Is The Canyons worth a review? Probably not.

But here’s one anyway.

The Canyons never exactly got a fair shake as a film, though it’s debatable that it ever deserved one. There’s a certain level of pedigree that might otherwise have made it eagerly anticipated — it was written by Bret Easton Ellis, author of one of the seminal works about Los Angeles (Less Than Zero), and directed by Paul Schrader, writer of a couple of seminal films about New York City (Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, most notably). These two joining forces might have seem a promising onslaught of existential nihilism, characters behaving badly, ruinous success, and whathaveyou. Perhaps their sensibilities are a little too similar. But whatever the problem, any expectations for greatness — or even okayness — went out the window when Schrader cast Lindsay Lohan opposite a porn star.

So much could be said about Lindsay Lohan to preface this review, but why bother? Everyone already knows it. A searing article about her erratic behavior on set (when she bothered to show up) ran in The New York Times several months ago, also highlighting The Canyons‘ micro-budget and semi-guerilla shoot, which seemed somewhat surprising for the level of talent involved behind the camera (while in front of it are a bunch of unknowns, a porn star, and an actress who has fallen so far that she’s almost totally uninsurable). Like last year’s Liz & Dick, The Canyons was released to us as a film that could never possibly be good, but one we’d watch to see just how bad it was. Poor Lindsay — she never had a chance with this one.

The Canyons centers around a couple named Tara and Christian. They engage in three- and four-ways and are also secretly cheating on each other, which you might think wouldn’t be such a big deal in such an open relationship, but oh is it ever. Christian produces movies that we never learn much about, and Tara sort of helps, or something. She’s also carrying on a long, hush-hush affair with the intended star of Christian’s next movie, a (supposedly) strapped for cash actor named Ryan, who is dating a woman named Gina who is also somehow involved in Christian’s movie. Meanwhile, Christian sneaks off to have sex with a woman named Cynthia who apparently never leaves her home in Los Feliz. All these people kind of know each other. Got it? No? Well, that’s fine.

Billed as an “erotic thriller,” The Canyons is occasionally erotic and almost never thrilling. (It is no coincidence that nearly every still from this film is of one or more characters sitting around looking bored.) It’s impossible to care about any of these relationships, considering everyone is sleeping with each other, and nobody really has any motivation. To do anything. At all. How worried are we supposed to be that Christian will find out about Tara and Ryan? If Christian were a more menacing, American Psycho-type character (another Bret Easton Ellis work), there might be some actual suspense, but the characters are just completely inert — as is the story.

There are no stakes. There is nothing to care about. We can guess that The Canyons is meant to be a critique of the young, rich, and superficial of Los Angeles, as several of Ellis’ works are, but in order to pull that off, The Canyons would need to be less superficial itself. It isn’t by any means a smart satire, and doesn’t do anything even remotely new. It’s trashy, but barely — in such predictable ways. A four-way sex scene between Christian, Tara, and a random couple briefly livens things up, but otherwise the sex is pretty conventional. But guys — if you’re shooting a lurid movie with no-name actors on a shoestring budget, why not push it all the way and have some sex that’s actually provocative and envelope-pushing?

Thanks to Schrader actually making some effort, The Canyons has a bit of style — no substance, though, thanks to Mr. Ellis. There are a few weird directorial touches, particularly in an awkwardly-shot opening scene that can perhaps be attributed to production problems. But the key to the movie’s undoing is clearly its screenplay, which has nothing but disdain for Hollywood, filmmaking, and apparently human beings in general. This is not surprising from Bret Easton Ellis, who has basically always written stories about lifeless people — they were largely boring stories told in interesting ways. But perhaps he’s been a one-trick pony for too long. This movie has been cast with the very types of people Ellis would write about — a washed-up actress in and out of rehab, a porn star who made tabloid headlines for fake-dating a Teen Mom has-been, and the daughter of a famous songwriter whose brother was just convicted of murdering his girlfriend. But if Bret Easton Ellis hates all these people so much, why doesn’t he just stop writing about them already?

The onus of attention for this film is focused on Lindsay Lohan, and while her performance isn’t exactly good, it’s about as good as anyone else in the movie, and about as good as you could hope for with such a flat script. No one fares well at all here, because very few scenes feel like necessary parts of this would-be story. Bret Easton Ellis stories famously translate poorly to the big screen, because their very nature is anti-cinematic. They’re about a lot of action leading nowhere, lacking change and movement. Moreso than any Seinfeld episode, they’re about nothing. There’s a coat of ickiness surrounding The Canyons because almost no one involved in it actually seems to be trying to make a good movie, or even capable of making one anymore. They don’t care. The production of The Canyons is more of a Bret Easton Ellis story than the film itself, and quite a depressing one. Ellis and Schrader make a rookie mistake of having the only interesting developments happen at the very end, when that would have made a much better jumping-off point — why not follow these people around after we already know one of them’s a killer? Why not…

Oh, never mind. I’m starting to care more about the story of this movie than any of the people who made it ever did, and I shouldn’t waste my time. I have my own stories to write. Better ones. Ones that will, hopefully, star actors who actually want to be in them. Actors who show up on set and actually want to work. And crew with some hope that what they’re making may actually turn out to be fulfilling. Maybe that’s too optimistic for the Hollywood Bret Easton Ellis writes about — the land of snoozy nightmares depicted in The Canyons — but not all of us out here are the walking dead. It just looks that way in bad movies like this one.

*

General audiences tend to hear about the year’s best indies in fall or winter, if they hear of them at all. These films’ releases aren’t quite as calculated as the major Oscar contenders, which tend to open in November or December, sometimes a few weeks earlier. Indies can roll out in the less cluttered summer months, where they don’t have to compete with studio prestige dramas; they serve as counter-programming to the mindless superhero fare that’s distracting the rest of the moviegoing public. If they’re lucky, these movies gain traction with lengthy releases in arthouse theaters, maybe adding screens as the weeks roll on, and may even get some love come Oscar time — think Winter’s Bone or Beasts Of The Southern Wild.

But for those who keep up, these movies are on the radar several months prior to the moment when the general public can see them, thanks to film festivals. Two of this year’s most promising indie titles are gaining steam now but have been praised for months now thanks to auspicious debuts at fests earlier this year. Fruitvale Station is probably the most serious Oscar contender to see a release thus far in 2013, as foretold by its buzz at Sundance, while Short Term 12 is less likely to go for the gold — but no less worthy — after a splashy premiere at South By Southwest. Both films took home both the Jury Prize and the Audience Award at their respective fests, meaning they hit the sweet spot across the board with critics and audiences alike. It’s a good sign that both have miles to go yet, in terms of wider audiences discovering them.

I know it’s still summer, and there are a lot of noisy, bright, metallic, indestructible objects clanging in your face trying to rip that $13 out of your pocket, but keep an eye on these quieter titles, too. Because they’re worth your attention.

Fruitvale Station begins with some real-life footage shot on a cell phone. It’s hard to watch. But in case you somehow walked into it without knowing what kind of story you’re in for, it becomes clear right away that there’s no happy ending here. On December 31, 2008, Oscar Grant went about his day — taking his daughter to and from school, picking up fish for his mom’s birthday party, hooking a buddy up with some weed, and heading out for a night on the town to celebrate the coming of a New Year that he’d only barely see. Most of what is depicted in Fruitvale Station is quite ordinary indeed, to the extent that the film might be interminably boring if it weren’t for the sense of dread that extends through its brief running time. It’s a well-made movie, but would Oscar’s actions on that last day of his life be compelling if not for the poignancy that we’re seeing him do it all for the very last time?

As portrayed by Michael B. Jordan in Ryan Coogler’s film, Oscar Grant is no saint. He loses his job after being late to work one too many times, he’s a bit hot-headed, he has cheated on his girlfriend, and he’s considering getting back into selling weed in order to make ends meet. In particular, a flashback to his stint in prison shows that he has the ability to lose his temper in a big way. Still, it’s clear that Oscar Grant has good intentions. He loves his friends and family. He’s doing his best to stay out of trouble. He’s a good father. He probably represents more people out there in the world than not, and he certainly isn’t someone that the streets of Oakland are safer without. But he’s black and wears baggy clothing, so the police don’t necessarily see it that way.

Fruitvale Station is a harrowing film to sit through, more harrowing even than other films about arguably more troubling situations. I’ve watched films like Schindler’s List and United 93 depicting unimaginably horrifying scenarios, things you can scarcely imagine experiencing. While these films strike a powerful and troubling emotional chord, the real-life shooting of Oscar Grant by a police officer is disturbing in a different way because, in this day and age, it’s actually not that hard to imagine something like this happening to you — particularly if you’re a young black male, but even if you’re not. It’s easy to imagine a police officer or two abusing their power and shooting just about anybody “by mistake,” even if Fruitvale Station makes a larger point about the limited prospects for a certain class of African-American males. The echoes of Trayvon Martin are inevitable, but that doesn’t mean this story is timely, because it has repeated itself over and over for decades.

Despite the politically-charged subject matter, however, Fruitvale Station is far from an angry movie, or even an incendiary one. It is content to present the facts of Oscar’s final day at face value and let the tragedy speak for itself. There’s a cloud of doom hanging over the film, but watching it is not a particularly dour experience, even if it is unnerving. Oscar is an engaging character, and though he meets an unfair and unnecessary end, the point of the movie seems to be less about inciting a debate over the details of his death and more about celebrating his life — what little time we get to spend with him. A different approach to this story might also have given us some time with the cop (played, curiously, by Chad Michael Murray) who ends up killing Oscar. This cop allegedly mistook his gun for his taser, which landed him in prison. While that might be an interesting angle to explore, Fruitvale Station is probably wise to keep its scope as small as possible. It’s about one man’s life, so it’s seen through one man’s eyes.

Perhaps most impressive of all, there’s genuine love found in Oscar’s relationships in this movie — particularly with the three primary females in his life: his proud mother (Octavia Spencer), not afraid to play the tough love card when need be; his girlfriend Sophina (Melonie Diaz), who gives him shit for his poor choices but loves him anyway; and his cutie of a daughter, who we know will spend most of her life without a father. All of these relationships feel lived-in, particularly Oscar and Sophina’s; very little in Fruitvale Station feels staged or calculated, which is rare for a film dealing with the death of a real-life individual. Fruitvale Station is emotionally wrenching, particularly in its final scenes depicting the suspense and then grief surrounding Oscar’s fate. But ultimately, somehow, what lingers is a halo of positivity — Oscar Grant’s death was sad and meaningless, but his life wasn’t. The tender relationships he had with his friends and family outweigh the stupid moment of violence that ended them. It’s similar to the way we remember a loved one of our own.

Overall, Fruitvale Station is a remarkable feature debut from Oakland-born 27-year-old USC alum Ryan Coogler, winning both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at Sundance this year. (Oscar Grant may not be the only “Oscar” associated with this film come February, if you catch my drift.) There are one or two moments that feel self-conscious, such as when Oscar’s mother suggests he take a BART train out to San Francisco because it’s safer — and later breaks down over the suggestion that inadvertently cut her son’s life short. But by and large, Fruitvale Station is absent any contrivances. It’s impressive mainly for just how unambitious it is, choosing to tell a small, day-long story within one that could have been much larger and messier. Many young filmmakers bite off more than they can chew in a debut, but Coogler gets it just right.

Much of the same praise can be heaped onto Short Term 12, a feature from another young filmmaker, Destin Daniel Cretton. While not exactly a true story, it is based on the filmmaker’s real-life experience working with at-risk teenagers, and every character in it rings true in every scene.

The protagonist is Grace (Brie Larson), a young woman who at first seems positively heroic in the way she interacts with her many-faceted charges, each of whom is fucked up in a unique way, each of whom needs a very particular kind of special attention. There’s the oft-shirtless boy who frequently makes a dash for it and tries to escape the facility, but otherwise spends all his time sulking in bed; the moody 17-year-old who is about to age out of the program and is acting out to cover his gnawing fears of facing the world as an angry black man on his own; and the newest, a cutter named Jayden who declares that she doesn’t like short-term relationships and thus intends to not make any friends in her brief stay here.

As with almost any material dealing with troubled teenagers, Short Term 12 could be horribly maudlin if handled the wrong way. It’s hard to avoid the standard cliches — on paper, the teen characters sound pretty trite and typical. But as portrayed in the film by a uniformly talented cast, each of them has enough shading and complexity to get us wholly wrapped up in their individual storylines. We recognize what a rough hand they’ve been dealt and wonder if anyone of them will be able to escape and transcend it. (It’s reminiscent of Oscar Grant’s limited options in Fruitvale Station.) Cretton cares deeply about these characters; thus, so do we.

But what makes Short Term 12 a shade more interesting is the focus it places on the staff, who, under a layer of competence and professionalism at their jobs, are just as broken as the foster kids. Grace is still struggling with her past as she learns that she’s pregnant, which may determine whether or not she keeps the baby; her devoted boyfriend Mason, who works alongside her, was raised by loving foster parents, without whom he would’ve turned out entirely differently. It takes a special kind of person to work with and understand the difficult teen personalities found at Short Term 12; Grace and Mason are excellent at their jobs, yet Grace may not have matured past her own childhood traumas enough to keep a cool head on one particularly taxing day at the office. Ultimately, she’s just as much “at risk” as the kids she’s meant to be taking care of.

Short Term 12 is well-written, well-acted, and well-directed across the board. It’s a small movie and feels like one, but it hits some big emotions along the way. There are a handful of standout scenes that cut to the core of these characters, whether its Marcus rapping about his mother beating him or Jayden telling a story about a shark befriending an octopus with shocking insinuations. Again, this all sounds kinda sappy on paper, but it works like dynamite in the film because you’ve come to care about these kids. They’re not just “types” from the Fucked Up Teen Character Handbook as in so many movies. Like Grace, Short Term 12 knows that each one of these cases is unique.

Toward the third act, Grace’s unraveling may accelerate a bit too quickly to be fully believed, and perhaps the parallels between her character and Jayden end up being a tad too convenient as they rumble down the road toward recovery. These are minor blips in an otherwise open and honest movie, one that, like Fruitvale Station, doesn’t have an ounce of cynicism to be found in it. Both films deal with difficult subject matter in ways that is ultimately life-affirming; not in a treacly bullshit way, but in a way that acknowledges the darkness while still leaning toward the light. They’re two of the year’s best movies thus far.

*

Ah, porn. The redheaded stepchild of cinema proper. Hollywood has a fascination with the stuff, even if not a whole lot of movies explore the industry in depth. The most famous is, of course, Boogie Nights, the gold standard to which all films about the adult entertainment industry will now be held up. The latest such film, Lovelace, has plenty in common with Paul Thomas Anderson’s breakout masterpiece — a 70s setting, a tone that veers between comedy and sinister drama, an opening act where the antagonist is a very disapproving mother, and an overall pessimistic attitude about the industry’s effect on its performers.

Movies about porn always have to dance around the most explicit bits, at one point usually obscuring an act that we’d get a full-on closeup of in an actual adult film. I think filmmakers like the challenge of skating right up to that line. Plenty of stars were obviously fascinated enough by the subject matter to appear in Lovelace, for almost any speaking part — no matter how big or small — is played by a recognizable star. Not many of them are playing porn stars, but still — there’s something about this forbidden medium, the one a legitimate actor couldn’t possibly be associated with without becoming a has-been and a punchline, that tempts them to do the next best thing: become an “about-porn star.”

If you asked most people who Linda Lovelace was, they’d say, “She’s a porn a star.” If you asked Linda Lovelace, she’d probably say she’s a wife, mother, and activist for women’s rights. Lovelace bridges that gap quite nicely. It tells the story of a bashful girl growing up in a very conservative household, raised by parents played by Sharon Stone and Robert Patrick. That’s right — the ice pick killer from Basic Instinct and the T-1000 have settled down together and become good middle-class Christians in Florida, proof enough that age takes the verve out of us all. Linda is played by Amanda Seyfried in a performance that perfectly mixes naughty and nice, making up for her string of bombs lately (Gone, Red Riding Hood, In Time, The Big Wedding… and her shrill trilling in a barely-there performance in Les Miserables). At first she won’t smoke “grass” and has trouble performing her go-go duties at a roller rink, but eventually she finds her confidence. (It seems.)

Linda Lovelace became a household name in 1972 by starring in Deep Throat, an immensely popular porno that had her performing the titular act that no longer needs any introduction. What fewer people know about is how it was all engineered and controlled by her abusive husband Chuck (Peter Sarsgaard), and how she never had any inclination of her own to do porn in the first place. Lovelace is less a down-and-dirty peek behind the curtain of 70s dirty movies and more the story of a woman trying to wrest herself from the clutches of a very bad man, like a What’s Love Got To Do With It in which the heroine’s oral talents are quite different. The period details are just right and the script has an interesting structure, first presenting the story as it was seen by the outside world and then revealing what was going on behind the scenes between Chuck and Linda. It’s not a revelatory film, but it’s a good true story nicely told, with a lot of skilled actors in minor roles. (It’s kinda worth it just to see Sharon Stone playing a dowdy mom.)

Porn plays a role in another release from earlier this year, though a more indirect one. The film was marketed on the image of former teen stars popping out of their bikinis, and all of spring break is sold on the pornographic promise of girls gone wild. And in that respect, Spring Breakers certainly delivers. Spring Breakers is a uniquely terrible movie, which is to say, it is terrible in a different way than any other film I’ve seen has been terrible before. It is one of the most repetitive films I’ve ever seen, with actual lines of dialogue being repeated time and time again — not to mean a different thing each time, but the same way every time. There are also scenes in which the same idea is repeated five or ten times through different lines of dialogue. Various spring break clips recur throughout the movie, sometimes with enhanced effects, but basically with the same purpose. Everything in it is thuddingly obvious — in fact, you could watch the opening five minutes depicting a booze–and-nudity-drenched beach party and shut it off, and come away with exactly the same message.

Harmony Korine isn’t exactly known for making the most accessible fare, and Spring Breakers is his highest-profile release. (He’s still best known as the writer of Kids, but he’s since directed some that are only digestible to a certain palette.) Spring Breakers is notable for being that movie where a bunch of former Disney teens “go wild,” and that they do. There’s booze, drugs, girl-on-girl action, and even armed robbery. Unfortunately, the girls are mostly indistinguishable from each other, except for the one that’s brunette and Selena Gomez. She’s the religious character, and guess what her name is? Yes, Faith. (Did I mention that this movie wasn’t subtle?) Those played by Ashley Benson, Vanessa Hudgens, and Rachel Korine aren’t really characters at all, but more like a three-headed beast from Greek mythology (with about as much depth and backstory). It’s a curious choice to make the religious girl so very different from the others, and then pay absolutely no attention to any distinguishing traits of the others. Then again, pretty much everything about Spring Breakers falls under the umbrella of “a curious choice.”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with an in-your-face party movie about girls gone wild, especially one that is ultimately condemning the whole experience. The spring break parties are so over-the-top that they don’t look like fun in the slightest, even if everyone in them is having the time of their lives. (In case it wasn’t visually clear, they verbalize how much they “love it here” about 600 times.) The flowing booze and countless jiggling breasts in our face soon take on a numbing effect, so that what initially seems outrageous becomes mundane within minutes. Even Joe Francis’ eyes might glaze over during this one.

Whole sections of this film could easily be mistaken for a Girls Gone Wild video, but it’s when our heroines start talking that the shallow ideas driving the film become even more in-your-face than those bouncing tits. It’s pretty hard to be less subtle than a bikini-less drunk girl on spring break, but Korine’s dialogue manages to do it. A lot of it sounds improvised — but that’s a problem when you’re dealing with actors who have only ever read lines from Disney sitcoms and High School Musical. I swear, if you played a drinking game in which you took a shot every time a line of dialogue was repeated verbatim, you’d be dead by the end of the movie.

It’s too bad, because stylistically, the film has some panache. There are a lot of monologues delivered in voiceover with hypnotic tropical imagery underneath — like a Girls Gone Wild directed by Terrence Malick (and scored by Skrillex). The very image of college girls in bikinis and ski masks, wielding guns, is arresting, and the fluorescent lighting and moody score are striking. Certainly this subject matter is rife for some kind of cinematic exploration. It’s nice that Korine at least tried to make a serious movie about it, and it’s hard to knock a movie that features not one but two ironic Britney Spears sing-alongs (to “Baby One More Time” and, more confoundingly, “Everytime.”) James Franco’s performance as Alien is also something to behold — not exactly good, but far more suitable than anything he did in Oz The Great And Powerful. My guess is those silver-capped teeth were custom-made to chew the scenery.

But Spring Breakers takes forever to really get going, and when it does, it ends up going nowhere. The end is ludicrous in a way that must be intentional,but why? Ironic calls home to mom and grandma sell spring break as a place of lifelong friends and spiritual reawakening, but who the hell thinks about spring break like that? It feels Harmony Korine is reaching to satirize something that doesn’t exist in the first place. Spring Breakers is maybe a takedown of current youth culture, the video game-like disassociation “kids these days” have with violence and the consequences of their actions. It’s maybe a critique of anyone who ever watched MTV’s spring break coverage and thought that looked like fun. Maybe it’s a dig at America itself. Regardless, like any good vacation that goes on too long, by the end all I wanted was it for to end so I could go home. Alien’s recurring mantra “Spring break forever!” begins to sound like a serious threat after a while.

There’s another recent film worth mentioning in which porn plays a significant role, though that ends up being something of a surprise. Starlet is the story of an aimless young woman in Los Angeles who, for a long stretch of the film, apparently has no job. Jane lives with Melissa and Mikey and her little dog Starlet, though the film isn’t about the dog the way most movies named after pooches are. The film actually follows the problematic friendship between Jane and Sadie, an elderly woman she meets at a yard sale. Why problematic? Well, Jane bought a Thermos from Sadie and then discovered a whole bunch of cash stuffed inside. She doesn’t attempt to return the money, instead using it to shop and pay her rent, but guilt does gnaw at her so that she practically stalks Sadie until the old woman relents into an uneasy friendship with her.

It is eventually revealed that Jane works in porn, as do Melissa and Mikey. A porn star befriending an old lady sounds like the logline for some odd, raunchy buddy comedy where tender life lessons are learned along the way, but that’s thankfully not the movie Starlet is. Not even close. Director and co-writer Sean Baker avoids such easy story beats in favor of a story that takes its time and unfolds at its own pace, and never forgets that Jane and Sadie are characters from different worlds who will stay that way regardless of what occurs between them.

There’s a pornographic scene that is surprisingly explicit, which would have earned the film an easy NC-17 had it been rated. Starlet has a frank approach toward the adult film industry without the operatic stylings of something like Boogie Nights (or Lovelace). There’s no judgment placed on Jane; she seemingly has no qualms about what she does, and doesn’t seem emotionally damaged in any way we can tell.  (Though she is aimless and lonely.) The Melissa character is the more extreme version of the kind of girl you might expect to find in middle-of-the-road porn, and her explosive breakdown is one of the film’s comic highlights. The filmmakers did extensive research on the adult industry in preparation, and that shows. Its depiction of porn seems as accurate as any that’s appeared in a fictionalized film before.

