In JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit, the author displays a curious knack for brushing over details that he fears would bore the reader. He admits as much multiple times in the book itself. Peter Jackson, the Lord of the Rings director who has turned the book into its own epic trilogy, aims to do just the opposite. His desire to flesh out the characters, expand the story and create more direct connections with the Rings trilogy has created a film series that is in danger of being longer than the book that inspired it.

This fact has wrought both cheers and jeers from longtime fans. The first Hobbit film, An Unexpected Journey, managed the rare feat of being both overlong and uneventful. While some might complain the Rings movies are also bloated, they didn’t feel like three hours because stuff actually happened. Journey, on the other hand, was quite a slog, rarely justifying its formidable length.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, is, thankfully, a much more impressive and focused work than its predecessor, the main reason being that stuff actually happens. Cool stuff. It’s an adventurous, technically audacious blast. And then, of course, there’s the dragon. But we’ll get to that.

Desolation mercifully takes no time getting going, continuing the quest of the hobbit Bilbo (Martin Freeman), who accompanies a group of dwarves to take back their homeland in the lonely mountain, which has been overtaken by a greedy dragon (Benedict Cumberbatch). Within the first hour, the merry band is nearly eaten by spiders and imprisoned by elves. And to think, in Journey they had barely left the shire by this point.

The main reason this sequel works so well is that Jackson and company’s additions (the script was co-written by Guillermo del Toro, who was originally attached to direct the trilogy) to the relatively simple original story feel much more like genuine improvements rather than attempts to pad the length of three movies. The main addition comes in the form of the Mirkwood elves, who, unlike the elves from the first film, are a bit dangerous and unpredictable. Their leader, Thranduil (Lee Pace) offers to help the dwarves on their journey; with caveats, of course. He is joined, in the movie, by his son Legolas (a returning Orlando Bloom) and Tauriel (Evangeline Lily), a brand-new female elf character. Some fans cried foul over adding a character to the universe, but Tauriel is a fantastic addition to this male-dominant universe. The love triangle that develops between her, Legolas and the dwarf Kili feels like one that actually may have some teeth to it (depending on what they do with it in the next film).

The human character of Bard is also expanded for the better. Although he plays an important role in the book, his character is not given much depth. Here he’s given a family and a more active role in helping the dwarves along on their journey. In fact, the entire town of Esgaroth, the town that has been displaced by Smaug, is more fully realized here; thus we care about what happens to the people here.

One of the more contentious aspects of the first film was its attempt to tie more directly to the Rings trilogy, creating a subplot involving the wizards Gandalf (Ian McKellan) and Radagast (Sylvester McCoy) and their encounters with the dark necromancer (soon to be Sauron). Here, they make more sense; rather than Gandalf leaving for half the story, we actually get to see what he’s up to, which is kind of cool. Still, I feel these scenes detract too much from the main story, and strike me as unnecessary additions. They’re interesting, but not essential.

All complaints go away once Smaug the dragon shows up. He is truly an awe-inspiring creation, and is by far one of the greatest dragons to ever grace a screen. The incredible CGI combined with Cumberbatch’s fantastic voice lend an air of gravity and even regality to the dragon. He is, in every way, a triumph.

The movie is not, however, about a dragon, and Smaug thankfully doesn’t steal the movie from the true star of the show. Martin Freeman’s Bilbo Baggins is about as endearing and lovable as a main character as has ever come from a fantasy universe. Seeing this character grow over the course of these movies is a treat, and Bilbo himself is a more interesting and nuanced character than Frodo, the protagonist form the Rings films. Credit for that goes equally to Tolkien’s original story, Freeman’s soulful performance and Jackson’s additions.

Smaug is still too long; it certainly won’t win over non-fans of the franchise, and I’m not sure the filmmakers have justified making this story into three long movies. But, Jackson and friends seem to have found the true, beating heart of this packed epic; a simple hobbit who, since he can’t go home yet, is doing the best he can. And, if he finds some courage (and a certain ring) along the way, we’re all the better for it.

On paper, Out of the Furnace is a slam dunk of a movie. Combine several of the finest actors of their generation with a hot director, set it in a gritty postwar fever dream and watch the fireworks. The result, however, is a good film that touches true greatness just often enough that it feels that much more disappointing.

Christian Bale gives perhaps his finest performance ever as Russell Baze, a Pennsylvania steel mill worker trying to make ends meet. He and his brother Rodney (Casey Affleck) are taking care of their terminally ill father when Casey is called to serve in Iraq. Around the same time, Russell causes a fatal traffic accident while driving drunk and is forced to spend time in prison. When both men come back from their respective hells, Russell attempts to get his life back on track with his former girlfriend, Lena (a mesmerizing Zoe Saldana) while Rodney makes money fighting and gets involved with a scuzzy promoter (Willem Dafoe). When Rodney’s business causes him to run afoul of Harlan (Woody Harrelson), a vicious backwoods crime lord, he disappears, and, with the trail seemingly gone cold, Russell decides to track down his brother outside the bounds of the law.

What makes the simple story stand out are the fantastic performances. Bale is firing on all cylinders here as a man trying to do the right thing but beset on all sides by disappointment after disappointment. His trademark physicality and emotional expressions are on full display here. In particular, a scene between Russell and Lena after he gets out of prison is a master class in acting. Harrelson is terrifying, if a bit one-note, as the villain, and Affleck does a great job as directionless vet who always seems to be feeling some mix of anger, fear or resentment. His performance recalls the likes of the great Tobey Maguire in Brothers or Robert DeNiro in The Deer Hunter.

