If you watch the 1930s-set backwoods gangster flick “Lawless” and don’t know better, and you’d be a major idiot not to know better, you might think tiny, mountainous Franklin County, Va., is over the hill and through the woods and one covered bridge over from big bad Windy City Chicago. Director John Hillcoat and screenwriter (and rock god) Nick Cave, who previously collaborated on the excellent “The Proposition” and the very good “The Road,” likely believe so. Someone get them a map STAT.

But I digress, as I always do with the details.

The duo has taken the wonderfully titled non-fiction family-history novel “The Wettest County in the World” by (our proximity) local author Matt Bondurant and drably re-titled it as “Lawless.” It follows a backwoods trio of Bondurant brothers (Tom Hardy, Shia LeBeouf, and Jason Clarke) who moonlight as moonshiners, selling the vile-looking homemade hooch during the days of Prohibition. Sure enough, things go wrong.

In the span of just a few weeks, a (1) former go-go dancer, (2) infamous mob boss, and (3) corrupt federal agent -– all from Chicago, all on separate missions in life -– end up in wee Rocky Mount, and onto the brothers, they respectively, 1) land a job at the family diner/gas station, 2) sniff out killer booze to sell back home, and 3) terrorize the siblings with endlessly wicked means of unlawful law enforcement. The newcomers are played by 1) Jessica Chastain, 2) Gary Oldman, and 3) Guy Pearce.

The Rocky Mount and Chicago depicted here each must have one only road going out, and it meets in the middle, and provides light-speed travel a la “Star Trek” Heck, today it takes roughly 12 hours to get from Rocky Mount to Chicago. Here, pre-Interstate, it is magically faster. How fast is to get to Philadelphia? An hour? Does the title refer to liquor running, or the rules of physics and distance?

But no matter these logic lapses, nor the cliché dialogue, “Lawless” floats and sinks on the acting. I’ll focus on the guys as the women (Mia Wasikowska also co-stars as a love interest) are only allowed to look “purty” and be supportive. Tom “Bane” Hardy grunts most of his scenes to ill-advised comic effect, while Clarke howls madly with his slimly written character. LeBeouf (former son of Indiana Jones) tries his best as a wimpy runt who must become a hardened man, but his character arc is foolish and laughably misguided.

It’s –- shocker — Pearce that near kills this film. “Proposition,” “Memento and “L.A. Confidential” are each new classics, and he excels in all. Here, he overacts himself right out of the movie as a sissy snot named Rakes, channeling Dennis Hopper at his most vile playing Dame Edna playing an endlessly psychotic version of super-agent-man Elliot Ness with a subscription to GQ for Sadists. Sporting ridiculously parted hair and shaved eyebrows, Rakes fears blood, and yet –- it is inferred -– gets his thrills raping crippled boys after he murders them in the woods. In a gangster flick set on Mars by David Lynch on full-tilt crazy, Rakes would stick out as a ridiculous sham.

One piece of divine greatness: Legendary bluegrass singer and Southwestern Virginia native Ralph Stanley covers the Velvet Underground’s “White Light /White Heat” at film’s end, and it’s an absolutely riveting, soul crushing performance that deserves a far better movie to precede it. For that matter, the entire music score, led by the genius Cave, elevates the movie, especially a breath-taking church singing which hits the soul dead center with pure joy-of-God beauty that can uplift an agnostic. The film misses, and not just geographically.

-Steven Mackay, Lyric volunteer

Years ago I went to the first run of Annie Hall. I lived alone with a collie named Scotty - but I called him F Skout Fitzgerald. And I was reading the sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Lila. And I was using a manual Smith Corona typewriter to write my papers. Somehow, the movie gave me nightmares for years. I still can’t watch it on late night TV. I think similar nightmares are a coming.

Ruby Sparks is a really good movie. One of the first scenes is when Calvin is walking his dog Scotty - for F Scott Fitzgerald - after losing his girlfriend Lila. He meets his dream girl, literally. She is a total figment of his dreamsand writing. But as time rolls on, she becomes real. Imagine. A girlfriend that you can control with the click of typewriter keys! And yet, there is so much torment inside Calvin that things take some bizzare turns. She is real!

Watching a creative but inhibited writer fall in love with a quirkly, crazy girl brings back memories of first love, fresh beginnings and time spent with a great psychiatrist played by Eliot Gould. Antonio Bandaras and Annette Bening are great as the mpther and step father to Calvin, but the true star who shines through the film’s entirity is Zoe Kazan who plays Ruby.