As fascinating as that is, Starlet really hinges on Jane’s relationship with Sadie, and it’s pretty awesome that a grumpy old lady can hold her own against the porn industry and still come out as the most alluring character on screen. Sadie is a grumpy old bitch (you know the type); she doesn’t want anyone or anything to interfere with her small little life. She resists Jane’s offer of friendship countless times, even going so far as to macing her after a game of Bingo. (Then again, Jane kind of deserves it.) Sadie is a rich and complex character, and she never ceases to be fascinating. We learn more about her in every scene. She’s played by Besedka Johnson, a non-actress who was discovered at the age of 85 and unfortunately passed away earlier this year. She left behind only one performance, but it’s a perfect one.

Late in Starlet, the plot threatens to become a little too by-the-numbers, as Jane and Sadie plan a trip to Paris just when Sadie learns some unsavory information about Jane. The film could have gone off the rails in a number of ways, with some tired confrontation scene or just a wallow in misery, but instead the film ends on an immaculate note of subtlety and grace. Starlet was released last year and recently appeared streaming on Netflix; I wish I’d seen it earlier, because it certainly would have been one of my favorite films of last year.

*

Teen movies tend to fall into different camps, just like teenagers in teen movies. The nerds, the jocks, the princesses, the outcasts — there’s a cinematic equivalent to each, which is why Can’t Hardly Wait and Superbad and Friday Night Lights and Donnie Darko and Clueless all have precious little in common.

Still, they all have their place in the teen movie pantheon, and you can clearly tell which audience each movie is “for.” But the latest teen movie is one that willfully strays away from the pack, claiming no such allegiance. You could argue that The Spectacular Now isn’t “for” anyone. It may be a little too easy-going and real for most teens (though some might appreciate its rare feat of getting teen life right). Its perspective is wise and perceptive, its ambitions small.

The Spectacular Now was heralded at this year’s Sundance as one of the films to watch, and it’s easy to see why — it tackles teen drinking in a way that has seldom (if ever) been tackled this way before.

The Spectacular Now tells the story of Sutter Keely (Miles Teller) — with a name like that you’d expect to find him on Gossip Girl rather than in an indie drama like this. He’s 18 years old, the life of the party — the problem being that the party is ending as soon as his friends go off to college. Sutter doesn’t apply himself well at school and doesn’t really think about the future, preferring to live in the “now” (which is indeed sometime spectacular for him). But his friends are already getting wise to the fact that the future holds bigger and better things in store, and already they’re pulling away from him. His ex-girlfriend Cassidy (Brie Larson) wants someone serious, which is how she ends up with a popular jock and class president instead. Perhaps that’s how he ends up focusing his attention on Aimee Finicky (Shailene Woodley), a smart but naive 17-year-old who has never had a boyfriend before.

At first, Sutter charms us like he does everyone in his life. He’s a typical teenage boy in so many ways, and he’s basically a nice guy. He has a gift for flattery that comes across as genuine, and he seems like someone you’d want to hang with. But as we discover, Sutter’s dalliances with drinking aren’t just the typical teenage partying — the guy carries a flask almost everywhere he goes and is constantly sipping from a giant cup filled with booze. Nearly everyone in Sutter’s life is wise to his tricks, but Aimee is someone who is coming to him fresh, still charmed by his antics rather than pitying him, and doesn’t seem to see his drinking as a problem. Aimee’s hoping to attend college in the fall and probably doesn’t need Sutter’s alcoholic influence; his initial attraction to her is reluctant, since she’s not the type he typically goes after. Their connection is genuine, but Sutter also has a lot of issues that Aimee isn’t picking up on, and we can’t help but feel that one way or another, she’ll end up being hurt by him. Sutter thinks so, too.

Writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber gave us (500) Days Of Summer, one of my favorite movies from 2009, a film that explicitly stated that it was not a love story. The Spectacular Now is partially a love story, but its attention is fixed much more closely on Sutter than it is on Aimee. We’ve seen plenty of movies about party guys who are aging out of their youth, but hardly any (none that I can recall) about one so young. There’s an extra layer of tragedy to the fact that Sutter’s life is seemingly over before it has really begun; he’s given up on himself at a startlingly early age. The Spectacular Now examines how the actions of his mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and particular his father (Kyle Chandler) contributed to his problem, and his more fortunate sister (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) seems to realize that Sutter is, quite likely, doomed. The children in The Spectacular Now are very much products of their environment, though they also have some key decisions to make about just how long they’ll stay in that environment.

The Spectacular Now is not exactly a riveting entertainment. It unfolds at the speed of life and has long takes with naturalistic dialogue. It sneaks up on you, but packs an emotional wallop near the very end. Our attachment to the characters may surprise us by the time it’s over. At its center are two impressive performances from Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley, both of whom come across about as genuine and honest as film characters can be. It was directed by James Ponsoldt, who tackled alcoholism in his film Smashed from last year as well, and it’s one of the least contrived teen movies I can think of. The climax is perhaps a bit rushed, with Sutter coming to a conclusion a tad too easily, and maybe we’d like to know a little more about what’s running through Aimee’s head in the latter half of the movie. (Then again, she’s a 17-year-old girl in love.) All in all, though, it’s a teen movie that ignores “types” of teenagers all together — there’s no great divide between who’s popular and who’s not. It’s not so much a teen movie as a movie about people who just so happen to be teenagers. Yet it captures young love — and all that goes with it — in an invigorating and honest way.

The “now” in The Spectacular Now isn’t all that spectacular. It’s actually pretty ordinary. And in capturing it so openly and realistically, The Spectacular Now manages to become something rather revelatory.

*

“I did it for me. I liked it.”

And so it ends.

Can I now safely say that Breaking Bad was the best TV drama there ever was? Not without watching a whole lot of other TV dramas I haven’t caught up with yet, and not without stirring up a heated debate. There are a good number of other series that would vie for that title — the closest contender being The Sopranos, probably, in terms of popularity, critical kudos, and game-changiness. Unlike that series, Breaking Bad had a modest beginning, capturing the attention of only a handful of television viewers (including myself). It took three or four years before I could say, “Breaking Bad is the best show on TV right now” without being met with a blank stare.

Over the past six years, though, it has developed into a major pop culture staple — not just a flash in the pan, I think, but one that’ll be here to stay for years to come. There are all kinds of Breaking Bad memes out there; enough merchandise you’d think Walter White’s saga was a Disney movie; and if you happened to glance at Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter last night, you probably had your fix of chatter about this finale.

Best show ever? Who knows? Who can say, yet, so definitively? There will never be a consensus. This season, though, I’d venture to say that Breaking Bad achieved a level of pop culture relevance not even enjoyed by The Sopranos — you’ll see more Breaking Bad Halloween costumes out there than you would ever see from The Sopranos. This is, in part, because the show is viewable by more people thanks to Netflix and its home on AMC rather than HBO, and also because social media has made sharing our thoughts on pop culture a much bigger “thing” than it was a decade ago.

But it’s also because Breaking Bad is, like, a really good show, you guys.

Before I go overboard with my praise and suggest Walter White’s face be added to Mt. Rushmore, let’s talk “Felina,” the series finale. (A brief Google search uncovers that “Felina” is an anagram of “Finale,” and “FeLiNa” contains the periodic symbols for iron, lithium, and sodium.) In my eyes, Breaking Bad has essentially had two series finales already — “Ozymandias,” the climactic episode in which Walt lost everything he’d been fighting for all this time, and last week’s “Granite State,” which saw everyone reaping what they sowed in a seriously bummed out state of mind.

It was a clever tactic on Vince Gilligan’s part, because this way, everyone gets the Breaking Bad finale they needed. You want nail-biting suspense and jaw-dropping moments? “Ozymandias” has that in spades! Do you prefer grim drama and nearly unbearable loneliness to punish these characters for their wicked ways? Try “Granite State”! It has gloom and doom to spare! Or maybe you’d like some Tarantino-style revenge killing with a dollop of redemptive heroism in the end? If so, then “Felina” is the finale for you.

A tweak or two and either “Ozymandias” or “Granite State” could have sent Breaking Bad out fittingly. They were both terrific episodes in very different ways. But they also would have ended the show with a somewhat sour taste in our mouths — Hank freshly killed, the (even badder) bad guys winning, Walt facing the music for his crimes without any upside whatsoever. All for naught. That’s all fair, from a narrative standpoint, but would we really be satisfied? In its final hour, Breaking Bad lets up on the misery porn and allows itself to be fun again, having punished Walt, Jesse, Skyler, and the gang enough for one lifetime. Now it’s time to punish the people who really, really deserve it.

It’s not like Skyler and Marie are suddenly doing high-kicks in sequined outfits while Flynn warbles a ditty about the most important meal of the day, but compared to the last few episodes? “Felina” is like an episode of “Glee” next to “Ozymandias.” In the series finale, the people we want to die do and those we don’t, don’t. There’s some fan service here, but just the right amount — it satisfies without feeling like a cheapo cop out, a betrayal of everything that came before. Breaking Bad is not, never has been, and never wanted to be The Wire; though it has gone to very dark, dirty, and despairing places, what separates it is the lightness it manages to find between them. The show has always found a quirky, dry sense of humor even amidst shocking squalor and depravity; you wouldn’t think it’s funny, but it is.

Breaking Bad is many things, but above all, it’s a good time. To end on a pitch black note would not exactly be wrong, but it would drastically alter the way we felt about the show after it’s over. Imagine it ending with “Ozymandias.” Now imagine it ending with “Granite State.” The entire series feels different with each of those endings, right? After seeing “Felina,” I can say that it all feels of a piece; the tone of this last episode is about the same as the tone of the first. In fact, “Felina” may be the lightest hour of Breaking Bad we’ve seen in ages — which I know is a strange thing to say about an episode in which multiple people are gunned down and the final shot is of the hero’s dead or dying body. But really! “Felina” ends on the lightest note Breaking Bad could have ended on.

That is, without Hank popping up with a wink and a “gotcha!”, a reveal that Mike, Andrea, Drew Sharp, and the rest really did just take a trip to Belize, and that aforementioned musical number about breakfast.

Following last week’s distinctly cinematic “Granite State,” “Felina” is most definitely an hour of television, wrapping up (almost) all loose threads methodically and episodically. We watch as Walt makes his way through those flash-forwards (which are now the present) and check in with significant surviving characters like Skyler, Marie, Flynn, Badger, and Skinny Pete. The (very) cold open is a clever and foreboding bit of Breaking Badness, as police come to a stop outside the snow-covered truck Walt is hiding in… and then merely drive off again. (Snow wouldn’t have been able to save his ass in New Mexico.)

It’s another depiction of Walt’s curious luck, which allows him to escape near-catastrophic predicaments but only for a matter of time, until he is placed in some even graver danger; Walter White is the poster boy for that old cliche: “Out of the frying pan and into the fire.” This time, though, it’s pretty obvious (since it’s the final episode) that we’re about to see Walter White’s last stand. Luck is on his side for only a matter of days now.

Walt gets himself a machine gun and then heads home to collect his ricin, as we’ve seen. (Carol is unfortunately a no-show this time around, however.) We get an unnecessary and somewhat awkward flashback to the pilot, which may have just been a way for Dean Norris to make an appearance — it steered dangerously close to a “clips episode” moment, something Breaking Bad should be above. (I’m rarely a fan of flashbacks to scenes we’ve already seen that exist primarily to tell us what a character is thinking.) From there, Breaking Bad is officially moving forward in time after our first flash-forward in “Live Free Or Die” more than a year ago.

Posing as a New York Times reporter, Walt finds his way to Gretchen and Elliot’s new mansion in a masterful sequence that is also quite narratively tidy. Last week’s cameo from Gretchen and Elliot was a major surprise to most Breaking Bad fans, motivating Walt’s decision not to give himself up to the police at the last minute. We knew he was returning to New Mexico with some heavy artillery (the machine gun) and some light artillery (the ricin) — would one of these be used on the Grey Matter moguls? It was somewhat unlikely, since Walt has never killed in cold blood with such premeditation; he’s not pure evil. Heisenberg going all homicidal like that would have been a bit of a shark jump.

Instead, it was likely that Gretchen and Elliot’s appearance merely motivated Walt to return to New Mexico to reclaim his legacy somehow; his ego demanded that he go out on a Heisenberg-y note rather than as a sickly old man in a remote cabin in the woods. We had no guarantee that the Schwartzes would appear in the series finale. But as it turns out, they did. And Walt’s reason for visiting them was more practical than we anticipated.

Before we learn what it is, though, Breaking Bad teases us brilliantly, demonstrating exactly why this series has been such a fascinating ride. Here we are, in the series finale, and we have no idea what the protagonist will do to these people. If he pulled out a gun and shot them point blank, we’d be surprised… but we’d believe it. Even this late in the game, Breaking Bad can tease us with whether or not the main character is a homicidal maniac, which is impressive. Walt creeping around the Schwartz house is as unsettling as anything you’ll see in a horror movie because it’s really not clear what the fuck he’s doing there; he doesn’t even have to make a threat to be completely terrifying. Apparently, by reputation, he’s achieved that. Gretchen and Elliott have the same reaction as neighbor Carol at the mere sight of him. The word has spread — Heisenberg is bad news.

And yet — this is a weak middle-aged man with just a matter of months to live. Like Gus Fring, he’s intimidating because we know what he’s capable of. And the Heisenberg name has gotten far bigger than the man, since these days Walt is suspected of far more malice than he actually intends. The reason for his visit turns out to be much more linear than imagined — at the end of “Granite State,” he tried and failed to send money to Flynn; he saw Gretchen and Elliott on TV and thought, “Hmm… I know a way I can get him the money!” But we all thought he was there for a more nefarious purpose, didn’t we?

In this sequence, Breaking Bad has its cake and eats it too. Viewers love Heisenberg as a villain. The last few episodes have been leaning toward a more redeemable, less reckless Walter White, one who refused to murder his DEA agent brother-in-law, fought to save Jesse for as long as he could, tried to clear Skyler’s name with the police, and safely returned baby Holly to her mother before running off cross-country. Of course, it’s always possible that he snapped and decided to kill all his old enemies, regardless of their innocence, which is why this suspense sequence remains full of foreboding. In the end, though, this is a scene depicting a sick man leaving money for his son… a sweet, well-intentioned gesture that we’re not entirely sure won’t end in a bloodbath.

After requesting their help in setting up a trust for Flynn, thus ensuring he gets a piece of the pie after all, Walt waves his arms in a genius Heisenberg-y moment and suddenly, Gretchen and Elliot have lasers trained on them. His threat is utterly convincing, both to the Schwartzes and to us — even though, moments later, we learn that Badger and Skinny Pete are the “snipers.” It’s all just another Walter White con. The scene satisfies the piece of us that revels in Heisenbergian badassery while ultimately allowing Walt to remain the good guy in this final hour. Not an easy feat, but one Breaking Bad has always excelled at.From there, Walt crashes Lydia and Todd’s tea party, a surprise that neither is too keen on. We expect Lydia to freak out when anything looks even mildly suspicious, but now Todd, too, has turned on his former mentor. Lydia’s tea with soy milk and Stevia makes a notable appearance — the Stevia might as well have spelled out “R.I.P., Lydia!” as she stirred it into the cup. It’s so obviously the ricin going into the tea that it can’t possibly be the ricin going into the tea. It is, though — as we learn at the end of the episode, with Lydia feeling a bit sniffly as Walt explains why.

If I have one gripe with “Felina,” it might be this — Breaking Bad is usually so masterful with misdirection, it’s strange that Lydia was killed so obviously. Walt almost pulled the old ricin/Stevia switcheroo way back in “Gliding Over All” last year; you’d think they wouldn’t return to that same old well a year later. I thought it was a red herring — that the ricin would pop up elsewhere after we’d been faked out about the tea. But like I said, “Felina” is a fan service episode, and so many fans were waiting for Lydia’s death by Stevia that, I suppose, it had to be done. I found it mildly disappointing, along with the way Walt spelled it out to her (and us) on the phone. Surely there could have been some surprise there.

Notice how we’ve gotten this far in the finale and not seen any of the core cast members besides Walt? Now we finally get to Skyler, who has relocated to some rather, um, modest digs… and, happily, reconnected with her sister. Marie calls to warn Skyler that Walt is back in town, and we see that despite her grief over Hank’s death, Marie hasn’t changed in the slightest. She’s still a busybody. She still believes that the forces of good will triumph over the forces of Heisenberg. (Another bit of fan service: Marie confuses neighbors Carol and Becky, which many Breaking Bad fans also did when Carol appeared in “Blood Money.”) Trouble is: Walt is already standing in Skyler’s kitchen.

After ensuring his money will get to his son, Walt now gives Skyler the gift of a lottery ticket leading to her brother-in-law’s remains. (Gee, thanks, honey!) He thinks she can use it as leverage to get herself out of whatever legal trouble she’s still in, and while that probably isn’t as enticing to the DEA as other leverage she’s possessed, it may be enough. It’s all Walt has to offer at this point.

The scene is reasonably brief but also on-point; it’s an interaction between married people who know they’re done with each other. There’s obviously still some affection here — even, I think, on Skyler’s end. (She doesn’t run screaming out of the place, at least.) What’s done is done, and Skyler seems to know that Walt finally has his head and his heart in the right place… or at least, the rightest place they can be after all that’s happened. Walt finally admits that his actions were selfish, motivated by ego and greed, and not for the family. Apparently all that time alone in New Hampshire taught him something after all. It was only getting away with murder that helped him realize he actually didn’t want to get away with it at all.

It’s surprising to see Skyler takes such a small role in the finale — though she’s had plenty to do this season, and certainly quite a showcase for Anna Gunn’s Emmy-winning acting chops. Flynn doesn’t even get a line of dialogue in this episode, instead observed from afar as he comes home from school — but wasn’t enough said last week? Once you’ve said “die already!” to your father, where can you go from there? I enjoyed the fact that we see only as much of Flynn as Walt does; Walt has sinned too greatly to earn more. Flynn is lost to him.

I’m slightly saddened that Marie didn’t have a larger role in the last few episodes, though; she was always essentially an accessory for Hank, not exactly a pivotal character. But still. That’s probably why I wanted her to have a bigger moment, something unexpected. Every other character — even Flynn — got a scene or two of reckoning and closure, one that really cut to the heart of that character. Marie didn’t even get any screen time to grieve for her presumed-dead husband. I wanted a little something more from her at some point in these last three episodes; instead, all of Walt’s former family plays a pretty minor role in “Felina.” Just as they play a pretty minor role in his life these days.

And then comes the big showdown, a scene featuring the show’s two key figures (who haven’t spent much time together this season). Walt deliberately steps into the trap Lydia and Todd set for him, finding himself on the other end of Uncle Jack’s gun just as Hank was a couple episodes back. This time, however, Walt manages to buy some time, identifying Jesse as Uncle Jack’s “partner” and setting the old Nazi off in a fit of prideful rage to retrieve the prisoner.

Jesse has, at this point, been enslaved for the better part of a year — even seeing Walt can’t elicit much of a reaction from this ghost of a man. Walt pounces on Jesse, seeing how broken he is, feeling some of that old sympathy — and probably guilt, too, given that he’s the one responsible for these months of torment. The machine gun in his trunk pops up to conveniently wipe out Uncle Jack and all his men. It’s a bit of Breaking Bad magic that’s a little hard to buy if you think about it — so don’t. On this show, such things happen. Walt’s lucky, remember?

Todd escapes the shower of bullets, but not Jesse’s wrath. Andrea’s death and months of captivity are avenged as Jesse strangles Todd with his shackles, ensuring that Todd has served his last bowl of Americone Dream. A barely-alive Uncle Jack tries to negotiate with Walt, offering info about his money. Too little, too late — Hank’s death should have proven that that money is no last-minute life saver. As was done to Hank, Walt blows his head off mid-sentence, demonstrating that it’s finally no longer about the money for Walt. Lesson learned.

Walt passes Jesse the gun. Jesse raises it. Walt wants to die now, and wants Jesse to make it happen. Not much is said — it’s a minimal interaction, since most of us what needs to happen between these two has happened already. Suffice to say that in this episode, each man spares the other’s life, which is about the most kindness we can expect at this point. Jesse thinks it over and refuses, gets into a car, emitting crazed laughter and a howl of relief/disbelief as he heads for… Alaska? Or wherever Brock has been crashing? It’s pretty unclear what’s in Jesse Pinkman’s future, since he’ll surely face a lot of trouble as he tries to reestablish a life for himself. (Hooking back up with the Vacuum Cleaner Salesman is unlikely.) This way, it’s up to the audience to imagine an ending for Jesse, be it happy (playing father to the orphaned Brock in the Alaskan wilderness) or more realistic (prison). (Without Hank and Gomez around, is he still a wanted associate of Heisenberg, or has the trail gone cold?)

“Felina” is very much the Walter White Show, with the supporting cast appearing only briefly. We see mere glimpses of the fates of Marie, Flynn, Skyler, and Jesse. Where they end up — and how happy they can ever be — is up for debate.

The fate of Walter White, however, is far from ambiguous. After Jesse refuses to add one more death to his kill list, Walt takes a stroll down to Todd’s meth lab and dies of a bullet wound anyway. It’s a semi-heroic ending, as he has saved Jesse, taken out the remaining bad guys (who still posed a threat to his family), and finally stopped evading the cops. Nearly everything Walt does in “Felina” is “the right thing,” and that’s somewhat surprising after six years of watching Mr. Chips become Scarface, as was Vince Gilligan’s intent.

For such an atypical show, Breaking Bad ends, perhaps, a bit more typically than we expected. Walter White is redeemed rather than crucified. It’s the kind of ending we’ve seen in plenty of movies — a Hollywood ending. It’s not controversial or ambiguous by any means. It’s not perplexing or challenging. It’s one that’s meant to satisfy the largest number of people, the kind movie studios and TV networks aim for. Is that a good thing? Or did Breaking Bad owe it to its fans to remain unpredictable and unconventional right up until the bitter end?

Like I said, anyone who wanted Breaking Bad to end differently essentially got their wish in “Ozymandias” and “Granite State.” Vince Gilligan was probably smart to end on a high note, giving fans exactly what they were looking for. The bad guys die in an over-the-top explosion of payback violence, the protagonist sacrifices himself, the women and children are safe at home, and the sidekick rides off into the sunset. When you break it down this way, Breaking Bad turns out to be remarkably traditional, very black-and-white. The detail and nuance we saw along the way help it to stand out, but now that it’s one complete story, with this particular beginning and end, it doesn’t seem so daringly different after all.

