Harmony Korine’s purposefully delirious drama/horror/satire “Spring Breakers” is shocking, but not for any onscreen debauchery, but how bright and shiny, and extremely dull it is, and how much it strives to be “Girls Gone Wild” meets “Natural Born Killers.” Circa 1994. (Back when I was in college.)

The story: Four college girls (led by Disney TV princesses Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez, plus Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine) head to Florida and plunge into binge drinking, drugs, sex acts, and scooter racing without helmets. The last one is a true shocker, eh? When the gals land in jail, a redneck, metal-toothed drug dealer (James Franco) “saves” and woos the group with guns, piano skills, and love of “Scarface.”

After Gomez as a Christian named “Faith” (fancy that, eh?) bolts for home, the other three turn pink-masked gangbanger. Really. It all ends in a shoot-out too over-the-top (and oddly racist) to even remotely take seriously.

Korine spills ironic observations about youth obsessions with sex, gun culture, and celebrity, and our affinity to get bored, no matter where or what we are. Good points. But he’s working from a sketchy 30-page culture thesis triple spaced to 90, with scenes and sounds (guns!) repeated without end, like a hammer to the cranium.

Boiled down: Korine’s only real trick is getting two Mickey Mouse stars to go Mickey and Mallory for faux shock value. To break taboos? Or filmgoers’ patience? Franco, btw, is madly genius but too over-the-top to be any kind of onscreen threat. The four girls, much like Koroine’s, are empty beer kegs, blowing foam. And, no, I do not care if it is all “ironic.” Irony needs a point, and that we have not.

Michael Haneke’s French-language “Amour” is the painfully grim picture of Parisian octogenarians struck helpless as the wife suffers a series of strokes and tumbles into the purgatory of dementia, lost under a thick sheet of ice. A ghost.

Anne (Emmanuelle Riva), the wife, was a piano teacher. In the first scenes, her eyes and spirit vibrate with light as she and her husband (Jean-Louis Trintignant) attend the concert of her former pupil. It’s at breakfast she has her first spell. Her eyes go vacant.

I saw that vacancy in the eyes of my grandmothers. This film and its devastating realness crushed me.

Georges, the husband, cares for Anne every moment, feedings and diapers. Strain breaks him. Guilt shames him. He stretches his love over the widening chasm between himself and her. It is not enough.

Haneke has made a film about love and honor that defies, but cannot overcome an ultimate horror — joyful love turned to torture as one half of a beautiful whole withers. No hope. Only an absence of help, cure, or god to end the misery.

Our leads are amazing, creating a fully realized couple surrounded by an apartment brimming of a shared life. All due respect to Jennifer Lawrence, Riva was robbed a Best Actress Oscar. She will break your heart.

–Steven Mackay, Lyric volunteer

“The Impossible” follows a family torn apart by one of history’s greatest disasters: The 2004 tsunami that killed nearly 300,000 people in Southeast Asia. Director Juan Bayona and writer Sergio Sánchez (both of “The Orphanage”) make this true story horrifying real as they place us inside the deadly wave with the characters as they fight not to be drowned, crushed, or impaled.

Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts -– both fantastic — head the wealthy Brit family and when disaster hits, parents are separated. Mom with an older boy, dad with two younger sons. Mom is sickeningly wounded. Dad is sickeningly worried. Bayona and Sánchez make this ordeal personal, like the family swept up in Wouk’s “Winds of War.”

But wait. The real family in this tragedy was Spanish — not English — and every major character we follow in this tragedy is English. The indigenous locals? Side characters. Helpers. Servants. Unnamed strangers.

Great as this film is, these diversions choke like a swallowed stone. The movie studio trusted a Spanish team behind the camera, but not in front. Why not Javier Bardem as the male lead? Yes, movies (“Argo”) constantly shuffle ethnicities, but with so many nonwhites truly killed, getting past that hump here is … impossible.

– Steven Mackay, Lyric volunteer

Is there a better actress right now of the under-30 set than Jennifer Lawrence? She co-leads “Silver Linings Playbook,” a flat-out great comedy/drama about two troubled adults making a connection over -– of all things -– ballroom dancing.

