BY GENE TRIPLETT

HONOLULU — Glancing out the hotel window at the lush green sprawl of golf course lined with palm and banyan trees and all manner of exotic flowering plant life ending at the white

Josh Hutcherson, Luis Guzman, Vanessa Hudgens, Dwayne Johnson.

 sands of Waikiki Beach and the sparkling blue Pacific beyond, it’s hard to imagine anyone finding hardship and trouble in this paradise.

But that’s what Dwayne Johnson managed when he was a student a Honolulu’s William McKinley High School.

“I wanted to go back to my roots,” the former WWE champion-turned-film-actor told a room full of reporters during a recent press day at the Kahala Hotel to promote the release of “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.”

“It was important to me,” said Johnson, a bit of his elaborate Polynesian tattoo showing beneath the short sleeve of the form-fitting black T-shirt that covered his heroic muscles like a second skin.

“I did a lot of my growing up here in Hawaii,” he said. “It always represented struggle. It was here in Hawaii I had the notion in my head, ‘Well, I can change my life with my hands.’ Meaning maybe I could build my body and I could become someone and change my family’s situation. So it was all driven based off that.

“And it all started in the McKinley weight room. It all started when I was 14 years old as a freshman. I started playing football. I was getting in trouble all the time. I was doing a lot of things that I shouldn’t have been doing. I still had coaches who believed in my potential, but it all started in that weight room.”

Facing the past

So, one of the first things Johnson did when he returned to Hawaii to promote “Journey 2” — much of which was filmed on location here — was revisit his old school.

“And I went back unannounced,” he said. “The principal knew. We went in, and the beauty of that weight room is, it’s still a mess, it’s still dirty, it’s still rusted out. There’s still electrical tape holding together a lot of the equipment. Nothing has changed in years. And that’s the beauty of it, because it’s never been about boosters and donating a lot of money, donating this beautiful space. It’s about kids getting after it, getting better in that dirty place. Big chicken skin moment.”

The surprised students he spoke to were no doubt impressed with this hometown-boy-made-good, as he’s now one of the biggest box office draws in the world with gross film revenues in excess of $2.1 million, and yet another potential blockbuster opening in theaters Friday.

“I enjoy making a movie that the entire family can go see,” Johnson said of “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.”

“In this case it’s a big adventure, an epic adventure. My first 3-D movie. Written and directed for 3-D, written and made for 3-D, not converted. There’s a lot of reasons to go back into this space. When you do a family movie right, there’s a character on the screen that every member of the family can relate to. That’s a cool and special thing. I like that.”

‘Journey’ continues

“Journey 2” is the second installment in a Jules Verne-inspired franchise that began with 2008′s “Journey to the Center of the Earth.” Josh Hutcherson returns as intrepid teenage explorer Sean Anderson, and Johnson makes his first appearance in the series as Sean’s new stepfather, Hank.

The running plot of the series thus far has had Sean setting out on dangerous quests to prove Verne’s 19th-century novels were more fact than fiction. This time the story begins when Sean receives a coded distress signal from a mysterious island where no island should exist.

Unable to stop Sean from tracking the signal to its source, stepfather Hank joins the quest that takes them to the South Pacific, where they hire a helicopter pilot (Luis Guzman) and his daughter (Vanessa Hudgens) as guides in their search for the lost island and its lone human inhabitant, Sean’s explorer grandfather, Alexander (Michael Caine).

What they encounter is a place of stunning beauty, volcanoes, mountains of gold, giant carnivorous lizards and miniature elephants, to name just a few of the mind-boggling sights.

And along the way, each of the characters learns in his or her own way to accept and appreciate others for who they are, and let go of negative first impressions.

Measure of success

“They don’t all have to make hundreds of millions of dollars as long as they’re good,” Johnson said of the films he’s made, which include “The Scorpion King,” “Walking Tall,” “Race to Witch Mountain,” “Fast Five” and the upcoming “G.I. Joe: Retaliation.”

