The Big Short
There's nothing subtle about The Big Short. Director Adam McKay (Anchorman) uses every trick in the Martin Scorsese handbook—freeze-frame, montage, fourth-wall-breaking narration—to tell the true story of a few investors who predicted the catastrophic financial crisis of 2008. Christian Bale, not exactly a low-key performer to begin with, is given Asperger's, a stutter, and a glass eye; Steve Carell's grieving money manager can't help but speak his mind; and Ryan Gosling is apparently the biggest sleaze in finance—an industry already oozing sleaze out of its finely tailored seams. These guys, among others, foresaw the burst of the housing bubble and invested against it—hoping to profit on Wall Street's unrepentant greed. NED LANNAMANN Various Theaters.

Bridge of Spies
Spielberg's first film since 2012's Lincoln is an exceptional job of work—a deliberately old-fashioned hybrid of courtroom drama and Cold War skullduggery that's so expertly put together that you may not realize the beauty of its construction until after the fact. ANDREW WRIGHT Various Theaters.

Brooklyn
With the exception of that time she played an assassin in Hanna, Saoirse Ronan is often confined to roles unworthy of someone who can actually act (see: The Lovely Bones). So it's exciting to see her carry a well-constructed film once again with Brooklyn, an understated study of a young Irish woman caught between her ancestral home in Ireland and 1950s New York. MEGAN BURBANK Various Theaters.

Carol
Carol is set in the 1950s, which was not a great time for gay people getting to live the lives they deserved. That makes it all the more remarkable that the film, based on the Patricia Highsmith novel The Price of Salt, doesn't punish its characters by dooming them to misery or early death, like most of the non-straight narratives Hollywood offers up. If creativity thrives within limits, Carol makes a pretty good case that love can, too—although it certainly shouldn't have to. ALISON HALLETT Hollywood Theatre.

Chinatown
"I goddamn near lost my nose! And I like it! I like breathing through it." Fifth Avenue Cinema.

Concussion
A drama about forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu (Will Smith), who the NFL tried to shut up once he started publicizing his research about how NFL players suffer major brain damage, leading to dementia and suicide. Fitting, then, that even Concussion felt the wrath of the NFL, as the New York Times reported in September: "In dozens of studio emails unearthed by hackers, Sony executives; the director, Peter Landesman; and representatives of Mr. Smith discussed how to avoid antagonizing the NFL by altering the script and marketing the film more as a whistle-blower story, rather than a condemnation of football or the league." Various Theaters.

Contact Dance Film Festival
NW Film Center and Bodyvox join forces to present new collaborations between filmmakers, dancers, and choreographers. NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium.

Creed
Creed is the latest entry in the Rocky franchise, though it's the first that doesn't include a writing credit from Sylvester Stallone. It probably took a lot of nerve for the star to allow relative newcomer Ryan Coogler (who gave us 2013's excellent Fruitvale Station) to take the directorial reins—but the payoff is oh-so-worth it. Creed is not only a loving homage to Rocky, it builds upon the legend while maintaining the original film's heart and purity. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY Various Theaters

Crimson Peak
"It's not a ghost story," Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) says in Crimson Peak. "It's a story with a ghost in it." Edith isn't talking about Crimson Peak, though she might as well be. Guillermo del Toro's latest is a visually sumptuous Gothic romance—one that, amidst all the melodrama, offers slivers of sly wit, loving nods to classic horror, and, by the time it's over, quite a bit of blood. It also has a ghost in it. Or two. Or three. ERIK HENRIKSEN Laurelhurst Theater.

Daddy's Home
Will Ferrell. Mark Wahlberg. Fighting over the love of a household. What do you need, a roadmap? With regular collaborator Adam McKay busy doing The Big Short, this partial The Other Guys reunion feels even more erratically hangdog than normal, wobbling uncertainly between lengthy improv digressions and musty family comedy conventions, sometimes in the very same scene. Still, the chemistry of the leads is undeniable, especially when bouncing off of folks like Linda Cardellini and Hannibal Buress. (Thomas Haden Church, assuming the role that Gary Cole usually plays in these things, is an absolute hoot.) It'll do until the next one. ANDREW WRIGHT Various Theaters.

