Ratings and running times are in parentheses; foreign films have English subtitles. Full reviews of all current releases: nytimes.com/movies[1].

'Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip' (PG, 1:26) The latest big-screen adventure of the unkillable singing chipmunks, the fourth in the franchise, features a simpler plot than the previous two films. It also puts the focus back on Alvin, Theodore and Simon, leaving the female trio, the Chipettes, in the background. The boys are worried about what they think are the engagement plans of their human minder, Dave, and take a road trip to disrupt them. Catchy songs abound. (Neil Genzlinger)

'Anomalisa' (R, 1:30) Directed by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, this sad, stirringly painful stop-motion puppet whatsit centers on a floundering soul (voiced by David Thewlis) who, while on a business trip, has an affair with a stranger (Jennifer Jason Leigh). An invaluable Tom Noonan voices everyone else. (Manohla Dargis)

★ 'The Big Short' (R, 2:10) Adam McKay's adaptation of the Michael Lewis best seller is a wildly entertaining movie that leaves you nauseated and shaking with rage. That's as it should be, since Mr. McKay and his energetic cast (including Steve Carell, Christian Bale, Brad Pitt and Ryan Gosling) set out to capture both the giddy thrills of the economic bubble of the mid-2000s and the moral corruption that fueled it. Rooting for the film's designated good guys means rooting for economic collapse, and you feel the awfulness of this contradiction. (A. O. Scott)

★ 'Bridge of Spies' (PG-13, 2:15) In this gravely moody, perfectly directed thriller about a real 1962 spy swap, Steven Spielberg returns you to the good old bad days of the Cold War and its fictions, with their bottomless political chasms and moral gray areas. Tom Hanks leads a terrific cast that includes Mark Rylance as a Soviet mole and Scott Shepherd as a C.I.A. operative. (Dargis)

★ 'Brooklyn' (PG-13, 1:51) Saoirse Ronan gives a remarkably lively and subtle performance as Eilis Lacey, a young woman who emigrates from Ireland to New York in the early 1950s, in John Crowley's lovely adaptation of the novel by Colm Toibin. (Scott)

★ 'Carol' (R, 1:58) Todd Haynes's gorgeous adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith novel stars Rooney Mara as Therese Belivet, a young woman in early-1950s New York who falls for an older suburban housewife played by Cate Blanchett. The blossoming of their love affair is related in subdued colors and whispered words, and it lingers in the air like an old song. (Scott)

★ 'Chi-Raq' (R, 1:58) Furious, funny and wildly uneven, Spike Lee's latest is a restaging of Aristophanes' fifth-century B.C. sex-strike comedy, "Lysistrata," now set in a Chicago where sidewalks are washed with blood and hearts beat to the rhythm of gunfire. (Dargis)

'Concussion' (PG-13, 2:03) This fact-and-fiction hybrid stars Will Smith as a crusading doctor — the real Dr. Bennet Omalu — who sets out to discover why some professional football players are dying too young. Written and directed by Peter Landesman, the movie has a cause and heart but not enough real tension. (Dargis)

★ 'Creed' (PG-13, 2:13) The "Rocky" saga, revised and reborn, with the Italian Stallion in the role of the grizzled trainer, helping a young contender prepare for his shot at the title. The contender is Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan), the love child of Apollo Creed, Rocky's erstwhile nemesis and eventual best friend. The director is Ryan Coogler ("Fruitvale Station"), at 29 a rising champion in his own right. (Scott)

'Daddy's Home' (PG-13, 1:36) An ugly psychological cockfight posing as a family friendly comedy, the father-stepfather competition pits a meek Will Ferrell against a feral Mark Wahlberg. It is best avoided unless a movie that has the attitude of a schoolyard bully happens to be your thing. (Stephen Holden)

'The Danish Girl' (R, 2:00) The story of a transgender pioneer, Lili Elbe, becomes a tasteful, sensitive and somewhat inert costume drama in the hands of Tom Hooper ("The King's Speech"). Eddie Redmayne plays Lili, whom we first encounter as Einar Wegener, a Danish landscape painter. His wife, Gerda (Alicia Vikander), also an artist, is the emotional center of the film, in part because Mr. Redmayne's performance, while technically flawless, keeps the audience at a distance from Lili's experience. (Scott)