“And in this case, we’ve got a shot at making hundreds of millions of dollars and also just making a good movie that has some value in it,” Johnson said.

Of course, the actor also known as “The Rock” made his first millions following the family tradition set by his father and grandfather in the world of professional wrestling. But that was only after earning a scholarship to the University of Miami, where he played on the school’s national championship football team in 1991, playing again for the title in 1992 and ’95.

It was after graduation that he developed “The Rock” character, performing to more than 10 million fans a week on television, plus domestic and international live audiences that often topped 70,000 people. He was regularly selling out such venues as the Houston Astrodome, Madison Square Garden and the Toronto Sky Dome.

His autobiography, “The Rock Says,” became a New York Times best-seller, and he even had a platinum-selling album with his WWE music compilation, performing with such artists and Wyclef Jean.

Return to wrestling

But as his movie career grew, “The Rock’s” wrestling fans saw less and less of their hero in the ring — until recently. In 2011, Johnson renewed his relationship with the WWE, hosting WrestleMania XXVII and the main event for WWE’s November 2011 “Survivor Series” at Madison Square Garden.

“I quietly retired from wrestling, and for those who don’t know, I’m going back,” Johnson said.

On April 1, Johnson will be the star attraction at WrestleMania XXVIII in his hometown of Miami, Fla. He will face WWE superstar John Cena.

“The goal is to go back for one night and create the biggest match in the history of the WWE,” he said.

“We could create something for the fans, plus I was passionate about the business, I loved it.”

And Johnson isn’t worried about possibly damaging that movie star face of his.

“Yes, well, the beauty of that is we control everything,” he said with that dazzling grin of his. “That’s just the way it is. It’s a crazy business. You go in with all (good) intentions to entertain the audience. But things happen.”

So it seems 2012 is a year of comebacks for this man who began his journey in a rundown part of paradise.

“Never did I imagine that I would be able to come back (to Hawaii) and not only come back, but come back as someone,” Johnson said. “That was something that I wanted so badly, and not only that, but come back and bring a huge movie here, and what that does for the local economy, and what that does for local businesses. And that’s special. That’s really special.”

There’s a red-dirt grittiness in the voice of James Garner that marks him an unmistakable son of Oklahoma, and it comes through with honest if at times pugnacious clarity in the actor’s tell-all autobiography, “The Garner Files: A Memoir” (Simon & Schuster, $25.99).

Co-written with veteran editor Jon Winokur (appropriately enough, author of several “Portable Curmudgeon” collections), Garner’s frank recollections offer up a warts-and-all portrait of a man who achieved remarkable success in film and TV even as he scorned movie moguls, scoffed at high-flown acting techniques and waged court battles with studio bean counters that many warned might ruin his career.

Ever the rebel and outspoken liberal, Garner now looks back on his successful career with an uncommon willingness to own up to his own flaws as well as to point out those of his fellow stars. And that makes for some juicy anecdotes in this highly entertaining, behind-the-scenes show-biz saga.

Born James Scott Bumgarner in Norman on April 7, 1928, the actor who later adopted the stage name James Garner endured a rough-and-tumble life before he discovered acting. His half-Cherokee mother died when he was five, his alcoholic father bounced around from job to job and his wicked stepmother – whom Garner simply calls “the redhead” – beat and humiliated James and his brothers regularly. That is, until one day when James snapped and nearly strangled her to death.

After a stint in the merchant marine, an injury-plagued football career with the OU Sooners and an enlistment in the Army in which he saw combat and was wounded in Korea, Garner decided in his mid-20s to try acting. Small Broadway parts led to auditions in L.A. and his big break – being cast as the witty, free-wheeling gambler Bret Maverick in the late -1950s TV Western series, “Maverick.”

Garner minces no words in describing his legal battles with Warner Bros. over what he viewed as short pay for a lucrative, hit series. So he left the show and went to court against the studio to win his contract release and a cash settlement. He would do the same again the late 1970s, suing Universal Studios over money issues related to his hugely popular TV series, “The Rockford Files.”

