Thor: The Dark World is a big, loud live-action version of a cartoon version of a comic book story. The effects are good, the surprises are enjoyable and the comic relief is so random that some hardcore fanboys may get upset.

Chris Hemsworth is a better Thor this time than he was two-and-a-half years ago. He’s less stiff and more comfortable doing all those Thorian things he does.

As Thor jumps back and forth between his fantasy realm and our good ol’ ordinary modern Earth, bad guys who existed before time began (not sure how they managed that trick) plot to destroy Asgard. To defeat them, he calls upon his weasel brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), even though Thor knows he can’t really trust him.

Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), Thor’s earthly love, is a walking billboard for girlish pursuits of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), long thought to be the domain of males. Her chum Darcy is played by Kat Dennings, who keeps ‘em covered up in TTDW. You’ll have to watch “2 Broke Girls” to get that Kat fan service.

They come to the rescue of eccentric science guy Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) who they spot on TV being arrested for walking around naked at Stonehenge. He, like everyone in the cast, is waiting for the “convergence” when, supposedly, many things will hit the fan. He generates a good number of TTDW’s chuckles and sets up Stan Lee’s cameo line. Selvig also has a hand in the film’s climax.

After Thor fights these wicked and particularly ugly dark world rivals in parts unknown (actually Iceland, on whose stark terrain battles were filmed), they follow him to modern day London to be clobbered again with that mighty hammer.

Thor: The Dark World is not a perfect movie. But it has a near perfect vibe for this story and this Marvel superhero. It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway), don’t leave until the screen goes dark and the theater staff comes in to clean up.

Lee Daniels’ The Butler will win awards. Its stars, its director and its storylines assure that this movie will notch several trophies next awards season.

But who gets which award? Oprah Winfrey was nominated for an Oscar in her first film role nearly 30 years ago in The Color Purple. Forrest Whittaker was a Best Actor Oscar winner for his work as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. Director Lee Daniels, whose name is now part of the film’s official title, earned a best director nom for Precious (whose star Mo’Nique took Oscar home).

Cecil Gaines (Whittaker) is a butler at the White House. His career spans the years of the civil rights movement in America, from the Eisenhower administration through the Reagan years. While the nation is undergoing major changes, so are Cecil and his family members.

His story begins in the 1920’s. After his cotton picker parents are victims of hateful violence by a member of their white employer’s family in Georgia, a young Cecil becomes a “house n——.” He parlays his talent into hotel gigs and is later recruited to be a butler at the White House. Life is good, better than he could’ve imagined.

Cecil has a wife he loves (Gloria, played by Oprah Winfrey), a family, a car, a home and a good job, serving presidents at the White House. When his son Louis (Daniel Oyelowo) goes to college in Nashville, he becomes an activist in the civil rights battle, making Cecil uncomfortable. The son’s radicalization takes him all the way to the Black Panthers, at which point Cecil decides he has gone too far. Their other son goes to the opposite extreme and enlists in the army during the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, Gloria’s booze issues threaten family harmony.

The men who are cast as U.S. presidents make up a notable list: Robin Williams as Ike, James Marsden as JFK, Liev Schreiber as LBJ, Jon Cusack as Nixon and Alan Rickman as Reagan. Jane Fonda appears as Nancy Reagan and Minka Kelly plays Jackie Kennedy. Presidents Ford, Carter and Obama appear via video footage.

Nancy’s invitation to Cecil to attend a White House dinner not as a server, but as a guest, is an appropriate coda to his career. A few more life events follow during Cecil’s retirement.

Lee Daniels’ The Butler’s talented cast also includes Terrence Howard, Cuba Gooding Jr., Lenny Kravitz, Maria Carey and Vanessa Redgrave.

Screenwriter Danny Strong and Daniels should be praised for keeping this movie at a reasonable length. This is a big movie that covers a lot of ground in just over two hours. With as many characters and plot points as this film has, it could’ve run much longer.

Whittaker’s performance should nab him another Oscar nomination and LDTB should land a best picture nom. Is Oprah’s performance Oscar-nomination-worthy? She’s good, but I don’t think she’s a lock to win, as some have forecast. Best adapted screenplay is another possibility. (Click HERE to read the Washington Post story that inspired the fictional movie script.)

Lee Daniels’ The Butler is a good film but not quite a classic. Because of its specific subject matter and because it covers a large swath of recent American history, LDTB is likely to become a favorite of many moviegoers.

As with many such films, Star Trek Into Darkness is critic-proof. The movie will have a huge weekend box office, no matter what anybody says about it. Even if STID were horrible, there would be long lines at theaters across the world. Happily, I can report that Star Trek Into Darkness is not horrible.

The new Kirk and Spock, Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto, deepen their bromance in STID to the point that the supposedly unemotional Spock actually sheds a tear when Kirk is in peril. They team up to fight a common enemy, one who threatens the existence of the Starfleet.

The movie opens with a stunning sequence. We see Kirk running through a forest of bright red trees, being chased by mime-like white-faced creatures who have yellow scarves around their heads and lower abdomens. It looks like a fantasy scene from a Japanese anime. At a cliff, he jumps and… Well, then the adventure really gets going, when Spock descends into a volcano on this strange planet.

Back home on Earth, a deadly bombing of a Starfleet underground archive in London is followed by an attack on Starfleet HQ in San Francisco. The villain behind it all must be tracked down and brought to justice. The bad guy is John Harrison, played wonderfully by Benedict Cumberbatch. You might get an occasional slight Valdemort vibe from his character.

