Fabrice Luchini, always a fine actor, plays Bertrand, a hot-shot lawyer who is in Monaco defending a renowned woman (Stéphan Audran) accused of murder. Since Bertrand could be in danger, he is assigned Christophe, a bodyguard played with staunch determination by Roschdy Zem.

Trouble begins when Betrand falls for Audrey (Louise Bourgoin), an attractive, high-spirited young woman who is the weather girl on a cable network, but has aspirations for greater success. Bertrand could be useful. Meanwhile, the bodyguard is trying to break up the attraction between Bertrand and Audrey. What is Christophe’s real motive?

Kempner ranges far and wide in exploring the unusual life of Berg, who grew up in Harlem and eventually conceived a program that would last for 17 years on radio—my grandmother, bless her, would never miss a chapter-- and then in 1949 would become an influential television sitcom that set a pattern for others to follow. Berg acted the role of Molly and won the first best actress Emmy. In delving into her life, the director has obtained comments from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, actor Ed Asner, producer Norman Lear and others adding insight into what “The Goldbergs” meant to them and to America.

At a time when Jews were undergoing Nazi persecution and when anti-Semitism was rife in America, a warm portrait of Jewish family life was being broadcast to the country on radio. In addition to writing the show, Berg became a star and a symbol. Her scripts mingled homey humor and emotion with thoughts about the world in which the Goldbergs lived. Jews could take pride in the show, and gentiles could become fans too as the family depicted was lively and endearing. Of course, there would be some who might worry about the show being “too Jewish.” And, like other sitcoms, eventually the program may have outlived itself.

But in its heyday, it soared, and Berg became immensely popular for her achievement. But when the blacklist arrived, she was targeted along with others and she had to fight hard against it. Most painful was the assault against Loeb. Pressure mounted for him to be removed from the television show. Kempner deals with this as a major part of the film, and demonstrates how hard Berg fought to keep him in the cast. But eventually the survival of the show was at stake, and in 1952 she had to settle with Loeb and accept his leaving. This turned out to be terribly tragic. Loeb committed suicide in 1955, and this was later fictionally dramatized in the movie “The Front,” in which Zero Mostel, playing a blacklisted comedian, jumps from a hotel window.

The strength of “The Hurt Locker” lies in its primary adherence to the day to day patrolling that could at any moment lead to a soldier being blown apart. The challenge is to spot planted bombs and then riskily defuse them, all the while being potential targets of snipers. Furthermore, there is no misplaced idealism here. The men work in a hellhole doing a thankless task with minimal expectation of survival in the brutal conditions into which they have been sent.

Risky contact with the local population is depicted. Who is the enemy? Can an Iraqi driver of a car be trusted? What about those watching from rooftops? Death waits at every moment.

Director Bigelow and editors Bob Murawski and Chris Innis have done a superb job escalating the intensity, but a major element in the success is the screenplay by Mark Boal, which gives us flesh and blood characters. The two most impressive are William James, played at award-caliber level by Jeremy Renner. James is a hot-shot daredevil who boldly takes chances from which others would shy. It is as if he is unafraid to die, yet with a cockiness about him that assumes a charmed life. He is also rebellious as far as military discipline goes. Fortunately, we eventually see another, more intimate side of him.

There is also J. T. Sanborn, an African American, who has more discipline and emotional solidity, and Anthony Mackie gives another award-caliber performance in portraying him. James and Sanborn are very different, yet bound together by their efforts to do their job and survive and the need to respect one another. Others in this Delta Company also come across as very convincing, as does Bigelow’s searing achievement of making us feel as if we are there with these men. There are some scenes of almost unbearable tension, as well as macho interaction when the men are off duty and turning their violent training against one another for amusement.

Moments of humanity intrude on the action, serving to show up the basic inhumanity of the situation. The film suggests the home life of the men through their conversations that help define them. It is probably a mistake to go at one point to the actual home relationship of James, as the film’s power lies in shutting out nearly everything else but the daily dangers. Yet that segment does have a purpose of making one think about how on earth one can expect anyone who has been through such terror to return to normalcy when the fighting is over

The story takes place in Iran, although it was filmed in an unidentified country. The secret site was chosen to avoid retaliatory action against such outspokenness. Director Cyrus Nowrasteh, who co-wrote the screenplay with Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh, based the film on the book “The Stoning of Soraya M.” by Freidoune Sahebjam, a journalist’s account of a story uncovered during a trip to Iran about a real stoning of a framed victim.

