The phenomenon of “Barbenheimer”—that is, the films Barbie and Oppenheimer, which were released on the same day this summer—was many things: An internet meme turned marketing gimmick. A triumphant return of the double feature. A point of pride for those who saw the films back-to-back on opening day.

But mostly, it was an indication that good films, not based entirely on IP (okay, Barbie was…but with a twist) still have an audience.

Oppenheimer was a particular surprise—a three hour film about the making of the atomic bomb that, as many critics pointed out (including this one), mostly consisted of talking—so much talking. And yet, in the hands of a master like Christopher Nolan, it managed to thrill. The aforementioned twist of Barbie, the year’s biggest film, was that it was an auteurist take on the Mattel doll, a candy-colored, whipsmart feminist dreamscape that was a send-up of the very thing it was meant to celebrate. I was dazzled by it, just like everyone else, but found its themes of female empowerment a bit heavy-handed and trite, so it only made my “honorable mentions” this year.

Of course, Hollywood being Hollywood, they’ll take away all the wrong lessons from the Barbenheimer phenomenon. We already know that an American Girl Doll film is in the works—insert massive eye roll. And I wouldn’t be surprised if a film about Albert Einstein was also in the pipeline. What’s more, we know some studios are going to try to replicate the “Barbenheimer” model by releasing contrasting high profile films on the same day in the hopes of creating another wave of memes. Silly studios, don’t you know these things need to happen organically?

Still, all told, it was a good year for film—not just because the movies were quite good (they were) but because audiences really demonstrated an appetite for films that weren’t just Marvel, Star Wars, or DC Comics. Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, a three-and-half-hour epic (with no potty break!) about a dark and little known period of American history, raked in $67 million domestically—not Barbie numbers, but nothing to sneeze at. (The banality of evil was an overarching theme in 2023, by the way—seen not just in Scorsese’s epic but Oppenheimer, Saltburn, and the unsettling Zone of Interest, about a Nazi commander who lives contentedly with his family next to Auschwitz, a film I saw on my laptop and need to see again in a theater to truly assess.)

And speaking of dolls, the camp horror film M3GAN, about a lifelike doll gone rogue, managed to tap into our anxieties about AI and inspire a thousand fabulous Halloween costumes. It raked in a hefty $95 million domestically. The films that were original, auteur-driven, and creatively bold were the ones that ruled the year. Let’s keep it up, Hollywood.

With that, here are my 15 favorite films of 2023. (In some cases, I am using excerpts of my own full-length reviews.)

1. The Holdovers

The oxymoronic phrase “instant classic” has always bugged me—only time will tell if something is truly a classic. And yet, the minute I saw Alexander Payne’s wise, mordantly funny, and sneakily sentimental The Holdovers, I knew I would want to revisit it again and again. Set in 1970, with a look straight out of The Paper Chase, it tells the story of a curmudgeonly and ostentatiously principled teacher (Paul Giamatti) saddled with a sad and surly boy (Dominic Sessa) during the Christmas break of a New England prep school. The film takes its sweet time in allowing these two prickly outsiders to warm up to each other, making their ultimate bond all the sweeter. A third character, a kindly cafeteria manager (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) who bears the impossible weight of the loss of her son in Vietnam, becomes the mother figure in this unlikely surrogate family. It’s a Christmas film for people who don’t love Christmas films and yes, an instant classic.

My full review. (The Holdovers is in theaters and available on demand.)

2. Anatomy of a Fall

What would you do if your mother was accused of killing your father—and you weren’t completely convinced of her innocence? That’s the premise of Justine Triet’s tense and slippery courtroom drama, Anatomy of a Fall, a film that gets under your skin and stays there. Sandra (a masterful Sandra Hüller) and Samuel (Samuel Theis) are having trouble in their marriage, stemming from several things, among them an accident which left their young son blind (they each secretly blame the other) and the fact that her writing career is thriving while his isn’t. Couple that with a dormant sex life—she sleeps with women on the side; he grudgingly accepts it—and it’s a recipe for an extremely tense home life. Samuel has a nasty habit of playing his music incredibly loud to get under Sandra’s skin. And one day, after just doing that—the song in this case, for maximum irritation, is a reggaeton version of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.”—he ends up dead on the snow-covered ground in front of their log cabin. Did he fall from the attic window—or was he pushed?

In the courtroom, Sandra encounters all the misogyny you might fear—an accusation that she stole Samuel’s ideas for her own gain, an intimation that she’s a man-hating lesbian or, worse yet, a crazed one. And young Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) is the only “witness”—although he must rely on his other senses to recreate the events of that day. At one point, he becomes angry at his mother, somewhat convinced of her guilt, but gradually, his memories change to become more favorable to her case—is he lying for her? And if he is, does that necessarily mean she’s the killer? Believing in someone’s innocence, the film argues, is always a leap of faith.

(Anatomy of a Fall has just left theaters. No streaming date has been set.)

3. Killers of the Flower Moon

Martin Scorsese always makes wildly entertaining films about terrible men. Killers of the Flower Moon is also about men doing terrible things—in this case, marrying and murdering Osage nation women so they can inherit their oil—but for the first time, he keeps his lens focused on the victims, the Osage women themselves. Yes, the stolid, greedy Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio) is the film’s main character, but it’s his bride, the wary and tentatively open-hearted Mollie (an astonishing Lily Gladstone) who is the film’s soul. Ernest’s uncle, “King” Bill Hale (Robert DeNiro) is the film’s true villain. He pretends to be a benevolent white man, a friend to the Osage, while actually masterminding their murders. In a lesser director’s hands, this film could be too grim to bear, but Scorsese manages to inject urgency and excitement into every frame, even the quieter moments. The film ends on a remarkable bit of fourth-wall breaking commentary, where Scorsese seems to interrogate his own body of work by asking the question: Whose stories get told and why?

My full review (Killers of the Flower Moon is now available on demand.)