While many advisers cautioned Garner that his litigiousness might scuttle his acting opportunities, the iconoclastic Okie notes with relish that these “rebellions” never kept him from getting acting work. Indeed, he was among the first in his profession to move easily between TV roles and big motion picture projects (resulting in a film resume that features roles in more than 50 movies – including landmark parts in “The Great Escape,” “The Americanization of Emily,” “Grand Prix,” “Victor Victoria” and an Oscar nomination for 1985’s “Murphy’s Romance”).

Garner is brutally honest about his own shortcomings (in fact, he boasts of being a thoroughly untrained actor and says he hates talking about his “craft”). And he’s equally frank in noting the flaws of his co-stars. He describes Charles Bronson as “a pain in the ass,” says he admired Steve McQueen but hated his egotistical preening, and describes how he once nearly got into a fistfight with Lee Marvin over that actor’s abuse of women and alcohol.

“The Garner Files” is rich with other star-studded anecdotes (one of the funniest concerning Gary Cooper’s penny-pinching ways) and loads of “outtakes” – some flattering and some not so – from family, friends and colleagues revealing the rigorously honest, down-to-earth personality of the man – now 83 years old – that many film scholars consider the greatest underrated actor of his era.

- Dennis King

This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is:

“Poolboy: Drowning Out the Fury”

Is it a satire on uber-action movies such as “Rambo,” or is just a self-consciously clunky piece of moviemaking hoisted on its own satiric barbs? That’s a puzzle that’s posed but never really answered by the super-bad “Poolboy: Drowning Out the Fury,” due out on DVD Tuesday.

The cheeky promo material for the film claims that it was originally made in 1990 but was so terrible that the studio refused to release it. The supposedly “unearthed lost movie” – a hodgepodge of mockumentary devises, thudding parody, purposefully clumsy special effects, tasteless comedy and wink-wink, ham-handed acting – has all the markings of a straight-to-video cult wannabe.

Directed by TV actor-cum-auteur Garrett Brawth (best known for a Bud Light Super Bowl commercial) with frat-boy zeal, “Poolboy” seems designed to offend on all levels.

Marshaling the talents of name stars Kevin “Hercules” Sorbo, craggy-faced villain Danny Trejo and perennial “Clerks” slacker Jason Mewes, plus a cast of justifiably unknowns, the film plays out “Scary Movie”-style like a jigsaw collection of scenes and conventions from several different genres.

Taking its initial cue from “Rambo,” the story follows brooding Vietnam vet Sal Bando (Sorbo), a former Southern California poolboy, who returns to Van Nuys and a country much changed for the worse. While he was away at war, it seems, his wife cheated on him and “the Mexicans” have moved in to take over the pool cleaning business.

So the butched-up Bando sets off on a violent spree to reclaim his rightful poolboy business and to take bloody revenge on the brutal Caesar (Trejo), the evil crime lord that killed his family. The result is a carnival of bad taste, racist “satire” and just painfully bad judgment.

“Poolboy” aims for that “so bad it’s good” sweet spot. But it only hits the “so bad it’s bad” jackpot.

“Poolboy: Drowning Out the Fury” is rated R (for crude and sexual conduct throughout, graphic nudity, pervasive language, violence and drug use) and runs 90 minutes. It’s being released by Screen Media.

- Dennis King

BY GENE TRIPLETT

“Wild Bill” Wellman’s first major movie mission was in danger of crashing numerous times before it finally landed at the first Academy Awards ceremony.

But “Wings” did make it to the 1929 Oscars, swooping up the very first best picture trophy and best engineering (special effects) honors to boot.

Now, with the 84th Academy shindig just weeks away, Paramount Pictures is celebrating its centennial year with the release of a newly restored version of the silent World War I epic on DVD and Blu-ray.

