How to Train Your Dragon 2

Dean DeBlois's sequel to the popular How to Train Your Dragon (2010)  is a high-flying and high-minded animated adventure that picks up the story of Hiccup, the intrepid young Viking dragon-tamer voiced by Jay Beruchel, and assorted Nordic folks of his island village Berk after they've made peace with the once-feared but now petted beasties of the title.I quite liked the mix of whimsy and dread in the first film, and was thrilled to see the sequel (a third is planned for 2016) expands this magical world beyond the delightfully intricate backdrop of the village to explore new astoundingly beautiful territories. (The aerial scene that opens this thoroughly entertaining film is breathtaking. Do see it in 3D.) When the film opens, Hiccup, an aeronautical genius and son of the village chief, Stoick (voiced by Gerard Butler), is on a mission with his loyal dragon companion Toothless, a rare Night Fury, to make all of the dragons friends of man (and vice versa) but on one of his excursions he is confronted by a crew of wranglers in the employ of one of the ruthless villain Drago (Djimon Hounsou), who means to rule the world with a dragon army. When told of Drago's plot, Stoick decides to protect his own and put Berk under lockdown, but  Hiccup and girlfriend Astrid (America Ferrera) slip out to try to change Drago's mind. While they are out Astrid is captured by the wranglers and Hiccup is intercepted by a kindred spirit and therein lies the heart of this surprising and touching film. Highly recommended though it contains frightening scenes of destruction and the death of major character and so might be too much for the little ones.

The Fault in Our Stars

In the 44 years since that bestseller turned movie Love Story made diseased young love a popular culture commodity, writers and filmmakers have dispensed with dramatic buildup and have been introducing audiences to characters and their maladies almost immediately. Once TB (or consumption) was reserved for the Third Act, sweeping in to usher one character or other into the wings. But no longer. That writers and directors no long wait has made leukemia or lymphoma or senility or HIV a character in the given story, the villain at whom we boo and hiss. Josh Boone's film adaptation of John Green's teen tale of love in the age of cancer stars Shailene Woodley (The Descendants, The Spectacular Now) and Ansel Elgort (Divergent) as young people living with cancer who meet in support group and fall in love despite Hazel's failing lungs and world-weariness. Elgort's Gus is a ray of single-amputee sunshine whose outlook is blisteringly optimistic. Hazel is soon walking toward the light. The story's centerpiece is a trip that takes Hazel, Gus and Hazel's mom (a luminous Laura Dern) to visit Hazel's favorite novelist (Willem Dafoe), a recluse living in Amsterdam, so that she and Gus, who one suspects loves the man's enigmatic book because Gus loves the girl, might experience some closure. Woodley, a fine young actress who is becoming an old pro at playing distressed teens, carries this solid picture, which is hobbled just a bit by Elgort's odd two-dimensionality. It's not so much that he's bad, because he's quite good. It's more the case that he's danseur noble to Woodley's prima ballerina, which is an interesting dynamic to watch particularly during the Third Act. Because Woodley is so good, Elgort's Gus seems under-modulated or fuzzy. Still, it's a solid picture, for those who like their teen angst served raw. Recommended but it's a real weepy woo-woo.

Edge of Tomorrow

Doug Liman's contribution to the original Bourne Trilogy, The Bourne Identity, was the only one of the three that kept a sense of humor amidst the explosions, flying fists and vehicle chases. Liman's latest film, Edge of Tomorrow, displays his penchant for spicing his war with wit. Tom Cruise stars as Major Cage, an Army public information officer who has been managing promotions for the global campaign against alien hordes of whirling biomechanical demons that have taken over Europe. Emily Blunt plays Sgt. Vrataski, the poster girl for the resistance. She is also called the Angel of Verdun because she led a seemingly successful battle against the alien invaders in France. When Cage refuses to suit up and actually join the fight he has been spinning, he is busted down to a private and impressed into the ranks of a unit that will be taking a beachhead the next morning. Unwilling and untrained, Cage is soon killed, along with everyone else, after landing. He is drenched in the blood of the time-shifting aliens and finds himself living the day of the attack over and over once he is killed. During one of the early iterations of this horror, he encounters Vrataski who becomes his cohort and teacher because she had met a similar fate earlier but had since lost the ability to "reset" the day. Her coaching of Cage through his agonizing training are some of the film's funniest moments. The ever-dependable Bill Paxton (Aliens, Big Love) and Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges) deliver finely accented performances as a no-nonsense master sergeant and the general officer in charge of the doomed invasion. Highly recommended.

