If you yearn for the good old days when movies told a story with actors instead of CGI (computer created images) special effects, aliens, or monsters, then I have a movie to recommend to you.

“The Book Thief” based on the international best selling novel of the same name by Markus Zusak, is intelligently and sensitively directed by Brian Percival, from a wonderfully crafted screenplay by Michael Petroni.  It’s a small, touching story with large emotional issues that is flawlessly and understatedly performed by a cast led by Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush, and Oscar nominee Emily Watson, and stars young French-Canadian teen actress Sophie Nelisse in the title role as Liesel Meminger.

The suspense drama set in wartime Germany (1938 –1945), revolves around young orphan Liesel Meminger, who is sent to live with foster parents Hans and Rosa Hubermann (Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson) following her separation from her communist mother by the Nazi government.  Once settled into her new school she meets next-door neighbor classmate Rudy (Nico Liersch).  Rudy is taken with this newcomer       becoming friends.  Liesel develops a strong interest in the reading books and thanks to the Buergemeister’s wife, (Kirsten Block) is allowed to read in her private library.

Liesel’s daily life is interrupted late one night when an exhausted, young Jewish refugee, Max Vandenburg (Ben Schnetzer) appears at the family’s front door looking for a safe place to rest.  Hans and Rosa agree to hide him from the government and swear Liesel to secrecy.

“The Book Thief”, contrary to popular belief concerning warring nations, is simply a story of ordinary people trying to live life amidst the hell of Hitler’s Third Reich and WW II (not everyone was a Nazi zealot).   Director Percival, who comes to the movie fresh from the success as the director of the TV mega-hit “Downton Abbey”, uses the voice of English actor Roger Allam to portray the character of Death throughout the film.  Its use is both soothing and disarming, but extremely effective.

Screenwriter Petroni and director Percival imbue their story with just the right amount of suspense and just the right amount of pathos without slipping into bathos.  The film is blessed with a production designer (Simon Elliott), an editor (John Wilson), a costume designer who knows the period (Anna B. Sheppard) and a musical score by the great John Williams.  It’s a two-hour screen visit with quality moviemaking.  What movie fan could ask for anything more?  “The Book Thief” in my opinion is a strong Oscar contender in the Best Adapted Screenplay category.  Perhaps, even a possible Best Picture nomination, as well.   We’ll see come January 2014 when the nominations come out.

Rush and Watson are nicely nuanced in their portrayals, and young Sophie Nelisse is a real find with plenty of appeal and composure for a relative newcomer to the business.

If you’re tired of films that lack a compelling story to share, and merely rely on gratuitous gun use and war without end, then “The Book Thief” (with nary an f-bomb being heard) is for you.  By the way, there is nothing to apologize for when it comes to selecting a “feel good” movie every now and then.  The world could use a few more of them about now.

The Camelot Theatres, Palm Springs’s premiere Art House for independent and foreign films is screening the gritty, grungy, and f-bomb laden film “ Dallas Buyers Club” starring Matthew McConaghey.  McConaghey, a Hollywood handsome, leading man, lost more than 40 pounds in order to play the role of Ron Woodroof, a Texas hustler and rodeo rider/electrician with Aids, who turned drug dealer in the recently released “Dallas Buyers Club”.

The HIV/Aids epidemic during 1980’s that devastated gay and straight people alike, sent chills that carried an almost certain death sentence to those who contracted the virus.  There was no known cure.  This feeling of hopelessness is what it must have been like to be told that one had contracted Syphilis during the 19th century.

The film directed by Jean-Marc Vallee and written by Melisa Wallick and Craig Borten is somewhat of a biopic in that it borrows incidents from the life a real person. – Ron Woodroof a hell-raising son of Texas.  Hollywood has gone down this road in the past with “Philadelphia” starring Tom Hanks as a closeted gay lawyer who contracts Aids; garnering an Academy Award for his performance.  So the subject matter is not toxic or radio active anymore.

There are likable hustlers like Jon Voight of “Midnight Cowboy” and then there are the not so likable hustlers, like Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaghey) who definitely falls into the latter group.  Ron’s lifestyle and unsavory friends give the Lone Star state a bad name.  It seems, at least in the movies, that all Texans drive battered old cars and pick-up trucks, drink gallons of beer and whiskey, love to fight and break things, and have accents so thick that sub-titles are required to follow the story.  But I digress.

The story follows Woodroof from a work related accident to his diagnosis as an HIV/Aids straight man, who snorts cocaine in between and during his sexual escapades, to smoking and drinking every grain known to man, and one who is in denial Big Time.  And he’s a mean, foul-mouthed dude to boot, who hasn’t met a racial or homophobic slur that he didn’t like.  Frankly, I lost count on how many f-bombs are hurled from screen (well over fifty plus for sure), but then I digress again.

His doctors tell him he has 30 days to get his affairs in order.  A defiant Ron bellows and smashes his way out of the hospital, as one of his doctors Dr. Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner), attempts to intervene and calm him down.  Unconvinced by his doctors prescribed drugs, he takes off in search of alternative methods and drugs including herbs and vitamins available in Mexico, China, Netherlands, and Japan.  Once back in Texas, he sets up a business with Rayon, a gay transvestite (Jared Leto who befriended him in one of his hospital stays) selling memberships to dispense free, non-approved FDA drugs and pills to anyone who becomes a member of his new organization – the Dallas Buyers Club – for a $400.00 membership fee.

Big Pharma is not pleased by this ploy and neither is the FDA.  Thus begins a series of maneuverings in an effort to shut down Ron and his Buyers Club scheme.  Now Ron moves from unsavory hustler to a Robin Hood like hero of the gay community with help from Rayon, and an unsuspecting Dr. Saks (the unscrupulous Woodroof stole a bunch of her Rx pads and has been writing his business subscriptions for drugs under her name).

Strange as it may seem, “Dallas Buyers Club” is a somewhat transformative movie story, in that an unlikable protagonist assumes hero-like status at the end of the film.  The characters may not be my cup of tea, but there is no doubt in my mind that Matthew McConaghey will be receiving an Oscar nomination come January 2014 for his towering performance, warts and all, as Ron Woodroof.   His nomination is a fitting testament to his skill and talent as an actor.  He will also be joined on the Oscar nomination candidates list by Jared Leto for a Best Supporting Oscar nomination as Rayon, the transvestite and business partner of Woodroof.  Other movies have employed a variation of similar points of friendship and tolerance coming to the fore in telling their stories.  The biggest difference is they don’t have McConaghey and Leto, and the cast the of “Dallas Buyers Club”.

“Dallas Buyers Club” opened nationwide earlier this month.