4. All of Us Strangers

In Andrew Haigh’s heartbreaking film, a lonely gay man named Adam (Andrew Scott) is navigating two unexpected events: He has met a handsome stranger (Paul Mescal) in the new apartment complex where he lives and he has begun visiting his parents at his childhood home. But there is a twist: He hasn’t lived in that home since he was 12, which was how old he was when his parents died in a car crash. Mom and Dad (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) are there, frozen in time, with outdated ’80s clothes and hairstyles, actually bit younger than he is now—but still, parental, doting. Meanwhile, the neighbor, Harry, becomes his lover—an uncommonly kind and tender one; it opens him up. Together, the two men unpack their traumas—the trauma of growing up gay and closeted, of the specter of AIDS, of losing one parents, or, in Harry’s case, getting rejected by his. So what exactly is happening here? Is Adam cracking up? Is the film supernatural? Haigh never fully answers that question—nor should he. The film, which is exquisitely acted by its four leads, especially Scott, is about loneliness and the need for connection. It’s about the particular trauma of the gay male. But its themes of longing to be accepted—by one’s parents, by society, by a romantic partner—are universal.

(All of Us Strangers is coming to The Charles on January 12.)

5. Passages

There’s sex—and lots of it—in Ira Sach’s wonderful Passages, a complex, voyeuristically fascinating film about a love triangle where characters are revealed, through their desires. Tomas (Franz Rogowski), a bratty, but undeniably magnetic film director comes home after a party and proudly announces to his husband, Martin (Ben Whishaw), that he has slept with Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos). Martin accepts this news with surprising equanimity—he is clearly used to such provocations. Briefly, Tomas thinks he loves Agathe, but it’s possible he just loves the taboo of it all, the disruption he has caused in everyone’s life. When he finally realizes it’s Martin he really wants, will it be too late to repair their marriage?

My full review. (Passages is now available on demand.)

6. Oppenheimer

Just because science can, does that mean it should? That’s the question at the heart of Christopher Nolan’s explosive (pardon the pun) Oppenheimer, an absolutely jaw-dropping cinematic achievement about the creation and deployment of the atomic bomb. The film works on numerous levels. It’s a character study of the brilliant and obsessive J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy)—a man whose ego ultimately got in the way of his principles. It’s a philosophical contemplation of how the thirst for knowledge and the pursuit of power can intersect in catastrophic ways. And it’s a riveting procedural, about the creation of the atomic bomb and its aftermath. There are lots of scenes in classrooms and courtrooms—and tons of great supporting work by the likes of Robert Downey Jr. (as a friend turned jealous rival) and Emily Blunt (as Oppenheimer’s long-suffering wife)—but the scene that will stay with audiences most comes after Oppenheimer’s mighty bomb is first deployed. As Oppenheimer’s underlings cheer him on like a conquering hero, he’s overcome with a feeling of dread.

My full review. (Oppenheimer is now available on demand.)

7. Maestro

Yes, there are parts of Leonard Bernstein’s life that Bradley Cooper left out—I, for one, wanted to see much more about the making of West Side Story and Candide. And yes, the prosthetics occasionally distract, especial in the film’s first third or so. But man oh man, this is the good stuff—a sumptuous, old-fashioned biopic, emotional and involving, delivered to near perfection. Cooper smartly chooses to focus on Bernstein’s loving but fraught relationship with his wife, Felicia (Carey Mulligan), who knew her husband was gay, but thought she was okay with it. (She wasn’t.) The film, which guides us smoothly from the ’40s to the ’80s, from his breakthrough conducting performance at Carnegie Hall, to his days as classical music’s greatest (and most glamorous) American ambassador, has immaculate costumes and set design in support of two colossal lead performances. It argues that Bernstein was a man of great appetites—for love, for sex, for conversation, and mostly for music.

My full review. (Maestro is now playing in theaters and on Netflix.)

8. Asteroid City (and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar)

I’ve described Wes Anderson as like cilantro—you either love him or he leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I’m Team Anderson (and cilantro, for that matter—I wonder if there’s a corollary). So what a treat to get not just a Wes Anderson feature film this year, but four shorts, all available on Netflix. Among those shorts was The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, a bewitching tale of a yogi (Ben Kingsley) who can see while totally blindfolded and the eccentric millionaire (Benedict Cumberbatch) who becomes obsessed with this ability. But the main course was Asteroid City, a film that somehow manages to be a TV show, a play, a backstage drama, and a meta commentary on all of the above. It largely takes place at the Junior Stargazer competition in “Asteroid City,” a sparsely populated town (one diner, one motel) so named because an asteroid once landed there. Its main character is a widower father of four (Jason Schwartzman) who doesn’t quite have the heart to tell his kids that their mother died. Other characters include Tom Hanks as the kids’ cantankerous grandfather, Tilda Swinton as the astronomer who oversees the compound, and Scarlett Johansson as a languorous starlet who starts a romance with the widower.

But as mentioned, the film occasionally pulls back—showing us the making of the original Asteroid City play (we’re now watching the teleplay) and assorted behind-the-scenes dramas. What exactly is going on here? I’m not entirely sure, to be honest. But through it all, Anderson is clearly reflecting on grief, on man’s place in the universe, on the euphemisms we tell ourselves about stars and heaven and death. He’s also reflecting on the power of images and storytelling—even within this elaborate, self-referential framework, I got completely caught up in the characters and story.

My full review. (Asteroid City is now available on Prime Video.)

9. Showing Up

At the art center where Lizzy (Michelle Williams) works in Oregon, it seems that everyone is a working artist. But there’s a hierarchy, of sorts. Lizzy, who works in the office and sculpts on the side, feels somewhat dismissed by her more successful landlord and neighbor, Jo (Hong Chau), who keeps promising she’ll get the hot water back on in Lizzy’s house just as soon as she finishes her two upcoming exhibits. “I have an exhibit, too,” Lizzy mutters, lamely. Later, Lizzy finds herself caring for an injured pigeon that has been passive aggressively foisted upon her by Jo. She’s also looking after her father (Judd Hirsch), a ceramicist himself, who seems to have given up on art (and maybe life) and her troubled brother (John Magaro). She is put upon, insecure, but driven to make art—and we root for her. Director Kelly Reichardt captures the daily rhythms, roiling creativity, and various artistic rivalries and collaborations of this art center with a keen eye, wry wit, and remarkable, tender insight.