David Russell directs and wrote the screenplay (based on a book), and similar to his hit “Fighter,” rests the story on wondrous and maddening families. The lead is Bradley Cooper, giving a jaw-dropper performance unlike anything before, as Pat, a man near-disabled by bipolar disorder. Back home with his over-protective mom (Jacki Weaver) and over-bearing/OCC father (Robert De Niro), Pat crosses paths, via friends, with Tiffany (Lawrence), a young widow with her own set of issues, mainly sexual.

Their relationship begins toxic, but there’s a romantic spark, they each has leapt over the cliff of sanity. If the finale is awkwardly, overly upbeat, refer back to the title: In a “Lord of the Flies” reality, we crave stories with silver linings.

De Niro, after a long bout of sell-out performances, is marvelous. But Lawrence (“Hunger Games” and “Winter’s Bone”) is the reason to see “Silver.” She’s 21, playing a slightly older unstable woman, flawlessly upstaging her co-stars.

–Steven Mackay, Lyric volunteer

Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal scored several Oscars, but little box office traction with 2009’s Iraq-set “Hurt Locker” Here, they go bigger and bolder by following the CIA and then SEAL Team Six as they hunt and eventually kill Osama bin Laden.

This is an openly controversial film. It invites scorn and bravado, as does any good piece of journalism. And this is a hard-hitting news piece a la spy/war film. A fantastic, bewildering, white-knuckle thriller, hard to easily grasp on a first viewing, but mesmerizing. In short, one of the year’s best, most complex films. A must see. But this is not the place for political debates, try that outside the theater in the lobby of The Lyric when the film’s end credits roll, and you have had a chance to collect your breath and walk.

I will say this, it is even-handed, and the political backlash against this film is insanely grotesque. Some on one side of the political spectrum demand a neon sign damning torture as bad. Another fears this film is propaganda for the guy in the White House because bin Laden went down on his watch. Both are wrong, or likely have been misled about the film. Obama, matter of fact, barely figures into the plot except for a brief appearance on TV, denouncing torture of prisoners-of-war. But, enough. Onto the film:

After we hear 911 calls from that terrible Tuesday over a black screen, we delve for 40-some minutes into the capture and – yes, it’s displayed in visceral drawn out reality — torture or an apparent terrorist at the hands of CIA operatives, as well as the back office paperwork and myriad details of the largest manhunt in U.S. history. The torture scenes hit hard. Our government denies torture ever took place. The film says otherwise. Take your pick of the truth from either side, or a bit of both. The detainee — one of scores of captured men seen put through various acts of distress — cracks a peep about a secret and favored courier for bin Laden. From there a tiny, illusive thread is tracked for a decade by Mia (Jessica Chastain), a CIA field agent who has no other mission in life but to find the Al Qaeda leader.

Leads dead-end, attacks rock London and elsewhere, colleagues are killed, and Mia is targeted by would-be assassins. It makes her more determined. Mia is an enigma, her inner character only partially revealed via child-made drawings on a wall and a daring taunt tossed at Leon Panetta (James Gandolfini). She is one rocking red head. Angry. Nice to see after the passivity of the female lead in “Django Unchained.”

The last hour, where bin Laden -– barely seen — meets his end, is flat-out riveting in its stark matter-of-fact rawness. Like the great book “No Easy Day” by SEAL Team Six member Mark Owen, “Zero” lays out the attack on the Pakastani compound we all know so well from after-the-fact news accounts. We follow the team members in, see the copter crash, the men jump, then doors come cracking open, and the bullets of our troops finding their targets. No music. No CGI. Just the hunt, SEALs doing their job.

A quick note: As with any film, dramatic license is taken, most especially during this climatic raid — see, Bigelow and Boal have their SEALS talk — talk! — inside the chopper as they approach their target, and then on the ground — shouting and what not — and that stuff never happens. Silence, always. Any one remotely familiar with Army tactics knows that. Paint ball war enthusiasts know that. You shout, talk, yell, you might as well draw a hand flare to bring on enemy fire. It is a small, but significant deviation.

