Overrated/underrated

UNDERRATED

“24/7 Penguins/Capitals: Road to the Winter Classic” on HBO: Now that we’ve dispensed with all that goodwill-toward-men stuff, it’s time to get reacquainted with the brutal poetry of ice hockey with this documentary miniseries. Though we have the Kings and Ducks, hockey isn’t as ingrained in our city’s fabric as it is on the East Coast, and getting inside these two championship-caliber teams illuminates the sport’s many charms with every busted nose and Canadian-accented profanity. If the Olympics didn’t make you a hockey fan, this might.

The music of “Biutiful”: From its grim yet eerily uplifting story of a Barcelona man grappling with his morals and mortality to Javier Bardem’s remarkably poignant performance, you’ll probably hear a lot about Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful” this Oscar season. But one aspect of this immersive film that can’t be overlooked is its score by multiple Oscar-winner Gustavo Santaolalla, which punctuates the movie with jarring flashes of noise and growling guitar dissonance not unlike something from the Neil Young playbook. Beautiful stuff.

OVERRATED

Noah Baumbach’s recent run: As fans of “Kicking and Screaming” (1995) and the Oscar-nominated “The Squid and the Whale” (2005), we’re confused why this writer-director has lately seemed preoccupied with telling charmless stories of unpleasant people doing unpleasant things. Apart from a welcome reunion with Wes Anderson for “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” Baumbach’s recent “Margot at the Wedding” (2007) and this year’s “Greenberg” both felt like being trapped listening to unrepentant jerks at a party. Did likable characters somehow become a sign of artistic weakness?

Salem: While this Michigan trio could’ve landed in this category months ago for giving birth to the year’s most groan-inducing mini-genre (“witch house”), it surprisingly endured a love-it-or-hate-it performance at Austin’s SXSW to appear on a number of year-end lists for an equally divisive debut album, “King Night,” which Offeredi trite techno beats out of your most clove-scented goth club nightmares paired with droning keyboards and gloomy attempts at rapping. We can only hope that whatever puzzling musical hybrid that awaits us in 2011 mercifully replaces them.