Belle

The enchantment in Amma Asante's Belle is in the title character's face. Asante trains her camera on Gugu Mbatha-Raw's eyes, which signal brilliantly flattery and fear, intimidation and indignation, rage and romance -- the range of emotions she goes through as the illegitimate, biracial daughter of a British naval officer in 18th century England who is left in the care of the officer's aristocratic uncle and aunt. The child, Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay, but called Dido (not Belle, as the title would suggest), is reared in splendor but relegated to a station lower than the other residents of the estate where she lives -- her loving cousin Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon), her spinster aunt Mary (Penelope Alice Wilton) and the Lord and Lady Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson). Screenwriter Misan Sagay has crafted parallel story lines based on the true story of Lady Lindsay. One involves the intrigues surrounding Lady Elizabeth's debut in London society as the impoverished though cultured and cherished niece of the Mansfields. The other concerns a case that Lord Mansfield will be ruling on as Lord Chief Justice that involves the suspicious drowning of slaves by a ship's captain. The young and fiery son of a local minister comes to clerk for Mansfield and falls captive to Dido's beauty and she to his passionate resolution to end slavery. The young squire, Daviner, is played by Sam Reid, whom I recently saw in another fine British film, The Railway Man. The chemistry between Dido and the ardent Davinier is undeniable and their courtship is handled with grace. It's a splendid film, sensitively pitched, and uses human servitude to explore questions of identity, honor and justice, writ large and small. Highly recommended.

Maleficent

Veteran visual artist Robert Stromberg's Maleficent is a supremely efficient and dazzling motion picture. It presents the origins story of the evil queen from the Sleeping Beauty story economically, narratively, but with an extravagance of visual embellishments -- the grandest being star Angelina Jolie's cheekbones. They're absolutely amazing -- witchy and old Hollywood. In fact, every shot of the queen is wondrous. Jolie, one of the producers of the film, plays the wronged queen of the fairies and guardian of the creatures living in the magical moors that are threatened by greedy humans. (Yes, the parallel to Jolie's philanthropic work in developing nations is stark.) Spurned and dewinged by a man she foolishly trusted, Maleficent curses the daughter of the man whose treachery wins him the throne (Sharlto Copley). The queen's infamous curse is that on her 16th birthday the Princess Aurora (Elle Fanning) would prick her finger on a spinning wheel's needle and fall into a death-like sleep. Over the course of those 16 years, however, Maleficent and her raven helper (Sam Riley) watch after the child who has been entrusted to the care of three inept and disputatious pixies (Lesley Manville, Imelda Staunton and Juno Temple) living in a cottage in an enchanted wood. The child touches the bitter queen's heart but nothing can reverse the curse but a true-love's kiss. It's an interesting twist but I'm not sure if young children, who will love the animation, will pick up on the film's message about the nature and meaning of love and devotion. Recommended.

