Andrew Garfield, Teresa Palmer, Hugo Weaving, Sam Worthington, Vince Vaughn, Luke Bracey, Rachel Griffiths

Mel Gibson

The story of Desmond Doss is so remarkable that it’s surprising it took this long for someone to make a film based on his life. Although Hollywood has produced plenty of movies about real-life war heroes, Doss is a fairly unique case: a U.S. Army medic and devout Seventh-day Adventist who single-handedly saved 75 men during the Battle of Okinawa without ever firing a shot. It’s the kind of material that Mel Gibson typically gravitates towards as a filmmaker, which is why it’s so fitting that “Hacksaw Ridge” marks the director’s long-awaited return behind the camera. “Hacksaw Ridge” isn’t as great as some of Gibson’s past work, but it’s a well-made drama that’s bolstered by a superb central performance and the best battle sequences since “Saving Private Ryan.”

Before plunging the audience into the horrors of WWII, however, Gibson flashes back to a year earlier to show how Desmond’s (Andrew Garfield) fractured home life and his romance with local nurse Dorothy Schutte (Teresa Palmer) led him to enlist in the Army. Though Desmond doesn’t believe in violence, his sense of patriotism and duty compels him to follow in his brother’s footsteps, much to the disapproval of his alcoholic father (Hugo Weaving), who witnessed all of his friends killed in action during the first World War.

Desmond wants to serve as a combat medic so that he can save lives rather than take them, but upon arriving at Fort Jackson for basic training, he’s met with resistance by his commanding officers, Sergeant Howell (Vince Vaughn) and Captain Glover (Sam Worthington), who try to convince Desmond to quit and then court-martial him for his refusal to carry a weapon. But since we already know how the story ends (in fact, Gibson opens the movie with a shot of Desmond being carried across the battlefield), it’s safe to say that he wins the case and is shipped out with the rest of his unit to Japan, where he would go on to earn the respect of his fellow soldiers in a miraculous act of heroism and bravery.

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Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Dane DeHaan, Jamie Foxx, Sally Field, Campbell Scott, Paul Giamatti

Marc Webb

You wouldn’t think that it’d be possible to overpromote a movie, but Sony has done just that with “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” spoiling virtually every major moment during the course of its marketing campaign, including the appearance of several characters that would have been a far better treat were they kept a secret. But while the knowledge that there would be multiple villains in the film left some fans dreading another “Spider-Man 3” fiasco, that’s only part of the bigger problem, because the movie is bursting at the seams with so much material that it borders on excess at times. “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” is the rare comic book movie where the action is the least interesting element, but for all the things that the film gets wrong, it does just enough right to keep you entertained, even if it fails to capitalize on the promise of its predecessor.

Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) has officially graduated from high school, but he has much bigger things on his mind than worrying about college, like how to ensure the safety of his girlfriend, Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), when he spends his days fighting crime as Spider-Man. After growing tired of Peter’s indecisiveness about their relationship (due in part to the vow he made to her dead father), Gwen takes the initiative and dumps him for good, leading Peter to fill that void by diving back into the mystery of his father’s disappearance. But he’s soon distracted by the arrival of his childhood friend, Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan), who returns home to assume control of Oscorp after his father’s death, only to learn that he’s dying from the same disease, which he believes can be cured by the spider venom that gave Peter his amazing powers.

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