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Diane Carson

English professor Jim Bennett has a dual personality. By day, he lectures university students in an animated way on the modern novel. By night, he debases himself and everything he professes to believe by repeatedly wagering every dollar he has and all he can borrow, up to a quarter million, until he's stripped bare. He embraces peril and courts disaster.

The best horror films translate nerve-jangling fears into frightening scenarios, tapping into conscious as well as suppressed anxieties: the malevolent stranger, the elusive intruder, or the evil doppelganger. The deliriously unnerving Australian film "The Babadook" capitalizes on those terrors, probing the dark, repressed unconscious of widow Amelia who struggles to care for and about her increasingly difficult son Samuel.

In the opening scene of "Foxcatcher," director Bennett Miller establishes his observational cinematic style. Wrestlers Mark and Dave Schultz, both 1984 Olympic gold medalists, physically grapple, at first just as part of a typical training session. Then, with increasing tension, the interaction segues into a serious psychological contest of will and character.

The much anticipated third installment in "The Hobbit" series, "The Battle of the Five Armies," wraps up Bilbo Baggins' fine adventure with two-and-a-half hours of personal and political drama. Gandalf anchors the multifaceted conflicts-- fighting the enticement of gold and power, struggles with morality, the critical importance of friendship and one's word--in short, dedication to good over evil.

In 1995, distraught over the sudden death of her beloved mother and a painful divorce caused by her own immoderate indulgence in casual sex and drug use, 26-year-old Cheryl Strayed impetuously and foolishly decided to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Somewhere along its 1100 miles from Mexico to Oregon she figured she might find herself.

Swedish Director Ruben Östlund introduces Tomas, Ebba, their son and their daughter beginning a week-long skiing vacation in the idyllic looking French Alps. Taking a lunch break on an outdoor veranda, they and others are shocked when an avalanche, intentionally set off by the ski resort for snow control, heads what appears to be straight for them.

The latest installment in "The Hunger Games" franchise, "Mockingjay -- Part 1," works hard to ramp up plot intensity, all the while building to a resolution that will come only a year from now in "Part 2." That it succeeds as well as it does comes largely from Jennifer Lawrence's charisma as Katniss Everdeen: strong, self-confident, and principled.

Director Laura Poitras begins her documentary "Citizenfour" with Edward Snowden cautiously and surreptitiously contacting her. Signing his encrypted email Citizenfour, Snowden invites Poitras' involvement in revelations of covert NSA surveillance on millions of Americans, among others, scrutiny that the NSA categorically denies before Congress.

A revisionist addition to the western genre, "The Homesman" is a curious film. Its title suggests an emphasis on the cantankerous George Briggs though its focus more often falls on women of the plains, notably Mary Bee Cuddy who saves Briggs' from certain death if he'll agree to travel east, from Nebraska to Iowa, delivering three women driven insane.

The 23 Annual Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival continues through Sunday, November 23 with a diverse feast of films on offer. Cinema St. Louis' programs organized under the theme "Race in America: The Black Experience" include one of my all-time favorite films: director Martin Ritt's 1972 narrative feature "Sounder" starring Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield.

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