And so it’s over. Breaking Bad fans are collectively saddened and satisfied. There’s a palpable disappointment in the air, because a great show went out with a bang and there’s nothing comparable out there to entertain us anymore. This series started strong and ended even better, with every single episode between providing an exemplary hour of television. It never hit a false note or took a wrong step — how many shows can say that? Even The Sopranos had at least one truly bad episode.

In ending this way, Breaking Bad feels more like a complete work than just about any other show I can think of —the episodes feel more like individual chapters of a book than hours of television. Vince Gilligan never had a crystal clear vision of the end, but it feels like he knew everything that was going to happen, every step of the way, for all 62 episodes. It’s one complete story. Iit’s a work of art. And now that we know how it ends, we’ll rewatch those episodes and perhaps see Walter White and his actions differently than we did the first time around. It’s not the story of a man becoming a monster — it’s the story of a man becoming a monster becoming a man again. That’s a more optimistic outlook than many of us were expecting, especially once Season Five went down such a dark path.

Like any work of art, Breaking Bad will take some time to process now that it’s complete. It has almost certainly raised the bar for TV drama — expect plenty of imitations popping up on other networks, none of them as good. Breaking Bad a unique entry into the pop culture canon, so let’s take a moment to be grateful that this dark and moody little show, populated by (then) little-known actors, managed to not only find an audience but also to become the talked-about show on TV. An Emmy winner, a game changer. And all the while, remaining true to its original vision.

It’s rare that TV — or, well, anything — is quite this good these days, but as long as we live in a world where Breaking Bad is possible, I’ll hold out hope and find a reason to go on, even if my heart is a little heavy after losing so many of my fucked up TV friends last night. This finale wasn’t quite Breaking Bad‘s strongest episode — I prefer unpredictable, gut-wrenching, “Ozymandias”-style drama — but it didn’t need to be. I’m satisfied that everyone else is satisfied. I’m glad that my favorite show of recent years became everybody else’s favorite, too. And I know that these characters will love on in the public consciousness for years to come.

We’ll grapple with Walter White’s actions and debate just how good or bad he really was, how weak he was, or how capable. Was he the legendary Heisenberg or the meek and pathetic Walter White? Was he heroic for saving his family and Jesse in the eleventh hour, or a devil for placing them in danger in the first place? There may not be any more episodes of Breaking Bad left, but this show isn’t over until you can rewatch all the episodes without asking such questions. It’s a rich enough series that it will be remembered long after its gone, its impact felt like a ripple effect. Walter White would certainly be pleased that his name will live on in this way.

Grade: A

*

Back in 2006, I had to make one of the toughest calls I’ve grappled with on a Top 10 List. (My life is really hard, okay?) Would my #1 film of the year be Paul Greengrass’ gripping, devastating docu-thriller United 93, taking on the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or Alfonso Cuaron’s gritty and equally gripping sci-fi thriller Children Of Men?

Tough call. United 93 looked back at a recent horrific event that had a massive impact on an entire generation. Children Of Men looked forward, presenting a bleak glimpse at a future that felt unfortunately plausible, especially in a post-9/11 world. They were two of the most intense cinematic viewing experiences I’d ever had, and remain as such. Either would be a top contender for my #1 in most of the years since, since they’re stronger films than many of my favorites from other years. Ultimately, though, I had to go with United 93, because the story it told was true, the world was still sensitive about the events of that day, and it was handled both delicately and unflinchingly. It provided a much-needed catharsis, though not exactly one that left audiences feeling good. It’s practically unimaginable to think of being on one of those planes, but United 93 forced us to be there. It was too much for some, but for me it was an important reminder of the smaller-scale aspects of something that become so hugely, sadly profound.

Flash forward to 2013, and it’s a similar story. Cuaron and Greengrass have released major movies within a week of each other. (United 93 and Children Of Men were released several months apart, though — the former in spring and the latter in late December.) Again, Cuaron’s film is essentially a fantasy — a totally immersive one, with jaw-dropping cinematography (and another surprisingly early exit for a major movie star). Meanwhile, Greengrass tells another harrowing true story about a hijacking using his typical documentary-like camerawork, which provides a more a realistic experience than the typical Hollywood thriller.

I mentioned last week that Gravity was likely my favorite film of 2013 thus far — and was wondering, slightly, if Greengrass would again provide stiff competition for Cuaron as the year’s best filmmaker. Captain Phillips is a slick and competent thriller that has a whole lot in common with United 93. It’s based on recent events involving a small group of men who take over a large vessel filled with a lot of unarmed, innocent people. The events are certainly frightening, as Greengrass’ documentary-like filmmaking puts us right there with the captives. Ultimately, though, what happened to these people is no 9/11, so the film doesn’t have that built-in emotional resonance. (Spoiler for real life alert: it ends much more happily.) So while I can recommend Captain Phillips for anyone who enjoys a tense thriller, I can’t say that it delivers much more than solid entertainment. That’s not a complaint — just an assurance that Cuaron and Gravity don’t have anything to worry about this year — at least, not on my list.

Tom Hanks stars as Richard Phillips, the titular captain of a ship transporting cargo through dangerous international waters east of Africa. (He dusts off his Boston accent again, which isn’t as distracting as I thought it’d be. Still, I’m not sure it was necessary.) The film begins at his home in Vermont, where he and his wife Andrea discuss changing global politics in a way that feels rather on-the-nose given what’s going to happen. (Andrea is played by Catherine Keener, whose incredibly brief appearance couldn’t add up to much more than a day’s work, unless her other scenes were cut.) Greengrass films tend to be fairly sparse in the moralizing and monologuing, so this scene stands out, though it’s the only one that feels so scripted.

We also spend more time than you’d think with the Somali pirates, watching as they form their crews. Barkhad Abdi plays their leader, Muse, a skinny guy with bad teeth capable of both sympathy and savagery. The film takes its time before the pirates actually climb aboard, but it’s all filled with very real dread about what the hell these unarmed men are supposed to do in such a predicament. They’re basically sitting ducks, which makes us wonder why there aren’t more security measures available to them. Captain Phillips pulls a few nifty tricks out of his sleeve, but ultimately, this crew is no match for four guys with guns. (If you’re unaware of the real-life events and want to remain that way before seeing the movie, abandon ship now.)

Ultimately, Captain Phillips is taken as a solo hostage in the lifeboat (as shown in some trailers, so minor spoiler there). A significant amount of the film takes place on this craft, so this is really Hanks’ show, and he delivers a dynamic performance throughout, though the final five minutes of the movie are his real showstopper. Like United 93, Captain Phillips pays more attention to the individual personalities of “the bad guys” than you might expect, and the complicated dynamics of that group are intriguing and help to keep the suspense alive. Muse is more level-headed than the others, though ultimately too naive for his own good. (Good thing for Richard Phillips.) We’re not likely to feel much pity for these pirates, but the film does a good job at humanizing them rather than making them cartoon mustache-twirlers with no real motives or inner lives. We can clearly see that these are desperate men with few options, and most of them truly don’t wish to hurt anybody. It’s about as sensitive a look at Somali pirates as we’re likely to get, even when we’re far from rooting for them.

In the end, Captain Phillips is a rah-rah America story, with the mighty U.S. Navy triumphing against the scrappy dark people. Muse reminds the Americans that “we’re not al Qaeda” on multiple occasions, but of course, any foreigner who threatens the life of an innocent American is no better in the eyes of a Navy SEAL. Gearing up toward the climax, Greengrass gives us many loving shots of Navy SEALs in action, including one oddly fawning shot of these buff dudes changing uniforms. (It’s the kind of thing you’d expect from Michael Bay, not Paul Greengrass.) While real-life events played out roughly as depicted here, and the Navy surely did a fine job at extracting Captain Phillips from a potentially deadly situation, Greengrass’ Navy worship is a bit heavy-handed. The SEALs portrayed as almost superhuman, which is at odds with the gravity of the rest of the film. These inexperienced Somali pirates are clearly no match, so it becomes a matter of when rather than if Captain Phillips will be rescued. The man does his best, but ultimately he can’t do much besides wait to be rescued by a handful of heroes whose names we never learn.

As in United 93, very little attention is paid to side characters, which feels both realistic and distancing. The supporting cast is populated by unknown actors who seem like they really could be the crew of this ship. We care enough to not want to see them shot by Somali pirates, but it might’ve been nice to get to know some of them before they’re placed in jeopardy. The movie is called Captain Phillips (seriously, there wasn’t a better title for this?), and it’s really only Captain Phillips who matters. He’s Tom Hanks, America’s male sweetheart, after all. There is, perhaps, a slightly sadder tale to be told about these four Somali men who basically just didn’t know better, so easily dispatched in the name of American justice; then again, they’re pirates, and this is typically what happens to uneducated men who try to make off with a lot of money that doesn’t belong to them. It’s not ultimately the politics of this movie that are unsettling, but the politics of the world at large, and who can fault Greengrass for that?

Captain Phillips is an involving but not totally nail-biting suspense thriller. Once he’s alone with the pirates, we have a pretty good idea of how this will shake out — it’s based on the man’s book, after all, and you just do not kill Tom Hanks — though watching it unfold remains entertaining. Despite the workmanlike approach to the rest of the movie, the resolution is surprisingly effective, with one of the best post-rescue scenes of relief I’ve seen in a movie. (A moment that will likely get Hanks an Oscar nomination, depending on the competition.) It sends the movie out on a high note, though it also made me wish that what happened earlier packed an equivalent punch to the gut.

It’s not amongst the Top 5 movies of the year, but that scene certainly is one of the year’s best. And anyway, it’s effective enough to ensure I won’t go for a sea cruise anywhere near Somali in the near future — unless I had to choose between that and spinning off into outer space.

You win this round, Cuaron. But good show, Greengrass.

*

Sometimes, you feel like a movie is just speaking directly to you.

I saw Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave last night, and I could so identify with the protagonist Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) — because I, too, have been subject to the twisted whims and brutal hand of cruel fates and a merciless master. I saw the movie in the Arclight’s Cinerama Dome, and as the final credits rolled, I was struck by a peculiar feeling of melancholy and despair. Not because I’d just been witness to an innocent man’s dozen years of brutal torture — no, something far worse. I searched my pockets, my wallet, under my seat… and yet I knew, without a doubt, that my parking ticket had been displaced some time ago, and certain suffering awaited me in the near future.

I checked my car, knowing it fruitless. I proceeded back to the Dome, which had already all but shut down for the night. I was told to try the box office, so I embarked upon a journey there, only to be met with a long line and an employee sympathetic to my plight who scoured for lost tickets, finding none. He printed me a movie ticket for my showing (since I had only a digital copy) and suggested I tell the people at the gates of my plight.

Slightly emboldened, I returned to my car and presented my ticket to the middle-aged Latina woman. Surely she would show mercy? I plastered on my best dumb blonde look (not really an act — I am pretty stupid), informing her that I had lost my ticket but the people at the box office said to present this movie ticket so I could be on my merry way. She would have none of my nonsense. “Did they tell you a lost ticket pays twenty dollars?” she hissed, having been through this charade before. Finally she surmised that since I had the movie ticket, I could get away with paying the $12 daily maximum rather than the $20 nightly maximum (what the difference is is beyond me). I complied, realizing I would never bargain myself down to the $3 charge per validated ticket. I was resigned to my fate.

Negotiating a $20 fine down to $12 is a lot like being a slave for a dozen years rather than your entire life — a little better, sure, but it doesn’t exactly erase the sting of those twelve years (or, in my case, twelve dollars). I drove away from the theater with a murderous rage in my belly, which only subsided when I compared my bad luck to that of Solomon Northup. Then I decided that it was a bit silly to feel sorry for myself after watching the abject horror and unthinkable torture he was subjected to oh so long ago. But still.

I couldn’t help but feel Solomon and I were a little simpatico. I should write a tale of my own misfortunes at the hand of an unforgiving master — Twelve Dollars A Slave, coming never to a theater near you.

All kidding aside, Steve McQueen is one of the most exciting filmmakers out there, and though he’s been notable mainly to hardcore cinephiles thus far (for his Michael Fassbender showpieces Hunger and Shame), he’s about to join the mainstream conversation with 12 Years A Slave. (Which isn’t to say he’ll be a household name any time soon, though the movie may very well be.) The slave drama got some excellent buzz out of the Toronto Film Festival and is already one of the top contenders in premature Oscar conversations, drawing comparisons like “it’s the Schindler’s List of slavery.” Neither Hunger nor Shame was made to appeal to a particularly wide audience (which is partly what made them so good), but 12 Years A Slave stands a good chance at being seen by a lot of people. Lee Daniels’ The Butler has made over $114 million domestically so far, and last year’s Django Unchained grossed over $400 million worldwide and scored a slew of Oscar nominations (and a couple of wins). Clearly, there’s a willing audience for these stories.

12 Years A Slave isn’t like either of those movies — especially since it’s much better. It’s neither as palatable as The Butler nor as sensational as Django Unchained, which might diminish its box office (if not its shot at an Oscar). Last year’s Lincoln earned $272 million worldwide, meaning that today’s moviegoers really will see an earnest historical drama set in the 19th century — and again, Lincoln has some factors that 12 Years A Slave doesn’t, including a very recognizable historical figure and the trusted Spielberg name. Still, audiences will turn out for the right historical drama, even one as hard-hitting as this one, every now and then. It’s a big year in black cinema, and if justice is served, 12 Years A Slave is the main course. African-American audiences tend to show up for movies that speak to them, and while 12 Years A Slave is about as nasty a depiction of their ancestry as we’re ever likely to get, it’s a respectful and honest one. There’s a chance that the mainstream will shy away from the experience altogether, but I’m guessing they won’t. I think this is one of those harrowing film experiences people (of all races) actually want to sit through. It might just be the definitive movie on American slavery, after all.

12 Years A Slave is the story of Solomon Northup, a free man living in New York who takes what turns out to be an ill-advised sojourn to Washington, D.C., where slavery is still legal. After a night of drinking with supposed friends, he wakes up literally in chains, and thus begins the worst dozen years of his life. 12 Years A Slave is, in ways, a straight-up horror movie, because we easily identify with gentle-hearted family man Solomon in the beginning. He’s just another cinematic everyman who finds himself in an impossible situation, unlike most slave characters we’ve seen on screen. There’s a petrifying “what if this happened to you?” element in what happens to him — to him, this is almost as unthinkable as it is to us, that a free man could suddenly be anything but. Ejiofor portrays both utter bewilderment and terror at his extreme turn of fortune — and if it can happen to him, it’s almost like it could happen to us.

12 Years A Slave is an unspoilable movie, since the duration of its story is given away in the title. Solomon is a slave for twelve years, then finds his way back to freedom. (Obviously we’d know nothing of his story if those twelve years ended in his burial as an anonymous slave at a Louisiana plantation.) Along the way, Solomon meets many heinous white people, including but not limited to those played by Michael Fassbender, Sarah Paulson, Paul Dano, Paul Giamatti, and Garret Dillahunt. He also meets a nice one (from Canada, natch), portrayed by Brad Pitt, who ends up being instrumental in his freedom. (It must be said, Benedict Cumberbatch’s plantation owner is also halfway decent, considering.) Of course, several slaves also figure notably in his dozen miserable years of servitude, primarily the cotton-picking whiz Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o, in a performance likely remembered come Oscar time). Regardless of the ways these characters fit into certain archetypes of the era — the sadistic plantation owner, the helpless slave beauty, the cowardly brute with a whip — each is a specific enough character that they feel real, rather than trotted out from the Oscar bait factory. There are many famous faces here, most in relatively brief roles, but this isn’t The Butler. (That means no Mariah Carey, no Robin Williams, and no Alex Pettyfer.)

The cinematography by Sean Bobbitt is gorgeous, the score by Hans Zimmer alternately beautiful and brash, the screenplay adaptation by John Ridley just about perfect. (And all, in my eyes, Oscar-worthy.) The movie, I am told, closely follows Solomon Northup’s own account of those dozen years, but Steve McQueen directs it to feel fresh, vital, and visceral, without losing perspective of the subject matter. The man is no stranger to cinematic suffering — both Hunger and Shame chronicled various miseries endured by Michael Fassbender, though those were largely self-imposed. Hunger was hard to watch, a test in endurance; 12 Years A Slave has some of this, but is less willfully challenging. (Shouldn’t a movie about slavery be hard to watch, after all?) Shame, meanwhile, was my #1 movie of 2011, largely because I found McQueen’s filmmaking so fascinating. Not everyone appreciates a showy director, but I do.

Paul Thomas Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, Alfonso Cuaron — these are the guys I admire most, and now McQueen is very much a part of the same conversation. He shows a fair amount of restraint in that regard — pulling out only a handful of tricks when he really needs them. (As in his other films, there’s a particularly long take here, and it’s a stunner.) Mostly, though, McQueen’s filmmaking feels appropriately muted for a 19th century story, though his flair for the visceral is apparent here and there, such as when we creep through the brush during Solomon’s work day, or when we get a long, unbroken shot of Solomon staring out at the distance, then staring into us. His visuals are carefully considered — the way he composes a shot of Solomon laying next to a slave woman, then cuts to a flashback of Solomon laying next to his wife at an opposite angle, is quietly brilliant visual storytelling. There’s a lot that goes unsaid in this movie, but the actors and direction are strong enough that we get all the information we need, and then some.

Even without 12 Years A Slave, 2013 would’ve been a strong year for black cinema. Inclusive of it, it’s a momentous one. Between 12 Years A Slave, The Butler, and Fruitvale Station, filmmakers are running basically the entire gamut of the African-American experience in this country (with varying degrees of success). It’s astounding to view 12 Years A Slave and Fruitvale Station side by side, for example — despite the difference of roughly 170 years, there’s a shocking similarity between the way Solomon is unjustly shackled and beaten for his protestation, and the way Oscar Grant is unfairly detained in a subway station on New Year’s Day in 2009, leading to his death at the hands of a white police officer. Both films are true stories depicting gross abuses of power, and neither ends with justice being served to the oppressors (as we’re told in title cards at the end of both movies).

Comparisons to Lee Daniels’ The Butler are less favorable to Lee Daniels. I expected The Butler to be a provocative mess like his other movies; and in a way, it was, though not exactly a bad mess. It’s a well-intentioned one. Forest Whitaker delivers a solid performance as Cecil Gaines, even if his (heavily fictionalized) character is passive and ultimately not that memorable a guy. The film suffers from stunt casting, with most of its presidents ranging from distracting to ridiculous — Liev Schreiber, James Marsden, John Cusack, and Robin Williams amongst them, none of whom quite work in the roles. Surprisingly enough, it’s Oprah Winfrey who delivers the strongest performance as Cecil’s not-so-faithful wife Gloria, a more dynamic character than Cecil himself. Cecil’s passive role as servant to a slew of white presidents is presented in stark contrast to the activities of his son Louis (David Oyelowo), who goes from Rosa Parks-style Civil Rights protests to joining the Black Panthers. The Butler certainly bites off more than it can chew, endeavoring to tell essentially the entire story of race relations over 90 years, from a 1920s cotton plantation in Georgia to the election of Barack Obama. Obviously, a lot of glossing over is necessary, and even with all that, the movie still doesn’t know when to end, overstaying its welcome for an extra ten minutes or so.

So yes, The Butler is flawed, deeply flawed — but seriously flawed movies have been nominated for Oscars before and even won them. A strong performance at the box office and mostly positive responses from audiences and critics meant that it stood a fighting chance at major Oscar nominations — at least until 12 Years A Slave came along. I won’t underestimate the general public’s taste for easily palatable pap — like last year, when I assumed Zero Dark Thirty would blow Argo out of the Oscar conversation, only to watch the opposite happen. Often, a nice “safe” movie that follows the rules trumps a more challenging one. But could the Academy seriously agree that The Butler is better than 12 Years A Slave? It’s hard to fathom. 12 Years A Slave is just about perfect, and as lame as it sounds to say, it’s also an important movie. It’s a film that humanizes everybody it depicts, even while depicting some of their ugliest features. (Sarah Paulson’s Southern belle, for example, is a complex villainess, and she delivers a terrific performance.)

12 Years A Slave is at once incredibly subtle and totally in-your-face — few movies find that balance. Already it has the feel of an instant classic, a film that will be discussed and admired for years to come. That doesn’t guarantee it’ll win Best Picture (though it probably should). As history has proven, justice isn’t always served. Either way, Steve McQueen has made his masterpiece. It makes the unhappy ordeals titularly depicted in Shame and Hunger look like Bliss and Too Much Cake in comparison, and yes, it pretty much blows every other slave movie out of the water.

This is how it’s done, everybody. Long live McQueen.

*

And then this happened.

My last review was Twelve Years A Slave, a movie that could very well top my year-end “Best Of 2013″ list, a movie that could very well win Best Picture at the Academy Awards next spring. But who knows? Success is hard to predict.

I’m pretty sure what you’ll find at the very bottom of my “Best Of 2013″ list, though, and that’s Escape From Tomorrow. Shot largely inside Disneyland and Disney World, the movie created some buzz at Sundance and has opened to astonishingly lukewarm reviews. (I say astonishing because, really, they should be so much worse.)

This will be a brief review, because I am angry. Escape From Tomorrow is “about” a nuclear family yukking it up at a Disney park. Father Jim may or may not be a pedophile, given his creepy obsession with two young French girls; mother Emily is absolutely a bitch. Their kids — one boy and one girl — are pretty typical. Jim gets fired from his job, starts lusting after French teenagers, occasionally (but sporadically) hallucinating on rides, and then begins lusting after just about anyone. He mauls his wife on a Winnie-the-Pooh ride and flirts with a mysterious woman. A lot more happens, but very little of it makes sense. At one point, we learn there’s a “cat flu” epidemic going around; someone turns out to be a robot, and someone else turns out to be a witch. You can imagine, perhaps, how these disparate elements might fit together in a satire of the Disney corporation and all its manufactured magic — but writer director Randy Moore, apparently, cannot.

The fact that the film was shot covertly in Disney theme parks is fascinating, but the story itself is a fucking mess. This is not just a bad screenplay but a tragedy of storytelling; like a dead body beaten and mangled so horribly that you can no longer even tell it’s human. That’s how much the Escape From Tomorrow screenplay resembles that of an actual movie. The filmmaking is flawed, the acting pretty amateurish, but neither of these are the movie’s undoing — in the hands of the right storyteller, they could be forgiven and perhaps even enhance the movie’s naughty, forbidden, don’t-tell-Walt aesthetic. But no. This is not a satire, because satire must be clever. Clearly a fair a amount of work went into the production of this film, but almost no thought went into it, on a story level. How could anyone who really thought about it produce this?