The Railway Man

Jonathan Teplitzky's film The Railway Man is a painful and highly affecting treatment of the true story of British World War II prisoner Eric Lomax, who along with scores of other Allied soldiers helped to build a railway from Thailand to Burma for their Japanese captors. Lomax (Jeremy Irvine) is discovered with a radio receiver he built from spare parts scavenged before the British surrender of Singapore and also connected to a map of the railway that he hid in a latrine. He is then beaten and starved by interrogators, led by the young "interpreter" Nagase. The scenes of his torture are nearly unwatchable but one must if one is to feel the full power of the film's conclusion. Most of the picture is told in flashback as Lomax, 35 years after the war, meets a lovely woman named Patti on a train to the Scottish Highlands. He is smitten, pursues her and they marry for she is taken by this rumpled, strange but loving fellow who seems fixated with train schedules. Soon after taking up house, Patti discovers Eric's wounds but only suspects how deep they go for he does not talk about them. The elder Lomax is played by Colin Firth (The King's Speech) with all of the classical discipline we have come to expect from this fine actor. And Nicole Kidman, whose screen work has always been interesting if uneven, has matured from girlish beauty into striking loveliness as Patti. Their friend and Lomax's fellow POW Finlay (Stellan Skarsgard) warns Patti about the danger of probing into the regions that Lomax has guarded so carefully. But Patti is determined and it is that determination and sudden and surprising act by Finlay that lead to the confrontation between Lomax and Nagase that is the final act of the film. Though not a perfect film,  questions about the prisoners' liberation and Lomax's life before Patti are not answered,The Railway Man is human without being sentimental and it carries an important message. Highly recommended but some scenes of prisoner torture, including water boarding, are nearly unbearable.

Neighbors

Nicholas Stoller's Neighbors flexes the same kind of comedic homoeroticism  that has made wealthy men of writer / director Judd Apatow and his stable of actors, principally Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill. Though Apatow is not formally associated with this picture, the doughy Rogen stars along with the adonic Zac Efron as the neighbors of the title. Rogen and Rose Byrne play new parents living the American Dream in a college town when the Delta Psi Beta men and their coterie of busty babes move in next door. Rogen's Mac and Efron's Ted become quick "bros" but then after too many late night frat parties and a call to the local constabulary they declare war. Once the barrages of penis jokes, simulated (and actual) intercourse and references to ejaculate are unleashed, there's no turning back. And for the audience you either go along for the ride or cover your eyes and ears. Perhaps it is true as some have written that once you've passed through the dense cloud of sex and drug references you will discover the film's deeper message about maturity and responsibility. I can't attest to that because Stoller has dialed the outrageous meter up to 11 and the quiet pillow-talk between two stoned parents tagged on the end just seems a bit, er, anticlimactic after 100 minutes of unspeakable vulgarity. Recommended but not for youngsters or oldsters who can't take a joke.

Chef

Jon Favreau parlayed his wit and affability into an interesting interview program back in 2001 called Dinner For Five. The idea was for Favreau, known at the time mainly for his acting in Swingers, to talk shop with four friends who were also in show business. The conversations were not all riveting but the notion of gathering around the dinner table to talk about common passions is appealing (My Dinner with Favreau?). Food and passion are at the center of Favreau's latest film, Chef, a nicely constructed tale of family, friends, fortunes and forgiveness that features some of the most lovingly crafted scenes of food preparation I've seen since Babette's Feast (1987). Favreau, who is writer and director of this delightful picture, stars as L.A chef Carl Casper, who runs the kitchen of a high-dollar boite owned by the unimaginative Riva (Dustin Hoffman). Casper wants to explore the culinary landscape but is shutdown by Riva and, subsequently, is pummeled by a local food blogger who describes Casper's cuisine as "cloying." Though Casper is professionally stunted that's nothing compared with the disappointment he feels in his relationship with his 10-year-old son, Percy (a perfectly casted Emjay Anthony), who delivers many of the film's most genuinely touching and insightful moments. Favreau gets enormous (and enormously loving) support in this venture from John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale and Sofia Vergara. I'm disappointed that Scarlett Johansson was cast in a relatively small role that did not require the amperage that she inevitably brings. Highly recommended but be sure to eat before you go.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Peter Dinklage makes cinematic hay of the delectable role of Bolivar Trask, a scientist intent on protecting the human race from an inevitable mutant uprising in Bryan Singer's enjoyable but perplexing X-Men: Days of Future Past. Dinklage, best known as Game of Thrones' Tyrion Lannister, dominates the crowded film that stars, to varying degrees, Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence in a curvy, spectral time-travel tale that sends Jackman's Wolverine back to the '70s to avert Trask's murder at the hands of Lawrence's blue shape-shifter Mystique, a killing that would lead to the eventual annihilation of mutants and their supporters. The film is all reliably weird and nonsensical, and Singer's signature comic relief is delivered by American Horror Story's Evan Peters as the jokey kleptomaniac Quicksilver. X-men veterans Patrick Stewart, Ian MacKellan, Halle Berry and Shawn Ashmore are more or less placeholders. Oddly, Anna Paquin who has played Rogue in the previous films gets star billing and is seen for maybe 10 seconds at the end of the film. Recommended.

