These topless women are FEMEN, an activist group that uses “sextremism” tactics to shed light on injustices. Founded in 2008 by Anna Hutsol, FEMEN originally started in Kiev before branching out to France for both expansion reasons and political asylum for its members. As of today, there are FEMEN branches in Germany, Canada, Turkey and Israel. The documentary follows the activist group from December 2011 to August 2012, as they plan and stage protests in Kiev, Zurich, Belarus, Paris and Moscow. 

Director Eric Van Looy’s remake of the Danish film “Loft” is an off-kilter morality play marked by unseemly characters, unlikely actions and a multitude of twists. The plot centers on five men – Vincent (Karl Urban), Chris (James Marsden), Luke (Wentworth Miller), Marty (Eric Stonestreet) and Philip (Matthias Schoenaerts) – who agree to rent a secret loft where they can take women without their wives’ knowledge.

Director Clint Eastwood’s meditation on the life of Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle was the hit of the movie award’s season. It won only a single Oscar (for sound editing), but it was up for six awards including best picture, and it grossed more than all the other best picture nominees combined. In other words, the film was a critical darling as well as a box-office smash, a combination that is difficult to achieve.    

Alice Howland (Moore) is a  brilliant linguistics professor who has a warm and loving home life and a rewarding career where she is respected by students and colleagues. Then she begins forgetting things. At first, the problems are relatively minor. She loses track of where she’s going in a lecture. It’s an embarrassing moment, but little more. Then after getting lost while going for a jog around her college campus, she decides to seek medical help. 

King is portrayed brilliantly by David Oyelowo, a British actor who skillfully captures the nuances of King’s posture, voice and demeanor. Oyelowo’s work was rewarded with a best actor nomination for a Golden Globe, and his performance ranks among the best of 2014. Although the movie revolves around King – and thus Oyelowo –DuVernay assembled a fine supporting cast that includes Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King, Common as James Bevel, Oprah Winfrey as Annie Lee Cooper and Tom Wilkinson as Lyndon B. Johnson. 

In “The Gambler,” Mark Wahlberg stars as Jim Bennett, a man who has never learned to quit while ahead. Despite being born into one of the wealthiest family’s in America, Jim’s gambling addiction has left him desperate, broke and hounded by low-life loan sharks. His problem is so severe that any cash he acquires is immediately lost to high-stakes wagers in blackjack and roulette.   

When it comes to games of the heart, the French are very deft players.  And that’s never been more the case than when Audrey Tautou, that wickedly charming screen gamin, walks into a flower shop and orders a rose for her beloved.  In Laetitia Colombani’s black comedy, He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, “a rose is not just a rose is not just a rose” in Gertrude Stein’s apt phrase, but a symbol of some very dark and dirty business of the heart ahead.

Liam Neeson made one of the most interesting career transitions in recent memory when he introduced the role of former government agent Bryan Mills in “Taken.” Before the film, Neeson was an actor best-known for solid dramatic work in pictures that include “Schindler’s List” and “Michael Collins.” But, as Mills, he became an action hero of the Dirty Harry variety, dispensing swift, brutal street justice to the sex-trafficking European thugs who abducted his daughter.

In his latest documentary, “Population Boom,” filmmaker Werner Boote examines the topic of the overpopulation of the planet in an attempt to discover if in fact the exponential growth of the total number of human beings on Earth over the last several hundred years is something to be concerned about, or if it is just a cover for a different, more pressing problem.  Throughout the film, Boote travels to diverse locations all over the world, from Africa to Asia to North America, interviewing many local citizens about their opinions on the world population.

The unlikely tale of Margaret and Walter Keane created one of the most interesting stirs in the history of contemporary art, and director Tim Burton does a fine job dramatizing their lives. It has been decades since the Keanes made a splash in the art world, so many viewers will come to their story fresh, but that does nothing to diminish the film. “Big Eyes” is loaded with universally accessible themes, including commentaries on narcissism, the power of mass production and the problems with a patriarchal society.