“It totally knocks me out,” said William Wellman Jr., son of the Oscar-winning “Wings” director who also helmed such classics as the 1937 version of “A Star is Born,” “The Public Enemy,” “The Ox-Bow Incident,” “Battleground” and “The High and the Mighty.”

“I mean, I have hosted the picture in five countries since 1993, and I’ve seen the picture many times,” Wellman Jr. said in a recent phone interview. “And when Paramount did this restoration and they showed me the final version I was speechless, how beautiful it is. It’s just incredible. … I couldn’t be happier.”

Andrea Kalas, vice president of archives at Paramount, said the restoration of “Wings” was accomplished in a meticulous frame-by-frame process, with state-of-the-art digital tools normally used to create special effects.

Before restoration

“It’s really just been in the last few years that digital restoration technology has evolved to a point where we could actually do what we did with this film,” Kalas said. “The element we restored from was compromised with things like printed-in nitrate deterioration, which literally softened the sides of the frame. And there were extreme vertical hairline scratches. To just bring the picture back to a basic viewable form involved major technology.”

On DVD and Blu-ray, the film now appears as sharp and clean as the freshly-struck prints shown in the first road show engagements of “Wings” in 1927, Kalas said.

The film stars Clara Bow — who was a superstar at the time — Charles “Buddy” Rogers and Richard Arlen in a story of two men and the woman they both leave behind as theygo off to become fighter pilots in the “Great War.” Gary Cooper also appears briefly — but memorably — in what was only his second screen role.

William Wellman — a former World War I flying ace himself — was a relative newcomer in the film business, having directed only a handful of B-movies when he received the “Wings” assignment.

After restoration

“Paramount was the number one ranked studio in Hollywood because they had the best directors under contract,” Wellman Jr. said. “Cecil B DeMille, Victor Fleming, Allan Dwan …”

Studio cofounder Jesse Lasky was trying to decide on a director for “Wings,” which would be most ambitious project ever undertaken by the studio, when production head B.P. Schulberg recommended his protégé, William Wellman. But Lasky didn’t relish the idea of putting his epic in the hands of a 29-year-old second-stringer.

“But my father had a couple of things going for him,” Wellman said. “First of all he was a decorated fighter pilot in the first world war, so he was the only director under contract at Paramount that had frontline battle experience. And they felt that that’s what the picture needed.”

Lasky reluctantly agreed to meet with Wellman.

“Lasky said, ‘Well, what makes you think you can direct my big road show picture better than my veteran staff of directors?’ And my father said, ‘My war record does. And I’ll make it the best goddamn picture this studio’s ever had.’”

The senior Wellman had earned the nickname “Wild Bill” for his willingness to volunteer for the most dangerous dawn patrols during the war. He would continue to live up to it on the set of “Wings.”

For example, to achieve ultimate realism in the film’s aerial battle sequences, Wellman required that his two leading men, Rogers and Arlen,  take flying lessons so they could go up in real planes and activate cameras mounted in front of them.

Arlen had had some flying experience but Rogers had none at all.

“Never before had actors been photographed in the air,” Wellman Jr. said. “They usually simulated it on the ground. My father did that too but he didn’t like the way it looked.

“Well, the studio figured that he was gonna kill their stars by making them take flying lessons. I mean it went on and on and on. And you can understand the studio’s position. But my father was not going to do anything that wasn’t in the best interest of ‘Wings.’

“Of course, they way they did it, there was a safety pilot. They went up in two-seaters and there was a safety pilot who would duck down. … Buddy Rogers said that he was the director, the cameraman, the actor and the pilot for 400 feet (of film) … the film rolls were 400-foot rolls.”

Wellman said Rogers would immediately “lose his lunch” each time he landed after an aerial sequence.

The filming was also running over schedule, because Wellman would only shoot the air battles when the sky was blue, with white, fluffy clouds.

“My father thought that the planes would all look like they were flies up in the sky if you didn’t have the clouds and the blue sky,” Wellman said. “So there was a lot of down time and this caused the studio to be, you know, let’s say anxious about where their money was going.”

