In my mind, the criteria for a good Godzilla movie is this: do the necessary human characters and plot get in the way of Godzilla smashing and burning stuff, or does it mostly stay out of the way? If the last serious American effort at adapting the iconic Japanese monster, Roland Emmerich’s 1998 bomb, is any indication, finding that balance is even harder than it looks.

The new Godzilla film, a franchise reboot of sorts, seems to be in a much better position, at least on paper. Whether it succeeds as a good Godzilla movie depends on your idea of what constitutes Godzilla in the first place.

Some fans will love the newest reboot of the classic monster franchise; others may cry foul.

No one has ever really attempted to make a Godzilla movie with compelling human drama or reaching some kind of rich meaning behind the destruction, but that’s exactly where this film positions itself. With the Legendary production label backing it up, it’s very much a “gritty” interpretation, in the vein of Man of Steel or The Dark Knight. If the idea of a gritty Godzilla movie sounds ridiculous, that’s because it probably is. But it’s also what makes this incarnation worth a second look.

The surprisingly heavy plot concerns a Japan-based nuclear plant supervisor (Brian Cranston) who is obsessively investigating the seismic activity that killed his wife when it caused a powerful power plant to collapse. He believes the government is hiding something big, and has soon pulled in his Navy engineer son, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), along with a pair of research scientists (Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins). Soon enough, they find a giant chrysalis containing a MUTO (massive unidentified terrestrial organism); and there would be no monster movie if the darn thing didn’t hatch and start wreaking havoc. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), there is an ancient beast that has been awakened, hell bent on destroying the MUTO itself.

The human elements of the film start off surprisingly emotionally resonant thanks to standout performances from Brian Cranston, as well as a sensitive performance from the underrated Elizabeth Olsen as Ford’s wife, Elle.

But other elements bring it down. The vast majority of the dialogue is either complex scientific jargon or painfully obvious foreshadowing. A character actually says “It’s not the end of the world” before all the smashing begins. Cute. I didn’t ask for Christopher Nolan-esque ponderings on man and nature in my monster movie, but I’m sure we’ll get them anyway.

The globetrotting nature of the plot doesn’t help, either. The film jumps around from location to location so frequently it’s easy to lose track of what you’re supposed to be focusing on. The jarring editing, especially when cutting to different characters, adds to the frustration.

It’s a slow burn getting to the giant lizard in action, but it’s definitely worth the wait. Godzilla’s new design is beyond awesome, and the creatures he goes to bat against are impressive in both scope and design. The quality of an incarnation of Godzilla and its monsters should be directly proportionate to how many “wows” the audience utters whenever it’s on screen. I emitted several. This is some of the most visually impressive destruction and creature design I’ve seen in years.

Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t feel the need to show that much of it. Every time we think we’re going to get a really good Godzilla fight, the movie cuts away to the increasingly boring humans trying to figure stuff out (we need to stop a nuclear bomb and multiple rampaging terrors? Why don’t we follow them around on a giant, slow moving ship?). There is a lot of devastation (including a particularly awesome leveling of Las Vegas), but we often get to see only the aftermath. While last summer’s Pacific Rim got 4 or so fully visualized giant monster showdowns, we maybe get 2 here. At least they’re shot well and convey an appropriate sense of weight; these are, after all, the equivalent of rampaging skyscrapers knocking each other around. If the action’s slow pace throws off modern audiences, that’s only because the blockbuster’s overindulgence in shaky cam and fast cutting has desensitized us to the allure of good, solid, classic combat. Whether the last 20 minutes of Godzilla truly strutting his stuff is a suitable payoff for the hour and a half of build-up is up to you. For me, it was.

I think a great Godzilla movie might get made someday, and I think this Godzilla is a giant clawed footstep in the right direction. The balance between wanton destruction and telling a compelling (and, more importantly, coherent) narrative may need some major work, but the big guy himself can’t help but garner a giant, childlike grin every time he’s on screen. And, coming from someone who has never even given Godzilla a glance, that is impressive. Some fans may be fundamentally opposed to a serious take on Godzilla, but if, like me, you never could get past the inherent cheese factor of most previous incarnations, this might be the monster movie for you.