Agree or not, political or not, Bigelow is making the best war films of our time. And Chastain carries the film on her back, her final scene tearing the lid open on her greatness as the leading actress of her generation. And Bigelow and Bola suggest that she Mia -– based on a real CIA agent, but also fictionalized and combined with the actions of others like her -– is our best hope of a good future, the brains who can tell the brawn where to go and hunt and get our enemies. Yes, she is an agent, but she is no super spy Jane Bond. She does not pop a gun or kick. Her weapons is her brain, her determination, he eye for detail and language, and a laptop. The new weapon of our day, the laptop. And it’s a long fight, and that’s what makes this film so fascinating – the time, the work, the frustration, as a 21^st century nation hunts a man, or a group, who very much hide – in many cases – in a 19^th century world. This isn’t a John Wayne rah-rah-rah war flick, it’s very much a slice of our reality for today, and likely years to come.

– Steven Mackay, Lyric volunteer.

In his near-three-hour blaxploitation spaghetti western homage/rip-off “Django Unchained,” Quentin Tarantino serves up a blood-soaked raw piece of pulp fiction that makes “Inglorious Basterds” and its Nazi history redux seem Disney fluffy. He tackles slavery in the 1850s America and shows it in all its vile, morally offensive code, and does not blink -– a black man is ripped apart by dogs as whites standby cackling, and the “N” word is used as verb, noun, adjective, and an exclamation. I winched, blanched, and shut my eyes at the violence, and the images of African-Americans forced into chains and depraved medieval torture equipment, and worse.

Vulgar and soul-killer upsetting? Yes. On purpose. How can it not be, how can any examination — even fictional and heightened — of slavery not make anyone with half a soul cringe, and look away in horror. Shame. Offensive, though? No. To my eyes and ears, “Gone with the Wind” is far more offensive to the core because it shows slave-ripe America as some kind of romantic, utopian Candy Land. I hate that film. Tarantino must as well. He fires on all cylinders, his anger at America’s past strong.

Speaking of Candy Land, Candieland is the name of a Mississippi plantation run by a ruthless land owner (Leonadro DiCaprio) where Django –- a freed slave turned bounty hunter played by Jamie Foxx -– and his killer mentor (Christoph Waltz) seek to free the former’s wife. That’s the gist and final hour of this epic that is bloody brilliant in a dozen ways, but troubled in quite a few. (This film is a political fireball. This is not the place to get into that.)

There’s so much more to the plot, but I would exhaust myself spilling every detail. Cinema master that he is, Tarantino cannot justify the 2 hour 45 minutes running time. He takes a dig at the pre-KKK as the idiot cowards they were and are, but the out-of-the-blue slapstick scene is overlong and kills an otherwise tense encounter between the racists and our heroes. More scenes throughout play overlong or repeat themselves over and over again.

Further, his main characters are not strong enough, nor his plot strands or dialogue. No one here reaches the deep well of Waltz’s Nazi in “Basterds,” or Samuel L. Jackson’s hit man in “Pulp Fiction.” Except for Django’s rebirth as a killer throwing hate and bullets back in the faces of his oppressors, no one else moves an inch forward or backward. We get two over-the-top bloody shoot-outs in the same room split apart by a half-hour in which Tarantino drags his own butt around as a slave trader with an Australian accent worse than I could ever mimic. And I do bad accents, folks. Bad.

Tarantino seems to have written a screenplay in which no idea was bad, and he could not depart with a page. Yet, so many grand ideas go unrealized. For the first time, I second-guessed Tarantino’s lead. See: DiCaprio’s sick twist prince -– and by gosh, he is damn good as an evil hothead-maniac -– runs a slave gladiator camp. He enjoys watching men of color kill each other in forced do-or-die sport, and his character demands a certain … repayment. Yes, he dies. No spoiler. But that death is cheap, quick, and with no deep wit.

