Clockwise from left: Damian Lewis in Homeland, Steve Buscemi in Boardwalk Empire, Andrew Lincoln in The Walking Dead, Jon Hamm in Mad Men, and Bryan Cranston on Breaking Bad. (Ed Johnson)

On Sunday night, as Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were making history as the first two women to successfully elbow out a male host for the Golden Globes, audiences took in an unprecedented display of girl power. With Lena Dunham winning for Best Actress in a Comedy, Girls taking Best Comedy, and Julianne Moore winning for Game Change, we trumpeted a new era ... one in which women could not only captivate an audience but do so with an unlikable protagonist. (Hannah Horvath is no Tony Soprano, but she can be plenty unappealing at times.)

Many of the night’s other nominees, including the stars of Veep and Nashville, fit into the same category, as did the un-nominated (but still there in spirit) Edie Falco in Nurse Jackie, Laura Linney in The Big C and Laura Dern in the criminally under-watched Enlightened, which premiered its second season this week. This last is perhaps the best example of these hard-to-watch heroines, with Ms. Dern playing the most delusional, self-righteous and self-martyring female antihero ever to traipse through premium cable.

It was a great night for rude, crude, progressive women. Unfortunately, it was an even better night for Bad Men.

In 2007, when Mad Men won the Globes for both Best Drama and Best Actor, AMC’s new prime-time show featuring gin-swilling 1960s philanderer Don Draper as its protagonist was still considered edgy for a non-premium cable show. Today, networks feature increasingly despicable, morally complex and utterly doomed characters, and the awards tend to follow. In the last several years, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has seen fit to nominate a serial killer (Dexter), a U.S. Marine-turned-Islamic terrorist (Sgt. Nicholas Brody in Homeland), several corrupt politicians (Enoch “Nucky” Thompson from Boardwalk Empire and Boss’s Tom Kane) and the world’s most dangerous high school science teacher (Breaking Bad’s Walter White) in its Best Drama and Best Actor categories.

This year, four of these ne’er-do-wells crowded the Best Actor box, with accolades for Homeland’s Damian Lewis, Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston, Mad Men’s Jon Hamm and Boardwalk’s Steve Buscemi. The only exception to the rule: the disgruntled-but-ultimately righteous Will McAvoy from The Newsroom. God save us when an Aaron Sorkin antihero is the closest we get to a good guy.

The rest are endemic of a new trend in millennial TV protagonists—men who are, if not quite villains, then at least Bad Men. At best, our guy is an immoral misanthrope and a latent misogynist. At worst, he’s a sociopath, one who may or may not be running an international drug cartel. Or a terrorist ring. If you’re lucky, he’s merely a serial killer who kills other killers. And the scary thing is: we relate to them. We empathize. And if they don’t already hate their wives and children, not to worry—we do. How can we not, what with the missus harping about domestic nonsense when there is a meth empire to run or a presidential front-runner to assassinate?

It’s not just awards-season accolades that reflect the shift away from shows about good guys: Homeland, Breaking Bad and Dexter beat their top ratings last season. The Walking Dead surprised even its biggest fans by shattering basic cable numbers with its season-three premiere, which saw an audience of 10.9 million total viewers, the “biggest telecast for any drama series in basic cable history,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

It’s not hard to see what attracts today’s audience to these characters. For the first time in our history, the majority of men will not be able to surpass their fathers in wealth or status. With the recession, record job losses and lack of affordable health care, the Great Emasculation is well underway. Thus our need for men who at least take a stand, for good or ill, men whose nihilism often stems from psychic trauma. Men who, if not kind or ethical, survive and even flourish under dismal conditions. They might not be heroes, but we respect them.

Unlike, say, their horrible wives.

Take, for instance, Jessica Brody, the wife on Homeland played by Morena Baccarin. Not only did she cheat on Sgt. Brody during his eight years in captivity and after he returned, she pestered him for “the truth” throughout season one, only to freak out about his embrace of Islam and finally kick him to the curb. Meanwhile, Brody tried—he really did—to be a good husband and father even as he plotted his terror attack. If only Jessica hadn’t been so nosy, if only his daughter Dana had shown him a little bit more respect, maybe he wouldn’t have felt the need to run off with a bipolar C.I.A. agent.

