Studio-financed dramas based on real-life heroism stories are a dime a dozen. We’ve all seen a million of them and pretty much know beat-for-beat how they operate, which is pretty much the same way all Hollywood blockbusters operate. (“Here comes the part where the handsome white man beats impossible odds and saves everyone!”) One always hopes, when one of these incredible-true-story cash-ins comes along, that the filmmakers seize the opportunity they’re given and actually do something interesting and artful.

Regrettably, the opportunity is typically squandered, and such is the case with The Finest Hours, a decent dramatization that’s too restrained and measured to be interesting. A product of Disney, the Craig Gillespie-directed thriller is inspired by the efforts of a handful of Bostonian U.S. Coast Guard rescuers who save around thirty men from a ravaged oil tanker in the middle of the stormy North Atlantic. Such a story sets the foundation for the bevy of visual effects teams to go absolutely ham with digital rain and pummelling waves and sweeping views of raging sea storms. The CGI maelstrom indeed looks pretty impressive, but it’s all stuff we’ve seen before in other, better movies of the same ilk. Plus, oddly enough, despite the chaos surrounding our plucky heroes, it never quite feels like they’re in all that much danger.

In February 1952, an oil tanker was literally ripped in two by a winter storm off the coast of Boston, prompting the Coast Guard to deploy a sizeable team of their best to search for survivors. In a cruel twist of fate, a second tanker in the area, the SS Pendleton, was split in half as well. With the Coast Guard crew’s numbers severely diminished, just four men are sent on a small motorboat to somehow navigate the crushing, freezing waters and locate the Pendleton and its survivors.

They’re led by Bernie Webber, played by an unexpectedly wooden Chris Pine. Webber’s a man’s man, but he’s shy and mildly awkward, socially. Pine doesn’t find any depth within the character, which is a disappointment, though his co-stars feel similarly docile (Ben Foster, playing one of the four rag-taggers, is also uncharacteristically sleepy in his performance). Half of the movie follows what’s left of the Pendleton crew, a collection of archetypes embodied, again, by talented actors seemingly on cruise control. Casey Affleck plays the crew’s impromptu leader, Raymond Sybert, a sort of ship whisperer who devises clever plans to keep the Pendleton afloat until help comes. Raymond, like Bernie, is a softspoken outcast of sorts, their respective journeys parallel and largely flavorless.

We don’t know much about Raymond’s background, but we learn a lot about Bernie’s in the film’s open, which flashes back to the meet-cute between he and his sweetheart, Miriam (Holliday Grainger, who has the lovely look of a classic Hollywood starlet). When Bernie’s out on his impossible rescue mission, we occasionally check in on Miriam, who’s worried into a frenzy, taking much of her frustration out on Bernie’s commanding officer (Eric Bana). Grainger’s gifted, and maybe the nicest thing about the movie is that she’s given ample time to explore Miriam’s different colors of desperation and anger and denial.

The Finest Hours‘ issues really boil down to the fact that it moves forward in such a sleepy fashion that the stakes seem to evaporate into nothing as we watch the actors navigate the uninventive script (by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson) without any vigor or enthusiasm. The generic, sweeping score is relentless in how it dictates the tone of the scenes before the camera or the actors are given a chance to, which is another added frustration. It’s an incredibly bloodless affair, and the ending is so protracted and full of pointless, long stares that I was absolutely itching for the thing to be over.

The allure of a dystopian-set film usually seems to lie in its many opportunities for action, cutthroat survival, zombies/talking monkeys/other evolutionary developments, and the always popular spectacle of seeing well-known cultural landmarks in ruin. I will admit that’s not why I keep coming back for them. I’m a junkie for relational dynamics in extreme duress and social psychology experimentation isn’t a career path I’m all that cut out for, so apocalyptic films it is.

Judging by its poster—which mostly consists of the faces of Chiwetel Ejiofor, Margot Robbie, and Chris Pine in blue-tinted, love-triangle infused expressions of seriousness–it’s easy not to pick up on the genre of Z For Zachariah. With nary an upturned Statue of Liberty, decaying zombie, or even a single action scene to speak of, it is actually post-apocalyptic. And while, yes, there is a love triangle at the center of the conflict, that these may just be the last three people on earth, that they are essentially strangers to one another, and that survival instincts turn people into manipulative creatures, all make for a nuanced psychological drama.

This is no Katniss, Peeta, Gale situation. Where Z For Zachariah excels is in its lack of outright drama. A lot like his 2012 film Compliance, Craig Zobel has fashioned another film where, when the credits roll, you realize you’d been holding your breath a great long while.

