I’ve probably said it before, but bio pics have got to be some of the most difficult films to make. There are so many facts to stay true to while developing not just a character but a real person.

Amelia Earhart was one of our most courageous aviators and a great many things to a great many people. Despite all of her amazing accomplishments, she was also still a flawed human being like the rest of us. Capturing that requires all of the skills of an Academy Award-winning actress.

Luckily, “Amelia” has Hilary Swank in the pilot’s seat. It also has Richard Gere in the co-pilot’s seat as Earhart’s husband and famed publisher George Putnam.

As a film, “Amelia” is as sleek as the lines of a twin-engine Lockheed Electra. As a bio pic, it can be as turbulent as Earhart’s solo Atlantic crossing. It makes it across, but it isn’t all smooth flying.

Swank does a great job recreating Earhart’s look and some of her spunk. The film is beautifully filmed with remarkable landscapes, skyscapes and vintage aircraft.

The rough patches come with some of the character growth scenes.

Some of my favorite film biographies are “Chaplin,” “Ray” and “I Walk the Line.” All three films offer a cradle to grave look at their subjects, painting pretty good pictures about what drove each of those stars to become who they were.

“Amelia” leaves out all but a cursory look at Earhart’s youth and motivation for learning to fly, which was primarily left at “Because I can.” While that might not have been far off from the truth, Earhart had to break many, if not all, of the feminine stereotypes for her era. She crusaded against the sexism that dogged her and the social conservatives who were vehemently opposed to women doing “men’s work” such as flying. (They even gave her flak for wearing pants. It takes nerves of steel to overcome daily criticism of every detail of your daily life…let alone your chosen occupation and its inherent dangers.) This film doesn’t come close to addressing that part of what made her tick. What made her so persistent in her determination to overcome such adversity? What kept her so affable and outgoing?

“Julie & Julia” was a great look at Julia Child that virtually left out her past prior to moving to France and learning to cook. Despite leaving out her early development, it still illustrated her love of cooking and her determination to succeed at it. Even if “Amelia” left out Earhart’s youth, I think that a “Julie & Julia” approach to “Amelia” would have still been able to answer most of my questions.

Other parts of the film that seem rocky to me are the transitions. One minute she’s in a somewhat combative interview with Putnam to be made the first woman to command a flight across the Atlantic and a little bit later Putnam is courting her…even though she shows no real interest in him. Still without much chemistry, they marry. Not a lot of explanation is given other than Putnam having connections to keep advancing her aviation adventures. That might have been a cold reality in her life, but the film keeps trying to paint them as having a marriage of true love, despite her tawdry affair with Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor). (Gore Vidal’s dad. Gore’s life just keeps getting more fascinating to me.)

Also, Swank’s Earhart seems to lack a little self confidence and bravado. Perhaps that was accurate of her private life, but not as much of her life in the spotlight. Swank’s Earhart is no wimp, but she could have used a dose of Amy Adam’s moxie from “Night at the Museum 2.”

Still the aviation intrigued me to no end. It is incredible what Earhart accomplished in the rickety crates she flew in the 1920s and early ’30s.

Her solo Atlantic flight is nothing short of phenomenal. Basically, load up a plane with fuel enough to hopefully see you across the ocean, point the plane east and try to stay awake until you see land. Otherwise, you die. She had very little by way of navigational equipment–not much more than the sun, stars and a jittery compass. Plus, if you pass 12,000 feet, the air gets very thin without much oxygen. Without oxygen, the engine performs more poorly and people have a tendency to pass out.

Her fateful around-the-world flight in 1937 only offered marginal technological advances by our standards, although a radio and improved instrumentation helped immensely. The film also mentions the possibility of mid-air refueling over the Pacific, and I really wanted to know how that would have been possible. I don’t know the technical specs of a Lockheed Electra, but I suspect the fuel tanks were in the wings and had screw cap covers. It was a twin-prop plane, so any hose being lowered down had to stay clear of the props. The engine exhaust ports belched fire. Spilled fuel could blow them up. The only mid-air refueling I’m aware of from the era was via dirigible. Navy biplanes could take off and “land” via hooks on the blimp. (Remember how Indiana Jones and his dad escaped the blimp in “Last Crusade“?) Wouldn’t Earhart’s Electra have been too heavy for that? Wouldn’t the hook assembly have put far too much drag on the plane, thus wasting tons of fuel for the whole trip? Really this has no bearing on the film, I’m just really curious.

Perhaps my digression is yet another example for summarizing my thoughts about “Amelia.” It is very interesting; I just wished they explained more.

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Oh, daddy! I have just discovered 88 minutes of undead bliss!

I thought I was too busy to go see “Zombieland” when it came out in the theater last October. I was a fool.

Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin and Bill Murray star in this sick romp through America after a zombie infection has killed off most of the rest of the planet.