But the real disappointment for me is Kerry Washington as the wife of Django. Great actress. Wonderful. But she is given nothing to do but react — scream, run, serve, faint, and stand still when a gun is at her head -– after a lengthy buildup that promises a raging woman of fire. I wanted to her bash in skulls with the wine picture she is forced to carry, scream and tear apart people. Django does it. Waltz’ character, too. Not her. Tarantino bares her body and scars, but not her inner-raging soul, and I know Broomhilda (her name) has one. I hardly believed this character came from the same mind that wrote “Jackie Brown” and “Basterds.” Or the “Kill Bill” series. Tarantino loves women in the best way.

I’m being far too negative. This is not a bad movie by a mile. I liked it. It screams genius, daring, red-faced anger for great lengths. The acting is aces all around (Foxx is deadly cool, and Waltz is clearly relishing every line and twist of his beard), and Samuel L. Jackson re-creates the entire character of the “house slave” as a villain named Stephen. He’s no -– get that name, step n’ fetch it character -– but the true brute force behind Candie’s world. Watch him stand tall at the end.

Tarantino spends so much time making homage to spaghetti-western troupes and bringing in cameos (Johan Hill, Bruce Dern), I wished he focused more on Jackson’s traitor of all traitors, a snake who is a far better power player and con man than Waltz’s bounty hunter. I would have watched another hour of Jackson and Foxx going at each other. And sat in fear and awe.

Nonetheless, this is near-unshakable film, and Tarantino knows it. Genius? Classic? Must own? No to all three. But unshakable, for sure. This is a must-see. Hollywood’s hesitation to look at America’s is an unbearable embarrassment. Tarantino still remains the most-surprising, outside-the-box American filmmaker of our time. Whatever he does next, I’ll be there, eyes wide open.

- Steven Mackay, Lyric volunteer

The big-screen adaptation of the tragedy/musical “Les Miserables” is everything every N.Y. film critic has said: Bombastic, sentimental, and manipulative; it tosses out tragedies like candy at a parade and has a story arc that could rival the Bible, but — so what?

Have these critics read Victor Hugo’s novel? The contrivances that drive its massive plot are halved here, and still may produce viewer whiplash, and a few eye rolls.

Hugh Jackman plays the Job-like French peasant Jean Valjean who finds faith and wealth after serving a grueling 19-year prison sentence for stealing bread, and sees raising the child of a doomed street woman named Fantine (Anne Hathaway) as his God-ordered duty. Meanwhile, he dodges an obsessive police inspector (Russell Crowe) hell-bent on law and order.

Directed by Tom Hooper (Oscar-winner “The King’s Speech”), “Mes” proudly defies cynicism, and my cynical-self fell for it, especially the actors who sing on and to the camera with none of the lip-syncing fakery that makes most musicals a chore (see, or do not, “Rock of Ages”).

Crowe may be a blank, but Hathaway gives a performance that left me rattled. Jackman, too. Yes, it oozes excess at every turn, but Hugo would happily hum along. I did.

One note, and I’d never mention if not for recent news events in Connecticut that rocked our national conscious: A young child is shot to death on screen. There certainly is more violence throughout, but some viewers may be extra sensitive to this depiction.

- Steven Mackay, Lyric volunteer

“Life of Pi” follows the harrowing spiritual journey/survival tale of an Indian teen named Pi (newcomer and sure-to-be-famous Suraj Sharma) who is swept away from a sinking cargo ship and lost at sea in a life boat for months. Also aboard the boat: A Bengal tiger as his sole companion and nemesis, savior and devil. Lost to Pi is his close-knit family -– father, mother, and brother, as well as almost all of the animals from their zoo in transport from India to Canada on the ship. Before him are endless ocean and certain death by starvation, heat stroke, thirst, insanity, or likely being the last meal of the tiger.

Of all the books I have read in the past decade, this has to be most un-filmable, yet Ang Lee — who made “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Brokeback Mountain” -– took it on. Cheers to him. He nearly succeeds against this Herculean task of turning printed word to image. Nearly.

Lee uses some of the best 3D and visual effects imagery I or you will ever see -– the folks who hand out the Academy Awards sure have taken notice so far — and every visual and audible aspect of the film is top notch.