In fact, Out of the Furnace often feels like a beguiling mix of those two films. Its gloomy ashen towers, dilapidated houses and bleak Pennsylvania landscapes are obvious visual homages to The Deer Hunter; in dealing with the ramifications of blue collar workers-turned-soldiers returning home, it seems like that film dolled up for a new generation. It’s a bold comparison to one of my all-time favorites, but the film occasionally earns it, particularly in the scenes between the two brothers, both trying to make their way but seemingly failing in different ways.

As the film moved past these compelling moments to the more mundane machinations of the revenge story, my interest began to wane. We’ve seen stories like this before, done much better. The only real pleasure towards the end of the film (besides the beautiful cinematography) is seeing these actors give it their all even when playing characters that aren’t as fleshed out as we’d like them to be. The thin plot often sets up conflicts without delivering on them; a subplot involving police chief Wesley Barnes (Forest Whitaker), the man committed to finding Rodney who also happens to be Lena’s new lover, is particularly undercooked. Director Scott Cooper’s leisurely pace suits the first half of the film well, but leaves the more traditional revenge plot completely unsatisfying. It feels, at times, like two different movies, both struggling for dominance, neither coming out on top. The ending is a letdown, and negates much of the dramatic tension so palpable in the rest of the film.

Out of the Furnace reminds me a lot of the 2009 film Brothers. Both are potent postwar dramas featuring stellar performances, but they’re also merely good movies with great ones trapped inside, struggling to get out. Out of the Furnace is not as good as the sum of its parts, but man, those are some really good parts. If there are many faults to find in the whole, it is still an electrifying film, featuring some of the finest living actors giving it their all. Even if you leave feeling unfulfilled, you won’t be able to take your eyes off it while it lasts.

Twenty years later, we have a Schindler’s List for a new generation, a film that stares unblinkingly into the dark soul of a nation that is far from overcoming the sins of its fathers. 12 Years a Slave is that movie.

It is, in some ways, an odd comparison, because the films, while both based on harrowing true stories, are actually quite different. Steven Spielberg is often seen as an old-fashioned sentimentalist, but the same tendency could in no way be leveled at 12 Years director Steve McQueen. In grueling, draining films such as Hunger and Shame, McQueen has shown himself to be a distinct modernist, his camera recording the actions of his characters with an almost cold indifference.

What makes 12 Years a Slave a great movie, perhaps the definitive American slavery film, is that McQueen doesn’t tell us that slavery was bad, as so many others have. He shows us through the life of Solomon Northup, a black man exposed to a litany of horrors few souls could survive. There is raw power in Northup’s story; McQueen smartly realizes no further message is needed.

Northup (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a free man living in New York in the 1840s. He makes his living as a world-class violin player, taking care of his wife and two children. A band of traveling performers convinces him to come to D.C. where he can make some money playing violin for their two-week show. When he arrives, however, he is sold into slavery and taken to the south.

We are taken on a tour of human depravity as Northup comes across a cruel slave trader (Paul Giamatti), who gives Northup his slave name before selling him to kindly plantation owner Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch). He is eventually passed on to a not-so-kindly one. Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender) is known as a slave breaker, but even he is unprepared for Northup’s impossible resilience.

Although McQueen coaxes brilliant performances from an all-star supporting cast, it is truly Ejiofor’s Northup that anchors the film. It is not so much the impossibility of this man’s circumstances or the fact that he survived them that inspire, but the fact that his spirit was so unbreakable. Ejiofor’s eyes express the spectrum of human emotion; pain, sacrifice, unendurable suffering and relentless hope are all right there in his face. When he stares into the camera, without saying a word, we feel every inch of what he has felt. It’s the performance of a lifetime.

A breakthrough performance by Lupita Nyong’o as fellow slave Patsy is equally breathtaking, providing not only a kindred spirit but a foil to Northup’s optimism. One of the film’s more powerful scenes comes when Patsy asks Northup to kill her. Repeatedly raped and beaten by Epps and despised by his mistress, she has reached the limits of human endurance. Northup refuses, and tells her to hold on a little longer.

McQueen’s film reminds me of the dichotomy in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life: the way of nature vs. the way of grace. The way of nature is for Patsy to die a dog’s death, the way she lived. But Northup shows her the way of grace, that the human spirit, unlike the body, can never be truly broken.

We see this dichotomy in the film’s treatment of religion as well. Epps and others use scripture to justify the way they treat their slaves, laying bare one of the grossest misuses of the Bible in human history. But the slaves show the way of grace in their songs. When a group of slaves sing a hymn over another slave who has died, we see them singing to the same God who has been used by other to oppress and demean them. The way of grace stands triumphant over the way of nature. When Northup meets Brad Pitt’s Bass near the end of the film, we realize we have met one of the few decent souls in the entire movie. And we can breathe a sigh of relief that people like him existed, that one decent man can almost redeem the human race. If, as Sartre said, “Hell is other people,” there are occasionally those who break in to remind us that the way of grace still exists to prove us wrong.

12 Years a Slave holds our heads over our nation’s history and forces us to stare. Rarely does a film speak so clearly and directly to our human existence. It is unflinchingly brutal, and certainly not for the faint of heart (I looked away from the screen at least twice). It’s also a powerful testament to the endurance of the human spirit. It’s not an easy sit, but it is, I believe, a necessary one; an important reminder that, while we’ve come a long way, there are miles we have not yet traveled in our shared human experience. If movies like Gravity remind us why we should go to the movies, movies like 12 Years a Slave remind us why we must.