Which isn’t to say that the protagonists of these shows ever voice any misogynistic tendencies. They don’t have to. It’s the programs themselves that turn the viewers against long-suffering wives, female colleagues and blameless children. A recent Huffington Post article on the 21 Worst Characters on television included the love interests on The Walking Dead, Mad Men and Boardwalk Empire. These shows, along with Breaking Bad and Homeland, all portray nosy, ineffectual matriarchs who are simultaneously ice-cold bitches, helpless victims and puritanical enforcers. We resent these women for the usual reasons women are often resented: because they are nosy, because they aren’t affectionate enough, because can’t keep their husbands from straying, because they are not always perfect mothers. Of course, they are driven to the brink by their husbands’ actions. But in a world that glorifies amorality, women are the spoilsports. They might be “good” (at least in relation to their husbands), but that makes them worse than bad. It makes them sneaky, shrewish and thoroughly unsympathetic victims.

Walter White is a Bad Men:

But Skylar is kind of worse:

Even worse, they are whores.

For instance, even though both Jessica Brody and Lori Grimes had the moral loophole of thinking their husbands were dead, we can’t help but resent them for carrying on with their husbands’ best friends. Betty Draper and Skyler White are also guilty of the cardinal female sin of infidelity, which is much harder to swallow, somehow, then when their fellows stray. (Poor Walter White has been at least sexually faithful to his wife, only to have her retaliate for his drug dealing by having an affair with her boss.)

Despite the flagrant violence of these shows, the Bad Men still tend to put “family first,” long after they give up every other social convention. And if they lash out occasionally (Draper’s constant bordering-on-abusive-relationships with his paramours, including both his current and former wives) or engage in stalker-level harassment (Walter White breaking into the house of his separated wife and refusing to leave), we sympathize.

In December, a 26-year-old Long Island man named Jared Gurman got into a fight with his girlfriend of three and a half years. They were arguing about The Walking Dead. Mr. Gurman—who described himself on Facebook as “an underappreciated person,” who felt that he should be “making more money at work”—took out a .22-caliber semi-automatic rifle and shot his girlfriend in the back. She ended up with fractured ribs and a punctured lung and diaphragm, all for calling Mr. Gurman’s theory about the zombie apocalypse “ridiculous.” Fans of the show might recognize a certain irony: despite a plethora of semi-automatics and reasons to put one to his wife’s head, Rick Grimes never took a shot at his wife.

What a mensch!

2013 Golden Globes, Bill Murray

If you are too busy watching the Australian cycling thing and can't understand what the hell is going on with Twitter (honestly, we don't know who you follow, but no one on our feed actually bothers naming the winners of these things), here are the latest updates for the 2013 Golden Globe Awards.

Best Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER: Argo
Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Best Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER: Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty

Best Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER:

Best Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Les Mis

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture- Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Hugh Jackman, Les Mis

Best TV Series, Comedy or Musical
WINNER: GIRLS

Best Director
WINNER: Ben Affleck, Argo

Cecil B. DeMille's Lifetime Achievement Award/Freestyle Portion of Evening
WINNER: Jodie Foster

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Lena Dunham, Girls

Best Animated Feature Film
WINNER: Brave

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama
WINNER: Claire Danes, Homeland

Best Foreign Film
WINNER: Amour

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Don Cheadle, House of Lies

Best Screenplay
WINNER: Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
WINNER: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

Best Performance by a Supporting Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Ed Harris, Game Change

Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Kevin Costner, Hatfields & McCoys
(RUNNER-UP: Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Julianne Moore - Game Change

Best Television Series - Drama
WINNER: Homeland

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
WINNER: Christoph Waltz - Django Unchained

Best Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Mini-Series
WINNER: Maggie Smith - Downton Abbey

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama
WINNER: Damien Lewis - Homeland

Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Game Change

Best Original Song
WINNER: "Skyfall," Adele

Best Original Score - Motion Picture
WINNER: Life of Pi

Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
WINNER: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Lining Playbook (Also, best speech? Y/N?)

Golden Globe nom-toppers. (Various)

Not too many surprises this year in the nominations, announced today, for the 2013 Golden Globe Awards. This year, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler will be making history as the first female duo to host the ceremony, held on Jan. 13., but other than that, it's all Lincoln (seven nominations), Argo (five) and Django Unchained (ditto).

