MCFARLAND USA

God, I hate Disney. Not all the time, of course, and in any case, "hate" is probably a strong word. But why does the studio have to keep releasing live-action movies that are inseparable from cartoons, with all of the potentially legitimate conflict inevitably dulled down and scrubbed squeaky-clean? And why does its succession of inspirational sports dramas never feature any actual coaching beyond bland and clichéd motivational speeches? And why do these damned things keep making me weep like a baby?

BAD WORDS

It's not impossible to make a comedy centered on an angry, sullen, emotionally inaccessible bastard, as Oscar Isaac recently proved in Inside Llewyn Davis. In that film, however, Isaac had a Coen-brothers script and a bunch of sensational folk songs to help carry him through. In Bad Words, director/star Jason Bateman merely has a half-workable comic conceit and access to unlimited profanities. The anger, sullenness, and inaccessibility, I'm sorry to say, win out.

FRUITVALE STATION

Marvel Studios' recent spate of superhero movies has trained us - or tried to train us, at any rate - to stick around for at least the first few minutes of the end credits, offering the promise of a bonus scene designed to build excitement for comic-book adventures yet to come. (Not to give the details away, but Marvel's new The Wolverine features a happy doozy of one promoting 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past.) Yet while they couldn't possibly have been expecting this same sort of credit cookie at the independent drama Fruitvale Station, the audience members with whom I saw the film stayed similarly glued to their seats, almost as though none of them was quite ready for the experience to be over. Given how haunting and emotionally overpowering writer/director Ryan Coogler's debut feature is, it would be impossible to blame them.

THE HELP

Based on Kathryn Stockett's much-loved bestseller, The Help concerns the tenuous relationships between black domestic workers and their privileged white employers in early-'60s Mississippi, and it's a fairly obvious movie, with director Tate Taylor opting for broad brushstrokes over subtlety, and the occasionally wrenching drama sitting, rather uncomfortably, alongside klutzy jokiness. Yet offhand, I can't think of another popular entertainment whose flaws matter less than this film's, because everything that's lacking in the picture is more than made up for in the fearless, emotionally precise, and oftentimes devastating portrayals of Taylor's cast. The Help is easy to complain about, but all it takes is one of the magnificent Viola Davis' fierce, tearful stares - or a blast of Octavia Spencer's anger, or a flash of Emma Stone's heartbreak, or a burst of Jessica Chastain's joy - to make your complaints feel positively moot.