(Showing Up is available on Showtime and on demand.)

10. Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret

Worth the wait. Fifty-three years after the publication of Judy Blume’s seminal novel about the inner life of 11-year-old Margaret, who’s freshly relocated from Manhattan to the Jersey suburbs and rudely encountering popular girls, religious uncertainty, and puberty, we get Kelly Fremon Craig’s charming adaptation, filled with affection for both the novel and its characters. Craig doesn’t try to ramp up the drama. She accepts it for what it is—life or death to Margaret (a winning Abby Ryder Fortson), a bit mild to the rest of us. Craig deftly highlights the book’s humor, from the infamous chant of “we must, we must, we must increase our bust!” to Margaret’s hormones stirred by the sight of her crush’s underarm hair. With Kathy Bates as Margaret’s drama-queen grandmother left behind in New York (“I read when you don’t have any loved ones around your life expectancy drops drastically”) and an excellent Rachel McAdams as Margaret’s sympathetic mother, who is having her own (mild) crisis of identity. The film’s gentleness, its goodness, feels a bit like a tonic.

My full review. (Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret is available on STARZ and on demand.)

11. NYAD

Not a love story, exactly, but something more rarely explored and perhaps even more interesting—the story of best friends as soulmates. Annette Bening is the titular long-distance swimmer—stubborn, brave, self-aggrandizing. Jodie Foster is her best friend and coach, who loves her, admires her, and is aggravated by her in equal measure. Not just a pitch-perfect (and exquisitely acted) character study, but a riveting adventure film, too—the scenes of the 64-year-old Diane Nyad attempting to swim from Cuba to Florida, will take your breath away.

My full review. (Nyad is available on Netflix.)

12. May December

Elizabeth Berry, the striving, B-list actress played with almost vibrating ambition by Natalie Portman, takes things way too far in her attempt to understand the interior life of Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), the notorious woman she is about to depict in an independent film. Gracie is not-so-loosely based on Mary Kay Letourneau, the 35-year-old school teacher who slept with a 13-year-old pupil, went to prison for her crimes, and later married the boy. Charles Melton plays the boy, now a 36-year-old man-child (with teenage children of his own), who still hasn’t comprehended that he was the victim of abuse. Director Todd Haynes foregrounds the doppelganger showdown between Berry and Atherton-Yoo, to brilliant and sometimes hilarious effect, while Melton quietly breaks your heart in the background.

My full review. (May December is available on Netflix.)

13. You Hurt My Feelings

Nicole Holefcener, the master of the chronicling the petty disruptions in the life of the bourgeoisie, is at it again. In this case, writer Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) discovers that her therapist husband (Tobias Menzies) has been lying about liking her latest book draft. This sends her into a spiral of self-doubt and recrimination. Meanwhile, he’s having his own crisis at work (he fears his patients disrespect him) and feels unsupported by Beth. As the minor disagreements between this loving couple metastasize, Holefcener dares to ask: Why do the ones we love annoy us the most?

My full review. (You Hurt My Feelings is available on demand.)

14. Priscilla

Another one of Sofia Coppola’s little lost girls, trapped in a meticulous gilded cage. This time, the auteur takes on Priscilla Presley (Cailee Spaeny), who meets (and is seduced by) a dashing young Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi) when she’s still just a girl. He brings the initially besotted teen to Graceland—where she can have all the jewels and clothing her heart desires—and essentially never lets her leave. Elvis cheats, abandons her for long stretches of time while he’s on the road, and tries to control her ever move. At first the fear of losing him, which he wields like a weapon, is enough incentive to stay. Eventually, she comes into her own. The scene where she finally pulls away from Graceland once and for all is pure catharsis.

My full review. (Priscilla is available on demand.)

15. Peak Season

How this one got lost in the shuffle is beyond me. I caught this smart, quirky film at the New/Next film festival and absolutely loved it. It’s an off-beat love story of sorts, about a stressed out city gal (Claudia Restrepo) who falls for an off-the-grid wilderness guide (Derrick Joseph DeBlasis) while vacationing with her Wall Street-bro fiancé in Wyoming. She, like many others, idealizes the guide’s easygoing lifestyle, the loose rhythms of his life. But the scales fall from her eyes when she realizes he might not be quite as carefree as he seems. My full review. (At this time, there is not streaming date set for Peak Season but it will likely become available on MUBI.)

Honorable Mentions: Air, Barbie, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Ferrari, Past Lives.

As of this writing, I still have not seen Poor Things, American Fiction, or The Color Purple. Look for reviews of those titles coming soon.

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Sigh.

And so we have Divergent, aka, The Hunger Games but with less fun wigs.

In
this film’s version of the future, Chicago is the only city to have
survived the apocalypse. (Totally believable. If they can survive their
own winters, a little nuclear winter should be a snap.)

The whole
population has been divided into factions—and it’s a bit like high
school. There’s Erudite (the brains), Candor (the school narcs),
Dauntless (the jocks), Amity (the hippie tree-huggers), and Abnegation
(the student government). Basically, it’s The Breakfast Club
goes dystopian. Our heroine, Tris (Shailene Woodley) is a member of
Abnegation and, as well as being the governing faction, they’re known
for their lack of vanity and selflessness.

Anyway, when a child
turns 16 in this universe, they attend the Reaping—er, Choosing Day
ceremony—where they get to pick which faction they want to belong to.
First, there’s a test to determine your natural place. You can choose
against your biology but it’s not recommended.

When Tris takes her
test, the tester (Maggie Q) freaks out and tells her to sneak out the
back and run for her life, rarely a good sign.

Turns out she’s a
“divergent”—or what we might’ve called a “floater” back in high
school—she doesn’t fit into any one group. This makes her a threat to
the ruling overlords, headed by Kate Winslet, in important hair.

So Tris has to hide her true identity, kind of pesky in a world where they have the technology to see inside your head.

Instead
of taking the safe route and sticking with Abnegation, she joins the
cool kids of Dauntless. Her brother Caleb (Ansel Elgort, who will play
Woodley’s lover in the The Fault in Our Stars—awkward!) joins
Erudite. Something tells me this ends up being a bigger deal in future
books, as Erudite is conspiring with Winslet’s Jeanine to take over the
government.