But “Wings” eventually did get off the ground and into theaters, and now present-day audiences can thrill to the still-incredible flight scenes Wellman managed to engineer.

“It’s just incredible to watch,” Kalas said. “I think (film director) Kevin Brownlow said something like, ‘“Wings’ captures the romanticism that veterans remember about war.’ Which is a great way of summing up some of the real emotion that stays with you when you watch this film. I mean, when you get to the end of this film there’s very few dry eyes in the house.”

If you didn’t catch up with “Drive” on the theater circuit, don’t miss this exhilarating ride on its home video run.

Nicolas Winding Refn (“Bronson”) directs sure-handedly from a brilliantly stripped-down script by Hossein Amini (“The Four Feathers”) based on the novel by James Sallis about a Los Angeles loner (Ryan Gosling) who works as a garage mechanic and part-time Hollywood stunt driver by day and moonlights as a wheel man for small-time heisters.

This may sound like potentially mindless action movie fare, this all-too-familiar plot, with an overabundance of car chases, explosions and brutal violence, and it does contain all of the above. And Gosling’s character at first seems typical of the genre, like Eastwood’s Man-With-No-Name (we know him only as “The Driver”), a man of few words or outward emotions, who remains cool and ultra-capable when the going gets rough.

But sweet, sad, vulnerable neighbor Iris (an irresistible Carrie Mulligan) and her little boy (Kaden Leos) jump-start deep feelings within The Driver and the film begins to reveal itself as a high-octane, 21st-century “Shane” in a souped-up Chevy, with not only action and suspense but all the heart, soul and heroism of that classic Western.

When Iris’ ex-convict husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac), comes under threat for a debt he owes to mobsters — which in turn puts the mother and boy in jeopardy — The Driver offers his services in a pawnshop robbery Standard is forced to commit. When the job goes disastrously wrong, The Driver goes on the offensive to protect Iris from the retaliation of some very ruthless criminals, including ex-B-movie producer Bernie Rose, played with startlingly convincing bad-guy gusto by Albert Brooks in one of the most Oscar-worthy supporting turns of 2011.

Unfortunately, “Drive” itself is a robbery victim, garnering only a sound-editing nomination when it should have been a top contender for best picture. There’s a surprisingly tender love story in the midst of the bloody battle between good and evil, and drama as powerful as the supercharged engines beneath the gleaming hoods of all those muscle cars.

Bonus features include the featurettes “I Drive: The Driver,” “Driver and Irene: The Relationship,” “Under the Hood: Story” and “Cut to the Chase: Stunts.”

— Gene Triplett

There’s nothing like a gnarly-cute family of whales in dire distress to pluck a nation’s heartstrings, ignite an international media frenzy, mobilize the National Guard, foster a truce between big oil and Greenpeace and bring about a thaw in the Cold War.

Drew Barrymore

That’s the cumulative effect of “Big Miracle,” a feel-good nature drama inspired by the amazing true story of three California gray whales that became trapped in the ice off the coast of Barrow, Alaska, in 1988 and set off a perfect media storm that led to an incredible rescue effort to save their lives.

Adapted from the book “Saving the Whales” by Thomas Rose, this decidedly family-friendly film feels in some ways like a throwback to the old Walt Disney wildlife films of yore. Under the steady hand of journeyman director Ken Kwapis (“The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” and loads of TV credits), the often funny, honestly emotional tale attracted a remarkable cast of stars.

With Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski (“The Office”) as prickly romantic leads, the impressive ensemble also includes Ted Danson as a blustery oil tycoon, Tulsa native Tim Blake Nelson as an Alaska wildlife ranger, Dermot Mulroney as a hot-shot military pilot, Kristen Bell as an ambitious L.A. television reporter and Kathy Baker as the oil baron’s whale-loving wife.