The Danish Girl
The Danish Girl takes place in the Expanded Universe of Oscar Bait, where the light is diffuse, all prostitutes are beautiful, everyone speaks vaguely accented English, and the only litter in the world is that plastic bag from American Beauty. Here, Eddie Redmayne—the reigning king of the EUOB—plays Einar Wegener/Lili Elbe, a Danish painter who was one of the first people to undergo sex-reassignment surgery. Most of The Danish Girl is about Lili's wife, Gerda (Alicia Vikander), coming to terms with the fact that her husband is a woman, as if that's the interesting story here. ALISON HALLETT

From Bombay to Bollywood: 50 Years of Indian Cinema
NW Film, with the help of the Government of India, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and Portland's own DJ Anjali & the Incredible Kid, has put together a 10-film retrospective on the width and breadth of the Indian film experience. It ain't all singing and dancing at weddings, you guys. More at nwfilm.org. NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium. ERIK HENRIKSEN Various Theaters.

The Hateful Eight
Quentin Tarantino's nasty new western isn't an epic. Sure, it's three hours long and shot in 70mm, but The Hateful Eight is a deceptively simple chess game that has more in common with Reservoir Dogs than Tarantino's last two films. Even the title is misleading: I counted nine, possibly 10 characters that could be considered "hateful." Bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) is bringing wanted murderer Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to the Wyoming town of Red Rock to be hanged. Along a snowy mountain pass he encounters another bounty hunter, Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), along with Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), supposedly Red Rock's new sheriff. The group seeks shelter at Minnie's Haberdashery, where other mysterious men are waiting out a blizzard. At least one standoff is inevitable. Despite the roadshow rollout, this isn't so much a grand-scale epic as much as an Agatha Christie-style chamber piece. (In other words, you'll be fine if you see it at the multiplex.) Sure, the photography is rich and pictorial—we see icicles dripping from the horses, and the deep focus works wonderfully for the lengthy interior sequences. But the characters and their shifting alliances drive Tarantino's wicked stagecoach. The very slow first half pays off in the grisly second half, and the performances are spectacular (particularly Leigh and Goggins). Tarantino's suspenseful puzzle box requires patience—and rewards it. NED LANNAMANN Hollywood Theatre, St. Johns Twin Cinemas.

Joy
I had some misgivings about Joy—namely, that it looked a lot like David O. Russell pandering to feminists. But after seeing Jennifer Lawrence's acting in the final, interminable Hunger Games movies amount to stony-faced pouting, it's a huge relief to see her back in the game as a character slowly self-actualizing in the face of pretty terrible odds. If this is what his pandering looks like, maybe Russell should do it more often. MEGAN BURBANK Hollywood Theatre.

Macbeth
Out of all of Shakespeare's back catalog, Macbeth has perhaps been the best cinematically served, with such Hall of Famers as Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, and Roman Polanski applying their distinctive worldviews to the material. (Polanski's 1971 version, his first film following the death of Sharon Tate, is still an amazingly tangible, all-encompassing ode to mud and blood and smoke and shit.) From the first frames of relative newcomer Justin Kurzel's adaptation, which stars Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, it becomes apparent that his method of putting his stamp on the prose is to, well, ruthlessly pare away much of the prose. While the Big Scenes are rendered with a ravishing starkness, the connective tissue that's allowed to remain tends to fall away into a low-toned dirge. Even those viewers unfamiliar with the source material may sometimes feel like they're flipping through a brutally gorgeous set of CliffsNotes. ANDREW WRIGHT Living Room Theaters.

Makoshika
A documentary about life in the rural landscape of eastern Montana. And not rural like "there's only one Wal-Mart in a 50-mile radius," but rural like "there's a one-room schoolhouse still standing. And they still use it. And some grades only have one student." Director Jessica Jane Hart in attendance. NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium.