In Dauntless, Tris meets Four (Theo James), the
studly, but unapproachable trainer of the new recruits, who begins to
take a keen interest in her. But why?

A lot of Divergent
plays like a sci-fi basic training film, with Tris having to overcome a
series of tests of endurance and bravery. But one of the cool elements
of the plot: She needs to try to think like a Dauntless—i.e., using
tools and strength—not like a “Divergent”—who might use a combination of
all traits, plus an almost extrasensory intuition. I dig it.

That
being said, there are a few problems: The film is almost two and a half
hours long, and seems poorly paced. The beginning has a leisurely
tempo—the final third, which contains much of the pivotal action, feels
rushed. Also, the film doesn’t have the wit or eye popping flair of The Hunger Games.

As
for Woodley? It’s unfair to compare her to the talent-and-charm bomb
that is Jennifer Lawrence, but she’s darn good. She has an alertness
about her, an intelligence in her eyes—she draws you in. And Theo
James—previously famed for taking Lady Mary’s virginity (and
inconveniently dropping dead) on Downton Abbey—proves to be an appropriately studly and appealing male lead.

I’m
looking forward to the next installment. Will the districts finally
overtake the capitol and will Katniss prevail? Sorry. I swear I’ll get
this straight eventually.

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Do you think it’s funny to freak out a 13-year-old girl by putting ketchup on her seat and congratulating her for getting her first period?

If you answered, yes, you’re probably going to like Bad Words.

If you’re like me and you answered no, you might find it a bit problematic.

Okay, I’d be lying if I said that Jason Bateman’s directorial debut didn’t make me laugh a bunch of times, because it did. We all have different thresholds for offensive humor. Mine might be different from yours. But I tend to think that when you wield this kind of nasty humor, it needs to be in the service of some sort of meaningful or satisfying whole. And I’m not sure Bad Words quite passes that test.

The premise is amusing: Bateman plays Guy Trilby, a 40-year-old man who, thanks to a technicality (he never graduated 8^th grade), is able to compete in a series of spelling bees, leading up to the televised nationals.

Guy, as it turns out, is a genius—with a photographic memory. He’s a natural. Still, he takes pleasure in playing mind games with his competition, mocking one contestant for being fat (sigh) and implying that he slept with another one’s mother (double sigh).

What’s his damage? Well, that’s the mystery of the film, as sussed out by Guy’s travelling companion (and occasional, joyless lover), reporter Jenny Widgeon (rising star Kathryn Hahn, who will recover from this).

The film’s most conventional storyline involves one of Guy’s competitors, a cherubic and impossibly chipper 12-year-old boy named Chaitanya Chopra (Rohan Chand), who immediately gloms onto Guy and wants to be his best friend. (If you think the film doesn’t trot out every “spicy curry” and “Deepok Chopra” joke under the sun, you haven’t been paying attention.)

Eventually, inevitably, Guy takes Chaitanya on a raucous night out on the town that involves over-eating, shoplifting, joyriding, drinking, and the hiring of a prostitute in an alley so that Chaitanya can see his first set of boobies up close.

I’m not going to be so uptight as to be offended by all of this, so instead I’ll focus on Guy’s character, which is muddled at best. Is he a bitter, joyless middle-aged man, or a fun-loving overgrown man-child? The film isn’t sure, so it goes with both, whenever it’s convenient to the story.

Yes, the mystery of Guy’s obsession with spelling bees is solved, in an easy-to-predict way. But it still sheds little insight into his character. In the end, I didn’t care about Guy or, more importantly, believe in him. As a result, the bad jokes lingered with me more than the good ones.

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His heroes, which include Rushmore’s teacher’s-pet-from-hell Max Fischer, the Ahab-like titular character of The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, and the preternaturally precocious Sam of Moonrise Kingdom have a few things in common: They tend to be obsessive and stubborn and fastidious. Often they, much like Anderson himself, are drawn to the formality, gentility, and artifacts of a bygone age. And they are convinced, unwaveringly, of their own moral and intellectual superiority.

And now we can add Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes) of The Grand Budapest Hotel to that group. He might very well be the most explicitly heroic of the bunch.

He’s the concierge of the hotel, still a place to see and be seen just before the outbreak of World War II, but already a symbol of fading Old World glamour. He’s as conscientious and perfectionist as you would want a concierge to be: Pleasing his customers is his number one priority—even if that means having sex with the aging doyennes who check in. Because he’s such an aesthete, because he squirts himself generously with expensive French cologne, and because he calls everyone “sport” and “darling”, everyone assumes he’s gay, but he’s not. He’s also no coward. His integrity is unassailable—he will fight to the death for his own good name and the good name of his friends. (He’ll also positively kill for a good glass of champagne, darling.)

We meet Gustave through the wide eyes of Zero (Tony Revolori), another one of Andersons’ wonderful filmic sidekicks. (For each eccentric, there is almost always an adoring and trusty sidekick, more resourceful than he looks.) Zero is a lobby boy and Gustave’s stoic and observant pupil, whose painted on pencil mustache suggests that perhaps he shares some of his mentor’s rarefied tastes.

F. Murray Abraham plays the mysterious Mr. Moustafa, who tells the story of Gustave, Zero, and the Grand Budapest Hotel to a keenly interested writer (Jude Law) some 40 years later. The hotel is now in disrepair, sparsely occupied; indeed, it should have been razed along with similar hotels decades ago.

The action, as Moustafa tells it, kicks into high gear when Gustave’s favorite octogenarian benefactor (Tilda Swinton, still unmistakable beneath pounds of makeup) dies and bequeaths Gustave a priceless painting. The family, especially her scoundrel son Dmitri (Adrien Brody), are enraged and have Gustave arrested for her murder. Also on hand: Dmitri’s creepy muscle (Willem Dafoe), an aging tough Gustave meets in prison (Harvey Keitel), and a perpetually one-step-behind police inspector (Edward Norton).

There is also a love story, between Zero and a young pastry maker named Agatha, a pretty girl, save for a birthmark on her face that looks like a map of Italy. The pastries she makes—decadently swirled with whipped cream and nestled fussily in pink boxes—are a character unto themselves.