And amid all that star power, two newcomers deliver standout performances that neatly ground the film in the natural world and ancient Inuit culture. John Pingayak lends an abiding spirituality and earthy wisdom to the role of Malik, Eskimo village elder and old-school whaler, and fresh young Ahmaeogak Sweeney nicely bridges the gap between ancient and modern ways as Malik’s smart, rock ‘n’ roll-loving grandson, Nathan.

The story is set in motion when Krasinki’s small-town TV reporter Adam Carlson happens upon three gray whales trapped in a rapidly freezing ice pack, able to surface only through a small hole in the ice to breathe. With their access to the open sea and their southern migration route blocked, the mother, father and baby whales (later dubbed Fred, Wilma and Bamm-Bamm) are in grave danger of drowning.

In quick order, Adam’s local news feed is picked up by national wires, and the whales’ plight ignites a rolling wave of sympathy – spurred on by the fiery lobbying of local Greenpeace activist Rachel Kramer (Barrymore) – that eventually reaches all the way to the Reagan White House and the Kremlin.

Soon enough, little, barren Barrow is inundated by noisy network news crews, which sets up some funny scenes of local gouging (an enchilada dinner for $20 and a motel room for $500 a night – cash only). Amid the growing frenzy to save the whales, smaller individual stories also play out concerning Adam’s career and his love for Rachel, Nathan’s tug between the go-go outside world and his grandfather’s steady, timeless wisdom and so on.

All in all, it’s a nice balance between individual mini-dramas and an epic rescue saga.

The latter is made more urgent and believable by some wonderful visual effects work that renders the three animatronic whales in all their scarred, barnacled, sad-eyed glory. And the former is made thoroughly engaging by likable performances from Krasinski and Barrymore, the debuts of brilliant native actors Pingayak and Sweeney and sturdy support by the always reliable Nelson and the slyly bombastic Danson.

- Dennis King

“Big Miracle”

PG
2:03
3 stars
Starring: John Krasinski, Drew Barrymore, Ahmaogak Sweeney, Tim Blake Nelson
(Language)

Dane DeHaan

“Chronicle,” the impressive debut picture of director Josh Trank and screenwriter Max Landis, mashes up conventions of several genres – from teen-angst dramas to superhero sagas (most notably “Spider-Man”) to found-footage films (think everything from “The Blair Witch Project” to “Paranormal Activity” and “Cloverfield”) – yet still manages to seem novel and innovative.

For freshmen, their work is remarkably bold and self-assured. That may be due to their lofty Hollywood pedigrees. Trank is the son of Oscar-winning documentarian Richard Trank (“The Long Way Home”), and Landis’ dad is John Landis, maker of such landmark comedies as “Animal House” and “The Blues Brothers.” So they would appear to have filmmaking in their blood.

With the quick, savvy “Chronicle,” they glibly employ the shopworn convention of found footage and put a video camera in the hands of anguished high-schooler Andrew Detmar (Dane DeHaan) to record a sort of Bizarro World version of “Spider-Man,” with Peter Parker turning his powers to the dark side.

Andrew is a fairly typical teen type – highly sensitive, shy, bullied at school and enduring a cruel home life with a bed-ridden, terminally ill mother and an abusive, alcoholic father. Early on, after one of his father’s violent tirades, he picks up a used video camera and declares he “will film everything from here on out.”

The cool, philosophy-spouting Matt (Alex Russell) is Andrew’s cousin and only friend, and one night he drags Andrew and his camera to a boozy party. There, the two hook up with popular class presidential candidate Steve (Michael B. Jordan) and happen upon a mysterious cave-like sinkhole in the woods.

The three brashly make their way down into the dank passage with camera in hand, and what they discover there radically changes their lives and their fates.

Leap ahead a few days, and Andrew, Matt and Steve find themselves enduring mysterious nosebleeds and feeling strange, telekinetic sensations. Soon, to their boyish delight, they discover that they each have magical powers to move things with their minds.

At first, they employ their rapidly advancing superpowers for childish games and pranks – levitating Legos and moving people’s cars around in parking lots. But as their powers grow stronger (Andrew being the most adept at using them), they find that they can create tsunamis of force waves and they can even fly.