What keeps us especially involved is the exposé of the way in which women are subjugated and brutalized, with men exercising their power under the guise of religion and with the complicity of a local mullah and mayor. Mozhan Marno is sympathetic and stoic as Soraya, whose husband beats her and wants to marry a 14-year-old girl, and also wants to avoid having to support Soraya. He arranges to have her accused of sleeping with the widower for whom she works, an adulterous offense punishable by death.

The heroine of the story is Soraya’s aunt Zahra, played with earthy vigor by Shohreh Aghdashloo, who tries in vain to save her niece and arranges for the facts to be smuggled out by the journalist. Those responsible for the evil machinations are played so well that we are able to believe that the unthinkable is happening, and there is also pathos in how Soraya’s employer is browbeaten into bearing false witness against her.

The director does not flinch in presenting the details and the horror of the execution. Although it is hard to watch, the director is well-justified in filming the brutality. Otherwise the crime against the victim would be too abstract. If stoning is going to be exposed, the terrible fate must be shown. Further horror is added by the practice of having the victim’s father, who disowns her and cast stones, as do her husband and her sons allied with their father as a result of his teaching them that his mother is inferior. The younger son is reluctant to go along, but has little choice.

With an excellent cast, the film has a solid foundation in acting and plot. Sofia Vassilieva is heartrending as Kate, who is doomed by cancer. Since nobody else in the family has the right medical make-up to provide her with such things as bone marrow transplants, her parents, Sara, a lawyer played with feverish obsession by Cameron Diaz, and Brian, portrayed as supportive but more nuanced and less hysterical by Jason Patric, arrange to have a genetically-engineered child for the purpose of being Kate’s perpetual donor.

Kate’s younger sister, Anna, is played by Abigail Breslin, and we know what a fine young actress she is. At 11, Anna is fed up and rebellious at having spent her life giving of her body to Kate. The final straw is the need to take her kidney. Her mother’s whole being is geared around saving her doomed daughter, with Anna’s feelings and well-being shunted aside. Anna finds a sympathetic lawyer, given a fine performance by Alec Baldwin, who sues on her behalf to get medical independence in order to make her own decisions. It’s child against mother, with mom the opposing lawyer in court.

The ethical and legal issues are profound. But the film is more intent on turning the material into soap suds. The lawyer is made an epileptic. The judge, although sympathetically played by Joan Cusack, turns out to have lost her own daughter to cancer. The music is not only relentless, but if bubbles are blown we get a song about blowing bubbles. Add a side story about Kate developing a close relationship with another cancer patient. We know he’ll die.

A male and female show up as federal agents (Bill Pullman and Julia Ormand) at a police station in a nowhere town and assert control of an investigation into a savage slaughter. Anyone familiar with crime tales should quickly guess who is responsible. With the suspense taken away, little remains but the violence as the be-all, end-all of the tale written by Ms. Lynch and Kent Harper.

There is one tolerable aspect of the film, and that is the performance of Ryan Simpklins as an eight-year-old girl who knows more than she should for her well-being.

Taking us on a tour through the milieu Allen creates is Larry David, even more irascible than on TV’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” The opening scenes are especially enjoyable as David, playing Boris, a self-described genius who was supposedly an accomplished physicist, talks directly to the audience and mocks us. He expounds his cynical view that the world is populated by idiots and all comes to nothing. So what’s the use, he reasons. He once tried to commit suicide, but failed by landing on an awning, being left with a limp. He has become a lonely, bitter hypochondriac given to waking up terrified in the middle of the night, yet he flaunts his superiority to everyone else. Allen amasses a string of scenes to comically define Boris’ hostility.

Into his life pops Evan Rachel Wood as Melody, a young, wide-eyed Southern girl who has fled from her overbearing mother and landed in Manhattan without a place to stay. She approaches Boris as he comes home and asks for food. After berating her, he invites her up to his apartment and feeds her. She persuades him to let her spend the night, and we know it will turn out to be longer. All this is very amusing as Boris makes fun of her background and Melody misconstrues his witty remarks. Wood is a joy in the role and her cheerful openness sparkles. She is not a virgin—she details her sexual fling with a boy back home in violation of her upbringing, but there is no guilt.