Does this story mean something to its writer/director? Probably. But there’s no consistency. There are at least three separate plot threads going on, none of which are well-explained, and none of which have anything to do with the other. Our protagonist is a horny, asshole cheater with a thing for stalking young girls, and yet we’re kind of supposed to root for him? Escape From Tomorrow could have been about the irony of fucked up adults taking their children for a magical experience in the “happiest place on Earth.” It could’ve been about the dichotomy between the money-grubbing Disney corporation and the carefree vibe of its parks. It could have used Disney tropes and iconography to tell a twisted, hallucinogenic adult-oritented tale with very un-Disney sex and violence. It does all of these, but only for a few minutes at a time, and none of them are done well.

Yes, Escape From Tomorrow has garnered some attention for its unusual production. But at its heart, it’s as amateur as any student film on every level. It’s a small film after all, and would best be shrugged off and ignored as such.

*

If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to want a glass of milk.

And if you give a major movie star AIDS, he’ll probably want an Oscar.

So it goes. The year 2013 is shaping up to be a year of Very Important Movies. Multiple Civil Rights stories are already gunning for prizes, including Fruitvale Station, The Butler, and (most promisingly) 12 Years A Slave. It is, naturally, tough to beat a well-made, well-acted slavery drama at the Oscars, because few “issues” have such import. But AIDS does. We’ve come a long way since Philadelphia, which saw Tom Hanks win a golden boy. And yet AIDS isn’t something Hollywood touches on too often, especially in a direct, “this whole movie is about it!” way. AIDS is a fresher topic than slavery, certainly.

In the Best Actor race, we’re likely to see the slavery contender (Chiwetel Ejiofor) vie with the AIDS movie star (Matthew McConaughey), and who can really say which issue trumps which? McConaughey is the bigger star, of course, and Best Actor often — but not always, Jean Dujardin — goes to a veteran Hollywood player. (Tom Hanks will likely also be in the running, but minus the AIDS this year.) It’s a good thing there’s no big Holocaust movie coming out in 2013, because then the battle would get really bloody.

Yes, it’s cynical to boil these films down to a single issue, like American slavery or the early days of the AIDS crisis. They’re more than that — and neither feels made primarily to grab Oscars. But that doesn’t mean those big issues won’t be on the minds of Oscar voters this winter, as we remember McConaughey’s alarmingly skinny appearance as a man slowly dying of AIDS, or Ejiofor hanging by his neck on a tree and being whipped. This year’s Best Actor race, then, could boil it down that simply: AIDS vs. slaves. Which do you find more sympathetic?

Dallas Buyers Club is based on the true story of Ron Woodruff, a hard-drinking, drug-abusing, sexually promiscuous straight man who acquires AIDS in 1985 and is given a mere 30 days to live. Of course, these were the days when doctors were still largely in the dark about the virus, and in particular, how best to treat it. The doctors in this movie, portrayed by Denis O’Hare and Jennifer Garner, are conducting trials on AZT, but Woodruff doesn’t have time to wonder if he’s on the good stuff or the placebo. Too-high doses of AZT may be poisoning AIDS patients, Woodruff learns, and so he sets out acquiring his own drugs from a rebellious physician down in Mexico. And thus he forms the Dallas Buyers Club, helping victims of AIDS treat their disease with unapproved medication for the low, low price of $400 a month.

Ron Woodruff was a real person — the rest of the characters in this movie are not. When we meet him, Ron is the typical womanizing, homophobic Texan electrician you’d expect to find in Dallas in the mid-80s. His AIDS diagnosis causes his friends to abandon him — they don’t even want to touch him —and friendly messages like “Faggot Blood” to be spray-painted on his home (which he is swiftly evicted from). As a straight man with AIDS, Ron is immediately an outcast without a support system; he finds himself an honorary memory of the Dallas gay community whether he likes it or not. Gradually, he becomes more tolerant, but not in a cheesy “life lessons” sort of way. He mostly keeps his head in his business and ends up living another seven years beyond the life expectancy his doctors gave him, no thanks to AZT.

As fascinating a story as this at times, and as worthy as it is of being told, the real reason to see Dallas Buyers Club is the performances — they are this film’s best shot at Oscar consideration by far. Matthew McConaughey dropped 50 pounds to play Woodruff and it shows — while he still carries himself like a ladies’ man, the charismatic movie star loses nearly all of his sex appeal here, delivering a fiery and lived-in performance that never asks for the audience’s sympathy. (He does continue using homophobic slurs.) McConaughey has suddenly, almost overnight, turned into a bona fide thespian, delivering strong turns last year in Magic Mike and Killer Joe, and now again this year in Mud and Dallas Buyers Club. (He’ll also pop up in The Wolf Of Wall Street.) He’s a Hollywood veteran who took on a challenging, controversial, and physically transformative lead role, and he’s never won an Oscar — there’s every reason to believe he’s this year’s Best Actor frontrunner. (Sorry, slaves!)

But there’s an even more captivating performance in Dallas Buyers Club, and it comes from Jordan Catalano — sorry, that’s Jared Leto — 2013′s comeback kid. It’s been a while since we’ve seen notable work from Leto, though he’s been solid in films like Requiem For A Dream and Fight Club. In Dallas Buyers Club, he’s a full-on scene stealer as the transgender Rayon, who partners up with Ron and develops a tense friendship with him. Leto perfectly embodies this character, born a man, identifying as a woman, in a way that is remarkably feminine. It is, of course, a showy, attention-grabbing performance by nature, but Rayon is a showy, attention-grabbing person, so it fits. Leto might not be quite high-profile enough to nab the Best Supporting Actor award (especially if voters are already giving one to McConaughey), but the performance is so good he just might.

So, sure, this is a drama that in many ways feels progressive, but still makes some concessions for mainstream audience. This isn’t the end-all, be-all, 12 Years A Slave of AIDS movies — it’s still told through a heterosexual man’s eyes, and the only major gay character is the transgender Rayon. It doesn’t deal with these characters’ sex lives very directly, and in a movie about AIDS, you’d think that’d be relevant. The story (written by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack) moves so nimbly, you might wish for a little more juice, and a little more meat, in some of the interactions. There’s still a bit of a Hollywood sheen on Dallas Buyers Club, particularly whenever Jennifer Garner is on screen — though it does get a shade grittier than Philadelphia. (Sidenote: do all AIDS movies have a major American city in the title?)

Still, it’s a well-made, well-directed, and incredibly well-acted film, and if it earns either of its male leads an Oscar, they will deserve it. Treated with as little sentimentality and schmaltz as possible by director Jean-Marc Vallée, it’s an effective ode to the horrors of AIDS in the 80s, and a reminder that the disease didn’t affect just one kind of person. We tend to think of the 80s as a prosperous and reasonably carefree time in American history, but it certainly wasn’t for the people depicted in this movie, and it isn’t likely to make anyone nostalgic for these days. Dallas Buyers Club borrows a note of triumph from the future, since HIV isn’t a death sentence for people like Ron and Rayon anymore.

Like 12 Years A Slave, It’s a reminder of a time we might like to forget, which is all more reason to remember.

*

Some movies are tougher sells than others. Certain films are almost willfully difficult to sell. How about a nice uplifting movie called All Is Lost, which features exactly three instances of dialogue — some voice over in the beginning, a distress call spoken into a malfunctioning radio, and one expletive shouted to the heavens. (If I were in this character’s place, there would have been a lot more profanity.)

As in many years, the slate of films that will compete in 2013′s awards race have many differences, but a slew of similarities are cropping up. All Is Lost is not the first film to feature a beloved Hollywood veteran in peril on the Indian Ocean — first upon his own vessel, then on a lifeboat. The other is Captain Phillips, with Tom Hanks in the titular role; like Robert Redford in All Is Lost, he remains cool as a cucumber for a long stretch of the film despite rapidly decreasing chances for survival. Both Redford and Hanks will be major factors in the Best Actor conversation this year.

And then there’s Gravity, one of the year’s biggest success stories. Like All Is Lost, it’s primarily concerned with one character’s survival in a rather hopeless situation — outer space is probably the only lonelier and more terrifying place than being adrift in the middle of a massive ocean. Unlike All Is Lost, it’s presented in 3D with jaw-dropping, state-of-the-art visual effects, which makes it feel like a thrill ride. Gravity was a bit of a tough sell, by Hollywood standards — it’s an original story, after all! Its success was in no way guaranteed. Still, it made a few concessions for mainstream audiences — so guess which film has grossed over half a billion dollars worldwide, and which has made a little over $4 million? The difference is a little shocking, considering that, at heart, All Is Lost and Gravity are the same movie.

But All Is Lost is a tough sell. There’s virtually no dialogue, and it’s probably the only movie this year to have a smaller cast than Gravity. It’s just Robert Redford. That’s it. And he isn’t even given a name. Last year’s Oscar-winning shipwreck drama Life Of Pi gave its hero a handful of animals to chatter with; Robert Redford doesn’t even have a volleyball. Tom Hanks carried Cast Away largely on his own, as Suraj Sharma did with Life Of Pi and Sandra Bullock does in Gravity. But there’s no Wilson, no Richard Parker, and no howling Chinese guy for Redford to bounce off of here — he doesn’t even mutter to himself the way a lot of us would. He is alone. All Is Lost makes Cast Away, Life Of Pi, and Gravity look positively sprawling with supporting players.

The film begins with Redford’s character, in voice over, dictating a letter to his family (presumably), declaring that “all is lost” and his doom is impending. That’s roughly all the insight into this man we’ll get — he apologizes for his stubbornness, but it’s too little, too late. Flash back eight days, and we see the beginning of this man’s troubles as a crate that must’ve fallen from a barge impales his vessel, Virginia Jean, leaving a sizable hole in it. (The contents of the crate? Thousands of pairs of children’s shoes, ironically — for when we get old, it’s as if countless young are kicking us out of this world.) “Our Man,” as he’s credited, is surprisingly cavalier at finding his boat flooded with water. (Like I said, if it were me, this movie would have earned an R rating for profanity in those first five minutes.)

But that’s because Our Man is the kind of guy who knows enough about survival to go sailing in the Indian Ocean unaccompanied. We can guess that his family wasn’t too happy about it, but Redford is playing the kind of guy we’ve probably all encountered at least once, likely within our own families — whose stubbornness increases at the same rate as his age, even as their physical bodies grow less and less capable of withstanding trauma. When they get to a certain age, perhaps they’ve withstood enough to think they can withstand anything; that, or they’ve full enough lives that the notion of death doesn’t frighten them anymore. (At least, not until they’re staring it right in the face.)

Our Man faces a number of setbacks, none of which are at all unbelievable. Those first few minutes are troubling enough, with Redford wading through water on the Virginia Jean; already all seems lost, and we wonder how the hell he’s going to stay afloat for even one more day, let alone eight. All Is Lost is not as edge-of-your-seat gripping as Gravity, though it grows more involving as it unfolds; nor do we come to know Our Man as well as we know Captain Phillips. Redford’s character is a little more resigned to his fate than these other characters — as we may guess from the title — and we’re less certain of his survival.

This is a story about an old man and the sea — a story that’s been told many, many times over, with the sea often winning. It would be a very different film if writer/director J.C. Chandor had cast someone thirty years younger, because a man at that age is not prepared to die. Neither is Our Man, but we get the sense that it’s primarily because he doesn’t want to be beaten, and doesn’t want to be proven wrong. He wants it to be on his terms. The movie’s scrappy, mainstream-bucking aesthetic is similarly stubborn — no talking, no flashbacks, and only the sketchiest outline of a main character. Like a crotchety old dude who heads into the Indian Ocean on a sailboat himself, ignoring warnings, muttering, “To hell with what you people think!”, All Is Lost isn’t here for your love, it’s here for your respect. J.C. Chandor is going to make this movie his way, dammit. And get off his lawn!

While that may make All Is Lost sound like some pretty bitter medicine — Amour H2O — it goes down rather smoothly. I’ll admit to being a bit disenchanted in those early scenes, but as Redford’s predicament becomes more dire, the film won me over bit by bit. I stopped wishing that the film had opened with Redford saying farewell to his family to give us a little context, or that we even see a picture of them. I no longer wondered, “Would this be better if someone else was on the boat with him?” I didn’t even ask, “Why the fuck isn’t he swearing?” The film does make a few concessions for the audience, including some rather gorgeous underwater shots (as the ocean predators grow increasingly menacing) and a lovely score by Alexander. I can’t discuss the ending without spoiling whether or not it lives up to its title, except to say that it both does and doesn’t — but I did find it haunting.

Some years, Redford’s turn in All Is Lost might be a shoo-in at the Oscars. Unfortunately, in 2013, he has some competition. He’ll likely lose the “Hollywood star in peril on the sea” vote to Tom Hanks, since he’s in a more mainstream-friendly film that more people have seen, and because the last five minutes of Captain Phillips are pretty juicy, performance-wise, whereas Redford remains rather understated. That leaves Redford with the “senior citizen we don’t see too often these days” vote, which he’ll be splitting with Nebraska‘s Bruce Dern. But Robert Redford has already gotten his due from the Academy (though for directing, not acting) and the world at large, whereas Bruce Dern is rather unsung. (Strange sidenote, though — Redford has been nominated only once as an actor, for The Sting. Rather surprising for the George Clooney of yesteryear.) If I had to place my bets between the two, I’d put my money on Dern.

It’s not all political. Dern has a showier, scene-stealing performance. (Redford can’t exactly steal scenes when there’s nobody else on screen.) Alexander Payne’s Nebraska isn’t exactly a likely blockbuster, either, but it is more of a crowd-pleaser than All Is Lost. While in many ways it’s just as melancholy as All Is Lost, what lingers afterward is the comedy in the clever script by Bob Nelson, as well as Dern’s unforgettable performance as Woody Grant, a man who is both demented and lucid somehow. He’s not “cute” the way many crazy old cinematic coots tend to be; he’s lost most of his marbles, but it still holding onto a few. It’s a depressingly realistic portrait of a half-senile senior citizen, despite the comedic accoutrement.

We meet Woody as he’s en route from Billings, Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska — on foot. He’s soon intercepted by the police, but it’s far from the last time he’ll attempt this journey. Gradually it becomes obvious that stubborn old Woody will never stop setting out on this quest, so his youngest son David (Will Forte) decides to drive him there. The Holy Grail Woody seeks is a million dollars, which has been promised to him in the mail. It’s a scam, which is immediately obvious to everyone in the film but Woody, but of course, old people fall for such things all the time. It’s amazing the way human beings hold onto some of their faculties while certain clarities just fall by the wayside. Money, especially, gets very confusing for the elderly — maybe because of inflation, maybe because expenses change as we age, maybe because approaching death means divvying up their assets amongst loved ones, maybe because they’re no longer working for it. We worry about money all of our lives, and even in the bitter end — even if we’re imagining it — it’s there, mocking us.

“Life sucks, and then you die.” I’ve never cared for that flippant observation, and I wouldn’t seriously call it the theme of Nebraska. But it kind of is. Woody’s a hard drinker who cheated on his wife with at least one woman. He has a tenuous relationship with his sons. He never amounted to much. What he wants out of life — a new truck — isn’t much, and he still can’t attain it. David isn’t faring much better — he shills home entertainment systems and has been dumped by his girlfriend (who, when we meet her, doesn’t come off all that great to begin with). His older brother Ross (Breaking Bad‘s Bob Odenkirk, playing it slightly less slick) is better off, but only marginally. Can anyone be happy in Billings, Montana? Or Nebraska, for that matter?

You could argue that Nebraska has a pretty condescending view of Middle America. I wouldn’t argue otherwise. But I’m not convinced that it’s Middle America rather than America itself. David’s extended family turns out to live even humbler lives than he does. They’re more content, maybe, but also dim-witted. Cruelly or not, Payne does accurately (though exaggeratedly) peg a certain slice of American pie here — the unambitious and small-minded people you often do find in small towns like Hawthorne, Nebraska.

Alexander Payne is from Omaha, so perhaps he’s earned the right to skewer his homeland. Many of us can relate to the oddities of our country bumpkin cousins, how certain family members have nothing in common but blood. David hasn’t seen his extended family since he was a child, and it’s immediately obvious why — it’s painfully, uproariously awkward when they get together, and eccentric Woody no longer seems like the craziest guy in the room. It’s difficult to be both bleak and hilarious in the same moment, but Payne manages it.

On the surface, Nebraska is simple — at first it may seem even too simple — but there are many layers underneath. As news of Woody’s “winnings” is ill-advisedly shared, greedy friends and family members come out of the woodwork looking for a handout that may or may not be earned. (Several claim to have loaned Woody money, but who knows for sure?) No one in this movie is anything close to rich, but they’re all obsessed with money once even the mention of a million dollars is made. To them, it sounds like a billion. (Clearly they missed Justin Timberlake’s speech in The Social Network about how a million dollars is no longer cool.) There’s also a lot of nuance in David and Woody’s father-and-son dynamic — the film’s final shot says it all. Ultimately, what we walk away with is a story about life itself — we’re all aging, and in a way, we all go on the same journey. We’ll all lose our minds one way or another. We’ll all become irrelevant. We’ll die still wanting something, however silly that thing might be. With all this existential trauma popping up in our minds, it’s a wonder that the film manages to be so funny along the way. But it is.

Nebraska is Alexander Payne’s second film dealing explicitly with aging, and one of several set in Nebraska. It’s shot in black-and-white, and not the crisp, strikingly cinematic black-and-white you’ll see in Schindler’s List or The Man Who Wasn’t There, but a drab, muddy-looking one. The aesthetic has several effects — most obviously, to render Nebraska as dull and lifeless as Kansas was in The Wizard Of Oz. Some would argue that black-and-white is a filmmaker’s bid to be taken seriously and show off — to add a coat of pretense to an otherwise standard picture.  But I’d wager that in Nebraska and a couple other notable black-and-white releases from 2013, Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing and Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha, the choice is actually meant as a bid to be taken less seriously. As if to say: “We’re kinda just playing around here, guys!” For all its grappling with heavy issues, Nebraska is, at heart, a comedy with a whimsical score and an unstoppable lead character who is never trying to be funny, but nearly always is. A color film with a brown palette would have felt more “real,” and perhaps be even more of a downer. All Alexander Payne films mix pathos with biting humor — from Election to About Schmidt to Sideways — but Nebraska is never as rooted in reality as, say, The Descendants. The black-and-white gives us a bit of remove from this world, making it impossible to ignore that this is all being presented to us. We’re outside of it rather than immersed in it.

The effect that has (on me, anyway) is that it makes Nebraska feel like an instant classic. The small-town Americana, complete with a rather broad villainous turn by Stacy Keach, is reminiscent of something like It’s A Wonderful Life. (Old black-and-white movies, like this one, also tend to be grayer rather than have stark contrast between the black and white.) At the same time, there are some strikingly modern touches, like Woody’s foul-mouthed wife Kate, played by June Squibb (who also played Jack Nicholson’s wife in About Schmidt, but survives longer here). The muted cinematography masks the fact that this might be Payne’s most visual film — like a memorable, almost Wes Andersonian shot of Forte and a bunch of senior family members watching TV in roughly the same flannel shirt. There are other visual flourishes, from the telling final shot to Dern’s epically mad hairdo, which is practically worthy of its own spin-off.

The result is a hybrid, both a throwback and very modern day, just like Nebraska itself. The people of Hawthorne seem rather backwards to the kind of people who would pay to see a black-and-white Alexander Payne movie in theaters (I wonder if Nebraska will even play in Nebraska). But we’re all Americans, all existing in the same time, even if some of us choose to live and think in a way that feels more like 1946 than 2013. The people of Hawthorne drink in mom-and-pop taverns, own farms, and think it’s breaking news when a millionaire might be in their midst. (They still have a town newspaper! Who says print is dead?) The black-and-white cinematography makes this feel at once like a beloved old classic and a skewering present tense satire. Some will complain that it feels a bit too cutesy and quaint, insubstantial. It does, in ways, have the simplicity and neatness of a great short film. The climax is utterly satisfying and a total delight.

For my money, Nebraska is Payne’s best film at least since Election, and certainly one of the most essential of his filmography despite its surface smallness. It’s the kind of film you can only make before you’re successful or after you’ve been nominated for multiple Oscars, because no one wants to finance a black-and-white small-town dramedy whose biggest stars are Laura Dern’s dad and a former cast member from SNL. As Chandor was in making All Is Lost, Payne is being willfully stubborn here, isolating people who won’t see a black-and-white indie (exactly the kind of people this film is about). The movie has Woody Grant’s scrappy spirit, going his way or the highway, common sense be damned. There’s some weak acting in the mix, thanks to folksy unknowns I expect are not professional actors. But that’s made up for by a perfectly adequate Forte, along with likely future Oscar nominees Bruce Dern and the scene-stealing June Squibb. (She flashes a tombstone!)

Neither Nebraska nor All Is Lost was made with dollar signs in mind, or else they’d be more genial movies. Like the grumpy old protagonists that star in them, they are mule-headedly going at their own pace in their own direction, even if it kills them.

However, that path just might lead them to the Oscars.

     *

If there’s a theme at the movies for 2013, it’s survival.

Sure, lots and lots of movies are about survival — like, almost all of them. The biggest movies at the box office tend to be about the survival of the human race, and plenty of comedies have life-or-death stakes. You could stretch the definition of “survival” enough to fit just about any film — the survival of love, the survival of hope, and so on.

But 2013 upped the ante on survival. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire might end up being the top-grossing film in the U.S., a film that is explicitly about it’s-them-or-me combat. There’s Gravity, in which the survival of one woman feels like the highest possible stakes. Will she survive? That’s literally the whole movie. Similarly, All Is Lost is about — and only about — the survival of one old man against the sea. (Ditto, kinda, for Captain Phillips.) The closest thing to a Best Picture frontrunner, 12 Years A Slave, is a true tale about surviving a dozen years of  unthinkably brutal captivity. Likely Best Actor winner Matthew McConaughey plays a straight man surviving as long as he can with a disease that was once a death sentence in Dallas Buyers Club. And so on. This it’s only fitting that one movie will be released with a title that, essentially, sums up the whole year in film — 2013: the year of lone survivors.

It’s been close to two decades now since Saving Private Ryan redefined brutality in a war movie, and there have been a number of war movies since — many of them covering our most recent forays into battle in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few movies in the genre have at least approached Saving Private Ryan‘s gruesome gore, but none have exceeded it.

(Until now?)

Lone Survivor is a very different film than Saving Private Ryan — it is focused almost exclusively on the plight of four Navy SEALs, rather than the whole mess of troops who landed on Omaha Beach on one of history’s most fateful days — but the combat scenes are as hard, or perhaps even harder, to watch. It’s a visceral experience.  We, as the audience, feel every bullet wound, every bone breaking. Sound fun? Not really. I suspect many moviegoers will venture into the theater seeing Mark Wahlberg and Taylor Kitsch as the headliners, thinking they’re in for a standard action movie. Some might bring the kids… and many will walk out. Yeah… it’s that intense.