The movie’s tension is amped up by a soundtrack that lays the dramatic music on rather thick. No subtlety here. That tension, though, is compromised by a heavy dose of quips, which give the film a cartoonish feel. Chuckles galore are piled on to the point of distraction. Enough!

Chris Pine brings a swagger to Kirk that’s similar to William Shatner’s. Pine is ruggedly handsome, in a Redford sort of way. Quinto, on the other hand, is a decent actor, but doesn’t hit that severe note quite as nicely as Leonard Nimoy managed. This movie has a bit too much Spock for my taste.

Notable supporting cast members include Simon Pigg as Scotty, Zoe Saldana as Uhura, John Cho as Sulu, Karl Urban as Bones McCoy, Peter “Robocop” Weller as Admiral Marcus and Alice Eve as Marcus’s daughter.

The looks of San Francisco and London in 2259 are not much different from 2013 Shanghai, with a few modifications. A future feature that I found goofy: people communicating via flip phones, not unlike the one I gave up a few years ago. (But in Trek, they get great coverage!)

Star Trek Into Darkness has content that will please fans of all the various Star Trek TV incarnations, as well as fans of past Trek movies. How about someone who’s totally out of the Trek loop? I think first-timers will figure out the characters and the scenario quickly and easily. It’s not rocket science. (Well, yes, it is, but…)

Iron Man Three is extremely good! Everything that went into the making of this movie revolves around Robert Downey Jr. and his considerable charisma and talent. He deserves every tenth of a percent of the box office he’s getting.

It starts when Downey as Tony Stark/Iron Man brushes off a geeky guy on Y2K eve. The geek, Aldrich Killian, played by Guy Pearce, takes offense, gets a haircut. He returns a few years later with some bad stuff that reprograms brains, generally with horrible results.

Meanwhile, Stark realizes he’ll have to confront a Bin Laden type madman who appears on TV and calls himself The Mandarin. This villain (played by Ben Kingsley) is able to cut in on every TV channel to deliver his taunting threat to the world. Stark dares The Mandarin to attack him, even offering his home address.

The attack comes. And the spectacular Stark home collapses into the Pacific. Even though I know it’s not real, I’ve always loved that house. While it’s sad to see the home destroyed, the attack by the Mandarin’s bad guys is a terrific action sequence right up at the front of the movie.

After the attack, Stark is presumed dead. But, no, he ends up in a small Tennessee town, where his priority is to make a call to his gal Pepper, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, to let her know he’s alive.

In this berg, he is befriended by a cute kid named Harley. The young man who plays Harley, Ty Simpkins, is one of the better kid actors I’ve seen.

Stark’s efforts to track down and quash the Mandarin include a confrontation aboard Air Force One and an amazing skydiving stunt. The final faceoff goes a bit long. A large helping of action would’ve sufficed. Instead, director Shane Black gives us the extra large.

IM3 feels, at times, almost like an old Bond movie with its evil villain and his “lair” and his henchmen and a charming hero who cracks jokes in times of great peril. Stark prefers wine to martinis and is true to his one woman, but he has the swagger and clever mind of the 60’s era Bond.

Fanboys who’ve followed Iron Man in the Marvel comic books may not be pleased with this film. The story and the villains are not exactly the same. But for those of us who know Iron Man from the movies, this film satisfies. Heck, I’m ready to watch it again.

Runtime is 2:10, but Iron Man Three flies by. In some scenes, literally.

Mud is an independent film that has a decent story and some good actors. As with many indie films, there are pacing issues. But the tale unfolds nicely, revealing several intriguing characters and subplots.

Mathew McConaughey stars in the title role, but the movie’s name also refers to the river that plays a vital role in Mud’s story.

Mud has a Tom and Huck feel to it with two boys on the cusp of puberty, who spend huge amounts of time on the river. Ellis and Neckbone (played by Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland) both have family issues. Ellis is dealing with his parents’ divorce; Neckbone’s folks are unknown. (He lives with his uncle, played by the always-interesting Michael Shannon.)

Mud (the character, not the movie) is a fugitive who’s living on an island in the river. Ellis and Neckbone become chums and provide him with food and other goods. Meanwhile, Reese Witherspoon shows up in town. She is Mud’s on-and-off girlfriend, Juniper.

Following close behind Juniper are bounty hunters, out to avenge Mud’s crime. Among the bounty hunters is Joe Don Baker, best known for his portrayal of Buford Pusser in the original Walking Tall—forty years ago! Also in the cast is Sam Shephard, looking older than 69 (his actual age), as a wizened river rat who is an ally of Mud.

Mud gives us a slice of modern day life in small town America. The southeast Arkansas town in Mud is like hundreds of other towns across the Midwest and the South. It’s certainly not as distinctive as Hannibal was in Tom and Huck’s day, but it shows us who live in cities what it’s like in the hinterlands.

I have joked that there is apparently a law stating that any Mathew McConaughey movie must contain at least one scene in which he is shirtless. In Mud, one of his character’s favorite possessions is a white shirt that he wears throughout the film—until, with less than a half hour to go, he takes it off, for no apparent reason. Except maybe to obey that law.

A movie like Mud depends on good performances from the kid actors. Sheridan and Lofland are up to the task. They’re not going to be Oscar winners, but they each do commendable work.

Despite its flaws, Mud is an entertaining film for true river rats as well as for those whose river time is spent crossing them on highway bridges.