Godzilla (2014)

Not 10 minutes into Gareth Edwards' weirdly off-kilter remake of the 1954 classic Godzilla, stunt-casted Bryan Cranston delivers a cringe-inducing scene. He's an American nuclear engineer in Japan who is forced to shut the door on his slow-footed wife (Juliette Binoche) and her team as the belly of a nuclear reactor in full-meltdown fills with radioactive gas. It's a stunning wreck of a scene that introduces this stunning wreck of a movie. Edwards ably stages scenes of mayhem and destruction as Tokyo, Vegas and Frisco are reduced to rubble and kindling by the gargantuan deep sea lizard and his two leggy foes, the M.U.T.O.'s. British actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson, a big-eyed cipher, is the human star of the film, as the skeptical son of Cranston and Binoche's characters, who is a bomb disposal ace. Oddly, he never does actually get to show his bomb-defusing stuff, though, because he's too busy running toward or away from screaming monsters and screaming people. The real weakness in the film, IMO, is that we have no human villain to cheer against. It's tough to unload your animus on 300-foot-critters that humans created and who eat our weapons as if they were chili dogs. Reap, sow and all that jazz.The film also features the reliable David Strathairn as an admiral who is tasked with the destruction of the big battling baddies. His character is introduced in a truly bizarre tracking shot on the deck of an aircraft carrier as Strathairn's character addresses the crew, his back to the camera. When he finally turns to face the camera, I'm sure most of the folks in the audience were thinking, "Who the hell is he?" The picture is no biggie but see it if you must.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel has beautfiul, fractal intimacy, which is to say it is lovely, complex and cold. That is NOT to say it isn't entertaining because it is, quite delightful, because like those geometric puzzles that fascinate math-nerds, Grand Budapest's component parts -- script, art direction, cinematography and performances (principally Ralph Fiennes amd Tony Revolori) -- are precise and astounding. It's a technical marvel, much like the work of Peter Greenaway (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; The Pillow Book), but, alas, lacks an essential warmth. Recommended.

Noah

Three-quarters of the way through Darren Aronofsky's Noah, the titular character and his family are huddled in the ark with the remains of the world's critters and he retells the creation story. The story is fairly close to biblical text but the visual elements are pulled straight from the Evolutionist's Bible. It's a pretty neat trick. In fact, the entire film (which stars Russell Crowe as Noah and Jennifer Connelly as his wife, who was not given a name in Scripture but is called Naameh in the film) is tricky in that one is never sure of the point of this cagey retelling of The Flood. Has Aronofsky (a skilled visual artist, for sure) recast the ancient story of the Creator's great displeasure with his Creation (at least the human element of it) as an environmentalists' cautionary tale (the CGI animals are marvelous) or is it, like others of Aronofsky's films, a weird study of destruction and delusion. I must say I spent so much time trying to puzzle out this question that I never connected with any of the rage and emoting on the screen and there's plenty of it courtesy of Ray Winstone as the murderously carnivorous Tubal-cain and Emma Watson as another filmic construct Ila, the once-barren but then miraculously fertile wife of Noah's oldest son, the noble Shem, played by Douglas Booth). Crowe and Connelly (a compelling coupling in A Brilliant Mind) are good here -- he's all righteous stoicism and she's all weepy, loving connivance. Recommended but it's not a Sunday School lesson.