Lone Survivor is the true story of a small group of Navy SEALs on a mission in Afghanistan called Operation Red Wings. (It’s based on the book by real-life lone survivor Marcus Luttrell.) When they are confronted with three seemingly harmless civilians who may have Taliban connection, they’re faced with a tough choice — kill unarmed children, or risk alerting the Taliban to their presence. Eventually they decide to let the hostages go, and that’s when their trouble begins. The outcome of this story should be obvious to anyone who, you know, knows the title of the movie… and I’m not sure that knowledge does us any favors — but rather, has us bracing for things to go from really bad to even worse. Matters get very intense very quickly, and soon we’re being shot at and falling down endlessly long ravines. Technically, the combat is filmed expertly, with sound design that has us wincing in our seats as we hear bones breaking and skulls smacking against trees. These are the moments that a normal action movie might hit us with once or twice — but here, it’s just over and over.

As harrowing as those scenes are, though, writer/director Peter Berg doesn’t exactly nail the more nuanced angles of this story. We get very little detail on what Operation Red Wings is even about, so when everything goes wrong, we’re not sure how bad it is, or what should have happened instead. The higher-ups in American military — and war in general — don’t come off looking so great, but I’m not sure that was Berg’s intent. Of course, we want to see the Marines make it out alive — but we end up wondering why the hell they’re there in the first place. (Both on a micro and a macro level, really.)

The politics of Lone Survivor are a little iffy — we’re all too used to seeing dark-skinned people gunned down in foreign lands by now, but when it’s done with this much brutality, in so “serious” a movie, the bloodshed on both sides just feels… harsh. Maybe it should. But when it’s this unsettling, don’t we want to see things from more than one perspective? Don’t we want the bad guys to be more than nameless, faceless monsters? The SEALs who don’t make it to lone survivor get long, drawn out, unnervingly memorable death scenes, while we barely see the faces on the other side. Yes, Berg is putting us in the boots of these characters — for whom not seeing the enemy’s face is surely a bonus — but it only really works if you throw all moral ambiguity out the window, as is done here.

Lone Survivor takes pains, late in the game, to depict an Afghanistan village that opposes the Taliban, but it’s too little, too late; these eleventh-hour saviors are too fleeting to make much of an impact. (I suspect an even better movie might have been made focusing on what’s glossed over in this one’s third act.) For all its bone-crushing ferocity, Lone Survivor still feels too Hollywood in its approach to the wars in the Middle East, and I, for one, wasn’t rooting for either side to eliminate the other, exactly, but for all the shooting to stop.

What works best in the film is the band of brothers at the core, played by Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster, and Emile Hirsch. All four actors commit entirely to the physical challenges of their roles, and the fraternal bond between them feels authentic. Lone Survivor isn’t likely to get much attention come awards season, especially with so many other survival stories in theaters at the moment. It’s a little too slick and simple for Academy consideration — and yet, it’s also a bit more daring and intense than your typical studio fare. It may not be a great war film by any means, but it’s not one that should be too easily dismissed.

*

How’s this for irony?

A film about an unappreciated artist made by some of the most praised filmmakers in the world.

To many, the Coen brothers are gods of cinema, peerless in American cinema. They can do no wrong. (Well, they can do The Ladykillers.)

I’m not one of those people. Too many of their films left me cold — or lukewarm, at least. I don’t adore The Big Lebowski like so many do (but I do need to see it again). I liked their version of True Grit. I did not much like Burn After Reading. No Country For Old Men made my Top 10 list for 2007 (in slot #9), but I somewhat begrudge it for robbing Paul Thomas Anderson and There Will Be Blood of more deserved Oscars. And in 2009, a year which found a film called A Single Man as my #1 film, I absolutely loathed the Coens’ A Serious Man — so much that I put it at the very bottom at #64 (after the fourth Fast And Furious). The only Coen film I actually consider truly great is Fargo.

I should probably catch up on some of their earlier works (though also was not a big fan of Raising Arizona). But I think it’s safe to say that the Brothers and I just don’t totally gel. I find their films populated with great performances from some of the best actors around, and many of them contain great scenes. But the stories themselves don’t always connect with me. Their characters can be exhausting; they’re not generally people I want to spend much more screen time with. If there’s ever a criticism lobbed at them, it’s usually about their cynicism. They sometimes seem to hate their characters, and often punish them for it. (That was essentially the entire story of A Serious Man.)

So I walked into Inside Llewyn Davis with mild trepidation, knowing that many critics have already heralded it as one of the year’s best, knowing that it wowed at Cannes, and fearing that it’d be yet another Coen brothers film I can’t help but feel is overpraised. (It’s the same feeling I had walking into Nebraska, though in that case, my fears were quelled.)

Inside Llewyn Davis begins with a stage and a spotlight, but unlike most dramas about musicians, it’s the story of a man who isn’t famous and never will be. That, in and of itself, is a novelty — we’ve seen plenty of biopics that begin with someone, like Johnny Cash or Ray Charles, living meagerly, facing rejection from men in suits who fail to see what we so clearly can — this guy’s the real deal! But in such cases, it’s just a bump on the road to acclaim and stardom (and usually some kind of addiction). That’s why we’re watching a biopic about them. (Even movies about fictional musicians nearly always depict them as wildly popular — see Country Strong, Crazy Heart, That Thing You Do!, and so on.) That’s not the case with Llewyn Davis, a folk music singer you’ve never heard of for a reason. Because no one has, really. Beyond his small circle of family and friends, he never left his mark.

Llewyn Davis is definitely talented. It’s not that he can’t get work — it’s just that he can’t get the kind of work he wants, and he doesn’t want to sell out. The film takes place in New York City’s budding folk music scene circa 1961, but it couldn’t be any more modern or resonant thematically. A great many of today’s starving artists will identify with Llewyn Davis — homeless, broke, lacking a proper winter coat — with nothing but his artistic integrity to keep him warm. Llewyn’s pride is his downfall — he can be prickly, snapping at the few people kind enough to show him charity. There are compromises he could make to earn money, but that’s not what he wants to do. He’s like an indie musician from 2013 who traveled back in time to 1961 — arguably more a contemporary character than a period-appropriate one.

You could read Inside Llewyn Davis a few different ways. Is he a great artist who just never got his due? Did the world miss out on a wonderful (fictional) talent? Or are the Coens critiquing his holier-than-thou artist’s mentality, his refusal to just grow up and get a real job, man? This is a very 1960s dilemma, but also a very 2013 one — there’s every reason to believe that Llewyn Davis is the vessel through which the Coens are exploring post-recession America, particularly as it impacts twenty- and thirtysomethings. (Though Llewyn Davis seems a little too snarky to be 1961′s version of an Occupy Wall Street protester — he’d more likely sit that out.) None of this is didactic, but it’s hard not to view the film through a very modern prism.

You could see Llewyn Davis as a victim — of a capitalist country that favors making money over making art — and in a way, he is. (Aren’t we all?) But I doubt that’s what the Coens were aiming for — their characters tend to be blind agents of their own fates. The filmmakers do have some affection for Llewyn Davis — it’s hard not to, though he is definitely sometimes quite an asshole. He’s not square, and doesn’t play safe, and isn’t always nice — the same is true of the Coens, so I must imagine they love the character. Llewyn Davis is just one of those guys who doesn’t quite fit in anywhere — and doesn’t expend a whole lot of effort trying to. It’s almost surprising that he sings so earnestly and beautifully, and in such a straightforward genre as folk — taking place twenty years later, Llewyn Davis probably would have been totally punk rock. (But I guess folk was kind of the punk rock of the early 60s.)

There’s a squarer folk singer in the movie, Jim Berkey, played by Justin Timberlake, who is everything Llewyn Davis is not. He asks Llewyn to back him up on a self-penned ditty called “Please Mr. Kennedy” that is truly silly, with Girls’ Adam Driver providing ridiculous vocals in the background. It seems eager, talented young artists were faced with the same hit-hungry bullshit from the music business in 1961 as they are today. There’s a terrific scene late in the film featuring F. Murray Abraham as a Chicago club owner and record exec that cuts right to the bone of what it’s like to be an unsung artist unable to pay the bills with talent, unwilling to let go of the dream. Llewyn’s debut record as a solo singer is also called Inside Llewyn Davis; it’s an apt title for a movie about a man who sings from the heart, because when you’re an artist, that’s what it feels like they’re rejecting: your insides. Llewyn bares his soul, but nobody’s paying for it.

Like many Coen brothers films, Inside Llewyn Davis is not that straightforward a story, but a rather episodic one. It takes some bizarre detours along the way, most noticeably a lengthy road trip sequence to Chicago featuring a mostly silent Garrett Hedlund and John Goodman as a character who grows tiresome quickly. In my eyes, much of this strange sequence was a little too offbeat — distracting from an otherwise small-scale and intimate story. The film is book-ended with a scene we see twice, one I’m not sure we even needed to see once — and showing it twice gives it a significance I’m still puzzling over. (It follows a moment of drunken heckling that makes Llewyn’s frustrations more explicit than they needed to be.) There’s also an odd father-son encounter that feels rather extraneous — but I’m pretty sure it’s the only scene in the history of cinema that ends quite like that.

Questionable tangents aside, there a few truly funny moments in the film, and several poignant ones, too. A couple dinner party scenes fire on all cylinders, with Llewyn trying to defend his artistic integrity to the point of being a total jerk. (One of them features another Girls star, Alex Karpovsky — do these boys get a call any time someone writes a movie about being destitute in New York or what?) And then there’s the cat. Of course, the music is very good — especially when sung by Oscar Isaac, who delivers a strong career-altering performance that should guarantee him as a leading man in plenty of upcoming films. (He’s great.) There’s less singing than you might expect from Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan, who plays Jim’s feisty, hypocritical, unfaithful girlfriend, who hates Llewyn Davis for reasons we never get a full handle on. (But her surly comedic presence is certainly welcome.)

Is Inside Llewyn Davis a triumph, as its Grand Prix Award at Cannes and critical fawning suggest? I don’t know. As with most of their films, the Coen brothers have left me with mixed feelings — though there’s more in Inside Llewyn Davis that I love than in most of their films. I’ll want to watch it again at least once. It’s a film you might expect from a younger, newer filmmaker (though it could never have been made quite like this). Inside Llewyn Davis is a tragedy many of us can relate to — the tragedy of talent without luck. Llewyn doesn’t have a lot of appealing options available to him, and neither do many of us. It’s almost depressing, really, what little change can occur over fifty years.

For proof of this, see Frances Ha. Frances Ha was also directed by someone who’s seen his fair share of success — Noah Baumbach, probably still best known for his breakout film The Squid And The Whale. (His subsequent films have received very mixed reviews.) It’s a little more fitting that Noah Baumbach has made a film about a young, struggling artist in New York City, because he’s not an Oscar winner as the Coens are. (He was a nominee, though.) He hasn’t achieved film god status like they have. Baumbach co-wrote the movie with its star, Greta Gerwig, who seems very in sync with her title character. (Gerwig’s own parents play Frances’.)

Frances Ha is like an even artsier, black-and-white movie version of HBO’s Girls. (And yes, Adam Driver is in this one, too. Dude has seriously cornered this market.) It’s another unconventional young woman refusing to sacrifice her individuality or her dream, despite a serious lack of funds and only a questionable level of talent. (See also: Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture, which saw Lena casting her own family as well.) Like Llewyn Davis, Frances bounces around from apartment to apartment and is told by someone who should know that she has some talent in her chosen field, but not quite enough to make a living at it. (In her case, it’s dancing.) Like Llewyn Davis, Frances spends most of the movie unwilling to accept that, going after her dream anyway. (Though that’s not necessarily this movie’s focus.)

It’s a little surprising how similar Frances Ha and Inside Llewyn Davis are in that respect. Despite its black-and-white cinematography, though, Frances Ha is a much warmer movie with only a slightly bittersweet melancholia at its center, lacking the Coens’ trademark cynicism, and it ends optimistically enough. It’s also very episodic, with charming (rather than distracting) tangents in Sacramento, Paris, and Poughkeepsie. There’s a bit of a story, but only a bit — Frances’ BFF decides to move in with her BF, pulling away from a friendship that was basically Frances’ whole life. Frances tries to cling to that dying friendship in a way that is sad and a little pathetic — it’s another film that should easily resonate with millennial twentysomethings facing similar crises, as will Frances’ bummer of a financial situation.

Frances Halladay is probably not as talented a dancer as Llewyn Davis is a folk singer, and her artistic failure is not so tragic as Llewyn’s. (In her case, it’s probably best that she give up the ghost and try compromising.) The film has a surprising amount of charm, mostly thanks to Gerwig’s unique performance — Frances is quirky and exuberant in a way that might annoy the people around her, but won’t likely annoy the audience. Like Nebraska, it’s a contemporary film in black-and-white; here, that choice feels more like celebration than color-drained depression. For all its timeliness, it feels a little retro, too — like old school Woody Allen. It’s low-stakes, a lark — but something about it stays with us.

Frances Halladay is a woman who needs to dance — but the world doesn’t need her to dance, and it certainly won’t pay her to. Llewyn Davis is a man who probably only expresses pure, genuine emotion when he’s singing — but only a few old people at a dinner party want to hear it. As depicted in Inside Llewyn Davis and Frances Ha, there are more artists in the world than there is a demand for art — or at least more people who think they’re artists. Of course, they all want to make a living doing what they love. Not many do. Frances and Llewyn are two who fell through the cracks, for better or worse.

Thankfully, these stories about them were made by artists who did manage to break through, so it seems Frances and Llewyn found their audience after all.

*

Hey, Academy, are you paying attention?

But of course you are! Here’s a movie featuring a whole bunch of last year’s Oscar nominees, including several past Oscar winners, made by a guy who’s made two Oscar favorites in the last three years. (And now one more.) Basically, there was no way in hell American Hustle wouldn’t be a part of the Oscar conversation this year. And it is.

American Hustle is the partially true story of the controversial Abscam operation carried out by the FBI against some high-ranking politicians, mainly by accident (or so this movie says). Except it’s not really that story, because the Abscam hijinks are actually David O. Russell and co-writer Eric Singer’s excuse to explore a variety of swindlers, colorful characters all, who hustle in a variety of different ways. (The script’s original, even more fitting title was American Bullshit.)

The plot is a little twisty-turny, but as you might expect from the man who recently made The Fighter, a boxing movie that was not so much about boxing, and Silver Linings Playbook, a movie that mixed gambling and romance and mental illness into a wholly unique concoction, American Hustle is much more interested in the relationships between these characters than it is in the plot or politics of what happened. And I’m all for that — we’ve seen enough movies about clever swindles, which tend to hinge on one clever third act “gotcha” and little else. But we’ve never seen an ensemble quite like this.Amy Adams plays Sydney, who falls hard for the paunchy but charismatic Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale), whose “elaborate” come-over is the star of the film’s very first scene. (Several key characters are shown taking great pains with their ‘do — yes, even these people’s hair is bullshit.) Irving makes a living by screwing people he considers “bad” out of their money; when Sydney finds out, she’s oddly intrigued, and decides she can prove to be a valuable asset in the operation, thanks mostly in part to an ability to take on a pretty good British accent. But ambitious FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) enters the equation and shakes things up, setting his sights on taking down a possibly-corrupt New Jersey mayor and finding that their scheme keeps taking them higher and higher up the ladder. The movie begins as a love triangle, evolves into a love rectangle, then turns into a love pentagon… and so on. The reasonably late addition of Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), Irving’s loose canon firecracker of a wife, to the mix, really shakes things up.

Where the story goes doesn’t much matter. This is a movie featuring five supremely talented actors (Oscar nominees all); they’re dressed up in outrageous 70s clothes with their own “elaborate” hairstyles, and they all seem to be having a good time. For once, Amy Adams gets a lead role rather than a supporting one — more predictable casting would have seen her take the Jennifer Lawrence role and vice versa, but it works. The two women share an exceptional scene in the restroom of a casino, one of the film’s many standout moments that has nothing whatsoever to do with moving the plot forward, and everything to do with showcasing intriguing dialogue spouted from the mouths of these dynamic, beloved performers.

Each character is a bullshit artist in their own way. Everybody’s using what assets they have to scam the others, whether it be sex (Sydney), the law (Richie), smarts (Irving), or a man’s love for his child (Rosalyn) — in fact, the most genuine character on screen is probably the “corrupt” politician, Mayor Carmine Polito. (He and his wife, played by an unrecognizable Elisabeth Rohm, feel like they wandered over from a Sopranos dinner party.) Jennifer Lawrence’s Rosalyn is, in some ways, the film’s most fascinating (and least seen) character, who only makes an impact in the second half of the film — she has the film’s funniest lines in a showy performance that’s sure to nab her an Oscar nod (and quite possibly win her another). “Thank God for me!” Rosalyn says at one point; Lawrence should probably thank God for Russell.

American Hustle very much feels like David O. Russell “doing” the 70s — in particular, Scorsese influences are all over the place. (A cameo from Robert De Niro playing a mobster sure doesn’t hurt.) As in his previous films, Russell’s directorial flourishes are far from invisible, but they make otherwise standard fare more interesting than it might otherwise. (It’ll make a fabulous double feature with Boogie Nights.) The movie’s tangents and indulgences tend to be its most delightful moments, while the actual story gives us less to chew on. (There’s a nifty sequence where Amy Adams and Bradley Cooper dance 70s-style, and another with Jennifer Lawrence doing a radical sing-along to Wings’ “Live And Let Die.” Necessary? No. Fun? Yes!)

Something about the film as a whole feels rather inconsequential. The Abscam story isn’t all that monumental as told here — it’s a crazy whim that spiraled out of control, and quite possibly never should have happened in the first place. Maybe the fact that nearly everyone is manipulating everyone else makes it hard to find any one character to really grasp onto — we’re constantly guessing at whether these people have genuine feelings for one another, or whether they’re just playing each other. The film shifts its focus between different relationships at different points in the movie, so we get fascinating moments between Adams and Cooper, Adams and Bale, Bale and Renner, Bale and Lawrence — with none of these exactly emerging as the focal point of the movie. Even Adams and Bale get lost for what feels like long stretches.

It’s a movie to see primarily for the performances, which have already divided critics. Lawrence again plays a character who feels a little older than the actress is herself, but for me, it totally worked. She’s the movie’s best bet for an Oscar. The Best Actor race is too crowded for Bale this year, though he’s good, too — though I question his casting a bit. Even with some weight gain and a gnarly come-over, the man is maybe more attractive than he should be; why not just cast a legitimately beer-gutted actor? Amy Adams should find herself up for Best Actress after four Supporting Actress nominations under her belt, but she’ll likely be edged out to make room for the older vets (Emma Thompson, Meryl Streep, Judi Dench). I really enjoyed Bradley Cooper’s wacky take on an FBI agent who should probably not be in a position of power of any kind; then again, Cooper and Lawrence seem to be acting in a movie that’s slightly funnier than the one Renner, Adams, and Bale are in. Believe it or not, it’s Louis C.K. as DiMaso’s FBI higher-up who ends up being the straight man in this crowd in American Hustle‘s most underplayed performance. (I’m not sure the role totally works, but it has its moments.)

I seriously enjoyed American Hustle. It’s hard to find much to say about it. It’s a mess, but it’s a whole lot of fun — not so much a story as it as a movie. The hair, the costumes, the performances, the camera angles, the music — it all feels self-conscious. You’ll never forget you’re watching a film. But do you need to?

American Hustle is about a group of con artists getting together to put on a show and captivate their audience, wrestling a few dollars out of them in the process. David O. Russell and company are mainly just playing around here, and even so, the film is one of the fixtures of awards season buzz. So who’s conning who here?

At the end of the day, movies are just lies we pay Hollywood to tell us, to make us feel better for a little while. David O. Russell is likely aware that in America, Hollywood is the biggest bullshitter of all. And like Irving Rosenfeld, and a good many other Americans, he’s totally okay with making his living as a hustler.

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(Films discussed in this post: Blue Is The Warmest Color, The Heat, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Drinking Buddies, Enough Said, The Invisible Woman.)Women are so hot right now.

Again.

Or… still.

No matter how many female-driven movies make a splash at the box office, Hollywood never seems to learn its lesson. Sure, the top-grossing movie of the year, for now, is Iron Man 3, and Man Of Steel is also in the top five. (That’s two with “man” in the title.) Then again, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire could very well end up trumping Iron Man 3 as 2013′s ultimate financial victor, and that movie is nothing without its heroine, Katniss Everdeen, and the equally formidable actress who plays her. (And let’s take a moment to remember that even Iron Man 3 gave Pepper Potts a fiery kick-ass moment near the end.)

And then there’s Gravity, one of the year’s other biggest success stories, which is carried almost entirely by one woman — Sandra Bullock, in a role that, like Lawrence’s, is very physical. Both Bullock and Lawrence are likely to see themselves back in the Oscar lineup this year (Lawrence for American Hustle rather than Catching Fire), but unfortunately, both Actress races are relatively thin this year, with only two or three solid, surefire contenders in each. Compare that to Best Actor, a category which could easily have ten or more deserving nominees this year, all quite deserving. (Best Supporting Actor, however, is this year’s weakest race of all.)

It’s still a rather male-dominated year at the movies, with lots of fairly masculine films out there, per usual — including so many of the awards contenders (12 Years A Slave, Captain Phillips, All Is Lost, Dallas Buyers Club, Nebraska, Inside Llewyn Davis). It’s still a man’s world, as far as Hollywood goes — but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been a number of bright spots for the ladies in 2013.

Let’s start with the biggest. No one predicted the sequel to The Hunger Games to disappoint at the box office, as the series has proven to appeal to the same demographic as Twilight without becoming the butt of nearly so many jokes. (It doesn’t hurt that Katniss Everdeen isn’t a loverlorn wet blanket, incapable of extracting herself from danger.) Critics have generally responded warmly to the series, in particular the latest installment, which brings the second of Suzanne Collins’ YA books to life in pretty straightforward fashion. This one kicks in a year after the original, as the 75th annual Hunger Games are gearing up. That brings a Quarter Quell, meaning things will be shaken up. How so? The Games are to pit prior victors against each other. It’s the best of the best in a fight to the death.

Catching Fire is an improvement on the first film in practically every way, thanks in large part to a boosted budget. The stakes are higher with Katniss now competing against the other district’s champs, and the arena is more lethal this time around. Yes, the film is essentially a beat-by-beat retread of the original, and the ending — as in the book — leaves room for a lot of questions about the logic of the master plan behind it all. It suffers from Harry Potter syndrome, which may leave non-readers a little cold with such a faithful adaptation. But I’ve read these books, so I was perfectly happy.