The film begins with Ann, played in an ambiguous state of early adulthood by Margot Robbie. Clad in a plastic suit with a portable oxygen tank, she searches for supplies and peruses books in the now dilapidated library. A few obligatory tableaus of dusty school rooms, empty grocery stores, etc. set the stage of the abandoned world Ann lives in. She makes her way home on a dirt road, removing her mask only once she’s gotten far enough away from the town. For whatever reason, the valley where her family farm, deep water well, and family church are all located is a safe place to breathe and live. And as a farm-raised girl, Ann has the know-how to stay alive despite being on her own.

Between Katniss and Ann, I’m starting to think the South may be the place to head in the case of impending worldwide destruction.

Ann’s contained and lonesome world expands considerably when she comes across a person in a hazmat suit. This scientist (Ejiofor) tests the air and plant life as Ann watches on in wonder. When he deems it safe, he rips off his suit, gulps the clean air and then rather over-exuberantly plunges into a nearby waterfall. Not realizing the water in this particular stream isn’t safe for jumping around in, Ann ends up having to nurse him back to health after he gets sick from radiation poisoning, taking him back to her farm to recoup.

Ann and the scientist named Loomis form a friendship, her demeanor one of sweet God-fearing Southerner, savvy in agricultural arts, he a science-fearing intrepid intellectual good at building. Once his strength returns he pitches in, helping Ann get farm equipment up and running and concocting a plan to utilize the waterfall to power the defunct generator. Ann is grateful, but overall more interested in there being another person alive in her world. Her family all left, apparently unsatisfied with sitting tight, feeling it their duty to search for survivors.

It doesn’t take long for Ann to try and use her unpracticed skills of seduction on Loomis. He admits to an attraction, but slows her down. After all they have forever to get to know one another uninterrupted, right? Enter an interruption. Covered in soot and a horrible haircut, Chris Pine’s Caleb appears. His familiarity with the area and good Christian manners immediately appeal to Ann’s sense of Southern hospitality. And with his charm, masculinity, and subtle passive aggression he becomes an instant threat to Loomis’s short-lived utopian fairytale.

Nissar Modi’s script, based on the novel by Robert C. O’Brien, doesn’t catapult into territorial insecurity or any form of violence, allowing a tentative and flimsy sort of trust to slowly build between the characters. Even as Loomis identifies that there is an obvious affinity forming between Ann and Caleb, his distrust lies within his inherent understanding of the way men behave in this new world. Ann has avoided some of the more psychologically disturbing aspects of what appears to be a nuclear holocaust, and Loomis has avoided telling her much of the outside world. When he tries to open up to her about this in order to prove his credulity toward Caleb, it only backfires by making her question what she knows of the man she thinks she loves.

Ejiofor plays Loomis’s descent from hopeful to threatened, capturing a primal and more subdued sort of survival mode. Survival against the possibility of threat in a world where one needs to be two steps ahead. As he and Caleb and Ann build the watermill that will ensure they survive the winter, Loomis and Caleb test each other, trying to decide what sort of threat the other is. Ann is relatively naive to the danger felt whenever Loomis and Caleb are onscreen together, but Robbie does a good job of conveying both Ann’s innocence to romantic entanglement and her skillful aptitude for survival. Caleb remains a mostly unexplored character, playing his role as the unknown quantity, the masked threat more frightening because of all he doesn’t say. Pine’s playful smile and knowing eyes perfectly convey the creepy seduction Caleb uses to woo Ann and to disarm Loomis.

The racial dynamics of the threesome isn’t overtly explored in any real depth, but Zobel does some diligence, such as a scene where Loomis gives Ann permission to “go be white people” together with Caleb. It’s funny, if not profound, and Ann’s innocent response of confusion doesn’t do much to continue the conversation. In the end the film sticks to themes around compatibility vs. attraction, religion vs. science, and the moral implications of following one’s instincts to circumvent a threat. The film’s climax is both tense and ambiguous, leaving a severe discomfort from its refusal to point to anything clear. But that’s another staple of any good dystopia: the paths aren’t clear and the compasses don’t work.

It took about 30 years, but Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical fairytale cocktail, Into the Woods, has finally expanded from stage to big screen courtesy of the Mouse House and Chicago director Rob Marshall. I wasn’t familiar with the original stage production going into the film, but it wasn’t at all hard to recognize Into the Woods‘ theater roots once I heard the exuberant, winky dialogue (Lapine adapts his own words to screen) and started tapping my foot to the infectious Sondheim tunes being belted out by some of the Brothers Grimm’s most famous characters. The film’s final act feels too deflated to call this overdue screen adaptation a certified triumph, but the first two thirds are so cheeky, unencumbered, and flat-out fun that it’s hard not to give Into the Woods a hearty recommendation, especially with all this holiday cheer hanging in the air.