In television, we're looking at dramas like Game Change (five), Homeland (four, including one for "The Bear" Patinkin), Downton Abbey and, yikes ... how did The Newsroom (two) manage to get on there? That's more nominations than Mad Men (one) received! Comedies remained from last year: Girls, 30 Rock and Modern Family topped the chart. HBO shot to the top of the chart with 17 nominations total, and in a distant second place came Showtime, with seven.

Read the full list below:

Best Motion Picture, Drama

Argo
Django Unchained
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Zero Dark Thirty

Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Les Misérables
Moonrise Kingdom
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Silver Linings Playbook

Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama

Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
Richard Gere, Arbitrage
John Hawkes, The Sessions
Joaquin Phoenix, The Master
Denzel Washington, Flight

Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy

Jack Black, Bernie
Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook
Hugh Jackman, Les Misérables
Ewan McGregor, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Bill Murray, Hyde Park on the Hudson

Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama

Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty
Marion Cotillard, Rust and Bone
Helen Mirren, Hitchcock
Naomi Watts, The Impossible
Rachel Weisz, The Deep Blue Sea

Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy

Emily Blunt, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Judi Dench, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
Maggie Smith, Quartet
Meryl Streep, Hope Springs

Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture

Alan Arkin, Argo
Leonardo DiCaprio, Django Unchained
Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master
Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln
Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture

Amy Adams, The Master
Sally Field, Lincoln
Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables
Helen Hunt, The Sessions
Nicole Kidman, The Paperboy

Best Director

Ben Affleck, Argo
Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty
Ang Lee, Life of Pi
Steven Spielberg, Lincoln
Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained

Best Screenplay, Motion Picture

Mark Boal, Zero Dark Thirty
Tony Kushner, Lincoln
David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook
Quentin Taratino, Django Unchained
Chris Terrio, Argo

Find out which star's daughter is Miss Golden Globe

Best Foreign Language Film

Amour (Austria)
A Royal Affair (Denmark)
The Intouchables (France
Kon-Tiki (Norway)
Rust and Bone  (France)

Best Animated Feature Film

Brave
Frankenweenie
Hotel Transylvania
Rise of the Guardians
Wreck-It Ralph

Best Original Song, Motion Picture

"For You," Act of Valor, Monty Powell & Keith Urban
"Not Running Anymore," Stand Up Guys, Jon Bon Jovi
"Safe and Sound," The Hunger Games, Taylor Swift. John Paul White, Joy Williams & T Bone Burnett
"Skyfall," Skyfall, Adele & Paul Epworth
"Suddenly," Les Misérables, Claude-Michel Schonberg & Alain Boublil

Best Original Score, Motion Picture

Mychael Danna, Life of Pi
Alexandre Desplat, Argo
Dario Marianelli, Anna Karenina
Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek, Reinhold Heil, Cloud Atlas
John Williams, Lincoln

Best TV Movie or Miniseries

Game Change
The Girl
Hatfields & McCoys
The Hour
Political Animals

Best TV Series, Drama

Boardwalk Empire
Breaking Bad
Downton Abbey
Homeland
The Newsroom

Best TV Series, Comedy

The Big Bang Theory
Episodes
Girls
Modern Family
Smash

Best Actor in a TV Series, Drama

Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire
Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad
Jeff Daniels, The Newsroom
Jon Hamm, Mad Men
Damian Lewis, Homeland

Best Actor, TV Series Comedy

Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock
Don Cheadle, House of Lies
Louis CK, Louie
Matt LeBlanc, Episodes
Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory

Best Actress in a TV Series, Drama

Connie Britton, Nashville
Glenn Close, Damages
Claire Danes, Homeland
Michelle Dockery, Downton Abbey
Julianna Marguiles, The Good Wife

Best Actress in a TV Series, Comedy

Zooey Deschanel, New Girl
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep
Lena Dunham, Girls
Tina Fey, 30 Rock
Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation

Best Actor in a Miniseries or TV Movie

Kevin Costner, Hatfields & McCoys
Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock
Woody Harrelson, Game Change
Toby Jones, The Girl
Clive Owen, Hemingway & Gellhorn