The Man Who Fell to Earth
Thomas Jerome Newton wasn't the first role David Bowie played—he'd been hiding behind characters like Major Tom and Ziggy Stardust since the beginning of his music career—but The Man Who Fell to Earth was Bowie's first major film role, and it's so ideally suited that it's difficult to tell where the actor ends and Newton begins. Bowie's unearthly gauntness and mismatched eyes already made him look alien-like, but when Newton reveals himself to his earthling girlfriend, Mary-Lou (Candy Clark), stripping off his nipples, contact lenses, and genitalia, it's one of the creepiest moments in science-fiction history. NED LANNAMANN Academy Theater.

The Martian
Set in a fantastical near-future in which America adequately funds its space program, The Martian is the best ad for NASA since Ahmed Mohamed's T-shirt. Just about every frame reinforces a core sentiment: It's time to start caring about space again. The fact that The Martian manages to sell this idea—convincingly and rousingly, with a fair amount of humor—is all the more impressive given that it follows a man who's been marooned 140 million miles away and is forced to spend his days desperately trying to delay his all-but-inevitable death. It's funnier than it sounds. ERIK HENRIKSEN Various Theaters.

The Revenant
See review this issue. Various Theaters.

Room
Room is about a boy who is born in the garden shed where his mother, "Ma" (Brie Larson), has been kept captive for seven years, ever since she was abducted at age 17. Five-year-old Jack (Jacob Tremblay) has never seen the world outside of the shed—he doesn't even know such a world exists—and when Ma decides Jack is finally old enough to help carry out an escape attempt, the plan she concocts is dangerous and thrilling. But there's much more to this story: Room is based on the 2010 novel of the same name by Irish Canadian author Emma Donoghue. I read the book in one sitting—in a paroxysm of anxiety and emotional investment that kept me awake until 3 am—and came away impressed by its thoughtful, unexpected treatment of incredibly disturbing subject matter. The film succeeds by the same token. ALISON HALLETT Academy Theater, Laurelhurst Theater, Liberty Theatre.

Sicario
What's the opposite of evaporate? Whatever it is, that's what Sicario does. When so many movies and TV shows disappear from memory as soon as you're finished watching, Sicario lingers. It clots. Denis Villeneuve's new drug thriller is phenomenal. Its story is both personal and political, a scathing portrait of the drug war, as well as an elemental allegory in which moral dilemmas are depicted by characters crashing violently into each other. NED LANNAMANN Laurelhurst Theater.

Spotlight
Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Brian d'Arcy James play the Boston Globe's "spotlight" team of investigative journalists who were tasked with looking into child molestation charges leveled at Boston's beloved Catholic Archdiocese. Translating a highly detailed true story to film could sound like a staged reading of a Wikipedia page, or worse, trivialize the victims' experiences—and Spotlight walks dangerously close to this precipice. However, other than a few hammy moments, this film somehow manages to pull it off. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY Various Theaters.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens
The Force Awakens starts like Star Wars, has a middle like Empire Strikes Back, and ends like Return of the Jedi. It's a best-of Star Wars mixtape. But one doesn't go to the seventh chapter in the most-watched series of all time seeking originality. It's not a question of whether there's a lot of new here (although this is easily the prettiest, most kinetic film in the series), it's a question of whether director J.J. Abrams can do justice to one of cinema's best-loved pop songs. And thanks to stars Daisy Ridley and John Boyega, and the best work from Harrison Ford in decades, Abrams hits the notes he needs to, clearly and strongly. BOBBY ROBERTS Various Theaters.

Tropic Thunder
In which Tom Cruise wears a fat suit and becomes 300 percent more endearing (which should be a mathematical impossibility), and Jack Black is funny on film for the last time ever. Oh, and Robert Downey Jr. in blackface. But it's not really blackface. It's satire. Trust me. BOBBY ROBERTS Laurelhurst Theater.

Youth
The title of Paolo Sorrentino's new film is a bit of obvious misdirection. Make no mistake: Youth is about getting hella old, and to its credit, it makes becoming creaky and gray look like it's maybe not the worst thing in the world. It helps that composer Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) and film director Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel) have been hugely successful in their work—their moneyed lifestyles permit them an extended visit at the incredibly plush Swiss spa where almost all of Youth is set. NED LANNAMANN Cinema 21.

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MEANS WE RECOMMEND IT. Theater locations are accurate Friday, January 8-Thursday, January 14, unless otherwise noted. Movie times are updated daily and are available here.