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AMERICAN SNIPER Based on the memoir by Chris Kyle (played by Oscar-nominated Bradley Cooper), the most prolific sniper in American military history, this is Clint Eastwood’s most commercially successful movie but far from his best artistically. Eastwood handles the action scenes powerfully but doesn’t thread them together with the kind of nuanced storytelling he’s capable of, and he leaves some loose ends dangling. The home-front scenes of Kyle with his wife (Sienna Miller) and family become a bore, but Cooper is excellent as a man increasingly addicted to combat and with no other thought than to protect his own. Rated R. 132 minutes. Regal Stadium 14 , Santa Fe; DreamCatcher , Española. (Jonathan Richards)

BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) In Alejandro González Iñárritu’s backstage satire, Michael Keaton dazzles with his brilliant dissection of a movie star, in artistic eclipse since he sold his soul to play a masked comic-book superhero, looking for redemption on the Broadway stage. Aided by a terrific supporting cast that includes Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, and Emma Stone and shot by the great Emmanuel Lubezki, Birdman , a nominee for best picture, crackles with wit, fantasy, and penetrating insights about show business, cultural relevance, and the modern world. The film received a total of nine Oscar nominations, including ones for Iñárritu and Keaton. Rated R. 119 minutes. Regal DeVargas , Santa Fe. (Jonathan Richards)

BOYHOOD Richard Linklater’s extraordinary achievement (and recipient of six Oscar nominations, including best picture and best director) has been to take one boy, a six-year-old named Ellar Coltrane, and shoot him for a few days every year for a dozen years. Linklater wrote each screenplay segment based on talks with his cast, which includes Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as the boy’s parents. We watch as Mason grows up and makes it safely through boyhood’s adventures and discoveries, arriving on the brink of young adulthood as the movie ends. Rated R. 165 minutes. Center for Contemporary Arts , Santa Fe. (Jonathan Richards)

THE BOY NEXT DOOR Jennifer Lopez plays a high school teacher who takes up an ill-advised affair with the teenage boy who moves in next door (in J-Lo’s defense, he’s played by Ryan Guzman, who is twentyseven). The attraction proves fatal when he develops an unhealthy obsession with her. Rated R. 91 minutes. Regal Stadium 14 , Santa Fe; DreamCatcher , Española. CITIZENFOUR This documentary should be required viewing, whichever side of the Edward Snowden patriot/ traitor bias you fall on. Laura Poitras, the director contacted by Snowden to break his story, presents only one side here, but it’s a compelling brief that asks what constitutional freedoms we’re willing to surrender for security. Poitras pads her film with some sleepy footage of Snowden sitting in his hotel room, but there’s plenty of meat. Rated R. 114 minutes. Center for Contemporary Arts , Santa Fe. (Jonathan Richards)

DYING TO KNOW Gay Dillingham’s profound, uplifting documentary takes us on a journey to that border no fence can keep us from crossing. Our guides are those two irrepressible icons of drugs and enlightenment, former Harvard professors Timothy Leary and Ram Dass. Local figures are among those interviewed, and there’s a nicely unobtrusive narration by Robert Redford. Not rated. 99 minutes. Center for Contemporary Arts , Santa Fe. ( Jonathan Richards)

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL Filmmaker Wes Anderson tells a tale of an Eastern European hotel manager (Ralph Fiennes) who is willed a priceless painting by a former lover (Tilda Swinton). This angers a relative (Adrien Brody), who feels he should be the true heir. Anderson’s eye for meticulous detail remains, and he shows new tricks as well. Nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Rated R. 100 minutes. Jean Cocteau Cinema , Santa Fe. (Robert Ker)

THE IMITATION GAME This very entertaining movie, an Oscar nominee for best picture, could have been a lot more. Morten Tyldum (nominee for best director) has taken the engrossing story of Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch, a nominee for best actor), the British war hero, computer pioneer, and homosexual martyr, and fit it into the familiar confines of a biopic stocked with Movie Moments, which never convince us that things really happened the way the film depicts them. Rated PG-13. 114 minutes. Regal DeVargas , Santa Fe. (Jonathan Richards)

