At Berkeley casts a nonjudgmental eye on everyone from cement layers to students discussing Thoreau to administrators complaining about budgeting. If only everything were interesting.

An honorable, sober but completely unnecessary take on the Dickens novel, Great Expectations serves as a fine introduction to the story but won’t excite those familiar with previous versions.

It’s a mildly interesting thriller — Paris through the eyes of a director who doesn’t know how to make its beauty menacing.

Not surprisingly in this tale of desperate men, the only women are top-heavy cartoon characters — literally, animated sequences illustrate Frank’s stories — or live-action betrayers, like Dakota Fanning’s Annie, Frank’s ex-girlfriend. I found the cartoons more interesting.

The element that really makes it work — when it does, which is not always — is Edward James Olmos, playing to perfection a weary retired police detective.

Overall, Gibney does a fine job documenting the timeless nature of Armstrong’s fall from grace. It’s undeniably satisfying to see the man himself lay it out: “It’s very hard to control the truth forever,” he says, awkwardly. “This has been my downfall.”

Miyazaki offers a vivid, at times fantastical view of Japan between the wars, wracked by the Great Depression, a fearsome earthquake that leveled Tokyo in 1923, a tuberculosis epidemic and the rise of fascism.

Overall, it’s engaging and serves its young audience well — a rare Holocaust movie that doesn’t strain to become Oscar bait.

"Dark World” is low-stakes, low-emotion, lowbrow.

To keep this one-man show visually engaging, director Sophie Fiennes places the professor in sets and costumes from the movies, talking about “Full Metal Jacket” from atop a barracks toilet and “Brief Encounter” from a 1940s British train.

It’s Margaux, the tragic supermodel and failed actress who took her own life at 42, who emerges as the film’s fount of heartbreak in several stunning scenes.

The second half is therefore much more interesting than the first; even so, the whole movie suffers from a lack of narrative momentum and a surfeit of wordless shots of men exchanging deep, meaningful glances.

This Belgian drama is the real deal, an alternately wrenching and ecstatic viewing experience, adapted from a play by lead actor Johan Heldenbergh.

A forgettable — and occasionally borderline offensive — animated tale of turkeys trying to take back Thanksgiving.

For all its glutinous cuteness, damn if About Time doesn’t sneak up and sock you in the tear ducts. I tried not to fall for it. I failed.

The film at least achieves the level of mediocrity thanks to the professionalism of two slightly younger participants — Kline and Mary Steenburgen, who also have Oscars on their mantels but go well beyond phoning it in here.

A big, dark film that should satisfy the many fans of the Orson Scott Card novel and engage newcomers, too.

It’s a remarkable story, vividly and urgently told by French-Canadian director Vallée (“The Young Victoria”) from a pointed, schmaltz-free script by Craig Borten and Melissa Wallack.

The schmaltzy Diana is directed at a dirge-like pace by German director Oliver Hirschbiegel, whose film “Downfall’’ depicted the final days of Hitler and provided one of the Internet’s most enduring memes.

Mostly a routine love story elevated by one of the year’s most magnetic performances.

Jeffrey Schwarz’s documentary is a fine, touching tribute to John Waters’ larger-than-life drag diva, Divine.

Like “Traffic’’ on a massive dose of downers, Ridley Scott’s The Counselor is a great-looking and star-filled but lethally pretentious, talky, lethargic drama.

This whole movie is pretty much a mental colon blow.

The film is still a gripping experience, though, with its circling sharks, its sun-dappled beauty and its agonies of shattered hope. At one point I was convinced that Sandra Bullock would splash down next to our man in her space capsule and Hanks’ Maersk ship from “Captain Phillips” would steam by to pick up both of them.

Any prison-break yarn that includes Arnold Schwarzenegger delivering the line “You hit like a vegetarian” is OK by me.

Danny Huston looks and sounds like his celebrated father, John, more and more each year, so I enjoyed watching him play a flamboyant and womanizing legendary director not unlike his old man in Bernard Rose’s modest little comedy.

This overlong drama plays like a threefold infomercial: for Christianity, the cheesy resort chain Sandals and Jeff “Ja Rule” Atkins, the rapper-turned-actor playing drug kingpin Miles Montego.

Juliette Binoche, as Claudel, is occasionally touching, but as soon as interest flares, the movie suffocates it via endless takes of her suffering through daily chores.