Best Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie

Julianne Moore, Game Change
Nicole Kidman, Hemingway & Gellhorn
Jessica Lange, American Horror Story: Asylum
Sienna Miller, The Girl
Sigourney Weaver, Political Animals

Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Mini-Series or TV Movie

Max Greenfield, New Girl
Ed Harris, Game Change
Danny Huston, Magic City
Mandy Patinkin, Homeland
Eric Stonestreet, Modern Family

Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or TV Movie

Hayden Panettiere, Nashville
Archie Panjabi, The Good Wife
Sarah Paulson, Game Change
Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey
Sofia Vergara, Modern Family

Cecile B. DeMille Award

Jodie Foster

Claire Danes and Damian Lewis (Getty Images)

No surprise here: Showtime has renewed its Emmy juggernaut Homeland for a third season of twelve episodes. Last night's episode was the series's highest-rated ever, with 1.75 million viewers. The show has continued to grow (and, critics say, stretch credulity a bit) since its Emmy win for Best Drama in September (a first for Showtime) immediately preceded the season launch. Hope you like Claire Danes and her shockingly emotive face--she'll be weeping for years to come!

Louis C.K. accepting one of his two new Emmys last night. (Getty Images)

No series has ever won five consecutive best series Emmys--and after four Best Drama wins in a row, the AMC period series fell to Showtime's counterterrorism thriller Homeland. The first-season drama made history of its own; it's the first Showtime series to win a top prize, after comedy series like Weeds and Nurse Jackie have failed to cross the finish line. (Also of note: not a single broadcast-TV series was nominated for Best Drama this year, and no broadcast series has won the prize since Fox's 24 in 2006.) 

Homeland also picked up prizes for its lead actress--Claire Danes, who had been heavily favored--and its lead actor, Damian Lewis, who beat longtime champ Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad and sentimental favorite/perennial loser Jon Hamm of Mad Men (no actor from Mad Men has ever won an Emmy). Homeland got a writing prize as well, while Boardwalk Empire won Best Directing for a second year in a row.

On the comedy side, familiar faces ruled the day, with ABC's Modern Family picking up a third consecutive prize against newer competition like HBO's Veep and Girls. The top acting prizes went to past winners Jon Cryer, who helped carry Two and a Half Men through the post-Charlie Sheen era, and Veep’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who's won twice before for two different shows (Seinfeld and The New Adventures of Old Christine). Notably, the two supporting-actor trophies on the comedy side both went to Modern Family performers who have won before, Eric Stonestreet and Julie Bowen, whose speech was interrupted by castmate and fellow nominee Sofia Vergara screaming from her seat.

But the story of the night may have been edgy comedian Louis C.K., who won two Emmys for writing two different projects: his series Louie (the first time a show has beaten Modern Family during that show's run) and his special Louis C.K. Live at the Beacon Theatre, a project that originated online and that, as the Observer first reported, was brought to television with the express purpose of winning an Emmy. Mission accomplished!

The prison escape movie—a tired genre—gets some fresh energy in The Escapist, a compelling, carefully written and totally gripping film from the U.K. that is acted with naturalism and conviction by a smashing cast. Made by the Irish Film Board with funds from the National Lottery reserved for the arts (why can’t we do that here?), The Escapist has already won numerous awards on the festival circuit, and I can see why.

It stars the versatile, always astounding Brian Cox as Frank Perry, a lifer whose grim routine changes when he receives a letter informing him that his only daughter is desperately ill after a drug overdose. Determined to break out and get to London for one last visit with the only person he’s ever loved unconditionally, Frank plans a daring escape with the aid of three other convicts (Joseph Fiennes, Liam Cunningham from the film Hunger, and Brazilian musician Seu Jorge, who are all perfect)—staking his life and expertise on a maneuver that involves elaborate prison blueprints to connect the air vents behind the dryers in the laundry with the shower drains that lead out through the sewers. Nothing unusual yet, but wait. Director Rupert Wyatt, making his feature-film debut, juxtaposes the clandestine eight-day digging and the clandestine rehearsals for the big break with the actual escape itself, mixing up time and action. This gives away some of the results too early, but there are still unexpected snafus and personality conflicts to detour the five prisoners before they reach the underground subway tracks that lead to the Charing Cross tube station. And, miracle of miracles, Mr. Wyatt does it without the usual CGI and high-tech special effects that make these epics look preposterous. Everything in The Escapist looks real for a reason. When the actors dig, they are really doing it all themselves. No painted on dirt or oil-brushed sweat here. This movie pays off, but looks like it was hell to make.