Matt, well versed in the philosophies of Jung and Schopenhauer, recognizes the potential dangers and urges caution. Good-time Steve tries to find a way to use their newfound powers to make Andrew popular with snotty classmates.

But, Andrew, obviously scarred and angry deep inside, is torn between his desire for acceptance and his hurt at past abuses. Gradually, he finds himself sorely tempted to use his psychic musles to wreck revenge on his tormentors. And when he coldly and telekinetically pulls apart a spider, we see which path he’s on.

Trank shapes the story’s formulaic contours deftly and turns the thing from lighthearted to bloody minded with smooth, uncommon skill. Even the old found-footage technique, fraught with its problems of logic, comes across in his hands as fluid and natural.

With its taut and smart script, sharp and full-bodied performances by three unknown actors and impressive visual effects on a relatively low budget ($15 million), “Chronicle” gives us a snappy new-school spin on several old-school tropes. It proves that invigorating, innovative and playful filmmaking can still be crafted with used parts.

- Dennis King

“Chronicle”

PG-13
1:24
3 ½ stars
Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Michael Kelly, Anna Wood, Dane DeHaan
(Intense action and violence, thematic material, some language, sexual content and teen drinking)

Sandra Bullock, Thomas Horn

NEW YORK – Sandra Bullock remembers exactly where she was on Sept. 11, 2001, when two hijacked jetliners crashed into Lower Manhattan’s Twin Towers.

She was at a boutique hotel in Soho. But, being a media-savvy celebrity, she declines to say exactly which hotel, for fear that her revelation would be interpreted as some sort of commercial endorsement.

“But I had full view of both towers,” she said. “I was there, I saw the second plane, I saw people, I saw people helping people. And that for me is what resonates about the city of New York. I saw within a second the entire city come together and help one another in a way they hadn’t the day before.”

During press interviews for the Oscar-nominated film “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” hosted by Warner Bros. at the Regency Hotel, Bullock talked about the cathartic nature of acting in a movie that addresses the excruciating aftermath 9/11 for families of victims.

In the film (her first role since winning the Oscar for “The Blind Side”), Bullock plays Linda Schell, widow of a man killed in the terrorist attack and the mother of a precocious young son who embarks on a painstaking journey around the city to come to terms with his beloved father’s senseless death.

Bullock said she believes the film has the potential to help people heal, but she rejects the idea that it will bring about any sense of closure.

“There will never be closure, I think for me or for so many people,” she said. “I have so many memories and emotions of it, some that still don’t register I think because your mind doesn’t let you register why someone would do that. So in a good way I hope (the memory) doesn’t ever leave, that vibrancy of what happened afterward, because it made me aware of so many things I wasn’t aware of before. So no closure but as long as everyone can talk about it and grieve I think that’s what this story is, the allowance to talk about this thing and be able to grieve.”

Bullock was born and raised in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., but in many ways she said she considers herself a New Yorker.

“My father was a voice teacher and we’d go back and forth between here and D.C.,” she said. “And my mother sang opera here, so we were always on the trains coming to New York.

“My first memory, my mom took me to see ‘All That Jazz’ on Broadway, and at that moment I knew I wanted to become a dancer,” Bullock recalled. “Did I become a dancer? No. I’m a big girl. But it’s one of my great passions, when I saw ‘All That Jazz’ and I saw the live performances.

“(New York) has always been where we went,” she said. “We had a tiny little studio apartment with a kitchen in the closet. We slept on floors and pulled out couches. In New York, there’s something for everyone. You never feel out of place in New York City. That’s a fact. Unless you’re a really poorly dressed tourist with the black socks and sandals. I think no one should wear polyester black socks and sandals. That should just be outlawed.”

- Dennis King

Paul McCartney was in New York the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, sitting on a plane that was taxiing out for takeoff on a flight to Britain, where the singer planned to celebrate two of his kids’ birthdays. Then the captain announced that there’d been a “terrible accident,” and McCartney looked out the window to see one of the World Trade Center towers on fire.