Oculus

Horror films by definition are malevolent but Mike Flanagan's Oculus has a really unsettling meanness to it that is fairly disturbing. Murderous, demonic spirits need motivation just like any other character, to my mind, but Flanagan's haint seems to like to kill without meaning or purpose. Can it be that for screenwriters all acceptable reasons have been spent? Or has Hollywood entered into an era of pointless annihilation, which in itself signals a turn toward the dystopic. That seems too easy. The picture stars the Scottish actress Karen Gillan (whom I first noticed as the irrepressible Amy Pond of Doctor Who) and Aussie Brenton Thwaites as sibling survivors of a particularly nasty domestic upset that left both parents (Katie Sackhoff and Rory Cochrane) dead and Thwaites's Timmy in the nut house. In the 11 year interim since that really bad day, Big Sister Kaylie has been hatching a plan to call out and, presumably, destroy the devil living in a cracked and cranky mirror that Kaylie believes was the cause of a few dozen grisly murders over the past 300 years. The film, which is artfully crafted and loaded with jolts, is comparatively free of gore and guts, but puts the children in peril trope through its paces. I'm not a fan of parents beating up on tots (be they mouthy or not) so this picture was tough going for me. Recommended but with those reservations.

Captain America 2: The Winter Solider

The Russo Brothers' Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier is an exhilarating feature that is witty without being glib and thrilling without being mindless. Chris Evans, who stars as the cryogenically preserved WWII hero Steve Rogers aka Captain America, knows how to deliver patriotic indignation and fill an Under Armour T-shirt, which is not a diss because this latest edition in the Marvel comics cinematic catalog is all about talking a big game about truth, justice and the American way (with apologies to D.C. Comics) and having the muscle to back it up. In this edition, Cap has to defend S.H.I.E.L.D., the agency responsible for transforming him from a 94-pound weakling into the specimen of masculine pulchritude that he is, and the world from the evil insurgent group Hydra and its own, unstoppable fighting machine, the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) of the title. Cap is joined in this exuberant undertaking by Samuel L. Jackson as  S.H.I.E.L.D.'s head honcho Nick Fury, Scarlett Johannson as the winsome and pistol-packing Black Widow and Anthony McKie as the metal-winged Falcon. It's all great fun, action packed, reliably bloodless and features a pretty gnarly performance by Robert Redford as the milk-drinking Alexander Pierce, Fury's friend, mentor and boss, with a big secret.

Lone Survivor

It took me quite a while to see Peter Berg's latest feature Lone Survivor because his meaty and masculine films (among them Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom) strike me as a smidge too earnest. True to form, Lone Survivor is brimming with decency and honor and a bloody intensity that has become de rigueur for contemporary war movies, that is, "support our troops" while damning greed and hubris. Mark Wahlberg heads a quartet of handsomely rugged (ruggedly handsome) actors (Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster [the best actor among them] and Emile Hirsch) who play real life Navy Seals on a mission in Afghanistan to take out a particularly loathsome Taliban chief. The mission is compromised, however, when they capture an elderly goatherder and two boys, one of whom would clearly reveal the team's location if released. The squad's leader Murphy (played with stolid brio by Kitsch) decides to do the decent thing and that, of course, seals their fate. (The title of the movie and book from which the screenplay was adapted is a spoiler.) Neither Berg nor Wahlberg would have signed onto a film that did not, in the end, be uplifting and life-affirming, despite its grim bloodiness. That's just how they roll.

The Wind Rises and Kill Your Darlings

Two quick hits from today -- The Wind Rises and Kill Your Darlings.

I'm not a fan of Hayao Miyazaki's animated features (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away) even though I admire the intricacy of his storylines and the richness of his color palette. However, my admiration has difficulty turning into affection for some reason. His latest film, The Wind Rises, may be his most ambitious work so far as it recounts the life of Japanese aeronautic engineer Jiro Horikoshi, who designed the Zeroes that bombed China and Hawaii in World War II. Far from a jingoistic defense of Japanese nationalism, The Wind Rises, which pulls in history and politics and science, is absolutely beautiful, occasionally poignant and a tribute to traditional painted-cel animation. Horikoshi is expertly voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt; James Krasinski plays his friend and fellow airplane designer Honjo; and Emily Blunt is the voice of Horikoshi's tubercular sweetheart and later wife, Nahoko. Warning: Though this is an animated feature it is glacially paced and fairly grim so leave the young ones home.