INTO THE WOODS Stephen Sondheim’s musical about psychological self-discovery gets Disneyfied (though tastefully) under Rob Marshall’s smart, sensitive direction. Top-drawer performances, with better singing than you might anticipate, come from Meryl Streep (Witch), a supporting-actress Oscar nominee; Johnny Depp; Anna Kendrick; and others. The score and dialogue remain largely intact, making this a must-see for Sondheimites. Rated PG. 124 minutes. Regal Stadium 14 , Santa Fe. (James M. Keller)

THE LOFT If you feel there aren’t enough movies about rascally, privileged men and severely abused women, then this is the flick for you. A group of dudes go in on a high-rise apartment for their affairs, and when one mistress ends up murdered, it kicks off a whodunit. Rated R. 108 minutes. Regal Stadium 14 , Santa Fe; DreamCatcher , Española. (Not reviewed)

LOST HORIZON In 1937, Frank Capra’s film of James Hilton’s novel

Lost Horizon was the most expensive motion picture ever made. It has now been restored to its original length, with stills standing in for irretrievable footage. It’s a utopian story of a place free from greed and violence, a place called Shangri-La, a word that’s become part of our language. Though the film creaks a bit in places, it remains a classic. Not rated. 132 minutes. Jean Cocteau Cinema , Santa Fe. ( Jonathan Richards)

A MOST VIOLENT YEAR The year is 1981, the most violent in New York City’s history. Writer/director J.C. Chandor

locates this wintry tale in the fuel oil business, where upwardly mobile Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) is trying to build his company. The challenges are considerable. Among them are a prying district attorney ( Selma ’s David Oyelowo), mobbed-up business rivals, and Abel’s amoral wife, Anna (Jessica Chastain), from whose father Abel bought the business. Chandor taps into the vein of Sidney Lumet’s streetwise New York films, and Isaac and Chastain give an acting seminar. Rated R. 125 minutes. Regal DeVargas , Santa Fe. (Jonathan Richards)

MR. TURNER Mike Leigh’s portrait of J.M.W. Turner is a warts-and-all impression of England’s greatest painter, constructed using the director’s process of improvisation, discussions with his actors to develop a script, and months of rehearsal. The result is a movie that is illuminating, beautifully performed, unimpeachably researched, and shot with an inspired Turneresque beauty by cinematographer Dick Pope. The film is perhaps a little long at two and a half hours, but that’s how long it takes. Rated R. 150 minutes. Regal DeVargas , Santa Fe. (Jonathan Richards)

OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS — ANIMATION This year, the animated short films nominated for Academy Awards are so brief they had to add some extra films to fill out the running time. Fortunately, the best one ( The

Dam Keeper ) is the longest, at 18 minutes. Disney’s Feast , which ran before Big Hero 6 , is another gem, but otherwise it’s a forgettable crop. 11 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 7, only. Not rated. 82 minutes. In English and various other languages with subtitles. The Screen , Santa Fe. (Robert Ker)

OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS — LIVE ACTION This year’s Oscar race includes a satisfying mix of live-action shorts, from the lighthearted ( Boogaloo

and Graham ) to the inventive ( Butter Lamp ) to the heartbreaking ( The Phone Call ). The other two, about a young Afghani woman in Switzerland and a quirky Israeli woman, are also thoughtful and skillfully crafted. 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 8, only. Not rated. 114 minutes. In English and various other languages with subtitles. The Screen , Santa Fe. (Robert Ker) PADDINGTON The famous stuffed bear brings his toggle coat and red hat to the big screen, starring in a comedic caper in which he arrives in London, is taken in by a family (headed by Hugh Bonneville), and attempts to escape a nasty taxidermist (Nicole Kidman). Paul King directs with charm and inventiveness, and the humor is a near-perfect mix of cartoony silliness for the children and British wit for the adults. A bit too much of the former evaporates in the second half, which may get too dark for smaller kids, but overall, it’s a delight. Rated PG. 95 minutes. Regal Stadium 14 , Santa Fe; DreamCatcher , Española. (Robert Ker)

