Grade: B+

Like the first installment, “How to Train Your Dragon 2” is essentially a boy-and-his-dog (or if you prefer, boy –and-his-horse) movie, except that the kid is a Viking and his pet a lovable—well, dragon. But it adds a third element to the mix—a villainous fellow named Drago Bludvist, who trains dragons to be destructive slaves rather than loyal and loving companions. The title might have been changed to “How and How Not to Train Your Dragon,” and the message is clear: when animals go bad, it’s the fault of their humans. (For an even more blatant example of that sentiment, see Sam Fuller’s still-controversial 1982 “White Dog.”)

In this case, though, audiences will probably be more interested in the colorful excitement of the tale Dean DeBlois has constructed than the moral he’s imparting. DeBlois has taken over full writing and directing duties this time around, and sets the action five years after the 2010 original (which was, of course, followed by a popular cable TV series). The realm of Berk is still ruled by the formidable Stoick (voiced by Gerard Butler), but it’s now an idyllic place where humans and dragons live in jovial harmony and youngsters like Astrid (America Ferrera), Fishlegs (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), Snotlout (Jonah Hill), Tuffnutt (T.J. Miller) and Ruffnut (Kristen Wiig) ride their flying critters in a sport that involves sheep that are hurled into the air via catapult, to be snapped up by the players and deposited in waiting baskets.

Missing from the contest is Stoick’s son—and Astrid’s boyfriend—Hiccup (querulous-sounding Jay Baruchel), the juvenile hero of the first movie, who now spends his time investigating new lands on his dragon Toothless and mapping them out. It’s on one of those trips that he and Astrid encounter a group of trappers led by Eret (Kit Harington) and engaged in capturing dragons for their master Drago (Djimon Hounsou), who’s intending to use his army to conquer the world. After returning to Berk to inform his father of the coming danger, Hiccup ventures out again to try to reason with Drago. But his journey instead takes him to what amounts to a dragon preserve, created by an alpha dragon called the Bewilderbeast and protected by a mysterious masked figure revealed as Valka (Cate Blanchett). She turns out to have a prior connection with both Hiccup and Stoick (the mythology of “Star Wars” is at work here), who shows up with his loyal sidekick Gobber (Craig Ferguson) not long before Drago arrives with an alpha dragon of his own. It’s alpha versus alpha to determine the fate not only of the sanctuary but of Berk as well.

“Dragon 2” is told on a larger canvas than the first film, but the realization is equally impressive. The visuals are similarly remarkable, with the production design of Pierre-Olivier Vincent and the art direction of Zhaoping Wei matching those of “Dragon 1” and the input of ace live-action cinematographer Roger Deakins once again an invaluable resource. Both the vast, lustrous backgrounds overseen by layout head Gil Zimmerman and the characters—both human and dragon—designed by Nico Marlet and animated by the crew under Simon Otto come across beautifully in images that are enhanced by 3D effects that are for the most part subtly employed. Complementing them are flavorful voice work and John Powell’s score, alternately lush and propulsive, which makes room for a musical interlude that eschews pizzazz in favor of a gentle, lilting Celtic ballad.

It could be argued that “How to Train Your Dragon 2” is too much of a good thing, stuffed to the brim with high-flying aerials, extended battle sequences (including one between the two alphas that can only be compared to rhinos or elephants butting heads, as well as a culminating face-off in defense of Berk that serves up climax after climax), and messages about self-sacrifice for the greater good and learning to accept the responsibility that comes with growing up. Some of the material, moreover, might be too dark and forbidding for small children, whose ability to sit still could also be taxed by the 100-plus-minute running-time.

But it will be hard for anyone to resist the antics of Toothless, who’s often shown playfully frolicking with other dragons in the background as the humans talk up front, and whose last-act transformations bring both loss and eventual triumph. Though voiceless, the beast is an expressive as most of the human characters, and more endearing than many of them. His fellow critters don’t have an awful lot of personality, but he boasts a good deal of it, and it’s the bond between him and Hiccup that encapsulates DeBlois’ major theme about how man’s treatment of animals determines how they will act. (Of course, whether it oversimplifies the natural order of things is another matter. Children also need to learn that wild creatures can’t always be tamed—and shouldn’t be expected to act in a benign fashion.)

But while “Dragon 2” is a rather different critter from “Dragon 1”—bigger, more sprawling and preachier—it has no less heart and humor, and is a rousing adventure besides. It’s no wonder a third installment is already in the works.

Grade: B+

Paul Thomas Anderson’s follow-up to “There Will Be Blood” will inevitably be known as the Scientology film, and it does indeed inhabit the world surrounding a self-styled, L. Ron Hubbard-like “prophet” who’s establishing a cult-like movement during the early 1950s. But though Philip Seymour Hoffman offers a fascinatingly intense performance as the obsessive, manipulative, volatile Lancaster Dodd, as he’s called, and obviously relishes the grandiloquent language Anderson’s provided him with, he and his program, here referred to as The Cause, aren’t really what “The Master” is about. Its focus is instead on Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), a troubled WWII vet whom Dodd brings into his orbit, with disconcertingly uneven results.