Wes Anderson’s films are often described as twee or whimsical, but there’s tons of action here—albeit heavily stylized action. There are fights on trains and chases in the alps and even prison escapes, all brought off with Anderson’s characteristic droll wit and imagination. But in the end, The Grand Budapest Hotel is all about the singular creation that is Gustave. Ralph Fiennes has given us a hero for the ages, a sort of Tim Gunn as action hero. It’s a long way from next year’s Oscar time, but here’s hoping he’s not forgotten.

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“It’ll be like Gladiator…but with volcanoes!” one producer would enthuse. “It’s . . . Gladcanoes!”

“And in 3D!” another would chime in.

Yep, not since SyFy’s Sharknado has a high concept been so, well, high. Pompeii is ridiculous, but at least it knows it’s ridiculous. I mean, it’s got to know it’s ridiculous. . .right?

The gladiator parts are so generic, they might as well have been assembled in a lab:

1. Bored slave master eating grapes? Check
2. Studly slave gladiator seeking to avenge the evil Romans who slayed his family? Check
3. Beautiful noblewoman who loves him? Check
4. Brave fellow gladiator who goes from enemy to frenemy? Check.

And so on.

Kit Harington, of Game of Thrones
fame, plays our hero Milo, complete with CGI-enhanced abs. I love
Harington as Jon Snow—he’s a world-class pouter. But let’s just say his
range is…limited. Here, he’s less gladiator than boy toy. For those
about to die…here’s my Blue Steel.

Kiefer Sutherland is on hand—counting the days until the 24 movie,
no doubt—as the dastardly Roman senator Corvus, who wants to marry the
beautiful and free-spirited Cassia (Emily Browning.) She’s the one who
loves Milo. Meanwhile, as Milo plots his revenge against Corvus and
prepares to fight his former foe/new ally Atticus (Adewale
Akinnuoye-Agbaje), things start a-rumblin’ and a-shakin’.

“Did you feel that?” Milo asks.

Oh yes, we did.

Bored
grape eating slave owner knows the lava is about to hit the
fan—although, like everyone else, he’s thinking less meteorological
phenomenon and more “wrath of gods”— and he tries to hightail it out of
Pompeii. But it’s too late. Giant tidal waves swallow up the land.
Statues crumble. Arenas collapse. Everyone strap on your sandals and run for your lives!!

Here’s
my dilemma: I can’t, in good conscience, suggest that you shell out $12
for this silliness. And yet, if you’re going to see Pompeii,
you should see it in the movies. Lava coming straight at you is a pretty
great use of 3D, all things considered. It also helps to enhance
Harington’s painted-on abs.

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Oh, how to explain the many ways that Winter’s Tale goes wrong, except to say . . .every way?

It’s
based on a book (that I confess to have never read), and succumbs to
every possible pitfall of adapting a novel: It feels plodding and
episodic. There’s an overly pedantic voiceover explaining its spiritual
“themes.” Character backgrounds and motivations are murky. Seemingly
significant characters show up for one scene, then disappear.

Here’s
what I could make of the plot: A thief (a raven-haired Colin Farrell,
looking a lot more like Snapes than anyone could’ve possibly intended)
runs afoul of a crime boss (Russell Crowe) who is also a henchman for
the devil. (I’d tell you who plays the devil in this film, but I’ll let
you stumble across that howler on your own.)

The thief is rescued
by a mystical white horse—alternately called a dog because…well . . .er.
. .it must be explained in the book—and falls in love with a beautiful
red-headed woman who’s dying of consumption. (She’s played by Downton Abbey’s milky-skinned Jessica Brown Findlay and any resemblance to Kate Winslet, circa her Titanic years,
is strictly intentional). Is she his destiny? His reason for living?
According to the film’s mythology, we are each given a singular miracle
in this life; the key is to find our miracle.

There is also a
lot—and I mean a lot—of talk about light and constellations and twinkly
things and fire and how good people turn into stars when they die. (To
summarize: Light good! Dark bad!)

Toward the end of the film,
Jennifer Connolly shows up as a mother of a sick child—and we’re
supposed to suddenly care desperately about both her and the child,
simply because the filmmakers want us to.

Although Winter’s Tale takes place in NY, everyone speaks with a different accent. (Hey, it’s magical realism. There are no rules!)

What
are all these good actors doing here? Did they do this film as a favor
to director Akiva Goldsman, the acclaimed screenwriter behind A Beautiful Mind and Cinderella Man? Crowe, for example, is essentially playing a supernatural version of Inspector Javert, his character in Les Misérables.
(Now on Crowe’s resume: Special skills: Accents, stage fighting,
tirelessly hunting all corners of the earth for mortal enemies.)

Look, a tiny part of me has to give props to Goldsman for at least attempting
something in the magical realism realm. We don’t see a lot of that in
Hollywood, partly because most of us are too cynical to enjoy it, but
also because magical realism is hard. If you’re going to do it, you need a confident director with a bold vision. Winter’s Tale
takes a literal-minded approach to fantastical material. It has no
sense of magic or enchantment or menace. Hell, it barely even has a
sense of romance. As Valentine’s Day gifts go, it’s a greeting card from
a second-rate New Age bookstore.

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And yet, The Lego Movie
is one of the most hip, hilarious, and nimble movies you’re likely to
see all year. (Moral of the story: You can’t judge a film by its title,
month of release, or number of visual dimensions.)

It helps that
the film looks great. While there’s clearly lots of CGI, directors Phil
Lord and Christopher Miller also reportedly used more than 3 million
actual Lego bricks to construct the film’s world (I’ve been assured that
no Legos were harmed during production). The result is remarkable—the
Legos have dimension and movement and depth. You feel like you can reach
out and stack them.

And then there’s the script—packed with
enough one-liners, pop culture references, and winking commentary to
fill up several movies. (Despite its title, the film is actually anti-commodification).

Emmet
(the voice of Chris Pratt) is just a regular construction guy in Lego
land. He sings along to the one ear-wormy government-issued song
“Everything is Awesome!” and laughs along with the one insipid
government-issued sitcom Who Stole My Pants? He follows the rules. He wants to fit in. He wants to be a square peg in a square hole, if you will.