The movie starts out light hearted, turns sinister, has a good climactic finish, then runs about four minutes too long to a sappy conclusion. Go see it - well worth the time. And oh, for a chance at taht typewriter!

“Beasts of the Southern Wild” is a harsh, hopeful, tragic, and bold drama/fantasy unlike I have ever seen. It’s divisive film, too, not just a love it or hate tale, but one fully embraced or entirely repelled. This is no easy watch. We follow a 6-year-old girl named Hushpuppy (newcomer Quvenzhané Wallis) living -– scraping by, really — with her father, Wink (another newcomer, Dwight Henry), in the shocking squalor of a direly impoverished fishing commune at the southernmost tip of Louisiana.

Distrustful of technology, government, and the modern amenities, the group lives by their own rules. They wish to live alone, to fish and party, the latter often to extreme. Their homes are trashed to the point of “Hoarders,” and the children are unwashed, food is eaten raw, and booze is plentiful. Judge them if you wish, they have no concern for our titles, names, or finger-wagging. Or politics. Yet, every person is family, no matter their skin color. The community is tight, and cares for one another deeply. Each person readily would endanger himself or herself to save another. Then a hurricane barges in and floods the make-shift town, drowning some, and sending others to retreat to the “outside” world. Those that remain survive on a floating make-shift trailer/boat. Life will get more difficult for all, especially Hushpuppy.

Wink and some other men attempt to blow a hole in a levee as they want to reclaim their homes and land from high water, and bury their dead mates as well as their livestock. The desperate, dangerous and darkly comical move brings them that satisfaction, but briefly. Federal officials move in, mandating an evacuation. It’s telling that screenwriters Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin neither condemn nor condone the authorities as it’s a near relief to see Hushpuppy delivered from such poverty.

There’s another tick: Wink is dying. I can only guess from septicemia fueled by long-term alcohol poisoning as the man has a profound drinking problem that sends him away mysteriously for days. Then Hushpuppy -– far wiser than her years, and accustomed to inch-by-inch survival — is left on her own, to cook, clean after herself, and care for the lot’s pigs, chickens, and dogs. She talks to her absent mother, and also chillingly imagines as only a scared, lonely child can, prehistoric beasts breaking free of the Antarctic ice and coming to kill her. (A story of Climate Change has sent her up a stream of paranoia.) These beasts for all intent and purposes are real to not just Hushpuppy, but our eyes as well, and in the final scenes we witness their wrath.

As with the harshest tale of childhood from Dickens and Twain, “Beasts” puts a child through a meat grinder that is difficult to stomach. It’s telling that her most safe, secure moments come later on a floating house of … shall we call it ill repute? See, there I go judging. That is not the place for such an act. Alibar and Zeitlin pull no punches. And Hushpuppy’s struggle feels desperately real. The documentary vibe comes from the film being shot on location with handheld 16-mm cameras, using all nonprofessional actors. In a just world, at the very least, Henry would get an Oscar nomination for Supporting Actor. The man is a cook by trade. One would not know that watching here.

It’s a shocking, enlightening film to witness, with a final scene that leaves us hanging, and gulping. This fictional tale is a record of a tumultuous life of one smart amazing girl who puts her ears to the chests of animals and family to hear their heartbeats and fears the end of the world in real time. She could be the girl next door, in any neighborhood in America. But she exists in a place no cameras or politicians go, an America never discussed at, say, a multi-billion dollar political National Convention. It’s a hard film to shake, upsetting to the core, and hopeful, and funny, too. I look forward to going back to re-experience this story.

– Steven Mackay, Lyric volunteer

Oh my, how does one write about Victorian manners and customs when discoursing on the portable hand massager? Why, quite tastefully, in fact, but not, shall we say, as done by French doctors!

I am a fan of such movies as The Importance of Being Earnest and this Victorian R rated flick manipulated my humorous streak quite handily. The characters were well fleshed out as was the story. Shades of Dickens, even, there was a poor house and need for charity, an engagement gone somewhat awry, and medical techniques energetically underexposed. The sets were, well, vibrantly well done. The costumes covered the period amzingly well as well.

Hysteria is a very funny movie. I found my my mind sometimes wandering around the Theatre, listening to the laughter from various seating sections, amazed in the fact that the audience was such a varied group. There is no nudity, no sex and only one actual kiss. Very chaste and proper as befits Queen Victoria, who plays herself, of course, in a brief cameo. I enjoyed the word play, double entendre and the use of “Ahoy” when answering the telephone.