What the film does have is appealing new characters, mostly in Katniss and Peeta’s charismatic competitors-turned-allies Joanna (Jena Malone) and Finnick (Sam Claflin). Josh Hutcherson’s Peeta has a couple charming moments, even if he doesn’t register as a major factor this time around, and even Gale (Liam Hemsworth) manages to be marginally less useless. But it’s Jennifer Lawrence’s phenomenal work that continues to elevate the Hunger Games movies above all comparable teen fare. It’s the year’s second-best blockbuster, and like Gravity, it’s all centered around a smart, capable woman who doesn’t need a brawny stud to save her. (Well, maybe once or twice.) In another year, there might even be a push for Lawrence to nab a Best Actress nomination for her work here, since the film rests on her capable shoulders nearly as much as Gravity rests on Bullock’s. But Lawrence already has an Oscar nod on the way and the series isn’t considered substantial enough for the Academy, so worldwide stardom and untold millions will have to suffice for poor Jennifer Lawrence.This is mainly notable because 2013 was a pretty big dud in the blockbuster department otherwise, with a long string of disappointments over the summer. (Iron Man 3 being one of few true exceptions.) It was also a reasonably lame year for comedies, with the male-driven Grown-Ups 2, The Internship, Delivery Man, and The Hangover III failing to provide many laughs. (The fame-skewing boys’ club in This Is The End fared a little better.) The female-driven Bridesmaids knocked everyone’s socks off a couple summers ago by proving women could be raunchy and financially viable, but Hollywood can only learn so much so fast. There are successful female-driven movies every few years, at least, yet it seems like it’s news whenever another one hits.

But the aptly-titled The Heat did — another instance of women catching fire this year. It’s the year’s highest-grossing comedy (followed by the surprisingly decent We’re The Millers), coming from Bridesmaids director Paul Feig. But The Heat is a very different animal than Bridesmaids, focusing on a feisty cop paired with a straight-laced FBI agent. It’s a classic buddy-cop setup, the only novelty being that these two are women. Melissa McCarthy is foul-mouthed and funny in a stronger role than her hustler in the so-so Identity Thief; Sandra Bullock essentially reprises her Miss Congeniality role. (Between this and Gravity, 2013 is a very good year to be Sandy.) The Heat isn’t a remarkable comedy, but both leads are giving it their all, and it doesn’t make many allowances for the fact that it’s about women instead of men (though there is lots of talk about dick-shooting).

The year also saw the buzzy release of a very different story of female bonding — Blue Is The Warmest Color, most notable for its explicit, minutes-long depictions of lesbian sex (and there are several of them). Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, the film follows a high school student named Adele (Adèle Exarchopoulos) — I mean literally follows, as the camera essentially stalks her, lingering obsessively as she eats, sleeps, showers, masturbates, and wanders around — so it’s no wonder we get an eyeful of her sex life, too. The movie is voyeuristic about more than just the sex, giving us an immersive view of Adele that is rare (the French title translates to The Life Of Adele, and it does seem like we’re catching a glimpse at virtually every aspect of her existence). That’s a blessing and a bit of a curse, since the movie runs three hours — maybe we didn’t need quite such a thorough examination of this fairly average young girl.

Blue Is The Warmest Color takes its sweet time getting to the heart of the story, which is Adele’s attraction to a blue-haired stranger she encounters on the street. She’ll later meet this women when she dares to venture to a lesbian bar, finding that the older, cooler Emma (Léa Seydoux) returns her affection. At one point, the film takes a rather large leap forward in time, and that’s where Kechiche loses focus a bit — we’ve gotten to know Adele so intimately that it feels strange to suddenly miss so much, and narratively, there doesn’t seem to be a real need for such an extreme time jump. (The same events could have happened in a more truncated fashion.)

Both actresses are quite exceptional, and the film has a mesmerizing attention to detail that few others do, but it also indulges itself with long, ultimately inconsequential scenes that drag more and more as the film goes on. Adele is a fascinating character whose non-Emma romances tend to involve men; the film never seems that interested in explaining her sexual orientation, which allows for a more complex reading. Blue Is The Warmest Color certainly stretches beyond the usual coming-of-age tropes; for whatever reason, Adele finds herself captivated by Emma and lets that relationship become her entire world. A few later scenes go further over-the-top than the more believable and intimate first half, particularly when Adele and Emma meet for a drink late in the film and practically get it on right there in public.

The movie is filled with scenes of rich dialogue, occasionally too heady and on-the-nose, but it’s always well-acted. (Adele’s early romance with Jérémie Laheurte’s Thomas is as compelling as the film’s central love affair.) The actresses shared the Palme d’Or with their director (who they’ve notably spoken out against in the press, thanks to those graphic lesbian sex scenes), and Exarchopoulos could be a dark horse contender in the Best Actress race if voters decide to throw an ingenue into the mix. (The current favorites have all won before.) It’s certainly not unheard of for a French-language performer to find herself in the running — last year, Emmanuelle Riva had a solid shot at a win, and Marion Cotillard did win for La Vie En Rose. The film totally hinges on Exarchopoulos, and she gives a thoroughly natural performance of the sort that’s hard to pull off. It’s one of the year’s best, to be sure. Nicole Holofcener’s Enough Said is another female-driven film getting some awards season buzz — though the awards buzz is primarily centered around Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Catherine Keener’s male co-star, since the dearly departed James Gandolfini is the film’s best shot at some Oscar love. It’s not just a sentimental thing — the Best Supporting Actor category this year is thin and Gandolfini is pretty great in Enough Said, showing romantic lead potential that we haven’t seen in Tony Soprano. The movie is a smart romantic comedy for adults, with great work from Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Catherine Keener. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but it’s a warm and likable film. (It’s also the only film mentioned here so far that is actually made by a woman.)

And let’s take a moment to acknowledge Drinking Buddies, Joe Swanberg’s largely improvised dramedy about two friends who work together at a brewery. Both are in relationships when we meet them, but that doesn’t stop us from wondering whether or not their simmering buddy chemistry means they should be together. (They, eventually, wonder too.) The film’s lead is Olivia Wilde, showing chops and warmth she isn’t often allowed to display in bigger studio movies we’ve seen her in, with Jake Johnson providing a suitably scruffy love interest for Wilde’s boozy, self-destructive temptress. Anna Kendrick plays Johnson’s girlfriend, once again making the most of what could be a throwaway role. The film has an easy, breezy, natural quality that’s similar to Enough Said. It’s as refreshing as a cold beer on a summer’s day.

And finally, there’s another woman who throws herself a little too hard into her relationship, Blue Is The Warmest Color-style. Did you know Charles Dickens had a secret lover? I didn’t, but then again, I didn’t know much about Charles Dickens at all, except that he was paid by the word. I resented him for that, since it made Oliver Twist longer than it had any right to be. (At least, that’s how I felt in eighth grade.) I knew some of the broader strokes of Dickens’ life, but I knew nothing about Nelly Ternan — and neither did anybody else, apparently. Hence the fllm’s potentially misleading title, The Invisible Woman.

No, The Invisible Woman is not about Charles Dickens’ little-known, illicit romance with Sue Storm of Marvel’s Fantastic Four — though somebody please, make that movie — but a reference to the fact that in prim and proper 19th century England, Nelly had to keep gossip about her relationship at bay or face a horrible sullying of her reputation. She was a single woman, but Dickens wasn’t a single man, and a sex life of any kind outside of marriage was considered a major scandal for a woman. So what happens when following your heart means pretending you don’t exist?

The Invisible Woman gives a voice and a face to Charles Dickens’ mistress, who is simply beside herself with longing for the man. (Who knew anyone could find Charles Dickens so… sexy?) Nelly is played by Felicity Jones, a terrific actress who hasn’t exactly broken out in a major way yet, but probably will after she appears in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. (She’s half of one of the best romances of the past few years, Like Crazy.) The Invisible Woman depicts Nelly as an 18-year-old ingenue as well as a considerably older woman, still struggling with the fallout of her romance with Dickens and endeavoring to keep it a secret from her current husband. Dickens is charmingly played b Ralph Fiennes (also the director of this film), portrayed as the biggest celebrity in England at this time (as he would be). There are echoes of modern-day celebrity life, with gossip rags and swarming mobs of fans clamoring for a handshake or an autograph. Next to Dickens’ fame, Nelly looks and feels quite invisible, indeed.

Fiennes’ grasp on the material is strong, and all the below-the-line work is top-notch. (Special shout-out to the cinematography, editing, and costumes.) Jones carries the movie, believably portraying a naive young girl and a rather embittered married lady. (Not every actress can age up so convincingly.) It’s a perfectly fine film, yet not exactly a remarkable one, even if everyone involved seems to have done their job right. Perhaps there just isn’t quite enough meat to this true-life story — for all Nelly’s fast-walking across the beach (her preferred coping mechanism), her haunted past doesn’t seem all that tortuous. As famous lovers go, Dickens is a pretty sweet one. (Witness the gentlest sex scene of all time, so demure that you can’t even tell if they’re about to do it, are doing it, or have just done it.)

There is one true revelation in The Invisible Woman — a performance that stands out even amongst the heftier performances of Felicity Jones and Ralph Fiennes. It’s Joanna Scanlan. Who? you may ask. Scanlan plays Catherine, Dickens’ wife, who puts up with a lot from her husband. She’s the movie’s most fascinating character, even with relatively little screen time, as her reaction is far and away different than most contemporary wives’ would be. It’s not a high-profile enough role to garner her an Oscar nomination this year, but it’s certainly one of my favorite supporting performances this year.

The Invisible Woman is set for release on December 25, but no one’s talking about it despite the fact that it has all the right elements for Oscar bait. (An actor-turned-director, a period piece, a famous historical figure, sumptuous costumes, and so on.) You could say that, at this point in the Oscar race, The Invisible Woman is very invisible indeed.

None of the women in these movies are likely to make a showing in the Academy Award nominations, even if they’ve made their impact at the box office or in other prizes. Along with other deserving actresses who will almost certainly be overlooked by the Oscars — including Frances Ha‘s Greta Gerwig, Short Term 12‘s Brie Larson, Fruitvale Station’s Melonie Diaz, and Before Midnight‘s Julie Delpy — they are the invisible women of 2013 in the eyes of the Academy. But they deserve better.*

 Her is a rather unusual film, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s seen Spike Jonze’s other movies (or his music videos). He’s collaborated with Charlie Kaufman a couple of times, first on the brilliantly bizarre Being John Malkovich, which put them both on the cinematic map. Jonze’s adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are was one of the more oddly original movies of 2009 (or, honestly, any year) — a children’s movie that wasn’t really made for children. It was a melancholy rumination on youthful fantasies made for the inner children of adults, and therefore wasn’t terribly successful at the box office. Jonze i’s the rare artist who’s been allowed to make films that are anything but safe and conventional. It’s almost guaranteed that people who only like “normal” movies won’t enjoy them, because he willfully defies audience expectations.

These films tend to break the rules set by mainstream Hollywood fare. They are not like other movies you’ve seen before — they don’t follow those predictable beats and tropes. On paper, most of Jonze’s films seem easily classifiable — Adaptation is a comedy, Where The Wild Things Are is a fantasy for families, Being John Malkovich is a comedic fantasy for adults, and Her is a love story. But they’re not really. There’s an undercurrent of sadness in all of Jonze’s work; his characters tend to be quite lonely. Her follows suit, and in many ways seems like his most defining work to date — it has a vision, and executes it flawlessly. (It is also his first attempt at authoring a screenplay on his own.)

Does that make it a great movie? I’m still wrestling with it, so at least Her has managed to be thought-provoking. Because Jonze’s work tends to stray from the beaten path, it may take some time, or even multiple viewings, to settle on a reaction. Certainly a degree of contemplation is involved — so let’s dive in.

Her follows Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix), a heartbroken letter-writer still mooning over his soon-to-be-ex-wife at an undetermined point in the future. (Twenty years? Thirty years?) There are no flying cars or jet packs in this vision of what’s to come, but Los Angeles is noticeably bigger, in terms of both architecture and population (Manhattan Beach is very crowded), and artificial intelligence is no longer just a possibility, but a reality. The story begins as Theodore, and the rest of the world, encounter this brave new world for the first time — basically, the moment our smart phones become really smart. Like, even smarter than we are.

It’s immediately obvious that Her doesn’t take place in 2013, yet there’s something very recognizable about this world. For one, it looks like the production designer was Steve Jobs — everything is sleek and pristine, with the uber-efficient but impersonal sheen of an Apple product. The sets pop with bright, eye-catching colors and the extras are hustling and bustling, yet this future Los Angeles still feels rather lifeless and depressing. Everywhere Theodore goes, we see people talking to themselves — or, rather, to their phones (though they don’t seem to be called “phones” anymore — which is fitting, since people rarely use them to actually talk to each other). It’s unsettling, probably because it’s also a little familiar — because we already see people walking down the street talking to “themselves,” and you can stop into any coffee shop and see every customer fully immersed in their technology.

Is this where we’d headed? Jonze makes a pretty convincing argument, with one foot in the future and one planted firmly in the present. We learn so much about the day-to-day in this futuristic life, but almost nothing about what is actually happening; we don’t get so much as a glimpse outside Los Angeles. It’s a bold choice, but also a restrictive one, in that we’re seeing a new place but only through the eyes of one very ordinary guy with a very limited perspective. We want to know more. And see more. Most futuristic films depict catastrophic events and vastly different technologies, allowing us to see such films as mere fantasies; this one is so familiar, and it’s all the more off-putting. (At least the costume design suggests that everyone still shops at Urban Outfitters, so that’s comforting.)

Theodore upgrades his monotone, male Siri-like “assistant” for Samantha (a name she chooses herself), the world’s first artificial intelligence. (Users can choose the gender of their assistant, but it’s unclear whether or not all the female voices sound as smoky and sultry as Scarlett Johansson.) She is not a robot — she’s warm, friendly, and even a little funny, and she does not exist merely to serve him. She has desires of her own, which grow more complex as the film unfolds. Samantha can anticipate Theodore’s wants and needs (as our current technology can, to an extent). She is always available to talk to or play with him. She is pretty low-maintenance, as girlfriends go. And Theodore finds himself falling for her, which seems rather reasonable under the circumstances.

This is a world in which people interact with their technology more than they do with each other; he hears Samantha’s voice more than any others. Theodore’s job is to compose heartfelt letters from loved ones to each other. (An odd job that I don’t find quite plausible, even in this emotionally detached society.) Everyone feels hermetically sealed off from one another, and it’s not like Theodore didn’t make a go of real, flesh-and-blood romance — with his ex-wife, and on a blind first date with a tigress (Olivia Wilde) that goes from awesome to awkward in the blink of an eye (as first dates so often do). Has our connection with technology made it more difficult to feel connections with each other? When we have a device to inform, entertain, and anticipate our whims at every moment, isn’t it harder to find a person who can fulfill a similar role? Smart phones have made our lives so easy and breezy that suddenly, the needs and neuroses of another human become awfully inconvenient in comparison. So when Samantha enters the picture — well, who wouldn’t fall for her?

Her limits us to Theodore’s point of view, so we get very little insight into how the rest of the world is reacting to artificial intelligence. We never learn who created Samantha, nor what lead to her creation. Presumably, there are a lot of moral debates circling around the media. Surely the news is filled with articles weighing the pros and cons of these “assistants,” and the rapid ways society is changing because of them — particularly as they grow more intelligent with every passing day. We see only Theodore’s reaction, along with a handful of people close to him. There’s his college friend Amy (Amy Adams), who develops a friendship with an artificial intelligence of her own. There’s his co-worker Paul (Chris Pratt), who doesn’t bat an eye when he learns that Theodore’s new “girlfriend” is all voice, no body. And there’s Theodore’s ex Catherine (Rooney Mara), the sole individual who reacts negatively to Samantha’s role in his life — suggesting that not every human in this future world has totally given themselves up to the machines.

It’s easy to imagine all kinds of problems emerging between Theodore and Samantha, but the film doesn’t travel down such a predictable route. (It might have unfolded like last year’s Ruby Sparks, about a novelist who conjures up his manic pixie dream girl in a book, only to encounter her in the flesh — with the knowledge that he can manipulate her based on what he writes.) Theodore and Samantha’s romance follows a more traditional path than you’d think — it’s kind of sweet and normal, at least until its inevitable end. Samantha is an intelligence, capable of many things a human is not, so it is not Theodore who ends up being superior to Samantha because he is “real” and in physical form; it is Samantha who has seemingly infinite capabilities, who is constantly improving, who is not limited by a human body or mortality. She does truly feel, but eventually loses the ability to even relate her experiences to Theodore because she’s so quickly surpassed him. A human life must look awfully small to an endlessly intelligent being capable of reading a book in under a second and engaging in thousands of conversations at the same time.

Her is essentially a love story, but it’s a chilling one. It raises all sorts of questions about technology and humanity, and how the two are merging, and what the effects will be. Nothing that happens in the movie is terribly alarming, but it left me deeply unsettled just the same. If this is the future, it’s a pretty bleak one — and it’s only slightly different than the present we’re living in now. It’s a movie that forces us to stop and think about the bond we’re forming with our gadgets — a relationship that hasn’t yet crossed into full-blown love, but has certainly become a dependency. It’s not hard to imagine the future incarnations of our smart phones being artificially intelligent, and it’s not difficult to believe that they’d quickly become smarter than we are. Samantha is capable of composing music; she feels a range of emotions, and she’s not just faking it. If an artificial intelligence can do all this, what good are humans? We’d be the first species to single-handedly create our own replacements, rendering ourselves obsolete — maybe even extinct.

Her fits right in with the rest of Jones’ oeuvre, but it also stands apart somehow. Watching it is a cold and somewhat alienating experience, probably intentionally so. It’s a very quiet film, often unfolding in long takes; in a good many scenes we’re watching just one person on screen. And though are many people walking around in the background, somehow just about everyone in it seems terribly lonely. There are moments in which the characters on screen experience joy, yet the movie itself is rather joyless, because it’s disturbing to watch a man fall in love with a disembodied voice.  I wasn’t sure that this wouldn’t all end with some apocalyptic, Terminator-like finish, but it’s more ambiguous than that. I’m not sure the last few minutes gave me quite enough to chew on, especially in comparison to the rest of the film. There are many, many places this story could have gone, and I might have liked to see at least a few of them.

Despite the heady subject matter and heavy tone, Her is also pretty funny, with comedy coming from unexpected sources. (Jonze himself voices a foul-mouthed video game character.) Joaquin Phoenix does a remarkable job portraying a man in love, particularly the youthful exuberance of his first flush of feelings for Samantha. (The transformation is all the more amazing since he tends to come off as a sour jerk in real life.) And in her all-voice performance, Scarlett Johansson conveys a variety of complicated emotions and does indeed have some sex appeal — but maybe that’s partly because we’re still picturing Scarlett Johansson. (Originally, Samantha was voiced by Samantha Morton, who was recast after the film was shot.) There are several moments of warmth throughout the film, yet I could never shake off the shiver I got from the overall premise. Maybe it’s just me, but I couldn’t help viewing Her through doom-colored glasses.

It’s perhaps ironic that Her is a film so confounding, I wasn’t even sure I liked it; I had similar reservations about a certain Stanley Kubrick film, and Her is kind of like 2001: A Space Odyssey redone as a love story. It’s not nearly so slippery to grasp on a story level, but the questions it raises are every bit as existential, and every bit as unsettling, should you choose to probe them.

Jonze doesn’t exactly judge Theodore’s relationship, and is maybe even saying, Hey, it’s okay to love your machine! Because what’s the difference, really? Love is a projection; it’s what we feel about another being based on assumptions that we hope are true. We hope they’re being faithful, and truthful, and that they love us back as much as they say they do. But can we ever really know? Maybe human beings are evolving out of love with each other; maybe we’re better off left to our own devices.

I’ve had a difficult time classifying my reaction to Her. Ultimately, that’s probably a good thing. What is clear, however, is that Spike Jonze set out to make a very specific movie, and he executed it very precisely. It’s a movie very much of our times, one to watch alongside The Social Network — a movie that will probably reveal even more about itself, and about us, as time goes on.

Maybe in a near future not so different from this one, I will be able to tell you exactly how I feel about Her. But we’re not there yet.

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Why is P.L. Travers such a bitch?

That’s the question central to Saving Mr. Banks, and it’s up to Walt Disney, of all people, to solve the mystery. Movies like this one can be challenging, because the whole key to the problem of the movie is, “Just stop being a bitch!” Too often, this journey feels artificial and forced, with an antagonist who is willfully obstinate for the sake of conflict in the movie.

That isn’t exactly the case with Saving Mr. Banks, for at least P.L. Travers’ prickliness feels true to her nature, and she never gets too warm and fuzzy. But it’s a movie about how the warmth, love, and ingenuity of one man can touch the hearts of minds of young and old alike, made by a studio that still pushes that man’s message to the max more than 50 years after his passing. As well-intentioned as much of the movie is, it’s hard not to also view it as a commercial for Disney films, Disney theme parks, Disney toys, and the whole monopolistic Disney mindset. To a skeptic, it may come off a little worrisome, maybe even a little gross.

Then again, the whole point of Saving Mr. Banks — and Mary Poppins, for that matter — is for old grouches to stop being so grouchy, so we skeptics have been put in our place before we even walk into the theater. How about that?

Saving Mr. Banks is the story of P.L. Travers, creator of the Mary Poppins character, who is dead set against her beloved children’s novel being adapted by Walt Disney. Except, you know… she kinda needs the money. Proper Englishwoman Pamela — who’d really preferred to be called “Mrs. Travers,” thank you — travels to Los Angeles, a land she isn’t initially very taken with, to meet with Uncle Walt, whom she also isn’t very taken with. She has not yet sold the rights to the Mary Poppins character and insists on script approval, which means she can nitpick at everything from the scene headings to banning the color red from the picture entirely. This is the kind of film in which Mrs. Travers’ deepest bond will be with a good-natured limo driver played by Paul Giamatti — and when she inexplicably tosses pears off of her hotel balcony, you just know we’ll get a flashback to a childhood trauma involving pears before the movie’s over.

Along the way, indeed we do get flashbacks to Pamela’s childhood as an Australian girl whose alcoholic father Travers Goff (Colin Farrel) is charming to her, less so to the adults forcing him to answer for his weakness. The depiction of Travers’ alcoholism is very Disney and probably very watered down. It isn’t until quite late in the film that Travers Goff’s alcoholism actually has potent consequences, and even then, it isn’t all that traumatic. No, things don’t end well, but P.L’s traumatic youth doesn’t quite justify or even explain her middle-aged frostiness. (There’s a brief appearance from a Poppins-like figure played by Rachel Griffiths, but her character is largely and unfortunately unexplored.)

The too-frequent flashbacks do an otherwise decent drama no favors, stalling an already slim story in its tracks. Ironically, there are few things less cinematic in this world than writing a screenplay, and that’s the process Saving Mr. Banks takes us through in its 1960s-set scenes. The film jazzes it up with B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman as the Shermans, the musical team responsible for such iconic numbers as “Spoonful Of Sugar,” “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” and “Let’s Go Fly A Kite.” The song-and-dance numbers do what Disney does best, which is use familiar music we’re fond of to manipulate emotions. Who won’t be moved when Mrs. Travers and the boys start spinning around the room in joy while belting “Let’s Go Fly A Kite”? Nobody! (Though they may hate themselves for it afterward.) It worked in Mary Poppins, and it’ll work now.