★ '45 Years' (R, 1:35) Andrew Haigh's new film is a loving, devastating portrait of a long, happy marriage that encounters an unusual crisis. Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay play Kate and Geoff Mercer, whose plans for an anniversary party are disrupted by news about an old, long-dead girlfriend of Geoff's. (Scott)

★ 'The Good Dinosaur' (PG, 1:40) In the beginning there was a dinosaur — followed by a kid scampering after him on all fours. That's the story in Pixar's latest, a lovely, eccentric charmer directed by Peter Sohn in which a gentle dinosaur roams the earth with a doglike boy. (Dargis)

'The Hateful Eight' (R, 2:48) More talking and killing from Quentin Tarantino, this time in a frontier outpost after the Civil War. Some interesting ideas about the racial politics of the Western genre peek out amid the verbiage and the violence, but Mr. Tarantino's grandstanding gets in the way. With Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Samuel L. Jackson, whose performance as a former Union officer almost lifts the film out of its self-conscious rut. (Scott)

'The Himalayas' (No rating, 2:04, in Korean) Chronicling the experiences of a seasoned mountain climber and the young man he takes as his protégé, "The Himalayas" is a broad comedy, a buddy movie, an adventure and a cornball weepie, not always in proportions that go well together. (Ben Kenigsberg)

★ 'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2' (PG-13, 2:16) Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) returns to finish the fight, defeat the enemy and send off a big-screen series that has had an astonishing run both in cold-cash terms and in its meaningful symbolism. She's ready (and so are you). (Dargis)

'In the Heart of the Sea' (PG-13, 2:01) Ron Howard directs this would-be epic about a shipwreck that was an inspiration for "Moby-Dick." Spanning decades and miles, it pits man (Chris Hemsworth) against Leviathan in an adventure that becomes an ecological cautionary tale. (Dargis)

★ 'Janis: Little Girl Blue' (No rating, 1:43) The documentary biography of Janis Joplin sustains a compelling double vision of Joplin, the needy lost child, pleading for love in a baby's primal squall, and Joplin, the hippie rock-blues mama she was on her way to becoming when she died at 27 of a drug overdose. (Holden)

'Joy' (PG-13, 2:04) Jennifer Lawrence, at her tough, radiant best, plays Joy Mangano, an entrepreneur stymied by her family in David O. Russell's rousing and chaotic fable of bootstrap capitalism. (Scott)

'Krampus' (R, 1:38) This attempt to wring a holiday horror-comedy out of the European legend of Santa's evil twin (more or less) scrambles scares and sentimentality into a lumpy, starchy pudding. With Toni Collette and Adam Scott. (Scott)

'Macbeth' (R, 1:52) The best reason to see this slick version of the sanguineous tragedy is Michael Fassbender's exceptionally fine title performance, though the writing isn't bad, either. A mushy-mouthed Marion Cotillard co-stars; Justin Kurzel directed. (Dargis)

★ 'The Martian' (PG-13, 2:21) Matt Damon stars in Ridley Scott's space western and blissed-out cosmic high about an American astronaut who, like a latter-day Robinson Crusoe, learns to survive on his own island of despair. Funny, loose and optimistic. (Dargis)

★ 'Mustang' (PG-13, 1:37, in Turkish) Full of life, "Mustang" is a stunning debut feature by Deniz Gamze Ergüven about five sisters in rural Turkey. Confined to their grandmother's house, the girls bridle against losing their freedoms in a story grounded in both laughter and tears, and in the resilient strength of these girls against soul-deadening strictures. (Nicolas Rapold)

'Only Yesterday' (No rating, 1:58, in Japanese) Isao Takahata, an Academy Award nominee and one of the twin pillars of the anime giant Studio Ghibli, brings the cleareyed grace of his animation to the lovely story of a 27-year-old woman looking back on her childhood. Originally released in Japan in 1991, the film is receiving a freshly voiced — and very welcome — United States release for its 25th anniversary. (Rapold)