The great thing that emerges from the debris is the human element. You never know more than you should. You don’t even know what these men are in custody for. But you do see the hidden emotional elements, believed to be dead forever in their rusted souls, that rise to the surface in the interdependence of their group effort. Even hardened criminals have a heart. For Frank, redemption is triggered by the arrival of a terrified new cell mate named Lacey, played by Dominic Cooper, the young Lothario from both the wonderful The History Boys and the moronic Mamma Mia! Against his will, Frank is reminded of himself as a lost youth. Lacey is brutally beaten and raped by a monstrous sexual predator named Tony (Steven Mackintosh), the junkie brother of the “wing king” Rizza (Damian Lewis), and Rizza’s sadistic control of the prison population slowly turns into a wedge between the escape artists and their freedom. Frank resents this distraction from his goal, but here is a kid who clearly needs protection, and in odd ways he never thought possible, Frank finds in Lacey a mirror to lost innocence and a chance to regain some of his own value as a man. Ignoring Rizza’s warning (“You got one thing going for you, Frank—you’re too old to die young”), Frank makes a decision that changes the future of his own existence—and the outcome of the escape. No spoilers, please.

Physically violent and psychologically probing, The Escapist reminds me more than any other film of the sensational, groundbreaking TV series Oz, but it’s not really an action film. There’s not much excitement in the set pieces, and the restraint in both the direction and in Mr. Cox’s performance creates an austere depiction of the tedium of incarceration as well as the courage and strength needed to cope with a life sentence. As minimalism, it’s more Robert Bresson than Clint Eastwood. My only caveat is that the cross-cutting out of sequence sometimes interrupts the flow of the narrative. (Why aren’t filmmakers content to tell a story chronologically? Is that considered too “old-fashioned”?) Still, for a first feature, it’s a fine piece of work that passes 102 minutes swiftly, and Rupert Wyatt shows great promise. You won’t feel the need to escape from The Escapist.

rreed@observer.com

Carefully adapted by Mr. Spragg and his wife Virginia, An Unfinished Life retains all of the book’s rich and vivid details, while providing a keenly observed dossier on the strange, resilient ways people in the modern American West feel and talk and think. It’s literature with a camera, thanks to the sensitive direction of Lasse Hallström, who proved with such films as What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Shipping News and The Cider House Rules that he has a special pipeline to the vagaries of the human heart. No matter how diverse his characters might be, he finds the key to unlock their deepest secrets, and they don’t get more diverse than in An Unfinished Life.

The story, abbreviated: Mr. Redford plays a codger named Einer Gilkyson, a scruffy rancher in the wilds of Wyoming who came from the land and devotes his life to the land despite the fact that in these changing times, the failing land doesn’t love back. Ten years ago, his treasured son Griffin died in a car crash, and Einer has never recovered from the grief. Now he is also burdened by the job of caretaker to his oldest friend, Korean War buddy and most loyal ranch hand, Mitch (Morgan Freeman), who was ravaged and crippled by a bear. Einer’s problems double with the unexpected arrival of Jean Gilkyson (Ms. Lopez), his dead son’s wife, who has traveled from a trailer park in Iowa to the wilderness to escape an abusive boyfriend, dragging along her 11-year-old daughter, Griff (Becca Gardner). Einer is both furious and curious. He has no use for his estranged daughter-in-law, whom he still blames for the car accident that killed his son, but Griff is a granddaughter he never knew he had, the only thing left of Griffin, and even the bearer of his name.

With no means of support, Jean gets a job waiting on tables in a local café and begins a new relationship with the local sheriff (Josh Lucas), while Griff hangs out with the two old men and learns to ride a horse, bale hay, drive a pickup truck and give Mitch his morphine injections. As the old man starts to thaw and slowly bond with the child, a lot of humor and humanity shine through. But then the grizzly that mauled Mitch returns with a taste for blood, Jean’s sadistic boyfriend Roy from Iowa tracks her down, Einer lands in the hospital, and everyone is tested.