PROJECT ALMANAC Some young people build a time machine and decide to make up for all their regrets in life. When that works, they decide to make themselves rich. They apparently didn’t take time to brush up on their sci-fi, however, because if they had, they would know that messing with the time-space continuum usually has terrible consequences. Oops. Rated PG-13. 106 minutes. Regal Stadium 14 , Santa Fe; DreamCatcher , Española. (Not reviewed)

SELMA Half a century ago, the civil rights attack on Jim Crow in this country was just coming to a boil under the leadership of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. One of the watersheds of that movement was a massive protest march bound from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, 54 miles away, in support of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. That undertaking is the centerpiece and focus of this uneven but powerful film (an Oscar nominee for best picture) from director Ava DuVernay. David Oyelowo gives us an MLK in whom quiet, deeply religious social convictions triumph over human doubts and weaknesses. Rated PG-13. 127 minutes. Regal Stadium 14 , Santa Fe. (Jonathan Richards)

SONG OF THE SEA In this hand-drawn animated feature by Tomm Moore, little Saoirse grows up picked on by her older brother, Ben, who misses their mother, a mythical selkie who died in childbirth. When Saoirse, who has never spoken, develops an affinity for the water at age six, her still-grieving but well-intentioned father allows the children’s meddling grandmother to take them from their home in a lighthouse to live in Dublin, and it is up to Ben to lead his sister back to her birthright. Rated PG. 93 minutes. Center for Contemporary Arts , Santa Fe. (Jennifer Levin)

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING A film about Stephen Hawking ought to be bursting with ideas. What director James Marsh has come up with is a watchable but conventionally structured romantic biopic. An Oscar nominee for best picture, its secret weapon is Eddie Redmayne (nominee for best actor), who is brilliant in his transformation into the Hawking we know, body confined to a wheelchair, voice produced by a machine. Costar Felicity Jones is a nominee for best actress. Rated PG-13. 123 minutes. Regal DeVargas , Santa Fe. (Jonathan Richards)

THE WEDDING RINGER Kevin Hart plays Jimmy Callahan, a guy who makes himself available — for a fee — as a best man for grooms to be who don’t have many friends. Josh Gad plays a guy who doesn’t have any friends whatsoever, so he invents a whole wedding party that needs to be filled out by Callahan’s friends. Rated R. 101 minutes. Regal Stadium 14 , Santa Fe; DreamCatcher , Española. (Not reviewed)

WHIPLASH Miles Teller plays teenage jazz drummer Andrew Neiman, whose dreams of becoming one of the greats hinge on surviving music instructor Terence Fletcher ( J.K. Simmons, nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actor), the sort of teacher who’s likely to throw a chair at his student’s head when requesting a drumroll. An Oscar nominee for best picture, this indie-drama by Damien Chazelle compellingly explores the ways in which the power dynamics of a mentoring relationship can turn a teacher’s obsession into a student’s compulsion. Rated R. 107 minutes. Regal DeVargas , Santa Fe. (Loren Bienvenu)

WILD In 1995, inexperienced hiker and camper Cheryl Strayed strapped on a backpack and covered 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. In this moving, ruggedly beautiful adaptation of her memoir starring Reese Witherspoon (Oscar nominee for best actress), director JeanMarc Vallée captures scenery and settings with deft camerawork. The storytelling is honest, vivid, and nonjudgmental, if sometimes a bit too on the nose. Rated R. 115 minutes. Regal DeVargas , Santa Fe. (Laurel Gladden)