★ 'Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict' (No rating, 1:37) Lisa Immordino Vreeland's sleek, entertaining portrait of the collector who assembled one of the great troves of modern art is well organized, with hundreds of beautiful images spanning decades of artists Guggenheim knew, galleries she ran, parties she hosted. Using tapes of interviews before she died in 1979, the documentary is imbued with Guggenheim's presence, even as art-world denizens dish on her foibles and vanities. (Daniel M. Gold)

'Point Break' (PG-13, 1:53) An athlete turned F.B.I. agent (Luke Bracey) infiltrates a gang of extreme-sports radicals (led by Edgar Ramirez as "Bodhi") who purport to honor the earth through daring criminal acts. In Ericson Core's remake of Kathryn Bigelow's superior 1991 thriller, the balky story is just dramatic filler between impressive showcases of wingsuiting, motorbiking and the like. (Rapold)

'The Revenant' (R, 2:36) By turns soaring and overblown, this American foundation story from the director Alejandro G. Iñárritu ("Birdman") features a battalion of very fine, hardworking actors. None are more diligently committed than Leonardo DiCaprio, as a 1823 mountain man who endures a crucible of suffering. (Dargis)

'Room' (R, 1:58) Brie Larson and an exceptional child actor, Jacob Tremblay, play mother and son in the adaptation of Emma Donoghue's novel. Written by Ms. Donoghue and directed by Lenny Abrahamson, the movie flickers with grace and imagination during its initial half but devolves into a dreary, platitudinous therapy movie in its second. (Dargis)

'Sisters' (R, 1:58) It's always fun to watch Amy Poehler and Tina Fey together, but it would be more fun if this movie weren't such a cobbled-together mess of tired raunch and weak sentimentality. (Scott)

'Son of Saul' (R, 1:47, in Hungarian, German, Yiddish and Polish) This debut feature from the 38-year-old Hungarian filmmaker Laszlo Nemes is a powerful but ungainly blend of allegory and thriller set in a Nazi death camp. Saul (Geza Rohrig) is a member of the Sonderkommando, Jewish inmates assigned to assist in the murder of their fellow prisoners in exchange for meager privileges. In his company, the viewer is given a tour of horror that is unnerving both for its harshness and for the sense of slick, self-congratulatory artifice that lurks around the edges of the frame. (Scott)

'Spectre' (PG-13, 2:28) Bond, James Bond, etc. (Dargis)

★ 'Spotlight' (R, 2:07) A team of Boston Globe investigative reporters — played by Michael Keaton, Brian d'Arcy James, Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo — takes on the local archdiocese in this powerful fact-based newspaper procedural, directed by Tom McCarthy. The movie, with a superb cast and a tightly constructed script, is an unflinching investigation of systemic moral rot and a rousing defense of the values of professional journalism. (Scott)

'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' (PG-13, 2:15) It's good! (Dargis)

'Trumbo' (R, 2:04) This clunker about the blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) tells a great-man story with a patchwork of fact and fiction, mixing in the odd bit of newsreel with a great many dull, visually flat and poorly lighted dramatic scenes. Jay Roach directed. (Dargis)

'Youth' (R, 2:04) Paolo Sorrentino follows the luxurious melancholy of "The Great Beauty" with this weary rumination on aging, set in a spectacular Alpine resort. Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel play old friends — a composer and a filmmaker — who feel their erotic and creative powers waning as the world goes on its decadent way. (Scott)

Film Series

Bert Williams And Company (Wednesday through Jan. 19) The Museum of Modern Art welcomes back the 1913 silent film "Lime Kiln Club Field Day," starring the Caribbean-American entertainer Bert Williams and an all-black cast. Abandoned by its white producers, the movie — believed to be the oldest surviving film to feature African-American actors — languished for years in unmarked containers before being reassembled. The story of a fraught courtship, the film presents performers who, amid widespread segregation, vibrantly asserted their art. Also screening: "Lime Kiln" outtakes and Williams's more heavily stereotyped comedy "A Natural Born Gambler," from 1916. Museum of Modern Art Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters, 212-708-9400, moma.org[2]. (Andy Webster)

