Matthew McConaughey’s emaciated frame haunts and informs just about every frame of Dallas Buyers Club, the “based on a true story” of Ron Woodroof, whose suffering from AIDS led him to become one of the biggest advocates for proper treatment of the disease.

As far as actors’ physical transformations for their roles go, what McConaughey has gone through to portray Woodroof is for the record books. The transformation is even more astounding keeping in mind that the role McConaughey performed just previous to this one was as a perfect male specimen on display in Magic Mike. Comparing these two wildly different performances is a great reminder of just how McConaughey is dedicated to his craft, which can get lost with movies like Fool’s Gold and Ghosts of Christmas Craft on his resume.

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There always have been and forever shall be movies made about making movies.

For In a World, though, Lake Bell has set her directing debut within a previously unexplored milieu, the highly competitive world of voice-over performers, within the “film industry” genre. And as director, writer, producer and star, it’s a milieu she clearly has a lot of affection for as she softly pokes fun at it.

Her end result is an amiable, innocuous form of entertainment. The script is another iteration of the naif lost in the woods with the wolves storyline that goes back to the time of The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra (1928) by Robert Florey and Slavko Vorkapitch.

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There are several astonishing things about Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, but the most shocking one is that it’s only about 90 minutes long.

Ok, that may not seem so astonishing, but it totally runs counter to major movie trends these days. Most Hollywood blockbusters now are overstuffed and bloated with excessive plot and characters — most likely tied to the current superhero craze — in an effort to make audiences feel like they’re getting their money’s worth at the theater, because, you know, it ain’t cheap to go to the movies anymore.

Cuarón, who co-wrote the Gravity script with his brother Jonás, starts his story right in on the action. Career astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and reluctant scientist Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) are on a space walk fixing the Hubble Telescope when debris from a nearby shattered satellite sends Stone careening far into space. The rest of the movie then deals with Stone and Kowalski’s efforts to somehow get their way back to Earth.

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