Yet, and I must be careful not to spoil the end, “Pi” author Yann Martel dared to peer into the darkest parts of the animal and human worlds and our shared existence. He did not blink. Lee does, though. He shows all the beauty of spirituality and one young man’s fight for survival, but not the deep darkness of both.

The movie insists on a “PG” rating, and lightness, I suppose with Lee wanting to bring in families. (“Pi” is still far too mature and frightening for small children. After all, the boy’s entire family drowns.) Before I’m being accused of bias as I read the book, know two of my favorite films, “L.A. Conficential” and “Children of Men,” diverged greatly from their printed sources. I don’t mind divergence. But the end here – and the film is told in flashback, as it is in the book – simply is too cautious.

See the movie, by all means. Especially on a large screen, where it belongs. The 3D work was jaw-dropping, surpassing that of “Avatar,” and with only the minimalist of settings –- a small boat on water. “Pi” will play at the Lyric in 2D regular format, which I’m sure will still vastly impress. (Read the book, too.)

I will say this: The film’s overall theme is a treat. As I write this review, the No. 1 movie in America is a mass-murder slasher film titled “Texas Chainsaw.” Another film about death. In 3D, no less. “Pi” is about life. Sadly, “Pi” failed to top the box office here in the United States. Overseas, it’s a smash hit. Take what you will from that bit of fact.

– Steven Mackay, Lyric volunteer

“I could write shorter sermons, but when I get started I’m too lazy to stop,” said Abraham Lincoln, 150 years ago and quoting a rhetorical preacher.

What better motive to be brief: Working from a screenplay by Tony Kushner (“Angles in America”), Steven Spielberg’s near-miraculous masterpiece “Lincoln” isn’t a full-life bio-pic of the 16^th president, but a careful, smart study of the man’s final months in office as he tried to end the Civil War and pass the 13^th amendment fully abolishing slavery, fearful his Emancipation Proclamation will fall useless once the nation re-unites.

“Lincoln” –- at its most basic — may be about legislation, yet it plays out as the most nail-biting, and, yes, funny thriller of our time, for no reason more so than this is about the true, ugly birth of America, where all men are created equal. (Women waited longer for equality; the gay population still waits its turn, Kushner makes apparent. The film has political leanings, for sure, which I won’t address here.)

Leaving behind old tricks and sentimental streaks found even in “Schindler’s List,” Spielberg has made a time-capsule story where the fights inside smoky rooms seem like found-footage from 1865. With our nation again deeply divided over everything from budgets to gun control, “Lincoln” almost seems a warped, darkly ironic mirror and wake-up call for today.

His own miracle maker, Daniel Day-Lewis brings Lincoln to life in astonishing detail –- high voice, striking bouts of anger and compassion, an endless tenacity for jokes and asides that charm some men and drive others mad. Day-Lewis again has topped himself, even with his volcanic performance in “There Will be Blood.” (The best film of 2001-2010 decade, I say.)

The acting all around is the best of the year, the cast inspired by the script, the ideals on screen by Kushner? Who knows. Enjoy it. This good a cast is rare. Jones and Sally Field (as Mary Todd) are equal to Day-Lewis at every turn to the point when husband and wife rip each other over son Willie’s death, the audience -– I –- felt as if I were an eavesdropper.

Even 10 minutes too long past a poignant stopping point, this is the Best Film of 2012, worthy of a long sermon and national viewing and consideration. And here I stop, not too lazy.

– Steven Mackay, Lyric volunteer

When the Academy Award nominations come in, 2012 Sundance-Festival-favorite “Sessions” will be mentioned. For sure. But when the awards go out, “Sessions” will be shut out. This is a drama destined to become a bit of movie trivia and “Did you ever see?” probing among cinemasts, loved by a few, unknown to most.

That’s a shame. This is a smart, amazingly uplifting, funny, poignant, and, yes, heartbreaking (very) adult tale of a man (John Hawkes, from “Winter’s Bone”) attempting to get laid despite his own body being left unable to move from the neck down after being stricken by polio as a child.

