300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE

No movie that opens with Gerard Butler being beheaded, even off-screen, can be all that bad, and so maybe I shouldn't be surprised by the not-so-bad-ness of director Noam Murro's 300: Rise of an Empire. I still am, considering how little fun I had at Zack Snyder's smash-hit predecessor from 2007, yet personally speaking, it's not hard to identify what makes this CGI-heavy bloodbath an overall better time - a much better time - than 300. But we'll get to her momentarily.

NON-STOP

Every Academy Awards season, the idea of adding a Best Casting category appears to gain some traction among film journalists and professionals. (This past autumn saw the limited release of a documentary - Tom Donahue's Casting by - devoted to the subject, and Woody Allen, whom one would've thought indifferent to the Oscars at best, even wrote an open letter to the Hollywood Reporter in support of a casting trophy.) I'm personally fine with restricting the ceremony to the two dozen categories we do have, but if such recognition were to be included, voters could do worse than to consider Amanda Mackey and Cathy Sandrich Galfond - casting directors for the enjoyably ludicrous Non-Stop - for the prize. To be sure, it doesn't take much wit to suggest that Liam Neeson play a grieving alcoholic with a bad temper and a gun. But casting, as two beleaguered flight attendants, 12 Years a Slave's abused slave Patsey opposite Downton Abbey's rigid Lady Mary? Now that's witty.

When it comes to the films and individuals that win Academy Awards, it's easy to get defensive, and even a little pissy, about voters' collective choices. "How could those people ever vote for ______," you find yourself asking, "when ______ is so obviously better? Don't they have any integrity at all?!"

THE LEGO MOVIE

Two of the characters in The Lego Movie are Lego Minifigures of Superman and Green Lantern, the latter of whom, here, is an obsequious suck-up whom the Man of Steel can't stand. That's a good joke. These decided non-friends are voiced by Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, who famously played best friends in 21 Jump Street. That's a good in-joke. The Lego Movie is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who also directed 21 Jump Street. That's a good in-in-joke. But the news that this new animated release is not only the cleverest, most hysterical comedy since 21 Jump Street, but an altogether stronger, more audacious piece of work than at least 90 percent of everything Hollywood gave us last year? No joke at all.