so bracingly original about Anomalisa, the latest work from writer/director Charlie Kaufman and co-director Duke Johnson, is how drastically it subverts the traditions of the medium and how authentically it strives to capture the human experience in a way that no other animated film has done before.

The movie follows Michael Stone (David Thewlis), a self-help author of “How May I Help You Help Them?”, as he travels to Cincinnati to give an inspirational speech at a customer service convention. We quickly learn that Stone is depressed and perceives everyone around him as different versions of the same man dressed in various disguises (all voiced by Tom Noonan). When he hears a new voice outside of his hotel room one night, he finds that a woman named Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is a beacon of uniqueness in a sea of familiar faces and the two form an instant connection.

Even if this story had been played out in a live-action format, the results would likely still be largely successful but the fact that it’s told not just in stop motion but incredibly fluid stop motion makes this a groundbreaking achievement. The set design and the lighting are impeccable, capturing all of the familiar nuances of a modern hotel and reimagining them for this new, miniature world. The attention to detail simply can’t be understated here; when you realize that the animators had a production goal of 48 frames per day (2 seconds of run time in the film), you begin to appreciate the level of craft that goes into the art form.

Of course, none of this patient effort would matter much if the narrative didn’t match the quality of the animation but luckily, Kaufman has penned his most stripped-down and intimate screenplay thus far. On the surface, it’s a mid-life crisis movie a la Lost In Translation but Kaufman tackles his typical themes of identity and isolation with a more light-hearted and empathetic touch this time around. There are threads of undeniable sadness throughout this film but there are also some unexpectedly playful notes too, perhaps my favorite involving a misleading series of speed dial icons for room service on a hotel room phone.

At the heart of everything is a beautifully rendered love story between Michael and Lisa, in which both characters attempt to push aside their own shortcomings to find a renewed purpose in one another. Like the visible seams in the faces of the puppet models that represent them, these characters have overt flaws that are bluntly put on display for us to examine and to potentially empathize with. In a bizarre way, I began to almost forget that I was watching stop motion at points in the story, which is an accomplishment in and of itself. Anomalisa may just be too peculiar an experience to find a mass audience but as a work of life-like animation, it’s a one-of-a-kind gem.