Then
Emmet accidentally stumbles across the “Piece of Resistance” that, as
legend has it, can be used to bring down the nefarious President
Business (Will Ferrell), who’s secretly scheming to destroy the denizens
of Lego world. Now believed to be “The Special” (a la Neo in The Matrix), Emmet joins forces with the Master Builders, who include most Marvel superheroes (Superman and The Green Lantern just can’t seem to get along), both Michelangoes (artist and
Mutant Turtle), Gandalf and Dumbledore (whom Emmet, understandably,
confuses), and the adorably spunky UniKitty (unicorn + kitty), who
manages to be both an incredibly cute thing and a jab at the scourge of
incredibly cute things in kids’ movies.

Emmet has fallen hard for
Master Builder Wildstyle (Elizabeth Banks) but she’s in a serious
relationship with a brooding cool guy. Maybe you’ve heard of him? He’s
Batman (voiced hilariously by Will Arnett) and the idea of Batman as the
romantic rival from hell is just one example of the film’s ingenuity.
(Another? There’s a good cop/bad cop team—voiced by Liam Neeson—that are
actually the same guy; he merely needs to rotate his head to go from
intimidating scowl to reassuring grin.)

The final act of the film has a heartwarming twist that almost elevates it to Pixar territory. While The Lego Movie can’t quite compete with Toy Story for its blend of humor and poignancy, it turns out that beneath all that winking cleverness beats a surprisingly tender heart.

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At least I can see why everyone signed on (the cast also includes Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville, The Artist’s
Jean Dujardin, and redoubtable character actor Bob Balaban). The
story—based on real events—is a doozy. During World War II, a carefully
selected team of curators, art historians, architects, et al were
recruited to hunt down and recover priceless works of art that the Nazis
had stolen. You see, Hitler, with classic hubris, had hoped to create
the world’s greatest art museum. (I’m yet to see a movie about Hitler
that doesn’t mention his thwarted aspirations as an artist and The Monuments Men
doesn’t disappoint—although in this case, I suppose, it’s appropriate.)
The recruits, mostly middle-aged and, in some cases, too drunk or
feeble of body to have served themselves, were given the half-hearted
blessing of Roosevelt and later, half-hearted cooperation from their
fellow soldiers (who were more concerned with carrying out military
orders and surviving the war than preserving art). They went through
basic training and then, dubbed Monuments Men, tirelessly searched the
front lines of Belgium, France, and Germany for the stolen work, often
risking their own lives.

The gifted Blanchett has possibly the
most interesting part—as a member of the French resistance working
undercover as a bookkeeper/art historian for the Nazis. But again, she
isn’t given much to do, and a potential romance with Matt Damon’s James
Granger is so flimsy and half-baked, I’m not even sure why they
bothered.

Most of the film is a series of set pieces: A raid on a
church, a roadside ambush, an encounter with an unexpected sniper, but
it’s remarkable how low the stakes feel and how little we’re invested in
the characters. This is because Clooney—who plays Frank Stokes, the
group’s leader—fails to make each character distinct enough. Bill Murray
gives us his patented amused deadpan and John Goodman mugs
extravagantly as only John Goodman can, but we’re never quite sure why.
(The film, which fancies itself a kind of Raiders of the Lost Masterworks,
also balances its mix of comedy and drama somewhat awkwardly.) Then,
adding insult to injury, Clooney does an earnest voiceover about the
power of art that feels dangerously mansplainy.

Another quibbles:
The period details never convince. A makeshift walkie talkie is as
crystal clear as the latest 4G from Verizon; likewise, a 45 record
containing a greeting from home for Murray’s character sounds like it
was digitally mastered in a studio. (What’s more, since we know next to
nothing about Murray or his family, the scene of him listening to the
greeting, in near tears, fails to move.)

There are a few pretty
good moments—a comical interlude involving Matt Damon and a landmine; a
scene at a Nazi’s farm house where Balaban’s Preston notices that the
Renoir “reproductions” on the walls are really, really good
—but this should have been pulse-pounding stuff. Instead it feels static
and bland, with an overqualified cast and, for this film at least, a
director not quite up to the task.

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There’s a massive disconnect between the film That Awkward Moment thinks it is and the film it actually is.

It seems to think it’s a hip, freewheeling, edgy bromantic comedy—equal parts Swingers and a Y-chromosome take on HBO’s Girls. When, for the most part, it’s clichéd, regressive, and, at times, down right offensive.

Early
in the film, Zac Efron’s Jason explains that when a girl says the word
“so” (as in: “so where is this going?” or “so what are we to each
other?”) it’s time to cut and run. (Before they decided to appropriate
that slightly-dated Internet-speak of the title, some earlier version of
this film was almost undoubtedly called “So…”).

He and
his best friends Daniel (Miles Teller) and Mikey (Michael B. Jordan)
make a pact to fill up their “rosters” with women you can have regular
sex with without any expectation of commitment. Then, you guessed it,
Jason meets a girl he really likes, Ellie (the gloriously named Imogene
Poots), but resists his feelings, because it’s against his own bro code.

Meanwhile,
Daniel has a female best friend who acts as a kind of wingman for him
at the bar, ushering girls his way, complimenting their shoes, making
introductions until—who could have possibly seen this coming?—Daniel
falls for her, too. (That whole scenario is beyond stupid: Teller is a
somewhat handsome kid who has risen to fame thanks to his abundance of
loopy charm. His female best friend, played by Mackenzie Davis, is a
model-esque beauty—in real life she’d be out of his league, not his
Plain Jane pal helping him hook up with other girls.).

Jordan’s
Mikey is the most human of the bunch. He plays a doctor, still pining
away for his ex-wife. (He has to keep the fact that he has feelings away
from his buddies—they wouldn’t understand.)

That Awkward Moment
is the kind of film where most of the women are interchangeable sex
objects—except for the two “cool girls” our heroes fall in love with.

