“The Fighter”

★★★ 1/2 (out of four)

I responded so strongly to David O. Russell’s “The Fighter,” an old-fashioned underdog narrative that wears sentimentality on its sleeve.

The difference between Russell’s film and the dozens of other similar, less successful sports dramas is that here, the filmmaker lets emotion develop organically from the characters and their histories. Instead of attempting to manipulate viewer responses via swelling music and tearful exchanges and all manner of riffraff, Russell (most noted for “Three Kings” and “I Huckabees”) has gone back to basics. For one, the film has a very rugged, neorealist, almost documentary-like style that immediately lends a certain degree of authenticity to the proceedings. Clearly, Russell has seen Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler.”

“True Grit”

★★★★

The filmmakers behind such adult-oriented movies as “Blood Simple,” “Fargo” and “No Country for Old Men” might not seem like the most logical choices to adapt Charles Portis’ classic western “True Grit,” about a 14-year-old girl who forges an unlikely bond with an ornery pseudo-lawman during their hunt for her father’s killer. But the Coens are always full of surprises. They’ve dealt with lighter material before (“Raising Arizona,” “The Big Lebowski”), and with “No Country for Old Men” they displayed a clear knack for working with a Western motif. Still, I wasn’t prepared for the delicacy with which the Coens handle “True Grit,” which is essentially a heartfelt family film set against a violent backdrop.

“Black Swan”

★★★★

“Black Swan” is Darren Aronofsky’s borderline-experimental attempt to immerse the viewer in madness and, in effect, replicate the experience of complete mental collapse. Naturally such a film requires an intensely psychological approach, but to my surprise, Aronofsky keeps everything under control in the midst of absolute chaos, never allowing his wilder impulses to engulf the carefully structured narrative. This is the work of a master.