Stephen Bruton

Early on in “Crazy Heart,’’ while lounging in bed just before the inevitable happens, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character turns to Jeff Bridges’s Bad Blake, the down-and-out country singer she’s supposed to be interviewing for a story. Cast in shadows, she asks him an asinine question that ends up capturing the essence of the film’s soundtrack. “So where’d all those songs come from?’’ she wants to know. “Life, unfortunately,’’ he replies. Sticking to that philosophy, the soundtrack is full of odes to hard knocks and hardened hearts.

MONA LISA SMILE *** (Starz on Comcast) Guided by Julia Roberts, we're transported to the Wellesley of a half-century ago for a message that no longer needs mongering: Hey girls, marriage is not all there is. Despite its needless lessons, Mike Newell's movie is fiercely performed - Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, and Maggie Gyllenhaal are some of the students - and usually entertaining. Hands down, the weirdest commercial film of 2003. (PG-13; runs through Nov. 3) WESLEY MORRIS CRAZY HEART ***½ (HBO on Comcast)

MONA LISA SMILE *** (Starz on Comcast) Guided by Julia Roberts, we're transported to the Wellesley of a half-century ago for a message that no longer needs mongering: Hey girls, marriage is not all there is. Despite its needless lessons, Mike Newell's movie is fiercely performed - Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, and Maggie Gyllenhaal are some of the students - and usually entertaining. Hands down, the weirdest commercial film of 2003. (PG-13; runs through Nov. 3) WESLEY MORRIS CRAZY HEART ***½ (HBO on Comcast)

CRAZY HEART (Max on Comcast) A familiar tale — fading country musician hits bottom, looks up — enlivened by a great, generous jewel of a performance by Jeff Bridges, our shaggiest of leading men. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a single mom who falls for him against her better judgment; Colin Farrell and Robert Duvall turn up, too. Songs by T Bone Burnett and the late Stephen Bruton. (R; runs through Dec. 16) TY BURR SPIDER MAN (HBO on Comcast)

CRAZY HEART (Max on Comcast) A familiar tale — fading country musician hits bottom, looks up — enlivened by a great, generous jewel of a performance by Jeff Bridges, our shaggiest of leading men. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a single mom who falls for him against her better judgment; Colin Farrell and Robert Duvall turn up, too. Songs by T Bone Burnett and the late Stephen Bruton. (R; runs through Dec. 16) TY BURR SPIDER MAN (HBO on Comcast)

Previously released 2009 Sundance Shorts Ten short films from last year’s Sundance Film Festival. The best, Destin Cretton’s halfway-house drama “Short Term 12,’’ has been shortlisted for a 2010 Oscar, but many of the other films are just as good. (115 min., unrated) (Ty Burr) The Book of Eli Denzel Washington plays a lone dude in post-nuclear America carrying a Very Important tome that frontier boss Gary Oldman wants. It’s basically “The Road’’ with twice the plot, four times the ammunition, and half the brains.

Previously released Avatar James Cameron’s long-game gamble pays off - for the most part. The film creates a planet called Pandora, a race of tall, blue cat-people called the Na’vi, and gives them both a dazzlingly colorful rain forest reality - part Rousseau, part George Lucas on inhalants. The 60 percent of the film that comes from the computer is tantalizingly realistic; the roughly 40 percent that’s live action is less convincing. With Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, and Zoe Saldana.

You’ve seen “Crazy Heart’’ before - many, many times, actually - but it doesn’t much matter. Country and western music feeds on that sense of rueful, willful repetition, the knowledge that sins of the past will be sinned in the future, even as the singer is lamenting those sins in the present. That’s where the humor and the dead-eyed fatalism of country both come from, and that’s what fuels Jeff Bridges’s shambling yet masterful performance as Bad Blake, faded C&W star and sorry-ass reprobate.

New releases Edge of Darkness Mel Gibson returns to the screen after seven years as a veteran Boston homicide detective and single father whose daughter is murdered in front of his eyes. His assumption that he was the target proves wrong, and he tracks down and punishes the guilty parties. An above average revenge movie. (117 min., R) (Sam Allis) Fish Tank British filmmaker Andrea Arnold’s second film, after 2006’s unnerving “Red Road,’’ is about a tough, angry teenage girl (the remarkable Katie Jarvis)

Previously released Avatar James Cameron’s long-game gamble pays off - for the most part. The film creates a planet called Pandora, a race of tall, blue cat-people called the Na’vi, and gives them both a dazzlingly colorful rain forest reality - part Rousseau, part George Lucas on inhalants. The 60 percent of the film that comes from the computer is tantalizingly realistic; the roughly 40 percent that’s live action is less convincing. With Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, and Zoe Saldana.

Previously released 2009 Sundance Shorts Ten short films from last year’s Sundance Film Festival. The best, Destin Cretton’s halfway-house drama “Short Term 12,’’ has been shortlisted for a 2010 Oscar, but many of the other films are just as good. (115 min., unrated) (Ty Burr) The Book of Eli Denzel Washington plays a lone dude in post-nuclear America carrying a Very Important tome that frontier boss Gary Oldman wants. It’s basically “The Road’’ with twice the plot, four times the ammunition, and half the brains.

Early on in “Crazy Heart,’’ while lounging in bed just before the inevitable happens, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character turns to Jeff Bridges’s Bad Blake, the down-and-out country singer she’s supposed to be interviewing for a story. Cast in shadows, she asks him an asinine question that ends up capturing the essence of the film’s soundtrack. “So where’d all those songs come from?’’ she wants to know. “Life, unfortunately,’’ he replies. Sticking to that philosophy, the soundtrack is full of odes to hard knocks and hardened hearts.