Movies 101

This week, "Movies 101" will be discussing at least one film that should be an Oscar candidate. That would be Digger, an Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu project starring Tom Cruise. We’ll follow that with a dissection of Verity, a mystery/drama starring Dakota Johnson, Josh Hartnett and Anne Hathaway. And we’ll end with a look at one of John Wilson’s wry documentaries, this one titled The History of Concrete.

This week, "Movies 101" will be discussing two films from Asia. One is the animated science-fiction mind-bender Akira, a 1988 release that is enjoying a remastered re-release. And the other is Hope, a Korean live-action film that belongs to the monster-vs.-human sub-genre of sci-fi.

This week, "Movies 101" will be discussing two films that have little in common other than a relationship with the past. The first is The Uprising, a re-creation of a real-life historical event that took place nearly 700 years ago. And the second is Practical Magic 2, a sequel to a fictional film about witches that premiered nearly three decades ago.

This week, "Movies 101" will be discussing a pair of movies that involve survival. The first is The Dog Stars, a Ridley Scott film based on a best-selling novel. The second is the blend of live action and animation titled Coyote vs. Acme.

This week, "Movies 101" will be discussing two films that feature teen characters. One, titled Tony, is based on the early life of a real person, the late chef and travel documentarian Anthony Bourdain. The other is a trek into horror titled, appropriately, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

This week, Movies 101 will tackle a pair of films that have little, if anything, in common … save for something plot-oriented that smacks of mystery. The first is the big-budget sci-fi survival adventure title, pun intended, “The End of Oak Street.” The other is the Japanese historical study “The Samurai and the Prisoner.”

This week, Movies 101 will be discussing three movies made by foreign directors. They are the haunting British time-travel tale “Rose of Nevada,” the Icelandic domestic study “The Love That Remains” and the Croatian historical documentary “Fiume o Morte!

This week, Movies 101 will be discussing three movies made by foreign directors. They are the haunting British time-travel tale “Rose of Nevada,” the Icelandic domestic study “The Love That Remains” and the Croatian historical documentary “Fiume o Morte!

One of the many great things about film is its ability to adapt to any scale. An intimate story about one person’s inner life can be just as effective as one spread over a huge canvas with a cast of thousands. On this week’s episode, Movies 101 will look at two new releases on opposite ends of the scale spectrum: The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s multimillion-dollar, decades-spanning epic, and Olivia Wilde’s The Invite, a four-person chamber piece set in a single location.

85 years ago, Orson Welles released his debut feature Citizen Kane, and movies were never the same. In the decades since, it has been exhaustively analyzed; the subject of countless books, documentaries and biopics; and regularly cited as the greatest American movie.