And
then there’s this: Are men actually as, um, phallus-centric as this
film would have us believe? Because the film is positively obsessed with
penises. There’s a long extended bit when Mikey accidentally
masturbates with tanning lotion—triggering a “made for the gag reel”
series of clearly improvised and mostly unfunny quips from his pals
(“you look like a traffic cone” “you look like a sad giraffe” etc.).
Later, Jason goes to a “dress up” party, which he misinterprets as a
costume party, decked out in a hanging dildo. In another scene, Daniel
goes to hug Mikey while wearing no pants and Mikey basically tells him
to back that thing up.

When the gang aren’t talking about their
“junk” and demeaning—or idealizing—women, they’re making fart jokes.
Those are some of the more sophisticated moments.

The film has its
charms—mostly because the leads are so effortlessly appealing. But
Efron, in particular, needs to start making smarter choices. That Awkward Moment
feels a bit like spending 90 minutes with three frat boys who are
constantly high fiving and laughing at each other’s jokes. They’re not
nearly as hilarious as they think they are.

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The film is narrated
(tremulously, of course) by Tobey Maguire as the grownup version of
Adele’s 13-year-old son Henry (Gattlin Grifflith), so if there was
concern that Henry and his mom are in real danger and might not make it
out of this ordeal alive, that’s pretty much dispelled.

But how
could anyone see Frank as a threat? He’s the most hilariously idealized
male I’ve ever seen in a film. The first day he kidnaps Adele and Henry,
he changes the oil in their car, fixes the furnace, teaches Henry how
to throw like a boy, inspects Adele’s firewood (she’s been
over-charged), and whips up a batch of chili (that he hand feeds to
Adele, as she’s tied up in a chair to make the kidnapping look more
legit in the eyes of the authorities). Later, he fixes squeaky door
hinges, takes off his shirt to reveal rippling biceps, dances the rumba
with Adele, and gives mother and son a lesson in how to (sensually) bake
a peach pie. All the while, young Henry is torn between loving his new
father figure and being overcome with Oedipal rage (the film literally
cuts to Henry glowering jealously every time Frank touches Adele).

What
to make of all this? I frankly don’t know. Everyone involved is
talented—from Winslet, who is one of my all-time favorite actresses, to
Brolin, who is the rare American actor who can project masculine
strength and decency (lately we’ve been outsourcing that role to
Australians). Director Jason Reitman has made three films I love (Juno, Up in the Air, and Young Adult), although there’s a secret conservatism lurking at the edges of those films that he really doubles down on here.

The
film is certainly well acted and directed, for what it’s worth. I guess
I’m just going to have to give these guys a mulligan. Whatever they
were going for, they didn’t achieve. Unless they were trying to give me a
few good sneaky laughs behind my hands. In which case, well played.

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Yes,
only one soldier lives to tell this true tale of an Afghanistan mission
gone horribly awry. And, as is often the case with the films by Peter
Berg (Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom), the film’s politics are all over the map.

It
starts with some actual footage of Navy SEAL “Hell week,” including the
shameful bell that is rung when a young recruit can’t take any more of
the physical and emotional punishment. I thought these opening images
displayed some compassion for the sad-faced young men who cried uncle.
But as the fictionalized part of our story begins, it becomes clear that
Berg was more interested in how strong, how stalwart, how mentally
tough the SEALs who made the cut were. He idolizes the band of brothers
they become.

These early scenes, on a base camp in Afghanistan,
seem to hum with the rhythms of daily life—the gentle hazing, the
physical one-upmanship, the good natured grief-giving. When four SEALs
are assigned to bring back a Taliban warlord, it seems relatively
routine. (One wide-eyed newbie is jealous that he can’t come.)

The
four SEALs don’t have particularly distinct personalities, I’m sorry to
say. Taylor Kitsch plays the alpha male—level-headed and decent and
strong. Emile Hirsch is the squirt of the group, slightly hen-pecked by
his wife (he finds himself sifting though decorator’s paint samples, at
her behest). Ben Foster is the steeliest one, the most willing to do
what it takes. As for our leading man Mark Wahlberg? He doesn’t seem to
have much of a personality beyond: good guy.

But almost as soon as
they arrive, something goes wrong: They stumble across a shepherd and
his son. If they kill the shepherd, they won’t be able to live with
themselves, but if they let him free, what’s to stop him from alerting
the Taliban of their whereabouts? They do the right thing, morally, and
perhaps the wrong thing, strategically, and let him go.

In short order, they are surrounded.

Here’s where the film will either lose you or grab hold of you for good: Most of Lone Survivor
is that battle in the craggy mountains of Afghanistan. It’s very long,
it’s very technical, it’s very bloody. I give Berg credit for mimesis—at
least it sure looked authentic to me. But I simply didn’t want to watch
this bloody and sickening fight go on and on. What’s more, it seemed
sensationalized, yet another way for Berg to underscore the superhuman
toughness of these SEALs (literally riddled with bullets, they still
manage to engage in close combat and protect each other).

On the
one hand, Berg is showing us the hell of war, especially war in a
convoluted political backdrop like Afghanistan, where it’s hard to
distinguish between the civilians and the combatants. On the other, the
film is undeniably gung ho (even with all that blood and death it could
still be shown as part of a Navy SEAL recruitment package). And then
Wahlberg’s Marcus Luttrell is saved by a kindly Afghan villager who
loves Americans and what they’ve done for his country. Alrighty then.

Lone Survivor
is a well crafted piece of filmmaking—taut and swift, with close
attention to the kind of details that bring a world to life. But any war
film they could easily make a video game out of is no war film for me.

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While
Theodore’s ex wife (Rooney Mara) pities Theodore for not being able to
sustain a human relationship, his friends, including coworker Paul
(Chris Pratt) are much more blasé about it. Paul even invites the
disembodied Samantha—who rests on a blanket or sits perched in
Theodore’s pocket—on a double-date picnic. Meanwhile, Amy has also
become close to her OS, although their relationship is strictly
platonic.

