Forty years ago a film about an elaborate sting that took place four decades earlier called The Sting was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won seven. This year another film about an elaborate sting that takes place four decades earlier called American Hustle was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won none. Have times changed or was the more recent film not really worthy of an Oscar? With one exception I’d say the latter.

That exception is Jennifer Lawrence who, had she not won the Best Actress Oscar for last year’s Silver Linings Playbook, would almost certainly have won Best Supporting Actress this year. Lawrence, who I was not particularly enamored of in Silver Linings Playbook, creates a classic character this time around, a brassy blonde who may not be as dumb as she looks in the grand tradition of screen goddesses from Jean Harlow in Dinner at Eight to Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday to Melanie Griffith in Working Girl. In this case, though, she may well be as dumb as she looks, but delightfully so.

Loosely based on the Abscam scandal of the 1970s, Best Actor and Actress nominees Christian Bale and Amy Adams play con artists tricked by a loose cannon FBI agent (Best Supporting Actor nominee Bradley Cooper) into helping him dupe the mayor of Camden, New Jersey (Jeremy Renner) who in turn will help them pull a scam that will result in the arrests of numerous crooked politicians. What Bale, Adams and Cooper were nominated for is beyond me. Bale who won a deserved Oscar for director David O. Russell’s earlier film, The Fighter is a wet blanket here. Maybe it was for going ugly with his pot belly and ridiculous comb-over. Adams, with her on and off British accent both in an out of character is just as uninteresting except for her eye-popping wardrobe. Cooper fares better, but he overplays his role almost as much as Bale underplays his. Renner, though, is excellent as the mayor who only wants to help people. Also of note are Elizabeth Rohm as Renner’s wife; Jack Huston as Lawrence’s Mafia lover and Robert De Niro in a strong cameo as a Miami Mafia don.

American Hustle is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Winner of two Academy Awards, Best Song (“Let It Go”) and Best Animated Feature, Frozen based on Hans Christian Andersen’s oft-filmed The Snow Queen is Disney’s best film in some time.

Idina Menzel splendidly voices the cursed queen while other excellent speaking and singing voice actors include Kristen Bell as her sister; Jonathan Groff as an enterprising ice peddler; Santino Fontana as a prince from another kingdom and Josh Gad as a lovable snowman.

Robert Lopez, who won the Oscar for Best Song with his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez, is an EGOT – an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award winner. His Tonys were for the musicals Avenue Q and The Book of Mormon.

Frozen is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Disney’s other major year-end release, Saving Mr. Banks did not fare as well as Frozen either with the critics or at the box-office. Pre-release it was thought to be a major Best Picture contender at the Oscars, but its only nomination was for Best Score, an odd nomination since it’s not John Williams’ background music that makes the biggest impression but the recreation of the Sherman Brothers’ score for Mary Poppins.

Emma Thompson gives her best performance in years as Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers who has held Walt Disney’s offer to film her beloved characters at bay for more than twenty years. The problem with the marketing of the film is that it is not, as advertised, a jovial recreation of the making of the earlier film. The film it most resembles is 1985’s Dreamchild with Coral Browne as an elderly Alice Hargreaves who was the child model for Alice in Wonderland. Just as that film alternates between past and present, so does the Disney film.

Colin Farrell makes a strong impression as Travers’ alcoholic father and Rachel Griffiths makes a striking model for Mary Poppins herself. Tom Hanks, while not resembling Walt Disney in any way, nevertheless acquits himself well as the legendary showman.

John Lee Hancock’s Saving Mr. Banks is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Another film that failed to achieve the box-office and awards recognition earlier thought is Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. The problem here is not the film, but current events. With Nelson Mandela’s final illness and death taking up so many TV broadcasts through the year, many potential viewers felt they knew all there was to know about the South African leader. Even so, there are rewards to be found in the film, most notably in he performances of Idris Elba as Mandela and Naomie Harris as his wife Winnie.

The film also boasts award-worthy cinematography, but its only Oscar nomination was for Best Song, “Ordinary Love” by Bono and The Edge.

Justin Chadwick’s Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

The latest in a long line of films about Allen Ginsberg; Jack Kerouac; William Burroughs and other poets of the beat generation, John Krokidas’ Kill Your Darlings focuses on events leading up to Lucian Carr’s trial for the 1944 murder of David Kammerer in which Kerouac and Burroughs were accessories after the fact.

Daniel Radcliffe is about as far away from Harry Potter as he could get as Ginsberg who has replaced Kammerer as Carr’s Columbia University lover. As good as he is, acting honors go to Dane DeHaan as Carr with Michael C. Hall as Kammerer; Jack Huston as Kerouac and Ben Foster as Burroughs all turning in their customary fine performances.

Kill Your Darlings is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Warner Archive has been slow to release Blu-rays of important films in their collection, but have finally come up with another good one in The Americanization of Emily.

Released a month after Mary Poppins, Emily, which was Julie Andrews’ second film, is reportedly her favorite of her films as well as that of co-star James Garner and director Arthur Hiller.

The dark anti-war comedy was supposed to star William Holden when it was to be directed by William Wyler. Holden did not want to work with relative unknown Hiller. His loss was Garner’s gain. Garner had originally been cast in a key supporting role that went instead to James Coburn. Melvyn Douglas; Joyce Grenfell and Keenan Wynn co-star with a script by Paddy Chayefsky.

This week’s new releases include Oscar nominee The Wolf of Wall Street and Oscar winner The Great Beauty.