The story takes several popular Grimm characters–including Rapunzel, Cinderella, and Jack (of beanstalk fame)–and several new characters of Lapine’s creation and throws them into the twisty, shadowy bowela of the titular woods, so that we can watch these familiar childhood characters sing, argue, fall in love, and interact in ways we’ve never imagined! I know, I know…that isn’t really the case anymore. The fantasy mash-up idea has long since lost its novelty since the musical debuted in the mid-’80s (Shrek, Once Upon a Time, Enchanted, the excellent comic book Fables, and many others have aped the gimmick), but it’s as potent (and trendy) today as it ever has been.

While an ensemble piece through and through, the plot is fueled by the plight of two central characters, The Baker (James Corden) and his Wife (Emily Blunt), who have always wished for a child, though their wish never came true. When an old Witch (Meryl Streep, unhinged) blows into the bakery in the showiest way possible (wind, thunder, flashes of light), the couple learns that they’ve been infertile all this time due to a curse she cast on The Baker when he was only a child, after his father stole magic beans from her garden. (In another act of revenge, she also stole The Baker’s infant sister, Rapunzel.) The Witch offers to lift the curse if The Baker can pull off an improbable scavenger hunt in the woods, fetching her four ingredients she needs for a potion: a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn, and a slipper as pure as gold. Sounds tasty.

The carriers of said items, as you might have guessed, happen to be the Brothers Grimm all-stars: the slipper is Cinderella’s (Anna Kendrick), who thrice flees through the woods after abandoning her prince at the royal dance; the cow, aptly named Milky White, belongs to young Jack (Daniel Huttlestone, his campy, old-school British accent unintentionally hilarious); the cape is, of course, Red Riding Hood’s (Lilla Crawford); and the corn-yellow hair comes from the pretty head of The Baker’s long-lost sister, the lovely Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy).

Secondary characters make memorable appearances, from Johnny Depp as Red Riding Hood’s Big Bad Wolf (their scene is uncomfortable, though the sexual tension has apparently been slightly tamed from the stage version), Tracey Ullman as Jack’s mother, and Frances de la Tour as one of Jack’s giants. Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen play Cinderella and Rapunzel’s princes, respectfully, and their epic duet in front of a waterfall, “Agony”, a witty lover’s lament, is one of the funniest things I’ve seen all year. (I laughed so long and hard my wife was thoroughly embarrassed, though that’s hardly an uncommon occurrence with us.)

The characters zip and weave through the trees, bumping into each other now and again, each in a mad search for their own personal “happily ever after”. The Bakers find, then lose, then find again The Witch’s items, while the Grimm characters play out their familiar stories with slightly remixed scenarios. True to the fairytale tradition, all their wishes do, indeed, come true. But that’s not where the story ends; it’s where the real story begins. “Be careful what you wish for” the film’s ad campaign warns us.

The film’s final third sees the characters return to the woods to learn life’s hard lessons, with some of our beloved heroes biting the dust for good. The woods represent the cruelty and sadness of the real world, and forcing historically idealized characters like Cinderella to reckon with wretched things like infidelity. (Her prince is charming no doubt, but is he faithful?) What’s the true cost of our wishes coming true? Is a wish worth making the ultimate sacrifice? This concept of subverting and sobering up our childhood notions of the “fairy tale ending” is brilliant and forever relevant.

Marshall and Lapine handle the 180 degree tonal shift from peachy-keen Disney adventure to dark, somber drama quite well, but the film ends with such low energy compared to the first two acts that it feels comparatively bland. The later musical numbers begin to feel like a homogeneous series of music videos, with the same nighttime forest background providing the numbers little in the way of visual distinctiveness. The songs feel really packed-in, too; the story’s message has a harder time ringing true when we’re so musically fatigued.

The wealth of superb performances are the film’s greatest virtue, chiefly among them being the formidable Streep, whose keen comedic timing is on full display. Corden and Blunt shine as well, with a natural rapport that makes them excellent anchors for the story. Unsurprisingly, the theatrically-trained Kendrick’s the best singer of the bunch, though the less vocally-gifted Pine makes up for his inexperience with flamboyance, prancing and preening and posing his way through the film with the wackiness of a cheap stage show on the Las Vegas strip.

Of the things Into the Woods gets right, perhaps the most pleasing is the way it embraces its origins as a stage production. CGI is kept to a minimum, and practical effects are used skillfully and tastefully. The sets (which all appear to be practical, not digital) are terrific, too, with the ominous trees and misty swamps looking convincing while never hiding the fact that they were built by human hands. With so many big studio cash-in adaptations poisoning our theaters and stealing our money, it’s nice to see one come along that actually deserves our attention.