The best science fiction gives us a credible vision of the future while slyly commenting on our now. Her—with
its gorgeous, minimalist art direction (by Austin Gorg), retro-future
clothing (Theodore favors orange shirts and high-waisted tweed
trousers), and city streets populated by people who are so plugged into
their interactive devices they barely notice each other—does just that.
(After all, aren’t most of us already in a relationship with
our smartphones?) Jones doesn’t judge, he simply observes, with humor
and humanity. It’s the future, through the eyes of a poet.

Theodore’s
job is to write letters, mostly love letters of both the platonic and
romantic kind, for people who are unable to properly express themselves.
A few times Samantha, who absorbs every word of Theodore’s hard drive
in a microsecond, quotes Theodore back to Theodore, and he doesn’t even
realize it. She’s his perfect woman, the Eve to his Adam—except instead
of his rib she’s created out of his hard drive. (And with that breathy
Scarlett Johansson voice, “phone sex” takes on a whole new meaning.)

Creepy?
Sure. But Theodore is undeniably happy with her. Also, Samantha doesn’t
isolate him: He sees the world through her eager, insatiably curious
eyes—she actually lifts him from his funk, opens him up to life’s
possibilities.

A lot of science fiction deals with the threat of some sort of man vs. machine rebellion. Her deals with a more pressing threat: Can an Operating System break your heart?

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Stiller plays the mild-mannered titular character who works in the negative processing department at Life
magazine, which has been taken over by efficiency experts, led by the
cartoonishly smarmy Ted Hendricks (Adam Scott). Walter has a crush on
winsome co-worker Cheryl (Kristen Wiig, mostly wasted) and spends much
of his day dreaming about impressing her with a bold, heroic life that
he doesn’t lead. There’s a back story: Walter’s father died when he was a
boy, so he had to put away the rebelliously boyish things (mohawk,
skateboard) and get a job at Papa John’s. (The Papa John’s product
placement is just one of many in this film: There’s also eHarmony and
Cinnabon—described as “frosted heroin” at one point!—and probably a few
others that I missed.)

When a photo that is meant to capture the “quintessence of Life
magazine” goes missing, Walter has to track down Sean O’Connell (Sean
Penn, enjoying himself), the adventure junkie photographer who took it.
This takes Walter to Greenland, Iceland, and the Himalayas. During that
time, he grows some hipster scruff, acquires some man-jewelry, and
basically learns to live life to the fullest.

This is obviously super corny stuff and it’s played for maximum
whimsy. But whimsy is a dangerous thing in the wrong hands. (Wes
Anderson films should come with a warning: Do Not Try This At Home.) The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
has no mystery, no secrets to share. It’s pleasant enough, but for a
film about taking risks and embracing adventure, it feels awfully safe.

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If you’re not up on la controverse de Cannes, the movie won the Palme d’Or at this year’s festival but was immediately dogged by negative publicity. The two young actresses at the heart of the love story said they felt bullied and exploited by director Abdellatif Kechiche and that he forced them into graphic sexual intimacy they weren’t comfortable with. What’s more, some female viewers, lesbians in particular, felt that Kechiche’s film was more about the male gaze than real intimacy between two women.

Defending a film against accusations of the “male gaze” is a bit tricky. Aren’t all films essentially the “gaze” of the director? Yes, Kechiche’s film is abundantly sensual—fleshy, you might even say. But he doesn’t only apply this gaze to the sex scenes. He eroticizes a bowl of spaghetti Bolognese as much as a naked breast. The whole film is an orgy of human desire.

And it’s a remarkable achievement: A three-hour film about a subject no less well-trodden than a young girl’s first love that is absolutely mesmerizing from beginning to end. When we first meet Adèle (Adèle Exarchopolous), she is in class reading La Vie de Marianne and learning about the exquisite agony of love at first sight. She’ll soon experience that phenomenon herself, passing by the punky, blue-haired Emma (Léa Seydoux) in the park. Their eyes meet—Emma has a particularly amused, knowing way of carrying herself—and Adèle’s life is changed forever.

Whether Adèle is a lesbian or not is never totally clear. What she is is completely consumed by the pixie in the park. She tries sex with a popular boy, but finds it unfulfilling. Then she has a fumbling encounter with a female classmate, a poor substitute for her fantasy girl. Finally, she finds her way to a lesbian bar, meets Emma, and they begin a love affair.

If Kechiche’s primary concerns are with the flesh, his film is also about class and how a certain kind of elitism can corrupt a relationship. Adèle is a smart girl but she has simple needs: She likes to read and she wants to teach children. Emma is an artist, who surrounds herself with creative types and art patrons. She keeps characterizing Adèle to her friends as a “writer” because somehow saying that her girlfriend simply likes to read isn’t enough.

Likewise, Emma is out and proud to her intellectual mother and epicurean step-father. Adèle’s family are more traditional (they’re the ones who make the Bolognese—“simple but delicious” as Emma calls it; while Emma’s parents serve raw oysters with a squirt of lemon and glasses of highly-deliberated-over white wine.) They think Emma is Adèle’s philosophy tutor and inquire about her boyfriend (she tells them he’s in “business,” which is exactly what they want to hear). The class differences, Kechiche suggests, are what threaten their relationship more than anything having to do with age or gender.

The film is deceptively simple. Many of the scenes sound banal when describing them—dinner parties and gallery openings and reading lessons in a kindergarten class— but in Kechiche’s hands they are rife with unexpected complexity. Kechiche employs the close-up like few directors—his gaze becomes our gaze, as it were, and it’s mostly wonderful to view the world through his sensual eyes.

His two leads are just incredible: Adèle Exarchopolous takes us through seemingly the entire emotional repertoire of adolescence—weepy and emo one minute, youthfully exuberant the next. (In several scenes, Adèle abandons herself to the giddy, stomping thrall of a huge crowd). And, most importantly, we see her discovering her own body and its power to give and receive pleasure.

And Lea Seydoux, with her alert, elfin looks and preternatural self-possession, is a wonderful counterpart. She, in some ways, is the stand-in for Kechiche: She regards Adèle with amusement, empathy, fascination, and lust.

As for that notorious sex scene? Well, it just seemed…gratuitous. There’s that old artist’s adage of showing, not telling. In fact, Kechiche is a master of doing just that. But he showed us. And then he showed us some more. And finally, he showed us so much it became wallpaper.

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