'Chimes at Midnight' (through Tuesday) If there was one role Orson Welles was born to play, it wasn't Harry Lime or Cardinal Wolsey or even Charles Foster Kane. It was that "sweet creature of bombast" Sir John Falstaff, whom he first tackled as a teenager at the Todd Seminary for Boys. Welles later conjoined all of the Shakespeare plays that featured or even alluded to Falstaff, first on stage and then in this sublime 1966 film mash-up, which includes a battle sequence that holds its own alongside the likes of Kurosawa and Eisenstein. "Chimes" begins Film Forum's three-week Stratford-on-Houston retrospective, which includes Welles's other two Shakespeare adaptations, "Othello" and "Macbeth." At various times, 209 West Houston Street, west of Avenue of the Americas, South Village, 212-727-8110, filmforum.or g[3]. (Eric Grode)

The Contenders 2015 and Curator's Choice (through next Friday) As if this time of the year wasn't sufficiently glutted with films deserving your attention (and most of them so darn long!), two series are reminding you of all the great titles to come out in the last 12 months. Both the Museum of Modern Art's Contenders 2015 and the Museum of the Moving Image's Curator's Choice series tend to eschew the brassier studio fare for the likes of "In Jackson Heights" (Sunday at MoMA), Frederick Wiseman's homage to the ethnically diverse Queen's neighborhood; and "The Look of Silence," which Moving Image will show Sunday with the film's director, Joshua Oppenheimer, in attendance. The Contenders: Through Jan. 15 at Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters, 212-708-9400, moma.org. Curator's Choice: Through Sunday at 35th Avenue at 37th Street, Astoria, Queens, 718-784-0077, movingimage.us[4]. (Grode)

January Brunch: On the QT (Saturdays and Sundays, through Jan. 31) Nodding to the recently released "The Hateful Eight," the Nitehawk Cinema gathers Quentin Tarantino movies made when his works were a mere two-and-a-half hours or less. The caper "Reservoir Dogs" (1992) is lean, mean and sometimes hilarious; "Pulp Fiction" (1994) broadens his violent palette with an unforgettable dance sequence; and "Jackie Brown" (1997), Tarantino's Elmore Leonard adaptation, is a model of understated economy. The perfect cast of "True Romance" (1993) — directed by Tony Scott from a Tarantino script — makes his dialogue sing. At various times, 136 Metropolitan Avenue, near Berry Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 718-384-3980, nitehawkcinema.com[5]; some shows are sold out. (Webster)

Modern Matinees: A Pioneer Cowboy (through Feb. 26) Even in the 1910s, when stage-trained actors with unconventional looks could mosey their way onto the big screen more easily, William S. Hart and his melancholy woodcarving of a face cut a jarring figure. An acquaintance of Wyatt Earp and an accomplished Shakespearean actor on Broadway, Hart didn't arrive in Hollywood until he was 49. He made up for lost time, appearing in more than 60 films in just over a decade. This Museum of Modern Art retrospective includes the boisterous 1916 Western "Hell's Hinges" (Jan. 22), in which Hart's gunman sees the light when a preacher and his sister arrive in the titular territory, described in the film's intertitles as "a gun-fighting, man-killing, devil's den of iniquity that scorched even the sun-parched soil on which it stood." On various days, a detailed schedule is at moma.org. (Grode)

New York Jewish Film Festival (Wednesday through Jan. 26) (Wednesday through Jan. 26) This event, presented by Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Jewish Museum, offers a constellation of viewpoints on the Jewish experience, looking to the festival's 25-year history and speaking to Judaism's present. Among its offerings, "NYJFF at 25: A Retrospective" comprises past festival hits. "I Don't Belong Anywhere: The Cinema of Chantal Akerman" — about the Belgian pioneer, who died in October — has its American premiere. And having a 20th-anniversary screening isTodd Solondz's eviscerating 1995 portrait of adolescent torment, "Welcome to the Dollhouse," is accompanied by "Night and Fog," Alain Resnais's 1955 documentary about the Holocaust, chosen by Mr. Solondz. At various times, Walter Reade Theater and Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, on West 65th Street, Lincoln Center. A schedule is at nyjff.org[6]. (Webster)