Boris soon takes on a role as her mentor and it is droll when Melody begins to sound like him, echoing his attitudes with similar expressions. Meanwhile, she is developing a crush on him. She is the aggressor, and he keeps telling her to leave and that she’s nuts to even think of him romantically, given the vast age discrepancy and everything else about him. (All the while David sounds like a stand in for Woody Allen, who might have played the part.) Before thinking the relationship wouldn’t happen, take a look at other May-December affairs that occur in the real world. But one suspects this one cannot last. The movie wisely shuns any sex play between the two.

Allen has more on his mind in the plotting. Into the picture comes Patricia Clarkson as Marietta, Melody’s mom, an uptight, religious, repressed wife whose husband, Melody’s father, has run off with another woman. I started laughing at the mere prospect of Marietta meeting Boris, now her old fart son-in-law. Following what happens to her in Manhattan is often hilarious, and if you know Clarkson’s work, you can count on her to give a terrific performance.

Maybe it is that the couple seems so boringly banal despite their illusions of self-importance. They are in a quite vapid relationship despite the film’s efforts apparently bent on making them special while at the same time sort of an Everycouple. And Burt, played earnestly by John Krasinski and Verona, portrayed by Maya Rudolph, are not particularly attractive. She’s plain (maybe that’s the point). He’s scruffy and would fit right into some of today’s French films that like their young heroes unshaven. Of course, with a film like this, there will be folks with reactions opposite from mine and think they are seeing people with whom they can empathize. (No Supreme Court potential intended.)

Each part of the journey makes Burt and Verona want to look somewhere else, as well it should given what they encounter. In Phoenix Allison Janney plays an overwrought, grating former colleague of Verona, and her lifestyle is a turnoff. In a Wisconsin visit to the home of an old chum of Burt, they find Maggie Gyllenhaal as the ditsy Ellen, living a hippie-like existence in a domestic cocoon with a guy nuttier than she is--Josh Hamilton as Roderick. That sequence at least has some good humor that explodes in defiance of a philosophy that precludes using a stroller for fear it might be too confining for a child.

Moreau is a remarkable actress who was so good in an entirely different type part in the 2004 “When he Sea Rises,” which she co-directed, and in which she played an off-beat performance artist. The change here is astonishing. As Séraphine, she is lonely, plodding, subservient yet independent in terms of forming her own private world that involves taking pleasure from nature, be it admiring trees and flowers. sitting on the grass to watch her natural surroundings or creating paintings that reflect her passion with intriguing and original results.

Being poor, she figures out ways to find what she needs to paint, using her hard-earned money and also copping ingredients where she can. She doesn’t consider her work meaningful and is astounded when attention is paid. She is also very vulnerable to broken promises or disappointments that arise from circumstances beyond her control. In addition, Séraphine is veering toward mental instability, ultimately leading to her being institutionalized with all of the horrors such confinement would bring given the backward an callous treatment of the mentally ill at the time.

If this sounds creepy, it isn’t. The handling of the dead as family members watch the process involves loving care. Although at first repelled, Daigo learns the art from the master employing him (Tsutomu Yamazaki). He begins to take satisfaction from the way in which his ministrations provide solace. In one bit of humor, as he runs his hand beneath a cover over the body of a woman beneath he finds a surprise that leads to a discovery of a family problem. In some situations family infighting surfaces under the pressure of bereavement.

There is a hitch for Daigo. His new-found profession is looked upon with contempt. Daigo has kept it secret from his wife (Ryoko Hirosue), and when she finds out she gives him an ultimatum—quit or she will leave. Daigo is now so involved with his job that he refuses to quit, and she does leave, at least temporarily.

There is a back story in Daigo’s life. His father left his mother when he was a boy and, barely remembering his dad, he nurses a grudge against him for having walked out on him and his mother, who has since died. Complications arise when Daigo suddenly gets word regarding his estranged father. The film builds sentimentally and predictably, but always in the framework of the delicacy with which the protagonist works. “Departures” is really about finding what gives one satisfaction in employment and learning about oneself through the process.