It all starts with Columbus (Eisenberg), a timid college student, giving us the Top-4 rules to surviving the zombie hordes. Soon he encounters Tallahassee (Harrelson), a burly redneck hell bent on killing as many zombies as possible while locating the last remaining Twinkies left in these here United States. They’re the modern Odd Couple who are soon duped by Wichita (Stone) and Little Rock (Breslin)–sisters who perfected the art of the con long before the infection spread. Before long they’ve joined forces as the last four people who are still alive. College-age Wichita insists on taking her 12-year-old sis on a real vacation to an amusement park in California. In Hollywood they crash at Bill Murray’s house only to discover, he, too, survived the zombie menace.

The rest of the movie is a rockin’ zombie slaughter fest. They must have had to employ an army of make up artists to zombify a large cast of expendable extras. Gallons of blood were splattered, sprayed, dripped and smeared. Survivors compete for the “Zombie Kill of the Week.” No clever zombie kill goes underappreciated.

The dialog sings with campy one-liners and observations. Director Ruben Fleischer and writers Rhett Reese and Paul Werner understand camp cult horror. They gave us everything they could for the perfect mix of violence and comedy.

Woody was born to play Tallahassee, the ultimate blood-thirsty NASCAR fan. From his snake-skin jacket to his obsession with taking out zombies using gardening tools and a sawed-off rifle, I’m not sure he could have made me laugh any harder.

Sweet little Abby Breslin was a no nonsense survivor playing on Tallahassee’s weakness for helping little kids by taking him hostage at gun point. If only I was that cool at 12. While Stone and Eisenberg were very good in their roles and kept me laughing, I think it was Breslin and Harrelson who brought that little something extra to really make “Zombieland” that much better.

Bill Murray was loads of fun, too. He makes Tallahassee’s hick dreams come true by rehashing all of his favorite movie quotes and playing “Ghostbusters” with him while using a vacuum cleaner as a ghost catching gun. Very tongue-in-check and self deprecating. Very funny.

I could go on rehashing all of the jokes for you, or you could just buy “Zombieland” and see for yourself. It’s awesome.

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Ooh…this is a toughie. I really like this movie, but it’s “hard to like it.” Let me explain.

In 1974, a young Englishman named Michael Peterson used a sawed-off shotgun to rob a post office. His crime earned him about 26 Pounds. It also earned him 7 years in Her Majesty’s Prison Service. That initial 7-year sentence (4 for good behavior) eventually stretched out to 34 years, 30 of which he spent in solitary. Why? Is it because he is a bad man? As he, himself, tells it, “I wasn’t bad. Wasn’t…bad-bad. I still had my principles.”

Today, Michael Peterson is called Charlie Bronson. “Bronson” (due out Tuesday) is the film based on his bizarre life. Father, husband, robber, brawler, mental patient, published author, poet, artist, fitness guru, thinker, England’s Most Violent Prisoner…these are all facets of this unusual man. The man is prisoner-as-rock-star. We get to see all of his personae here.

The film’s style…is it a bio-pic? Drama? Art house? It’s hard to nail down. It functions admirably on so many levels. Bronson constantly breaks the fourth wall, directly addressing the audience. We also go inside Bronson’s head, to the theatre of the mind, where we see him in face paint and in costume capering onstage. It’s an intense film in the vein of “Fight Club” with great flourishes of irony and contrast like in Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange.” It’s dark like “Apocalypse Now,” and surreal like “Blue Velvet.”

It’s also funny, with plenty of uneasy “Trainspotting“-type humor to be found throughout. “Bronson” also features a great soundtrack! It really supports the story beautifully with sweeping opera, muscular classical and pop classics from period groups like New Order. A fave moment of mine, watching the mental patients dancing/stumbling around to “It’s a Sin” by the Pet Shop Boys.

When I said it’s hard to like this movie, I meant I have a hard time watching things like prison cruelty or inhumanity, that sort of thing. I have no problem watching dudes cutting each other to pieces with swords on a battlefield, but when it comes to prison flicks, sometimes it makes me feel a bit weird. It’s just me personally and shouldn’t reflect on the quality of the film.

This is a pretty incredible movie, actually, featuring (I’ll just say it) the performance of the year from Tom Hardy. It’s basically all Hardy. This is nearly the film equivalent of a one-man play. Hardy goes all-out and really disappears into the role. He nails the physicality of Bronson, the emotional state and the mentality of this pit bull of a man. And yes, when I say goes all out I mean it. We see it all. There is full-frontal male nudity and a couple brutal fully-nude fight scenes. A very gutsy performance.

Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, “Bronson” is one of the most interesting and original films I’ve seen in the past year. It’s really just an outstanding effort. I’ve heard that Tom Hardy is up for the lead role in the reboot of “Mad Max/Fury Road.” He could do great things with Max. I say bring it on!

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