That’s almost crude to say, but that’s exactly the trek we follow. Based on a true story, “Sessions” focuses Berkley, Calif., resident Mark O’Brien’s desire and need to lose his virginity before he dies, and he knows he won’t live terribly long. His “sell by” date runs quick, he says.

Mark spends his nights in an iron lung, a massive tube that alleviates breathing problems, and his every waking moment is accompanied by an oxygen tank for much the same purpose. He can move nothing but his head. The rest of his body, dormant. He can, however, get an erection, and, like any living being, longs for sex, intimacy, physical contact.

Here’s the beauty of this flick, small in the best of ways: Relative newcomer writer/director Ben Lewin -– himself partially crippled by polio -– refuses to go sentimental or booming give-us-a-big-cry movie soft accompanied by a swelling orchestral score a la Hollywood. Instead, he beautifully lays out the film with clear-eyed, sobering journalistic precision.

O’Brien himself was a poet and journalist. The mood, the smallness, fits. Before the opening credits are through, Mark has finished university (in footage of the real O’Brien) and now works as a freelance writer, typing and dialing the phone with a stick inserted in his mouth.

When he makes a house visit for an interview, as he does in any outside trip, a medical assistant pushes O’Brien along as he lays flat prone in a hospital bed. His latest paid gig: Write about sexuality and the disabled. That assignment gets his own wheels (and libido, and sexual fantasies) spinning. He’s 38, never had sex, and hitting the bars, clubs, and other singles hot spots, is out of the question.

But a sex surrogate is within the bounds, and O’Brien seeks out Cheryl Cohen Greene (Helen Hunt, of “As Good As it Gets,” and gone too long from cinema screens), a specialist dedicated to physically helping people cope with sexual hang-ups. (If you’re thinking “prostitute,” don’t, and the notion is handled quickly here, in fine form.)

As O’Brien explore his sexuality, he also wrestles with his faith and what God thinks of his struggle, if He would forgive O’Brien’s curiosity. O’Brien believes in God, and holds no anger toward Him, and his continuing faith journey is handled with sober-minded serious, no mockery. “I’m not getting married anytime soon,” O’Brien says, I paraphrase, to his priest, played by William H. Macy. Their talks are fascinating, to anyone of faith, or not of faith.

O’Brien and Greene’s first sexual encounters are tinged with all the possible awkwardness of anyone’s first time, cranked a thousand fold as he can’t move. O’Brien, with a lifelong lack of intimacy and love and relationships, instantly falls in love with Greene, and in his mind sees her as his wife, love of his life. Except she is married, with a teenage son. (That notion caused a stir at the second screening of this I saw.)

I’ll stop with the film synopsis. This is a true story, if you know the outcome, I’ll just bore you. If you don’t know the story, I’ll make you mad.

This is an adult film, no holds barred, with graphic nudity and sexual content, but it’s not porn of any kind. The sex, as with O’Brien’s life and faith struggle, is dealt with clear-eyed and exact, no frills, no tricks. More so, it’s sex as human contact, an absolute need for intimacy and love.

And that’s the real treat of this film, this is a story of one man, under unique experiences few of us can ever imagine, but he’s a man like us nonetheless. (That he’s more at peace than most men is not an exaggeration.)

Director Lewin doesn’t need to push his story down our throat with a bag of sugar, he lets his actors -– both deserving of Oscars, especially Hawkes -– act, and he tells his story with an exactitude that 95 percent of Hollywood could not possibly imagine: There’s a moment when O’Brien faces a life crisis, and Hawkes’s character doesn’t cry a tear, but shrugs, “Oh, well.”

The moment almost seems comedic. But it’s not. It’s a simple as this: O’Brien – as played by Hawkes – knows his time is limited, and he is making the best of it, hungry for every moment and every experience that others, myself included, take for granted.

For a film that shrugs off miracles, “Sessions” is its own kind of magic. Don’t let this small gem of film pass by unwatched. See it. A

– Steven Mackay, Lyric volunteer