John Krokidas's Kill Your Darlings is an intriguing though oddly coy film about Allen Ginsberg's infatuation with a conflicted fellow Columbia University student, Lucien Carr, who fancies himself a muse but is actually a stifling narcissist. Carr (Dane DeHaan) seduces Daniel Radcliffe's closeted Ginsberg so that Carr can pull away from an older, clinging lover, David Kammerer (a terrific Michael C. Hall), a former professor who, pathetically, writes Carr's papers and supplies him with drugs and alcohol. In re-telling the story of Ginsberg's toxic friendship with Carr, Krokidas describes the origins of the Beats and rounds out his cast of principal players with Jack Huston as Jack Kerouac and the redoubtable Ben Foster as William Burroughs. Though Burroughs describes this quintet as libertines, the film is surprisingly lacking in sexual heat.

Pat Metheny and Unity Group

Pat Metheny told the audience at the Knight Theater in Charlotte last night that he's been performing live for 40 years. FORTY YEARS. What's it with jazz musicians and their longevity? (That is, when they're not riding horse or hooch?) Metheny, 59, has toured the world dozens of times over the decades and he has lost none of his dexterity -- at least to my ear. He and the Unity Group (reed man Chris Potter, bassist Ben Williams, drummer Antonio Sanchez and keyboardist Giulio Carmassi) performed selections from the ensemble's first disc, Unity Band, to open the evening -- and explosively, at that. Metheny, whose work cuts across generations and genres, is a most generous band leader, despite his virtuosity. He does not exploit the spotlight but uses it for the purpose it was created -- to showcase excellence. Highpoints of the evening were his duets with band members; his riffing with Potter throughout the evening pulled SO's from the audience several times. Some might find Metheny's more experimental forays into freer-jazz off-putting, but I appreciate the expansiveness of his vision, which was on full display last night as the Group performed suites from the new disc, KIN: propulsive soundscapes and ethereal atmospherics. In most cases, the whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts but in the case of Unity Group, each individual player's precision in signature and improvisation is so phenomenal that they can actually play along with ghost instruments (marimbas, high hats, accordions and vocals) without falling out of phase. Sheer brilliance!

Inside Llewyn Davis

The Coen Brothers' inside Llewyn Davis is a curious picture, a film of unspectacular events in the life of a pretty reprehensible man, Mr. Davis of the title (Oscar Isaac), a struggling Greenwich Village folkie in the early '60s who is having a bad week. Though talented, the bleakness of Davis's outlook (and thus his songs) is off-putting but that would be tolerable if he were committed to loftier causes or cared about other people. As played by Isaac (who is terrific), Davis is a self-involved prick who, it seems, dares people to reject him -- which they do. The girlfriend (Carrie Mulligan) of his former folkie partner (Justin Timberlake) despises him because he seduced and quite possibly impregnated her. His response to her not altogether persuasive harangue is "It takes two to tango." But he tries to do the right thing for the wrong reasons and thus continues his descent. Inside Llewyn Davis is beautifully filmed; the smoky cafe scenes are especially evocative but it's not uplifting (has any Coen film been?) and despite featuring fine performances and great tunes might leave you irritated and exhausted like the characters on the screen. Recommended.

Her

Spike Jonze's Her is an interesting cinematic conceit about our dual fixation with detachment and intimacy. For his fourth major feature film, Jonze has crafted the quasi-futuristic tale of a divorcing ghost writer named Theodore Twombley (Joaquin Phoenix), who pens and sends fulsome love letters for the tongue-tied. He's a masterful wordsmith regarding other people's ardor but has difficulty managing his own. Theodore's brilliant though self-flagellating wife, Catherine, (Rooney Mara) has left him confused and introspective, a common characteristic of the people in Jonze's highly cerebral films (Being John Malkovitch and Adaptation.). When he purchases a new sentient operating system to organize his home and his life, Theordore meets the system's spectral personality, Samantha (the voice of Scarlett Johansson), who beguiles lonely Theodore and is beguiled by him. Their romance is touching and sparkling with newness but, as one might expect, not without complications. The world Jonze has created in this film is lousy with folks in high-wasted, belt-less trousers sporting earbuds that are connected to OS's that weed their email, joke with them and line up dates for them. Brave New World? So, Theodore's "relationship" with Samantha doesn't raise an eyebrow and for some -- neighbor Amy (Amy Adams) -- is envied. As with Jonze's other major pictures (he's also directed short films and music videos), I found Her intriguing and intellectually stimulating but not especially warm and affecting. Recommended.

