The Sapphires (Wayne Blair, 2013) - Your standard “it was the 60s, and racism was bad” story, with two twists. One: The put-upon black people are aborigines. Two: They’re in a girl group put together hastily to play for American soldiers in Vietnam. Chris O’Dowd plays the band manager with as much effort as he’s been asked for; when we first see him, he is sleeping hungover in a station wagon, and shook awake by the cliched sounds of Sam and Dave’s “Soul Man.” The girls are cute and funny, becoming more predictable as the plot rolls on, and listening intently when a black soldier tells them what it’s like fighting for The Man.
The Place Beyond the Pines (Derek Cianfrance, 2013) – The director/writer’s follow-up to “Blue Valentine” is a strangely optimistic noir that takes place over 18 years. Ryan Gosling plays a motorcycle stuntman who learns he fathered a son and turns to bank robbery to provide for him. Bradley Cooper plays a young cop who happens to be closest to Gosling when he slips; and he, too, has a young son. Both actors work well within their archetypes (Gosling wordless and sad, Cooper rash but pulling back before it’s too late), and Ray Liota brightens up the melodrama as an adeptly crooked cop, but the plot’s pretty predictable — actually, worse than that, because it ends up with fewer consequences and more obvious emotional resonance than you expected going in.