Tomorrowland was a huge failure for Disney, the film was supposed to be a huge hit, but never connected with audiences. I thought it was better than most people were giving it credit for, but it was still underwhelming.  Easily the best part of the film is Raffey Cassidy. She’s clearly an up-and-coming actress. She steals the film from Hollywood royalty George Clooney. Cassidy is a natural who shows off a wide range of acting skills in Tomorrowland. She also gets to kick a little butt. I’m looking forward to following her career.

Over the years, Tarantino has had a knack for digging up actors and resurrecting them. The best of example of this is John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. The same can be said for Jennifer Jason Leigh. She’s been consistently working for years now, but it’s been a little while since she’s had a role of any substance in a big film. That all changed with The Hateful Eight where she plays a vicious outlaw of a woman with all the qualities of a feral animal. She literally has no redeeming qualities to speak of. She’s being taken to the gallows by a bounty hunter played by Kurt Russell. We don’t know what she did, but there’s no doubt she’s guilty of whatever it is. I’d love to see Jennifer Jason Leigh get some beefier roles. She’s an underrated actress.

McAdams has had a fantastic career thus far, but she’s mainly stuck to romantic comedies. One of her few dramatic roles was in the film State of Play, where she also played a journalist. McAdams has always been a likeable actress, but with Spotlight, she proves she should be getting way better scripts than rom-coms. In Spotlight, McAdams plays a journalist that comes from a devout Catholic family. She herself has fallen from the church, a fact she hides from her grandmother. She also wrestles with the idea of what her grandmother will think when she finds out she’s trying to expose the Catholic Church for their dirty secrets. It’s an interesting dynamic that I’m sure many people across the country fought with. Like most of the actors in Spotlight, McAdams is really authentic as a journalist. It’s probably one of the more real films you will ever see, without even a trace of Hollywood to speak of.

Alicia Vikander burst onto the Hollywood scene a few years ago and hasn’t stopped working since. She appeared in 5 films that were released in 2015 alone. Although she’s nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Danish Girl, it’s her game-changing work in Ex Machina that really caught my attention. Vikander is mesmerizing as a breath-taking cyborg. Is she nothing more than a pile of microchips and circuit boards, or is she starting to become aware of what she is? This is what the main character is tasked with trying to figure out.  It’s not so simple however, as he begins to fall in love. Ex Machina unfolds like a stage play and is packed with great performances. Vikander is the highlight of the film, it's easily one of the best performances of the year and officially introduces American audiences to an actress we will be seeing quite a bit from in the coming years.