Nebraska

Alexander Payne directed Laura Dern in 1996's Citizen Ruth, a wonderful movie about a not wholly sympathetic unwed mother, and her father, Bruce Dern, as a wandering fool in his latest  film, Nebraska. Both movies are studies of distressed people, brimming with imperfections, who seem to be both indifferent to and craving compassion from others. This actually might be true for all of Payne's beautifully crafted and highly personal films -- Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, The Descendants. Nebraska, shot in stunning black and white,  begins in media res with Bruce Dern's codger character Woodrow Grant walking down the shoulder of a Montana highway on the way to Nebraska to pick up his million dollar sweepstake winnings. It's not immediately clear if Woody is eccentric or senile and, much to the film's credit, the question is never really answered because it doesn't matter. What is clear, however, is Woody is determined and miserable, having arrived in his twilight years with little to show for his life -- except two estranged and alienated sons, David (Will Forte) and Ross (Bob Odendirk) and a weary and intemperate wife, Kate (an absolutely marvelous June Squibb).  Son Will agrees to drive his father to Nebraska even though he knows the sweepstake is bogus. He wants to try to connect with his old man before it's too late, but Woody is having none ofi it. The road trip, which includes breathtaking vistas of the prairies, includes a stop in Woody's hometown, the fictitious Hawthorne, Nebraska, where relatives and town locals believe their native son has indeed struck it rich. The film is both gentle and trenchant, with lovely golden threads of nuance woven through. Dern, who is 77, is terrific, and Forte, who for all intents and purposes is a television actor, brings just the right mix of youthful irritation and filial protectiveness to his part. Highly recommended.

The Wolf of Wall Street

The latest Martin Scorsese / Leonardo DiCaprio project, The Wolf of Wall Street, is a whirling howl of a movie about insider trading and money laundering during the lustful Clinton era. DiCaprio, whose highly profitable association with directorial giant Scorsese dates back to 2002's Gangs of New York, plays real-life Wall Street bad boy Jordan Belfort, whose biography is the source material for Terence Winter's screenplay. Belfort -- addicted to coke, coitus and cash -- starts a small investment firm in the early '90s that scams its clients but enriches the brokers -- a principle laid out in a marvelous scene between DiCaprio and Matthew McConaughey early in the film. In short time, the modest firm of a half-dozen serial losers turns into a trading behemoth that is run like a Tony Robbins seminar. The boiler room banter crackles and the profanity and vulgarity are non-stop but there's a heart (although a fairly small one) beating underneath all of the cheating and double-crossing. Scorsese, who is a peerless master of unconventional storytelling, stages a half-dozen  outlandish set pieces that allow the cast to wallow in the narrative excesses of this delightful bacchanal. DiCaprio's work during the quaalude overdose scene reminded me of the physical comedy of a young Jerry Lewis, who was at the top of the screwball comedy heap during the '60s. Jonah Hill -- who stars as Belfort's second in command, the pearly-toothed Donnie Azoff -- is a wonderfully intuitive actor with Swiss-made comedic timing. His performance in Wolf is a true joy. Highly recommended.

