“I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS”

★★★★ (out of four)

Jim Carrey is a great actor. He never gets his proper due, but over the course of the past 12 years — starting with “The Truman Show” and then “Man on the Moon” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” — he has demonstrated not only keen dramatic skills, but also a willingness to throw himself into difficult roles with absolute confidence and commitment. Carrey may have made a name for himself by dressing in tutus and talking with his butt, but these periodic forays into strange and dark territory have proven that he is willing and able to deliver brilliant, completely unique performances when given the right material. (I know I’ll get flack for this comparison, but honestly, the only other high-profile actor I see routinely displaying this level of creatively and risk-taking in his performances is Daniel Day-Lewis. Yeah, chew on that for a while. You know it’s true.)

“FASTER”

★★★

This is exactly what Dwayne Johnson needed. After years of ignoring his true calling as a badass action star, preferring instead to parade around in tutus in a bizarre attempt to establish himself as a “family-friendly” nice-guy talent, the actor once known as The Rock has finally flung himself full-force into action-movie anarchy.

The bare-bones story of a man out for revenge against the criminals who murdered his brother, “Faster” delivers some decidedly nasty thrills and puts Johnson’s larger-than-life image center stage. It’s a choice role in a good film, but unfortunately, Johnson is forced to share too much screen time with other, less compelling characters. The film is solid as it stands, but if Johnson had the stage to himself, there’s no telling how bone-crunchingly awesome this thing could have been.

“HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS:  PART 1”

★★★  1⁄2

Warner Bros. has been taking some flack these past few years as their Harry Potter film series took a nose-dive in terms of creativity and overall effectiveness, and the harsh criticisms are not without cause. After Alfonso Cuaron and Mike Newell each left the series after just one (successful) installment, the studio turned to the well-respected British filmmaker to close out the final three chapters, and the results have been uneven.

Sure, the movies still rake in obscene amounts of cash all over the globe, but from an artistic standpoint, the consensus seems to be that Yates took a once-vibrant series and ran it into the ground — perhaps as a result of his own willingness to let the studio heads call all the shots. Though marginally entertaining, “Order of the Phoenix” and “The Half-Blood Prince” both suffered enormously from flat, truncated screenplays that never allowed any breathing room for these characters or their story.