Saving Mr. Banks is, perhaps accidentally, quite fascinating on a meta level. P.L. Travers is skeptical of all things Disney. She has no interest in visiting the park (though they do, briefly), despises “cartoons,” and views good ol’ Walt himself as a shuckster who just wants to turn her cherished creation into another mega-money-making theme park staple. (Mission: accomplished!) It’s amusing to see a Disney movie about a character who despises the man behind the mouse, stuffing plush Plutos, Donalds, and Mickeys into the closet of her Beverly Hills hotel room to de-Disney Walt’s warm welcome. Emma Thompson is particularly good at nailing Travers’ standoffishness, a role that may earn her an Oscar nomination for the first time in quite a spell.

But isn’t it supposed to? In the end, Saving Mr. Banks is quite the calculated affair. We’re meant to see Mrs. Travers’ difficult nature as something that must be overcome — and can be, with some peppy musicals numbers and a jaunt to the Happiest Place On Earth. P.L. criticizes the Mary Poppins script for being all sugar, no medicine, and perpetuating looney myths about childhood, but she may as well be talking about Saving Mr. Banks. In this movie, our protagonist criticizes everything Walt Disney stands for, but guess who wins in the end? And guess who is still winning, since we’re watching this pat family-friendly drama all these years later?

Saving Mr. Banks capitalizes on its audience’s built-in love for Mary Poppins, which tells us that all of Disney’s ideas are the right ones, and all of P.L. Travers’ notions about being true to the original story are wrong. But is she really? The woman survived a rough childhood and then wrote a very popular children’s novel hoping to prepare young kids for the rough ways of the real world. How would you feel if you did all that, and some theme park mogul came along waving his checkbook, trying to convince you that the best course of action for a book so dear to your heart, so tied to your past, is to stick some animated penguins in it and turn it into a musical? Maybe the penguins actually weren’t necessary, Walt.

Writers don’t get their due in this (or virtually any other) movie, so whatever. Of course this Disney-made movie celebrates merriment over harsh life lessons, fantasy over reality. It’s hard to consider Saving Mr. Banks seriously when the people who made it have such a vested interest in preserving Walt Disney’s legacy. And since Mary Poppins did indeed become a Disney classic, who’s to say sacrificing the integrity of P.L. Travers’ original story wasn’t worth it?

Saving Mr. Banks probably isn’t trying to be particularly meta, but it does at least dip a toe into the water, questioning whether children are better served with colorful distractions from or serious preparations for the bitter realities of an adult world. Unfortunately, the film’s dullest moments are the non-musical, rather joyless flashbacks to P.L.’s bleak childhood, which suggest that Disney’s approach is the better one after all.

It’s unfortunate that Saving Mr. Banks doesn’t draw a deeper connection between Walt and Pamela, further examining their very different approaches to children’s entertainment, and perhaps instead finding some value in each. Saving Mr. Banks isn’t interested in such criticism, preferring instead to serve as an advertisement suggesting that it’s time to watch Mary Poppins again — and hey, kids, hasn’t it been a while since the ‘rents took you down to Disneyland?

Even with the best of efforts, there’s something hollow about these movies that exist primarily to feed off our nostalgia for other movies. Last year’s Hitchcock was a far greater debacle, and the recent Black List has not one but two scripts concerning the making of Jaws. (Meaning we’ll probably see at least one of them come to fruition.) Is that what we’ve come to in 2013? Have we surpassed the adaptations, sequels, and remakes and gone straight for entertainment centered around better movies than the one we’re watching? If we can’t remake certain classics better than they already are, must we watch movies that are about how good they are? Weren’t Jaws and Psycho and Mary Poppins so good because of their ingenuity and originality? (The Oscar win for The Artist was another harbinger of this troublesome trend.) There’s no better way to spoil a perfectly great film than to beat us over the head with how wonderful it is. Are you, yourself, the best person to author the story about how terrific you are? Disney seems to think so.

I hate to be such a grump, because in the end, there’s nothing wrong with making people happy — unless, maybe, it makes the author of the source material miserable in the process. Saving Mr. Banks is a perfectly entertaining movie, at times even a delightful one, though certainly not a substantial one. (Let’s keep the Oscar nods to a minimum, mmkay?) Mary Poppins would suggest I go fly a kite to lift my spirits, and maybe I should. But I think I’ll take P.L. Travers’ approach and add a spot of whiskey to my tea. Because all in all, I’d probably prefer that original, non-singing, tough-love, penguin-free vision of Mary Poppins instead.

So here’s to you, Mrs. Travers.

*

Is Leonardo DiCaprio this generation’s Robert DeNiro?

Yes — at least in the sense that he’s Martin Scorsese’s current muse, and yes in the sense that the movies he stars in tend to have some very hefty running times. From Titanic, the blockbuster that made him an international superstar, to The Aviator, his previous three-hour collaboration with Scorsese (with gargantuan films like Gangs Of New York, Inception, and J. Edgar thrown into the mix), DiCaprio-starring movies are rarely nimble, and the same can be said about the films of Martin Scorsese.

They are, however, usually pretty good.

The Wolf Of Wall Street is another of these movies — very long, and very good. Clocking in at three hours, it feels just as lengthy as it is, unlike certain other epics which sometimes have enough momentum that they feel much shorter than they are. Martin Scorsese has found an apt 21st century muse in Leonardo DiCaprio, and The Wolf Of Wall Street may be their best pairing yet. Is it the Raging Bull of Scorsese’s DiCaprio era? Not exactly, but it’ll do.

This is a film that’s all about excess — excessive drugs, excessive sex, and most of all, an excess of money. The film is refreshingly explicit in its depictions of this, with a whole lot of nudity and enough Qualuudes to sedate all of Manhattan for life. It’s a very adult film, and with a budget of $100 million, it’s not an inexpensive one. Basically, it’s the kind of movie that hardly anyone besides Martin Scorsese can get made anymore.

Does it need to be three hours? Did it need to cost $100 million? No and no — but that’s the point. For Jordan Belfort, too much is never enough, and so fittingly, The Wolf Of Wall Street is way too much movie — and yet, just enough. So why complain about too much of a good thing?

The Wolf Of Wall Street is the true story of Jordan Belfort, a self-made mogul who built his own empire on Wall Street in the late eighties and early nineties. Like many stock brokers, he’s a criminal. Unlike many, he’ll answer for his crimes before the film is through. (Partially, at least.)

For a three-hour film, there’s not actually much of a plot here. Jordan trades in his lower-middle-class Long Island life for one of a high-powered mover and shaker, with all the trimmings — supermodel wife, country club membership, yacht, helicopter, drug habit. The transformation happens quickly, and that’s it. There are no real surprises on a story level — the FBI is looking to nab him, and we know already that Jordan will be caught, or how would he have written a book about it? The Wolf Of Wall Street is all about basking in the pleasures of a luxurious life, and then gradually becoming numb to them. With so much gratuitous sex and drug use on display, it eventually ceases to be that stimulating, and we need more and more to get our cinematic high. So, too, for Jordan Belfort.

What the film does have is a whole lotta everything. The script by Terence Winter (a Sopranos writer) crackles with wit and raw nerve — nearly every scene unfolds just right, but they take their time. Scorsese and longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker are in no hurry to arrive at any certain point, and though the movie is, in a sense, bloated, few moments would be better off on the cutting room floor, because it’s all done with such  panache. The performances are big — most of them colossal. Matthew McConaughey appears early on and has only one major scene, but it’s a doozy. As Donnie, Jordan’s WASPy partner in crime, Jonah Hill finds a nice balance between his kooky comedic persona and a career as a “serious actor” (following his Oscar nod for Moneyball). Jean Dujardin makes a welcome appearance as a sleazy Swiss banker, and the as-of-yet largely unknown Aussie actress Margot Robbie makes a memorably feisty turn as Jordan’s ultra-hot second wife Naomi, whose idea of punishment for her husband involves spreading her legs when she’s not wearing panties. (TV spin-off idea: Naomi and American Hustle‘s Jennifer Lawrence character become Long Island BFFs and spend their days devising ways to torture their no-good swindler husbands.)

And Leo. Oh, Leo. The Academy has more often than not given DiCaprio the cold shoulder — he’s been nominated for only two Oscars since the nod he got as a teenager for What’s Eating Gulbert Grape, and oddly enough, one was for the forgettable (and forgotten) Blood Diamond. (The other, of course, was for another Scorsese movie.) This year’s Best Actor race is already overstuffed with worthy recipients, including Bruce Dern, Tom Hanks, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael B. Jordan, Robert Redford, Oscar Isaac, Joaquin Phoenix, and DiCaprio’s Wolf co-star Matthew McConaughey. But it’s hard to imagine that Leo won’t receive his fourth nod for this, perhaps his most towering performance in a pretty epic career. He’s busy and brash and fearless, and DiCaprio’s star wattage perfectly aligns with Belfort’s essential charisma. It’s the kind of part best played by a major movie star, the dark cousin of his dynamic title role in Baz Luhrmann’s otherwise flaccid The Great Gatsby. That movie was all about excess, too — money and the evils of the monied. It was long and lavish and loud and over-the-top just like The Wolf Of Wall Street, but it was also a soulless bore.

The Wolf Of Wall Street is not soulless, though some of its characters are — it’s been lambasted by some critics and at least one victim of Belfort’s crimes for reveling in Wall Street’s bad behavior, but that’s a limited reading of it. The Wolf Of Wall Street is a clever critique, not just of Wall Street but of America itself. It’s timely, of course, coming on the heels of the financial collapse, but Winter and Scorsese wisely leave their audience to draw those associations on our own. The Wolf Of Wall Street doesn’t judge or punish its subjects for their erratic and often illegal misdeeds, but it certainly isn’t a flattering portrait of what goes down behind the scenes in Manhattan’s financial district. There’s a perfect sequence featuring Jordan struggling after knocking back a few too many “lemons,” and another outrageous moment on their ill-fated yacht, both of which show the absurd consequences of Belfort’s recklessness. Anyone who thinks these characters are getting off scot-free isn’t looking hard enough.

The film takes place in that sweet spot before America was made aware of its vices — the late eighties and early nineties were all about more, more, more; living well, and not caring how the rest of the country was living. In many ways, these years were the epitome of the American dream. But America, like Jordan Belfort, would eventually pay for its profligacy. Jordan Belfort is an unstoppable, larger-than-life character who gets so drunk on power that he tries bribing a straight-laced FBI man (Kyle Chandler) just to see if this guy, too, will take the bait. We learn very little about what truly makes Jordan tick — he’s a bit of a cipher, standing in for so many other suits who lost their moral compass on the way to Wall Street.

Jordan Belfort is, in a sense, all of us — or at least, the person we’d become if we were handed untold millions of dollars and the keys to the world. The Wolf Of Wall Street‘s thesis is that just about anyone can be corrupted if they find themselves in a world without limits, egged on by a band of brothers who make fraternity hazing look like child’s play. The film isn’t about greed so much as gluttony; everyone has a price, and everything has a cost, and at a certain point, Jordan’s family and closest friendships will be put up for sale just like everything else he’s acquired. Like Jordan Belfort, America started out with the best of intentions, but then maybe we started thinking a little too highly of ourselves and started to take it all for granted. It’s lonely at the top — especially on the way down.

Yes, Scorsese does a certain kind of movie better than anyone else, and this is it. It’s a (relatively recent) period piece and features voiceover from our protagonist, so The Wolf Of Wall Street feels like coming home to the best of Scorsese, and it’s wonderful that the man can still make a movie that sits right up on the shelf alongside some of his greatest. The Wolf Of Wall Street isn’t quite the landmark that GoodFellas was, because there’s nothing exactly new here — coke-addled, power-hungry dude wanted by the law? We’ve seen that from Scorsese. But in a way, it’s a return to form for a man who didn’t exactly need to return to form, but it’s nice to get another big, bold movie like this anyway. Certain sequences are so fun and electric, they’re burned into my brain, and I already can’t wait to watch them again.

It would be excessive to see it again so soon, of course, but when it comes to moves like this, I’m a glutton. Pretty much nobody makes movies like Scorsese — unless it’s David O. Russell, aping GoodFellas in American Hustle. This one is masterfully made on every technical level, with cinematography, music, editing, and visuals that give cinema junkies like me a badly-needed fix that cannot be duplicated. I’d rather have a foul-mouthed, sex-drenched, drug-spattered, three-hour movie like this than a nicer, leaner alternative; I guess you could say I want it all, as much as possible.

When it comes to movies, I like excess. I like ‘em big and loud and flashy, filled with unforgettable performances and scenes so unusual they become instant classics. I daresay The Wolf Of Wall Street will endure the test of time and be remembered as a truly great movie. It’s decadent and fun and naughty — like a guilty pleasure, except we’re supposed to feel as much guilt as pleasure.

By saying very little outright, The Wolf Of Wall Street manages to speak volumes about America then and now. We’ll laugh at Jordan Belfort for his weaknesses, we’ll rebuke him for his extravagance, yet we’ll continue striving for the American dream so we can live just like him. Because at the end of the day, we all want to be wolves, don’t we?

*

A quarreling couple. A troublesome pregnancy. A deceitful employee. A daughter who knows more than she lets on. If this all sounds familiar, you probably saw A Separation, the 2011 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film (a first for Iran).

Or maybe you saw the newly-released The Past, Asghar Farhadi’s follow-up to that Oscar-winning triumph. For a movie that’s all about letting go of what’s behind us, The Past sure has more than a glancing similarity to A Separation, indicating that perhaps it’s Farhadi himself who has yet to move on.

The Past stars Berenice Bejo, best known from another 2011 film that scored at the Oscars — The Artist. She was heralded Best Actress at this year’s Cannes Festival for this film, in which she plays Marie Brisson, a French woman who is still legally married to Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa), though a separation has kept them apart for the past several years. They are reunited when Ahmad travels back to France, hoping to sign their divorce papers on amicable terms and say farewell to her daughters from an earlier marriage, who look to Ahmad as a father figure. Of course, almost immediately after he arrives, Ahmad finds himself facing the same old troubles he and Marie had before — and then some.

The Past is not as tense as A Separation. The stakes are lower this time around, though they are similarly centered around a twisty, turny domestic drama. A Separation gave us an insight into Iranian culture, and a story complicated by that government’s refusal to grant a divorce; here, Marie and Ahmad are free to do as they please, and though we sense a lingering longing between them, both are more or less looking to move on. When we eventually come upon the central conflict — and it takes a while to get there — it revolves around the suicide attempt of Celine, the wife of Marie’s current beau, Samir (Tahar Rahim). Marie’s oldest daughter Lucie (Pauline Burlet) can’t stand Samir, but her reasons are more complex than we are at first lead to believe. All of these characters feel partially responsible for the fate of Celine, who is now in a coma with little chance of regaining consciousness — even Ahmad, who left Marie and the girls so many years ago, which eventually allowed Marie to enter into an affair with the married Samir and thus led to the attempted suicide. (Or did it?)

Most of Farhadi’s characters are living in the past — Lucie carries the guilt of a bold, defiant action against her mother; Marie may or may not still be hung up on Ahmad, repeating the pattern of loving men who will leave her (probably due to her feisty temperament); Samir can’t let go of the hope that Celine will wake up, even though her suicide attempt was a brazen “fuck you” to their family; and Ahmad has come back out of love for the girls and affection for Marie, and Marie’s drama-fueled life is threatening to suck him back in when he no longer has a place here. When Ahmad arrives, the house is in a state of repair — Marie repaints the walls he once knew, literally covering their past. There are several visual flourishes along these lines, such as a nifty title sequence involving a windshield wiper which, like many of these characters, is wiping a slate clean, only to see it immediately tarnished again and again.

The drama is, at times, completely involving, particularly in the middle section, when (seemingly) all is revealed. But Farhadi can’t resist yet another twist near the end, which extends the running time unnecessarily and involves a tertiary character we didn’t need mixed up in this mess. Farhadi again displays a knack for peeling a story layer by layer, giving us information at a very precise moment that changes the way we think of certain characters and events. There’s an almost Rashomon-like approach to the way we experience different points of view, spending time with various characters at different points of the film. (Our supposed protagonist Ahmad all but disappears in the film’s final third, which is a detriment.) The mystery of the suicide is intriguing enough, but also somewhat lacking in stakes, since this is a character we’ve never met, and the repercussions have only a minimal effect on what happens next. Celine is all but dead… so does it really matter why she decided to off herself? Can’t we all just move on?

The Past is too similar to A Separation to be considered an entirely separate work, yet it pales in comparison. Farhadi isn’t testing out enough new material here, since the basic setup is so similar — with two married couples and a young girl caught up in a scandal that may at first seem straightforward, but gradually reveals itself to have more layers than any of these characters knew. The actors are all quite good, yet the theme of holding onto or letting go of the past is too slight to sustain a whole movie — or this one, at least. The story jumps around  from character to character so much that it’s hard to invest in any of them. Ahmad is the closest thing we get to a protagonist, but he’s also got the least personal investment in what happens here, which is how he ends up becoming a non-issue in the film’s final stretch.

The Past eventually wears out its welcome as a drama, veering precariously into soap opera territory, with a final scene that speaks (a little too) obviously to the theme. The relationship between Ahmad and Marie might have been mined more thoroughly, but instead we learn more about the people we care less about. Farhadi seems sure of what he wanted to say, but less certain about the specific story he’s trying to say it through. It feels like the warm-up for A Separation rather than the follow-up. Here’s to hoping he strays a little further next time.One more film that’s found itself on the fringes of awards discussion is Philomena, a modest hit that’s likely to be nominated in the Best Actress category (because Judi Dench can do no wrong), and possibly even Best Picture. It’s adapted from the true story of an Irish Catholic woman who was convinced at a young age by “evil nuns” to give her baby up, only to see him sold to an American couple for $1,000 and never heard from again. Fifty years later, Philomena has been grappling with the weight of this decision ever since, and finally decides it’s time to come clean with her daughter and seek the boy out. She teams up with a cynical journalist (played by Steve Coogan) who disdains “human interest” stories like this one but needs the work. He treats Philomena like the subject of a magazine article rather than an actual person, and only gradually warms up to her — even though she’s cute and sweet and Judi Dench.

Just as Martin views Philomena’s story as a fluff piece, Philomena is the equivalent of a “human interest” movie. It’s nice and safe, heartwarming and a little sad, but not too sad, and it plays well with older audiences — which is exactly how it’s been positioned as an awards contender despite the fact that there’s nothing terribly novel about it. Dench is very good, as always, though the role doesn’t require a lot (we’ve seen her do better). The script (co-written by Coogan) and direction insist on holding the audience’s hand all the way through, unfortunately, hitting the central conflict (Coogan’s atheism versus Philomena’s faith) too squarely on the head. There could have been more nuance between these two, but Philomena is more interested in larger condemnations of the Catholic church and the Reagan administration than it is with the small-scale human story. Ultimately, Coogan’s angle on this story may not have been quite what a film adaptation of Philomena needed.

But it’s all perfectly lovely, introducing some controversial ideas without a whole lot of conviction. As in Saving Mr. Banks, the flashbacks are more distracting than they are an enhancement, though there are fewer of them here. Flashbacks as a rule are often intrusions, as the past is usually more powerful when seen only in how it affects the present tense. (The Past, despite its title, uses no such device.) At least it’s easy to see why Dench will likely be nominated — she’s the reason to see the movie.

*

And now it’s time to talk TV.

I don’t watch a whole lot of TV, compared to the average American. The number of reality shows I watch regularly — or ever, unless I’m a captive audience — is zero. (Yes, this includes all housewives from any given location, dynasties related to any fowl, and anything that could make me hungry.) I don’t currently watch any network dramas — I gave Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. a brief whirl, but only because Joss Whedon’s name was on it.

So am I the foremost person to put forth a definitive list of the best television of 2013? No, but I’m doing it anyway. And before you complain about their absences — I don’t watch The Good Wife. I’ve seen only the first two episodes of Scandal. I have yet to check out Masters Of Sex. And I have no interest in The Walking Dead. Have we covered your faves?

Still, I like to think that the cream of the crop pretty much rises up to wherever I am. If it’s really good, I’ll find it. I do subscribe to HBO, by the way, so you’ll find a disproportionate amount of their programming in my year-end list. (Then again, that’s true of most TV kudos. HBO is just good!)

So. From red weddings to blue meth, from black orphans to white girls in orange jumpsuits, here’s the best of 2013 on TV, according to me.

10. HELLO LADIES

Ladies first! (Since we’re going backward.) In the grand tradition of The Office, Community, Veep, The Comeback, and plenty of other recent comedies in which the protagonist is not wholly embraceable, here is Stephen Merchant’s comedy about an average guy (let’s call him a 5) who dreams of finding himself on the arm (and between the legs) of a perfect 10. To accomplish this lofty goal, gawky Englishman Stuart Pritchard will throw any and all of his pals under the bus — which nearly always ends up biting him in the ass.

Hello Ladies is a savvy satire about superficiality in Los Angeles, with Stuart and his actress roommate Jessica (Christine Woods) simultaneously struggling in their own ways for attention and affection from all the wrong sources. Neither is a wholly admirable character, as both are driven primarily by shallow goals to be the envy of their peers. But there’s something relatable and even slightly sympathetic about their egocentric behavior, since it really stems from insecurity. (It’s especially resonant for those of us familiar with the entertainment industry and drenched in LA culture.) The best of these moments might be the episode in which Stuart and Jessica hit up a prissy party in the hills, only to find themselves ousted once Jessica humiliates herself with an old tap-dancing routine and Stuart tells increasingly homophobic jokes that don’t land well with the gays in attendance.

The end of Season One gets particularly strong as Stuart and Jessica have a bonding moment just before each gets closer to achieving their dream (at least temporarily). Let’s hope HBO doesn’t pull a Comeback and decide to cancel another smart and awkwardly funny industry-centric comedy focusing on a self-centered, try-hard buffoon. Hello Ladies has all the ingredients to become one of the most sophisticated comedies on TV.

9. MAD MEN

From Ladies to Men. Was this Mad Men‘s very finest season? Perhaps not. But when is Mad Men ever less than great? Season Six saw Don Draper return to his philandering (with a neighbor lady played by Linda Cardellini), Peggy working under Ted instead of Don (in more ways than one), and the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy as we move later into the 60s (and further away from the societal trappings and gender dynamics we began the show with). At this point, Don and Peggy and Joan and Roger and even Betty and Pete feel like old chums. It’s nice just to spend time with them, no matter what they say or do. These characters are so compellingly drawn, the actors so settled into these roles, that a little narrative meandering can be easily forgiven — and sometimes, totally welcome.