American Hustle

Characters in David O. Russell's films approach one another at odd angles, sometimes glancing off, sometimes colliding. This angularity is depicted not just in his movies' unusual narratives (from Spanking the Monkey's tale of incest and self-loathing to Silver Lining Playbook's unflinching depiction of the chaotic courtship of two emotional disasters) but also in the way the characters talk to one another and, indirectly, to us, the audience. It often feels like Russell's people are mining for a just-so aphorism or bon mot that will settle the matter at hand -- whatever that matter might be. The results of this scramble are nearly always delightful and more often than not revealing. In American Hustle, the matter is a con (based on the Abscam sting of the late '70s) being staged by an unhinged federal agent (Bradley Cooper) who extorts the cooperation of two grifters, Irving Rosenfeld and Sydney Prosser (a paunchy Christian Bale and barely clad Amy Adams), to try to bring down some greedy New Jersey congressmen. Also caught up in the caper is the mayor of Camden, New Jersey, Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner) and Rosenfeld's cluelessly narcissistic wife Rosalyn ("It Girl" Jennifer Lawrence). The actors spin around each other like skaters on ice, teasing and enticing and terrorizing, sometimes as part of the con and sometimes simply because they know of no other way to behave. All of the principals and featured players are wonderful in their roles, which occasionally are upstaged by the disco-era coifs and bling. Highly Recommended.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Peter Jackson's winning formula of eye-popping visuals and affecting characters is on full display in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, but more is not necessarily better. Though episode 2 of his latest trilogy includes some marvelously uncanny set pieces of derring-do (the dwarves' barrel escape alone is a stunning bit of film-making) and a winged menace voiced by uber-villain Benedict Cumberbatch (the dragon Smaug of the title), it still pales in comparison to his masterwork, The Lord of the Rings. Unlike the earlier triology, which also starred Ian McKellan as the wizard Gandalf, this picture, which is brimming with Jacksonian splendor, feels attenuated, relying more and more on spectacle and less and less on narrative and dramatic tension. Even so, it is so much fun and is highly recommended.

Dallas Buyers Club

Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallee's Dallas Buyers Club features two wonderfully transformative performances by Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto but a script, though based on true events, that is plagued by emotional hollowness. McConaughey, bowlegged and skeletal, plays Ron Woodroof, a Dallas electrician and rodeo bull-rider, who was diagnosed with HIV back in 1985 and given 30 days to live. He rejects the diagnosis, defiantly declaring he's not homosexual and so can't possibly have HIV and rejects an offer to take part in trials for an experimental drug, AZT. An inveterate horn dog, Woodroof changes his mind as his mind as his body, and libido, succumbs to the ravages of the disease. While in the hospital for treatment he meets Rayon / Raymond, a cross-dressing hustler who becomes Woodroof's partner in a scheme to smuggle vitamins and mineral supplements into the country and sell them to HIV patients. Abandoned by his rodeo friends and hounded by the FDA, Woodroof finds himself fighting both his disease and the system. McConaughey and Leto deliver fine performances that are more than stunts but still lack the resonance needed to fully connect with the audience. Vallee spends little time exploring the nature of Woodroof's transformation from ignorant, racist homophobe and a scene between Rayon and his disapproving father, who oddly looks younger than Rayon, is painfully off-key. Vallee lets the viewer assume that Woodroof's proximity to the mouthy but clearly self-loathing Rayon was enough to break through Woodroof's tough exterior. I, for one, wasn't buying it.

Out of the Furnace

Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) has a message in his new film Out of the Furnace that is neither cathartic nor revelatory. It's just distressing. The film, co-written by Cooper and Brad Ingelsby, is the story of two brothers (Christian Bale and Casey Affleck) in a hard-luck Pennsylvania town where hope is stillborn. Affleck's Rodney is an emotionally war-torn veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Bale's Russell is the dutiful son who toils in the town's failing steel mill, while loving up on the lovely Lena (Zoe Saldana) and caring for his dying father with his uncle Red (Sam Shepherd) and trying, without much success, to keep his younger brother out of trouble. Rodney, a raging bull of a guy, channels his anger through the local fist-fighting circuit run by a bar owner (Willem Defoe) but Rodney wants to make bigger money and has heard that the action in the New Jersey mountains run by a psychopath named DeGroat (Woody Harrelson) is the way to go. A horrible idea not just because the bloody outcome is inevitable but because it forces the viewer to check any further emotional investment in these miserable people. The acting throughout is fine and the muted autumnal palette is beautiful and fitting, but the pay-off, much like the one young Rodney chases, is elusive. Also stars Forest Whittaker as the local police chief.