THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

The Wolf of Wall Street is Martin Scorsese's three-hour black comedy about the grotesquely indulgent life of felonious stock trader Jordan Belfort, and Leonardo DiCaprio gives a ferociously alert performance as the title character, even when, in a scene of perfectly executed physical slapstick, a Quaalude high gone wrong leaves him nearly, and hilariously, immobile. The movie is filled with memorable set pieces and blisteringly profane dialogue, and several supporting actors - Kyle Chandler and Matthew McConaughey especially - are in utterly spectacular form. There's filmmaking energy, even bravado, on display in just about every scene. And after dozens of releases in a career spanning more than four decades, it's the first Scorsese picture that I've ever actively hated.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook is a modern romantic comedy, which means that, in essence, its storyline would fit rather snugly alongside those of many offerings in the cinematic oeuvres of Katherine Heigl and Kate Hudson. But allow me to blow your minds with this little nugget of information: While its narrative arc may seem familiar, even insultingly so, almost nothing in the movie happens the way you think it will. Somehow, using author Matthew Quick's 2008 novel as a blueprint, Russell has taken a tale involving two impossibly good-looking near-lovers, an emotionally distant family, and a big dance contest, and has ensured that you truly can't predict whether the seemingly de rigueur unions and reconciliations and victories will actually transpire. What's the deal with this Russell guy? Doesn't he know that's not the way things are done in Hollywood?

J. EDGAR

Pretty much everything that's bothersome about director Clint Eastwood's biographical drama J. Edgar is only bothersome for the movie's first half hour. That may sound like a lot of time spent bothered. But the film does run 135 minutes, even its weakest moments are by no means awful, and in the end, it emerges as a really fine work with a really fine central performance. So as a nod to J. Edgar (the movie, not the man), let's just get it out of the way and address its failings at the start.

THE GHOST WRITER

Calling Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer "lighthearted" isn't entirely accurate, as the movie is a moody suspense thriller concerning high-level government conspiracies, and its color palette seems to shift only from gray to very dark gray. Then again, this is a Polanski film we're talking about - coming from the man who gave us Rosemary's Baby, Repulsion, Chinatown, and The Pianist, it's practically Gidget Goes Hawaiian.