At first everyone thought it was a tragic aircraft mishap until they heard the second tower had just been hit by another plane.

“Like everybody else, it was, ‘Oh no, wow. This is some act of sabotage.’ And then we heard about the Pentagon,” McCartney recalls in the opening interview of the documentary “The Love We Make.”

“I just started thinking, you know, what can I do? Because there’s going to be a spirit shift in New York, in America,” he says. “This is suddenly a place where people are gonna feel vulnerable for the first time in a long time.”

Born the son of a volunteer Liverpool firefighter during the World War II Blitz, McCartney decided to organize a small concert for the firefighters of New York, but he was persuaded instead to headline a much larger event, the “Concert for New York City,” which VH1 was planning at Madison Square Garden.

This fascinating and sometimes moving film documents the rehearsals, promotional interviews and McCartney’s solo wanderings through the streets of post-9/11 New York in the weeks leading up to the Oct. 20, 2001, all-star concert. This not a concert film, although there are brief clips of musical performances by McCartney and others throughout. This is more of an intimate portrait of a famous man, three years a widower at the time, moving through a wounded city, determined not to allow his fame to cut him off from real life. He politely accepts greetings and engages in conversations with all kinds of fans — from housewives and street musicians to more than a couple of crazies, friendly and willing to sign his name for the genuine autograph seeker but not the eBay hustlers, whom he instinctively recognizes. He’s also alert for cars following his limo a little too closely. “Let’s get some distance, George,” he tells his driver at one point.

Then there are his amusing and sometimes revealing backstage conversations with visitors and fellow performers including Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, Mick Jagger, Harrison Ford, Steve Buscemi, Leonardo DiCaprio and President Bill Clinton.

McCartney commissioned the film himself from filmmaker Albert Maysles, who was in the car with the Beatles the first time they drove into New York City in 1964. Co-directed by Bradley Kaplan, the film reveals a well-meaning human side of McCartney seldom seen in the past, emerging to help in one of the nation’s darkest hours.

— Gene Triplett

Praise be to Vera Farmiga for proving to be as miraculous behind the camera as she is in front of it with “Higher Ground,” one of 2011′s bravest dramatic creations, now available in a Blu-ray and DVD combo pack.

Many a filmmaker would be daunted by this bold screenplay based on a memoir by Carolyn S. Briggs about her life in an evangelical Christian community, but Farmiga steps up with a sure yet sensitive hand, drawing uniformly strong performances from an excellent ensemble cast.

And Farmiga shines brightest of all in the central role of Corrine, a woman who shakes up the devout members of the radical New Testament church when she dares to question the religious dogma she has embraced all of her adult life. Corrine and her husband, Ethan, had turned to dedicated Christianity as young newlyweds after their baby daughter narrowly escaped death in the crash of Ethan’s rock band’s van.

Now, after years of daily Bible study, strict family practices and bracing for the Rapture, a growing feeling of spiritual emptiness and disillusionment — plus a tragedy that befalls one of her best female friends — causes Corrine’s faith to falter, which in turn triggers the growing resentment of the rest of the flock and the unraveling of her marriage.

Farmiga’s sister Taissa makes an impressive acting debut as Corrine at 18, and Dagmara Dominczyk is priceless as best friend Annaka, a true believer with a bawdy sense of humor and an openness about sexuality that rekindles Corrine’s own carnal curiosity.

But what’s most remarkable about Vera Farmiga’s first time in the director’s chair is the skill with which she handles the touchy subject of blind faith and religious fervor without condescension, while presenting a truthful portrait of the self-described “Jesus freak” culture and one woman’s troubled spirituality. At the same time, she manages to tell a story that is emotionally rich and at turns funny, poignant and powerful.

Bonus features: Deleted scenes, commentary with Vera Farmiga, Joshua Leonard (Ethan) and producer Renn Hawkey.

— Gene Triplett