Digging a bit deeper, the film is also right out of today’s headlines and political discourses. The rights of women, the enlightenment (or lack there of) of men, and the differences of class remind one of the current political debates going on today. Go see it. It s pretty amazing!

I am not a Jack Black fan but this movie changed my mind. There has been so much bad news in the world lately that seeing a movie about a murdering mortician was not high on my list. Lo and behold and Praise the Lord, the movie LIFTED my spirits, say “amen”! Tuesday night is seniors’ night and there were plenty on board to appreciate this movie as well. Lots of laughter out loud and not a texting screen in sight.

This movie seemed straight forward from the start but there are twists that I didn’t foresee. It reminded me of Waiting For Guffman and would have been equally funny had Will Ferrell been Bernie but as I said, Jack Black did an awesome job. A great documentary of a good boy gone bad … or did he? And the ending that was totally expected … well, no spoiler here.

The movie is at the Lyric for two more nights and I highly recommend it.

We recently showed The Avengers, a movie where Universes collided in mayhem and destruction at a superhuman level. Dial this back a little and add more collisions and you have The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

TBEMH is a very well done, very funny yet poigant story of a group of retirees from Great Britain who can’t afford to live there. They learn about TBEMH from a brochure and move to India to spend their last years in luxury. Lo and behold, the brochure was Photoshopped and is nothing like the brochure. It is a run down, broken down hotel run by a young man whose favorite saying is “Things always work out in the end. And if they don’t work out, it must not be the end.”

The rest of the movie is a series of contrasts and collisions of old and young, new and old, tradtional and modern, gay and straight and so much more. There are many laugh out loud moments and serious romantic moments. Each character is well drawn which makes the movie seem much shorter than the 124 minutes run time. Some are good and one is horrid but I found I really liked them all.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is well worth the watch and is held over until July5th.. You have no reason not to see it!

The Lorax is not an awesome movie but an enjoyable one. The message - clean air and trees - is not subtle but the writers did have some fun with it. There were several groups of teenagers in the audience Tuesday night and they laughed out loud several times. I am not a fan of 3D but it seemed much less intrusive than say in Hugo. This is not a must see movie but it is an enjoyable 86 minutes and reaches all ages.

The groups of teenagers did need a lesson in movie courtesy. My biggest problem with the movie was the the texting going on during the movie. The many flashes of phone screens was very distracting. Was it really necessary to interrupt an 86 minute movie with 86 texts per person? It was rude to say the least. The young people seemed to see nothing wrong with it but maybe there needs to be a slide before the movie saying “Turn your cell phones off.” I offended once, a long time ago, not turning my phone off and getting a call during a movie and I was very embarrassed. A short lesson in etiquette would be nice, but who would deliver it?

It is hard to call this a “movie” - it is, rather, a series of voiceovers with still lifes. Yes the actors move, stiffly, but even the dialogue is in total deadpan with no emotion. Even the knife scene is done almost without movement. Sex? Jung never even unbuttoned his shirt nor undid his tie. Maybe this is the way life was in the time period portrayed but I found no life in the characters. The scenery was gorgeous. The movie, not so.

I really liked this movie! First, three things that disturbed me: 1) why 3D? I don’t think the animation would be any more enhanced (and it is very good) with the addition of 3D. 2) Okay, this one has been around since Mickey Mouse and Goofy. If Pluto is a dog, what is Goofy? Well, we have cats all over the land acting like people but we have pigs and horses as animals. And 3) I spent much of the movie trying to keep up with Puss’s hat. It always came back in an explanable way. Never did it just …. appear after being blown away.

My rants aside, I really enjoyed Puss in Boots. There was humor for all age levels. The animation was great. The story held my interest. There was good character development and surprises galore! AND I was warmed up by some hot cocoa from the concession stand. How can one argue with that?

Puss in Boots is at the Lyric until Thursday night. Take the kids, take your honey, or go alone as I did. It is a really fun movie!

What a joyous, happy, romantic holiday romp. It even has little kittens in it! Martha Marcy May Marlene is just the movie to bring a tear to the eye and a smile to the lips ….. if you are Charlie Manson. Whoa, dogs, this movie is CREEPY! The time and memory juxtapositions keep you on your toes as you follow Martha/Marcy May in her journey from commune life to bitchy sister. The hippie life seems so idyllic and the normal life so restrained and confining until the memories start haunting …. haunting.

Not wanting to give too much away, the movie is not for the faint of heart and the ending is ….. whoa! See it at your own risk - it is a well constructed movie of a disturbing topic.