Phoenix, returning to admitted acting after the puckish performance art of “I’m Still Here,” gives a riveting performance as Quell, from the initial sequences of his strange antics on a Pacific beach during the war, which even his randy shipmates look on with shock, through his break with Dodd in England years later. Hunched over, squinting, with a tendency to hold his arms at his hips in an old-man pose, he brings the tormented, unpredictable ex-sailor to unsettling life, exploding at an instant from quiet menace to rage. After the war we see him as a portrait photographer in a department store, ogling the floor model but abruptly attacking a customer, an obviously well-heeled businessman, after which he takes a menial job as a farm worker. After an incident involving another laborer who falls ill from a slug of Freddie’s homemade hooch, which he distills from anything at hand, he dashes away to escape a beating and winds up in a drunken stupor on a yacht taking Dodd and his bevy of followers through the Panama Canal to New York.

The two immediately hit it off. It’s fairly easy to see why in Quell’s case—he’s both puzzled and awed by the strange, pontificating Dodd, and is in desperate need of some guidance. But why should the latter effectively adopt Quell? In part it’s because he takes to Freddie’s brewing expertise. But one gets the feeling that it’s really because Quell is the ultimate challenge: if Dodd can work his salesman’s magic on Freddie, can anybody be beyond his reach? (Of course, Dodd might also have an inkling of the fact that Quell can serve as a private enforcer, spontaneously going off on those who disrespect his mentor.)

That’s demonstrated in a scene after their arrival in New York, when Dodd’s the focus of attention at a party where he’s challenged by a outspoken skeptic (Christopher Evan Welch), whom Freddie later assaults. But that sequence also shows Dodd’s quick temper, too, when he snaps back at his questioner with a venom that spurs Quell on. He just controls it better—though he has another outburst later on, this time with a long-time supporter who questions the “evolution” of his movement.

What “The Master” becomes from this point is an episodic, impressionistic account of the relationship between the two men, as Dodd’s cagey wife Peggy (Amy Adams) and sons—one devoted to his father, the other blithely dismissive of him—look on. There are occasional glimpses of Quell’s past, in particular his doomed infatuation with a young girl (Madison Beaty), but these episodes are more dreamlike (as are depictions of his sexual longings) than explanatory. Nor is Dodd’s history revealed: he arrives on the scene fully formed, and really changes little, his ambition well established by the first frame in which he appears.

Rather than a symphony with a beginning, middle and end, in fact, the film is really more a cinematic theme and variations, composed primarily of sequences in which Dodd seeks to induct Freddie fully into the movement through a series of exercises (including a question-and-answer session called processing that looks suspiciously like Scientologist auditing) and Quell is alternately drawn in and repulsed. The climax of this macabre dance comes in a beautifully composed jailhouse scene, when Dodd’s been hauled in for misappropriation of funds and Freddie for going crazy trying to prevent his arrest. As Dodd stands quietly watching, leaning against the bunk beds, the shackled Quell literally tears his cell apart, and when Dodd berates him for giving in to his animal drives, Freddie challenges his teachings as mere invention. It’s a bravura moment for both actors, who are equally histrionic, but Phoenix is in full-throated mode (as Hoffman was in “Capote”) while Hoffman is more subtly seductive.

The sequence is a high point of “The Master,” showing the brilliance of the two stars as well as Anderson’s in conception and composition. But it’s also indicative of the film’s major problem—it repeats essentially the same point over and over, and though the restatements build to the jailhouse tornado, as a whole the picture doesn’t rise to the revelatory close one longs for. Indeed, it ends more in obliqueness and ambiguity which, though perhaps thematically impressive, aren’t dramatically as satisfying as you might wish.

But even a flawed Anderson film is more interesting than most directors’ unequivocal triumphs. And this one is as beautifully produced as any of them. Though the supporting cast, even Adams, is largely overshadowed by Phoenix and Hoffman, the crew contribute work of a quality it’s impossible to ignore. Mihai Malaimare, Jr.’s widescreen cinematography is exquisite, capturing every nuance of period detail in the production design of Jack Fisk and David Crank, John P. Goldsmith’s set design, Amy Wells’s set decoration and Mark Bridges’ costume design. Editors Leslie Jones and Peter McNulty give the performances time to breathe without sacrificing forward motion, and Jonny Greenwood’s score adds to the sense of dislocation Freddie represents.

Though it doesn’t possess the single-minded intensity of “There Will Be Blood,” this is obviously a masterly piece of filmmaking. And like “Blood,” it provides a stage for two extraordinary performances.