Written and directed by Mike Leigh

StarringImelda Staunton, Phil Davis, Ruth Sheen

British writer-director Mike Leigh’s films focus on average working-class English characters that prove to be anything but ordinary. His world view may be on the bleak side, but it is suffused with a rare humanism. Vera Drake (Best Picture winner at the Venice Film Festival) is Leigh’s most accessible work since 1996’s Secrets & Lies (some of his hard-core fans may find it a bit “soft” in fact), a beautifully performed, toweringly empathetic story about a woman naively caught up in a 1950s abortion scandal.

Vera Drake (an amazing Imelda Staunton), is a relentlessly cheerful mother hen who takes care of the sick (“What you need now is a nice, hot cup of tea”), invites down-on-their-luck neighbors to supper, works tirelessly as a domestic for three different employers, and still has the time and energy to prepare dinner nightly for her husband (Phil Davis) and two grown children (Alex Kelly and Daniel Mays). Though not well off, the Drakes are reasonably comfortable, as close-knit a family as any in Leigh’s oeuvre (which includes the powerful All or Nothing).

For some 20 years, we learn, Vera has been “helping young girls in trouble” (read: terminating their pregnancies), perhaps because she herself was once forced to get an abortion. When a client has complications and nearly dies, the police step in to investigate. Vera’s role in the tragic chain of events is exposed and she is arrested – on the very night her daughter plans to announce her engagement.

Vera’s unmasking and detainment make for a mournful, moving last act. A genuine caregiver, she doesn’t consider what she does as abortion (“that’s not what I do,” she protests), but the legal system sees it differently. One wishes Leigh had given Vera at least one impassioned speech in defense of her actions (he deflects a certain amount of criticism of her character by revealing she never charged for her services), but this is 1950, not 2004, and Vera is no Norma Rae. Staunton’s performance (Best Actress, Venice), a model of economy, is a heart-tugging tour de force. (Pay particular attention to the scene where she is forced to remove her wedding ring at the police station.) We feel for her, no matter where we stand on the issue of a woman’s right to choose. Starts Oct. 22 at the La Jolla Village Cinemas

Directed by Istvan Szabo

Written by Ronald Harwood

Starring Annette Bening, Jeremy Irons, Lucy Punch

In the delightful, stylishly done Being Julia, adapted by Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) from W. Somerset Maugham’s 1937 novella Theatre, Annette Bening finally finds the plum role that has eluded her since winning the Best Actress Oscar for American Beauty. Her Julia Lambert, reigning queen of the London theater circa 1938, is slaying audiences in a play melodramatically titled Farewell My Love, but the artistic and financial success it has brought her – and her supportive, asexual business-manager husband, Michael (Jeremy Irons) – has begun to ring hollow. In the thick of a midlife crisis, Julia thinks she is in desperate need of a holiday, but in reality simply wants “something to happen.”

Her wish comes true when she makes the acquaintance of Tom Fennell (Shaun Evans), a twenty-something Yank, who professes to be her biggest fan. She is easily seduced by the ambitious young American, and for a while finds the distraction – and the sex – enormously fulfilling (since they lead separate lives, Michael doesn’t interfere, perhaps realizing her affair is good for business). Very quickly, however, Julia learns that Tom is the worst kind of gold-digging opportunist – he is not only accepting her money and gifts, but is secretly romancing a much younger woman, aspiring actress Avice Crichton (Lucy Punch). Disillusionment gives way to revenge when Tom urges Julia to audition Avice for a role in her new vehicle, Nowadays. Avice gets the part, setting into motion a comical variation of the Margo Channing-Eve Harrington dynamic from All About Eve, which involves her repeatedly upstaging her young co-star on the show’s opening night.

Director Istvan Szabo (Sunshine, Mephisto) coaxes from Bening an enormously winning performance. (That she is in the company of a gallery of rich supporting performances doesn’t hurt, either.) The actress, beautifully costumed and photographed, appears to be having a grand time playing this grand dame, and her giggles are contagious. (Could an Oscar nomination be far behind?) In most May-December romances, the older woman usually gets the short end of the stick. The frothy, utterly enjoyable Being Julia (a bit long at 104 minutes) reminds us that some women get better – and craftier – with age. Starts Oct. 22 at the Hillcrest Cinemas

Directed by David O. Russell

Written by Jeff Baena and David O. Russell

Starring Jude Law, Dustin Hoffman, Lily Tomlin

As a character says in Stephen Fry’s Bright Young Things, “one swallow does not a spring make.” Nor do good ideas necessarily make good films. I Heart [symbol] Huckabees, director/co-writer (with Jeff Baena) David O. Russell’s star-studded metaphysical comedy, has the right screwball sensibility, but for all its willingness to exist outside the box, it isn’t very funny – and is far too taken with itself to boot.

Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) is a (lousy) poet (“you rock, rock”) and rabid environmentalist who heads up an organization dedicated to fighting urban sprawl. At a crisis point personally and professionally – he’s convinced that golden-haired Brad Stand (an unusually relaxed Jude Law), an executive with Huckabees, a Wal-Mart-type chain, wants to depose him from the Open Spaces Coalition – Albert seeks the assistance of an “existential” detective agency run by goofy husband and wife team Bernard and Vivian Jaffe (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin). Thrown into this goofy mix are firefighter and amateur philosopher Tommy (Mark Wahlberg, a real surprise); Brad’s beautiful blonde girlfriend, Dawn (Naomi Watts), the current national spokesmodel for Huckabees; and sneaky French philosopher Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert).

Russell, writer-director of Three Kings and the hilarious Flirting with Disaster, doesn’t believe in dumbing things down, and for that we can be grateful. But too much of I Heart Huckabees (one of the worst titles of all time) is comedy of the look-at-me, aren’t-I-clever? variety. (It is funniest, ironically, in its slapstick moments.) His attempt to “peer under the surface of the Big Everything” by poking fun at New Age thinking is welcome, and he has assembled a top-notch cast to do his bidding (only Isabelle Huppert seems out of place – did we really need to see her getting humped from behind by the hairy-limbed Schwartzman?). But a comedy rises or falls on the strength of its humor, not its intellectual conceits. I Heart Huckabees has too much of the latter, and too little of the former. (Hillcrest Cinemas)

Kyle Counts is the film critic for the Gay & Lesbian Times