Meadowland, I Smile Back, Suffragette, A Ballerina's Tale

Meadowland

I Smile Back



Suffragette

A Ballerina's Tale



Quick capsules on a mixed week at the movies:

Les Misérables

I hate “Les Miz” so much it takes all my objectivity to concede that “The King’s Speech” director Tom Hooper has adapted it about as well as humanly possible. And to me it’s still a flatulent, hideously overwrought low-art spectacle, a sketch of a story populated by line drawings of characters.

The Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts

The cream of this year's crop of Oscar-nominated animated shorts is

• "The Gruffalo,"

with Helena Bonham Carter leading a star-studded cast in a beautiful, fully realized telling of a delightful, classic children's story. I also had a soft spot for 

• "The Lost Thing,"

about an eccentric young man who finds and takes home a huge, mysterious lost object with limbs, tendrils, and bells extending out of its amorphous form. Also worthwhile is 

• "Madagascar, Carnet de Voyage,"

a picture scrapbook of the director's trip to Madagascar come to life. 

• "Day & Night,"

the Pixar production that screened with "Toy Story 3" last year, is the least interesting offering, but still better than "Let's Pollute," a self-congratulatory and ham-handed winky "educational film" about the merits of pollution.