Zero Dark Thirty begins in brutal fashion. Well, emotionally speaking, anyway. The first two minutes of director Kathryn Bigelow’s high-stakes CIA action thriller set the tone for the rest of the film, as blackness...

Now that I’ve given my two cents on what I found to be the most appalling movies of the past year, here’s another pair of pennies regarding the other end of the cinematic spectrum. Though Oscar voters may have...