Doesn’t sound like much, but it’s the complexity of the wounded characters and the way they find the missing chords in their imperfect lives through each other that gives this film its depth and substance. Confronting inner conflicts with courage and grit, each character finds his or her own soul. Jean rediscovers her own strength and resourcefulness as a woman, gaining self-respect in the process. Einer lives through his pain to rekindle a compassion for others he thought he’d surrendered forever. Mitch conquers his deepest fears by facing the bear that destroyed his life. Griff is no longer a lost, leftover person, but a growing woman with a hopeful future. Cynics often charge Mr. Hallström with sentimentality, but here is a director for whom telling a story always comes first. He’s strong on narrative action, which has become a lost art in contemporary cinema, yet he always takes the time to let his characters develop naturally before your eyes, almost as though you’re watching the film in “real” time. This requires real actors, and an ensemble as polished, skilled and generous as the one in An Unfinished Life is as good as it gets in an age when most casts seem to be appearing in entirely different films, even if they’re onscreen together at the same time.

In his most rugged and ragged role in years, Mr. Redford plays Einer to the hilt in his best understated way. In Mr. Freeman, he has the perfect partner. They can parse an emotion down to its most revealing subtext and move you deeply when you don’t even know why. And they’re as funny a mismatched pair of over-the-hill cowboys as Butch and Sundance 40 years on. When Griff wonders aloud if they’re gay, the myriad reactions from this pair of wild cards begin down in the boots with surprise, roll out of the stirrups with side-splitting hilarity, and end up hiding the kind of mutual affection that two aging saddle tramps would equate with eating quiche. Both innocent and worldly beyond her years, young Becca Gardner as Griff reminded me of an adolescent Jennifer Jason Leigh.

As for J. Lo, I must admit she reveals a seldom-tapped reserve of calloused sweet uncertainty that is admirable; challenged by formidable company in every scene, she holds her own corner of the ring. No knockout here—from anybody. In smaller roles, valuable assistance is offered by Camryn Manheim as a salty waitress, Josh Lucas as the man with the badge who is a nice contrast to the usual redneck fuzz in books and movies set in Wyoming, and Damian Lewis as the violent boyfriend. Mr. Hallström guides them all to seamless victory in a film about love, loss, family, friendship, forgiveness and the elusive nature of redemption. I don’t know about you, but I don’t see that kind of movie often. Do not miss this one. An Unfinished Life is powerful, intriguing, thought-provoking and unforgettable.

Psycho

The previously noted Damian Lewis, who plays the heel in An Unfinished Life—proving again there’s no such thing as a small role of no significance when a big actor gives it his own special stamp—is again on view in the odd, disturbing psychological drama, Keane. This intense portrait of a tightly coiled man in crisis coming rapidly unraveled on every level is a bigger showcase for Mr. Lewis’ talent and range, which is vast. A British actor familiar to audiences at the Royal Shakespeare Company who can play Americans with no trace of an accent, Mr. Lewis has what looks like a bright future in American films.

In Keane, he portrays the tormented inner psyche of a man whom we never really come to know, but whose desperation is utterly compelling. Keane, a handsome man in his 30’s whose appealing looks have been diminished by sleepless nights of terror, anxiety and panic, wanders dazed through the city searching for his daughter, who has disappeared without a trace in a bus station. Jittery, mumbling and talking to himself, he looks more like a psycho who has lost track of reality than a father who is trying to restore it. As the film progresses, he grows increasingly more unbalanced, living in a cheap hotel, drifting in and out of taverns, snorting cocaine and returning repeatedly to the terminal to find his daughter’s kidnapper.

Then he meets a single mother with a young daughter of her own, broke and disillusioned and friendless. While Keane reaches out to them and takes a small step toward normalcy, he also becomes unnaturally obsessed with the little girl. While the mother (the astonishingly talented Amy Ryan) tries to sort through the detritus of her own life and her relationship with a man in another city whom she is afraid to return to, Keane is allowed into their world as friend and confidant. In time, he becomes a kidnapper himself, willing someone else’s child to replace his own lost daughter, who might not have existed in the first place. The unexpected finale is as lovely as it is surprising.

