“The Master” takes some getting used to.

This is a superbly crafted film that’s at times intentionally opaque, as if its creator didn’t want us to see all the way into its heart of darkness.

It’s a film bristling with vivid moments and unbeatable acting, but its interest is not in tidy narrative satisfactions but rather the excesses and extremes of human behavior, the interplay of troubled souls desperate to find their footing.

A pleasant fantasy with a crackerjack title, “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen”is a charming film whose few attempts at seriousness are best forgotten or ignored. When Emily Blunt and Ewan McGregor are your stars, that is easy to do.

Blunt and McGregor are two of the most gifted and attractive actors working today, able to play off each other with great style, and when they invest themselves in these amusing characters they bring to life the film’s very contrived plot about bringing British angling to the desert of the Middle East.

Martin Scorsese making a film from a children’s book is as improbable as, well, Martin Scorsese making a film from a children’s book. But with its beautiful panoramic shots of 1930s Paris, the director’s visually thrilling “Hugo” has real moments of 3-D magic. Sadly, they aren’t quite enough to make this adaptation of Brian Selznick’s celebrated novel, “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” a wholly satisfying experience.

Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write again: Woody Allen has made a wonderful new picture, “Midnight in Paris,” and it’s his best, most enjoyable work in years.

If you’re surprised to be reading that, think how I feel writing it. I’ve been a tough sell on the past dozen or so Allen films, very much including the well-acted but finally wearying “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” It seemed that everything he touched in recent years was tainted by misanthropy and sourness. Until now.