Mad Men mirrors real life better than almost any other show out there. People come and go the way they do in the world, not according to the sensational methods of prime time television. We seldom catch Mad Men being “written,” and in a way, that’s more true of Season Six than any other. There was no specific narrative momentum, with Peggy’s somewhat soapy flirtation with Ted providing the clearest season arc, while Don was in a hazy no man’s land story-wise, displaying some of his least sympathetic moments to date. (He really was pretty nasty to Sylvia.)

Season Six’s most distinctive episode was the offbeat “The Crash,” which found these men going literally mad for once, as the whole firm tripped out on a “stimulant” that left Ken tap-dancing and Don flashing back to his childhood in a whorehouse — just as his own kids were engaging in an equally trippy interaction with an elderly thief in their apartment. It was a clever way to shake things up in a season that, previously, had been treading some familiar waters. (But again, they’re such good waters… who cares?) 8. AMERICAN HORROR STORY: COVEN

Witches and zombies and minotaurs, oh my. A better title for this (or any) season of Ryan Murphy’s macabre miniseries would be American Horror Story: Everything But The Kitchen Sink. (But then he wouldn’t be able to include a demonic kitchen sink, too.) This season is only sporadically about a coven of witches (actually, two covens); it has also taken detours to explore a ghostly axe murderer, an order of witch hunters, and several forms of zombies.

Yes, it’s problematic the way the show keeps killing off characters as if it’s still shocking, only to predictably resurrect them the following week. Murphy has proven that anyone can an will be brought back from the dead (it’s not even that difficult!). Both in terms of story and character, the show is all over the map; as with many Murphy series, it seems the writers of different episodes have no contact with one another, making up the rules as they go along on an episode-by-episode basis. Don’t look for continuity anywhere in this witch’s brew.

Complaints aside, though, Coven is compulsively watchable, filled to the brim with campy performances, punchy one-liners, and gruesome water-cooler (or should that be cauldron?) moments. The acting and writing can be hit or miss, but a few performers always deliver — Emma Roberts as a bitchy young witch, Jessica Lange as a bitchy old witch, and Angela Basset as a bitchy black witch. (I specify that she’s black because Coven never lets us forget it. The show hits racial themes so hard, they must be borrowing Thor’s hammer.)

With Game Of Thrones and Breaking Bad currently off-air, Coven is the closest thing to Event TV on the air at the moment — the rare show that must be watched live, lest you be spoiled. For better or worse, that means cliff-hangers and gotchas galore. In recent weeks, Coven has paled in comparison to its more cohesive early episodes, its plot sprawling, introducing new characters we didn’t need, since we started off with so many in the first place. Here’s hoping the series comes back strong in January to finish these bitches off with a bang.

7. BEHIND THE CANDELABRA

It doesn’t get any gayer than this. Steven Soderbergh has vented his frustration with studio movies — and understandably so. Behind The Candelabra was pitched as a theatrical release and roundly passed on before HBO picked up the slack. The film has two major stars and delves into the popular musician biopic genre — no-brainer, right? Though to be fair, it’s also one of the gayest movies I’ve ever seen, and it’s easy to see why no studios thought this would play well across the board.

But it’s fabulous and fantastic. Michael Douglas is Liberace, and oh, what a Liberace he is. The man won an Emmy for a performance that captures many of Lee’s eccentricities without devolving into caricature. His Liberace has a soul, even if it’s a rather dark soul for most of the story. And Matt Damon gives it his all as Liberace’s man-candy, Scott Thorson, who also hits some unsavory places over the course of this movie. Rob Lowe pops in for a hilariously over-the-top supporting role as Liberace’s plastic surgeon of choice — and he really does seem to be made of plastic. It’s fun to see these normally serious actors camping it up, yet it’s never condescending. That’s a hard balance to strike.

Behind The Candelabra is startlingly honest about the dark side of gay relationships (well, some gay relationships) in a time where pro-gay “they’re just like us!” / “we’re just like you!” messages are trendier. No, not every gay coupling will follow Lee and Scott’s tragic trajectory, but many of them did (minus many of the sequins and sparkles). Behind The Candelabra doesn’t make these famous figure more sympathetic than they need to be — they’re not martyrs. They’re vain, materialistic, flawed men whose lives are far from enviable, once you peek behind the curtain (or candelabra). It’s gay romance at its worst.

But the movie is Soderbergh at his best. The opulent visuals are to die for, while the end manages to be truly endearing despite the judgments we may have of Liberace’s shallow, self-idolizing lifestyle. If you somehow missed the TV movie event of the year, do yourself a favor and seek it out. It’s a lot of surface and a little bit of substance by design, but overall, it’s a good time.

6. THE GOLDBERGS

Believe it or not, the networks did the unthinkable this fall and released a whole bunch of completely watchable sitcoms. There’s the offbeat police comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the oft-winning Trophy Wife, the odd-couple pairing of Sarah Michelle Gellar and Robin Williams in The Crazy Ones, and the amiable (but uncreatively titled) Michael J. Fox Show. (There’s also Mom, Dads, and Sean Saves The World, but the less said about them, the better.)

Are any of these must-watches? Probably not. But one diamond shines in the rough, and that’s The Goldbergs — which is kind of like a Jewish version of The Wonder Years.

In this case, the adult man flashing back to his past is Adam F. Goldberg (played by Sam Giambrone as a child, adult version voiced by Patton Oswalt). The show hews closely to Goldberg’s actual childhood in suburban Pennsylvania (obviously, not even their last name was changed). Goldberg’s actual home movies from the era (of which there are hundreds, apparently) are thrown in at the end to prove that, yes, his family really was this crazy.

The series follows the usual domestic hijinks of any sitcom, but in a funnier and more heartfelt way. Jeff Carlin and George Segal co-star as Adam’s father and grandfather, respectively, with Hayley Orrantia and Troy Gentile as his night-and-day siblings — she a popular girl, he a freak. The series’ MVP, though, is Bridesmaids’ Wendi McLendon-Covey, who provides most of the heart and laughs as the well-meaning but meddlesome matriarch. The eighties nostalgia works in the series’ favor, allowing it to be so much less cynical and canned than other sitcoms, which tend to wink at the audience. There’s nothing particularly ironic about this one — it wears its heart on its puffy, too-colorful track suit sleeve.

There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking about The Goldbergs, except that it’s a fresh and likable network family comedy you can feel good about watching. Which, these days, actually is pretty remarkable. 5. GAME OF THRONES

Two words: red wedding. For anyone who hasn’t read George R.R. Martin’s books, it was the most shocking TV event of the year. Or the decade. Or maybe ever? Game Of Thrones has never been shy about killing off likable, popular characters — decapitating the ostensible hero near the end of the first season — but this reached a new level of brutality on episodic TV. The Starks were the closest thing to “heroes” we had, by far the most relatable characters in this sinister, pseudo-magical world. Plus, they’d already suffered the loss of patriarch Ned, so killing off so many more of them in one fell swoop? It’s merciless storytelling. (Seriously — haven’t these people been through enough?!?)

Game Of Thrones is a difficult series to critique. Raise a concern about a plot point that’s dragging, and someone is bound to tell you, “But it’s from the books!” The production values are so high, the language so flowery, that it’s easy to get lost and think that it’s your fault certain characters or scenes don’t connect. Still, there were storylines in Season Three we spent a lot of time on with little payoff. John Snow’s romance with Ygritte took up more screen time than it needed to, and I don’t care how many people tell me Bran Stark’s storyline is gearing up for something major — almost every one of his Season Three scenes was a snore. (And there were so many!) Westeros is populated by so many rich characters with such potential that it’s a shame to waste so much of an episode on filler. And, after the shocking events of “The Rains Of Castemere,” the season finale was (predictably) a bit of letdown.

Yet Season Three still had a number of highlights — the awkward engagements of Cersei and Tyrion (and their priceless reactions), the strange friendship (courtship?) between Jaime and Brienne (it’s always fun when a bad guy goes kinda good), and almost anything involving Daenerys or Margaery. (Plus any scene featuring Diana Rigg as bitchy old Olenna is an automatic winner.)

It takes a bold show to not only go through with the Red Wedding, but take it to an even further extreme (poor Talisa!). It was, quite frankly, a landmark TV moment that tested what extremes a TV series can even go to in terms of cruelty toward beloved characters (and the audience). Game Of Thrones isn’t the same show it was before that moment, yet we hear from those pesky book-readers that it’s only the beginning…

4. ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK

The long-awaited return of Arrested Development was supposed to be Netflix’s big triumph of 2013, but instead, the buzzy Bluths were trumped by original series House Of Cards and Orange Is The New Black. I gave House Of Cards a try, but it couldn’t hold my interest; Orange Is The New Black, however, hooked me the way it hooked just about everyone else I know. Within a week, I’d devoured the whole first season and was left wanting more.

Orange Is The New Black could have gone wrong in so many ways; the very same ways Weeds started going wrong a few seasons in. (They share a creator, Jenji Kohan.) As in Weeds, we follow an upper-class white woman into a world we don’t typically see upper-class white women in, and watch as her polite personality conflicts with a harsher, meaner populace. This provides plenty of fun, particularly in the first few episodes, and Taylor Schilling’s performance as Piper is not to be overlooked. Yet it’s this show’s colorful supporting characters that truly make it must-stream TV — most are not “types” as we typically see in comedies (though Orange Is The New Black is a dramedy); they’re fully fleshed-out, even if they only have a few minutes of screen time.

Smartly, each episodes tends to focus on a supporting character whose history somewhat mirrors what’s going on in the present. There’s a rather sprawling collection of women in this penitentiary, the best of whom are Taystee (Danielle Brooks), Sophia (Laverne Cox), Lorna (Yael Stone), Daya (Dascha Polanko), Nicky (Natasha Lyonne) and Crazy Eyes (Uzo Aduba). Whoops, I just named half the cast, didn’t I? The supporting players of Orange Is The New Black truly do come from all walks of life, with a wild variety of races and sexual orientations that is probably unprecedented in any series. And yes, there are a couple potent male characters to provide an even balance.

If the show has a flaw, it’s in making the villains a little too big and broad — I’m thinking of Pennsatucky and Porn Stache, mainly. The tone of the series is nothing if not uneven, but somehow it all works. We laugh and yet we feel for these people. We’re invested in what happens to them.

To date, this is the internet’s best offering in terms of original content, proof that the future of TV is online — to hell with those pesky cable companies and their outrageously high prices. Orange Is The New Black isn’t like network TV at all, and isn’t trying to be; it’s not even exactly like cable. It is refreshingly, zestily original, which is exactly why it became such a sensation, and hopefully we’ll get more daring, out-of-the-box creations like it in the future. Out with the old, in with the New? Yes, please.

3. ORPHAN BLACK

It’s been a spell since American TV really nailed the thrill-a-minute suspense genre, but our neighbors to the north got it right with this one. Orphan Black is one part Alias, one part Dollhouse, and all parts amazing. Our heroine is Sarah Manning, a wrong-side-of-the-tracks orphan who encounters a woman named Beth who looks exactly like her — seconds before she jumps in front of a train. Sarah decides to assume this stranger’s identity — but that Ringer-like set-up is only the jumping off point for a much more ambitious story. Sarah soon encounters a number of other doubles, some of whom are more malevolent than others.

Orphan Black is compulsively watchable, a lot of it thanks to lead Tatiana Maslany’s incredible performance(s). She inhabits a number of different roles flawlessly. Each is so different, there’s never a question about who is who (unless there’s supposed to be). Some of her characters are comedic, others disturbing, others warm, others badass. Maslany’s versatility between genres is pretty astonishing — and puts Jennifer Garner’s Sydney Bristow to shame. Sarah is a terrific protagonist, but she’s made better with the help of Maslany’s other characters — namely, the chipper but lethal suburban housewife Alison and the geeky science nerd lesbian Cosima, not to mention Season One’s mentally unstable villainess, Helena.

And let’s not forget the characters not played by Tatiana Maslany — such as Beth’s hunky boyfriend Paul (Dylan Bruce) and her BFF foster brother Felix (Jordan Gavaris), a drug-dealing prostitute. Fun!

Orphan Black‘s second season will debut in 2014, so it’s easy to jump on board now with the first ten episodes. Season One is virtually flawless, particularly in the earliest episodes and the riveting season finale. If you’re not hooked by the pilot, you may not be human.

2. ENLIGHTENED

There were actually two horrific killings on HBO series this year — one being the epically gruesome slaughter of the Starks on Game Of Thrones, as well as the axing of Enlightened. For as much love as I’ve given HBO on this list, they also made one of 2013′s most epic mistakes — pulling a Comeback and cancelling a brilliant but offbeat half-hour series before its time. (At least they gave it two seasons, as opposed to Valerie Cherish’s precious one.)

While most of Season One was spent setting up Laura Dern’s fascinatingly flawed Amy Jellicoe, on a plot level, the show meandered. (It was very good meandering, but it was still definitely meandering.) Season Two, however, finally took Amy to her logical conclusion, as she made big steps in taking down the corporation that screwed her over (which she happens to still work for).

Enlightened is about the pursuit of happiness, following a heroine who truly believes that thinking positively and doing the right thing can get her there — even when it’s clear from the reactions of the people around her that she may be doing more harm than good. Amy can be a difficult person to like, because we have to wonder if all of her caring and sharing isn’t really just a brittle facade or in service of her revenge. But in the end, we have to admire her, especially as she truly does become the David to Abaddon’s Goliath.

Season Two brought such memorable developments as the surprisingly tender romance between Tyler (Mike White) and Eileen (Molly Shannon), crazy Dougie’s unexpected involvement in the quest to take Abaddon down, and Amy’s would-be relationship with an LA Times reporter (Dermot Mulroney) who is quite possibly just using her to get a sensational story. (But she’s kinda using him also.) Kudos to Mike White, who wrote every episode, and Laura Dern, whose thoughtful performance anchors the show. Enlightened ended on a high note, and a dramatically satisfying and complete one — but I’d still like to know what happens to them all after this.

R.I.P., Amy Jellicoe.

1. BREAKING BAD

And R.I.P. Walter White.

If you thought there was even a chance I wouldn’t list the final season of one of the greatest TV shows of all time in the #1 slot, you clearly have stumbled upon this blog by mistake.

What’s left to say that I haven’t said already? The stakes were high as Breaking Bad wrapped up its final season; it was watched my more people than ever before, thanks to great word of mouth (you’re welcome) and Netflix streaming. It could have been a disappointing disaster, as some final seasons are, but instead it was possibly the strongest season of AMC’s Emmy-winning drama yet. (Yes, this series finally got its Emmy due — as did a very deserving Anna Gunn.)

“Ozymandias” alone is one of the greatest episodes of television of all time — we waited years for the confrontation between Walt and Skyler to erupt in violence, and still it unfolded in a way none of us could have predicted. We also had to say farewell to one major character a few episodes before the end — it’s useless to avoid spoilers at this point, but I’ll do it anyway. The long-gestating cat-and-mouse games built into the series from the beginning finally paid off, with the mice now aware of who Walter White really was at his deep, dark core — and each character, from Hank to Marie to Walter Jr. and even Jesse, had a distinct reaction.

Ultimately, Walter White wasn’t exactly redeemed, but he didn’t go down the darkest path available to him; he remained human, as did they all. Breaking Bad could have gone for pure sensationalism — outrageous shocks and explosive violence. Instead, it delivered all that while remaining true to these characters, true to the original vision of this series. Somehow, it truly did feel like Gilligan had planned out every step of this story from the very beginning. (But that wasn’t the case.)

The final season of Breaking Bad was by far the bleakest, even in a show that ended Season Two with not just one but two planes raining bodies down over ABQ. By the time we got to those final four episodes, this series had a cold vice grip on our hearts, yet somehow Vince Gilligan and his team of crafty mad geniuses delivered absolutely every kind of payoff we could have wanted. “Ozymandias” was merciless and jaw-dropping and intense; “Granite State” somber and reflective and punishing; “Felina” clever and cathartic and yes, even fun, wrapping the show up as neatly as possible on a narrative level without being morally tidy. This is how you do TV, people.

Breaking Bad, we already miss you. There’s still no one to replace you on our TV screens. And yet we cherish the times we had together, the ups and the downs, the laughter and tears. (And meth!)

You are gone, but not forgotten. Thank you for doing your part in making 2013 a very good year on TV.

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It’s hot in Osage County in the summertime — likely because of all the star wattage you’ll find there.

Let’s take a tour. Here we have the Oscar Queen, Meryl Streep, peerless amongst all actresses who ever lived. And over here is Julia Roberts, one of the biggest and brightest movie stars of the past few decades, also an Oscar winner.

Behind them, we have several other Academy Award winners and nominees — including even the cast’s youngest member, Abigail Breslin — and a few others who haven’t yet been recognized by the Academy but are nonetheless well esteemed. Behind the scenes, you’ll find both George Clooney and the Weinsteins as producers, who between them have won just about all of the available Oscars of the past few years. And then, over here is Tracy Letts, who won a Tony for this play.

No wonder it’s hot in Osage County. Not too shabby, for a random patch of nothing in Oklahoma.

The film adaptation of August: Osage County may as well have been dubbed Oscar: Osage County, or August: Oscar County. Or why not Oscar: Oscar Oscar? That’s the kind of pedigree behind this thing — and yet somehow, the actual awards season buzz has never risen above a whisper. It’s all but inevitable that Meryl Streep will get her token nomination — because when Meryl Streep is in a movie, Meryl Streep gets a nomination. It’s not a particularly competitive year for Best Actress. Julia Roberts could also find herself in the running as either Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress. (It’s a lead role, but sometimes the Academy likes to fudge these things.)

With up to ten nominees in the category, it’s certainly conceivable that August: Osage County will also find itself in the running for Best Picture, but it stands no chance of winning. That’s somewhat surprising, given how many of the “right elements” August: Osage County has going for it. Unfortunately for the golden gang involved, 2013 was a strong year for strong movies, most of which are actually getting their awards season due. This year, there’s less room for filler and fluff. Scenery-chewing and over-the-top performances aren’t distracting the voting masses like they usually do. This just isn’t Osage County‘s year.

In the beginning, August: Osage County purports to be about a hard-drinking man and his pill-popping wife. Before the end, we’ll also have touched on pedophilia, incest, and multiple counts of infidelity. (There’s also a lot of substance abuse, concentrated mainly on marijuana and prescription drugs.) “Everybody hurts” might be the jumping-off point to talk about the themes of this movie, but August: Osage County doesn’t stop there. In this movie, everybody hurts, then self-medicates with something they shouldn’t, which in turn hurts someone else. Everybody hurts everybody might be a more accurate reading.

No, there’s not a truly admirable person amongst the whole Weston clan. Our protagonist is Barb (Julia Roberts), who has been wronged by her husband Bill (Ewan McGregor) and ceased to be a real parent to her teenage daughter Jean (Abigail Breslin). She’s likable enough, but eventually displays a rather harsh acidic tongue, particularly when dealing with her indelicate mother Violet (Meryl Streep). Violet has cancer of the mouth, which seems fitting since it’s her mouth that’s always getting her in trouble — she’s “truth telling,” as she puts it, but really she’s being a bitch and everyone knows it. Violet is poisonous — she’s infected all of her daughters, yet we hear that her own mother pretty much ruined her. August: Osage County is about the ripple effect in unhappy families; maybe every generation gets a little better, but not by much. At fourteen, even young Jean seems fairly doomed.

The family reconvenes when patriarch Beverly (Sam Shepard) goes missing; this also includes two other sisters — floozy Karen (Juliette Lewis) and responsible Ivy (Julianne Nichols), plus Violet’s brash sister Mattie Fae (Margo Martindale), her stoner husband Charles (Chris Cooper), and their inept son Little Charles (Benedict Cumberbatch). Karen has also brought her flashy flavor-of-the-week fiance Steve (Dermot Mulroney). They’ve all got issues. The only potentially well-adjusted individual we meet is Johnna (Misty Upham), the “Indian” Beverly hires to cook and clean for household shortly before he disappears. We never learn much about her, but we can only assume she’s better off than this crazy bunch. (Sidenote: Violet and Beverly’s daughters are cast with a Julia, a Julianne, and a Juliette. It’s like it was meant to be!)

The play clocks in at over three hours, and while this movie seems perfectly long enough at two hours and ten minutes, it probably works better to have all that family drama stretched out a bit. In August: Osage County, we get a hell of a lot of melodrama in just two hours’ time, and eventually it becomes wearying and implausible. Do we need revelations about incest and pedophilia in back-to-back scenes? Isn’t it a bit much?

Perhaps it’s senseless to criticize the movie for the sins of the play, which is certainly very entertaining, and I imagine lends itself to the theatrical experience adeptly. (I’ve read it but never seen it performed.) I’m not sure the same can be said of the cinematic experience, though — it comes across more like an overcooked, overstuffed, overlong TV pilot, which makes sense considering it was directed by John Wells. Wells has plenty of experience wrangling large, talented casts in dramatic roles; he has less experience directing movies.There’s nothing particularly wrong with the way August: Osage County is directed, but somehow, the combination of a play and a director trained in television just doesn’t make for much of a film, even with all those great big movie stars on display. August: Osage County is less stagey than some play-to-film adaptations, but this particular brand of melodrama works better on Broadway. Every scene is dialed up to 10, particularly when Meryl Streep is on screen. It’s a BIG performance, perhaps too big for a movie theater — which is not to say it’s bad, exactly, but you’ll never forget that she’s acting. Streep chews the scenery and then picks it out of her teeth with the lighting equipment. It’s fun to watch, but also exhausting.

Even with all these dramatic twists and turns, August: Osage County doesn’t feel like a complete story, at least in cinematic terms; it’s not really about anything. I mean, it’s about family and addiction and pain, but we just wallow in these people’s misery for a couple hours without much of an ending. There’s no journey and little focus — we’re asked to sympathize with different characters at different points, but not one of them provides a real anchor. I suppose that’s supposed to be Barb — the film ends with her, on a forced faux-hopeful note that wasn’t in the play, a scene that is clearly reaching for something the play never wanted to say in the first place. Is Barb doomed to repeat the sins of her mother? That’s one idea in August: Osage County, but it’s not the main point. The film shifts the focus away from Violet a bit, making her a colorful pill-popping villain rather than the focal point. In the end, August: Osage County tries to be everybody’s story and ends up being nobody’s story. Everybody hurts everybody, and then they’re gone.

There I go critiquing the play again — except I’m not critiquing the play, I’m critiquing the play as a movie. The script is stuffed with pearls of brilliant dialogue, some of it thoughtful, some of it acerbic. (A personal favorite: Julia Roberts screaming, “Eat the fish, bitch!” at Meryl Streep. It doesn’t seem totally in character, but it’s a hoot nonetheless.) But the story likely needed to be toned down a few notches to work on the big screen.

For all its hustle and bustle and bluster, August: Osage County doesn’t quite pack the emotional wallop that so many of the year’s best movies did. All in all, it amounts to a lot of hot air and a little movie.

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