This is the third film for director Lodge Kerrigan, a New Yorker with a distinct style and vision, a special way of examining lives under stress and an emphatic feeling for actors. He makes you constantly question your own response to what you’re seeing, until you don’t know what’s going on or whom to trust. The frantic and unnerving first half of Keane exudes a hypnotic sense of claustrophobia, as Mr. Kerrigan’s camera traces every nerve in Mr. Lewis’ face; then the film relaxes into a triangular structure (man on fire, mother in distress, daughter in sweet confusion), but the director never loses his hammerlock hold on the audience’s emotions. The sense of impending horror and potential tragedy never wavers, which makes the almost placid ending doubly baffling as the light surface hides deeper, darker truths. A few things are certain: Damian Lewis is on a roll, Lodge Kerrigan is a director worth watching, and Keane is a small wonder in a season of big but deadly, brainless blockbusters.

A Lush Life

An early cabaret season is off to a smashing start with the welcome “comeback” of jazz icon Annie Ross, every Wednesday and some Saturdays stretching into mid-October at Danny’s Skylight Room on West 46th Street, in the heart of Restaurant Row. Call 212-265-8133 for showtimes and reservations. The first can be erratic, and the latter is imperative; this living legend is packing them in. From the tongue-tickling “Twisted,” her own signature classic (penned with saxophone wizard Wardell Gray), through the tricky vocalese lyrics that she added to solos in the Count Basie band, pausing here and there for dreamy ballads like “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” Ms. Ross is a master class in how to sing jazz inside out, upside and down. Recently, the opportunities to hear her do this have been rare. A lifetime spent dancing recklessly on the lip of a volcano has compromised the old vocal cords, but I don’t know any other singer about whom it can be said that while the pyrotechnics of perfect pitch and tone may have left the room, it couldn’t matter less.

Talking in tempo on “One Meat Ball”, she demonstrates for all aspiring jazz singers the value of being an accomplished actress in the bargain. On songs by Victor Herbert, she doesn’t need two octaves to break your heart. She is fearless enough to sing Lorenz Hart’s bittersweet lyrics to “Nobody’s Heart” without a piano. Ms. Ross has a syncopated swing that carries you aloft on a low, lush voice that changes notes like the valves in a trombone. She has warmth and feeling and an almost spiritual connection with sophisticated lyrics that cannot be taught by a vocal coach with a metronome. Her sense of time and rhythm will fracture you. It has always been thus.

Sailing from the highlands of Scotland into the lowbrows of Hollywood at the age of 4, imitating her legendary aunt Ella (Finian’s Rainbow) Logan—brogue and all—in the “Our Gang” comedies, playing Judy Garland’s scene-stealing kid sister in the MGM musical Presenting Lily Mars, moving on to the jazz circuit, working with everyone from Billie Holiday to Miles Davis, owning her own famous club in London, marrying black drummer Kenny Clarke when such things were politically unsafe, flirting with drugs before rehab was so fashionable that it got you a spot on Dave Letterman, making history as the centerpiece of a revolutionary vocal group called Lambert, Hendricks and Ross in the 1950’s, selling out from Covent Garden to Birdland, disappearing in the 1960’s, then back from nowhere, starring in movies for Robert Altman, falling down and picking herself up and starting all over again: The story of her life could—and will—fill a book, and since nobody knows the saga better, she’s writing it herself. Between chapters, and a new CD called Let Me Sing! (out this week), Annie Ross is now making music again.

At 75, she’s still beautiful, glamorous and full of sass. Nourished by a pinspot in a pomegranate-red designer gown, singing Jimmie Lunceford’s jump tune “’Taint What You Do (It’s the Way That You Do It),” she makes time stand still. And until you hear her sing an emotionally charged “Lush Life,” you haven’t lived at all. Duke Ellington used to define a successful performance as “Being in the right place at the right time, and doing the right thing before the right people.” Annie Ross did it all, and she did it before its time. Here we go again, listening and loving and learning something. But don’t take my word for it. Go directly to Danny’s some Wednesday night and you’ll see what I mean.