Captain America is probably the only superhero that would have his own museum exhibit. In an early scene in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rodgers (Chris Evans) goes to the Smithsonian to look at his own display, detailing the history of the Captain, from his WWII era bravery to the bold part he played in the Avenger’s defense of Manhattan during an alien invasion. It’s a credit to the film and the universe it creates that we fully believe that the Captain would have his own museum exhibit. He’s not some flying, mutated monstrosity or eccentric mechanized billionaire. He’s a flesh-and-blood hero that just happens to have super-strength.

The Winter Soldier is a thoughtful and engaging addition to the Marvel canon.

The first Captain America movie did a fantastic job of setting up the Captain and his place in the Marvel universe. He was the patriotic one (obviously), the one who stood up for his traditional values and his clear-cut concept of right and wrong no matter the circumstances. That’s easy enough when you’re fighting Nazis.

But in the Winter Soldier, the Captain is more of a hero for our time. He questions what it means to be a hero, and feels lost in a modern world 80 years ahead of his time. It’s here we find the Captain, working with returning SHIELD teammates Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to protect the organization from outward attack. But new forces threaten to compromise the organization from within, and the Captain soon has to contend with the shadowy agent Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford) as well as the mysterious Winter Soldier, who seems hell bent on putting the Captain down for good.

The movie’s action is, dare I say it, marvelous. The Captain’s shield bounces off of baddies’ skulls with the ease of your favorite childhood bouncy ball. The directing team of Joe and Anthony Russo give the film’s many intense fight scenes a sense of weight and drama that help to render realistic something as ridiculous as a ricocheting trash can lid. One thing missing from recent Marvel fare has been good old-fashioned hand-to-hand combat, and The Winter Soldier has it in spades. But that doesn’t mean the level of destruction has gone down. In particular, a car chase involving Nick Fury is easily one of the coolest and most exciting in recent memory.

If The First Avenger played out like a techno-tinged patriotic war movie, The Winter Soldier plays out like a ‘70s spy espionage thriller. The Captain moves quickly from one revelation to the next (and boy are there some doozies) in his attempt to unravel the mystery of the Winter Soldier. It’s at times unrelentingly intense.

The movie also stands out from the comic book crowd in its tackling of the real-world, modern day themes of security and military protection in the digital age of widespread surveillance. From the NSA to Facebook and cell phone companies, these are timely American fears, and I’m pleasantly surprised to find a superhero movie tackle them with such gravitas. It adds a welcome shade of moral grey to the Marvel cinematic universe.

But, before this review gets to dire, the best thing about The Winter Soldier is that it’s incredibly fun. Johansson and Jackson have never been better, and their characters get some of the film’s best scenes and lines. Evans has truly embodied his role as the iconic American hero. Redford has a ton of fun with a meaty villain role, and newcomer Sam Wilson (aka the Falcon) is a welcome addition to the team. It’s also a very important movie in the Marvel cinematic universe, jam-packed with several bombshells that will deeply shake up the future of all the comic juggernaut’s Avengers-based franchises.

Comic movies with this much going on tend to collapse under their own ambition (Iron Man 2, anyone?), but The Winter Soldier can march on with little care for building up to an Avengers movie. In fact, there are times where it doesn’t feel much like a Marvel movie at all. That’s a very good thing. The meta-references to the Marvel universe that the filmmakers were surely obligated to include are somewhat distracting and drag the film’s pace down a bit, but they’re rare and not especially obvious for those not looking for them.

The “Marvel Machine” has been accused of sometimes churning out bare-minimum efforts to satisfy its desire to expand its universe in order to make even more movies (and more money). That complaint may be justified, but this supercharged sequel is prime evidence that Marvel still trades in thoughtful, timely and engaging blockbusters. You’ll want to see it again the second it’s over.

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.