Sally Potter's twin interests - in grand world movements and in the grand internal movements in people lives - are effectively brought to bear in Ginger & Rosa, her best film of the decade.

Everybody in Admission is funny - Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, Lily Tomlin, Wallace Shawn - but they're not funny in Admission.

Considering the fact that a young girl is picking her nose on the movie poster, The Croods is surprisingly evolved.

It's that wonderful, totally unambitious yet satisfying thing, a really good movie.

The result is a movie that, like the book, is episodic and has dips in energy but has more than its share of glory and illumination.

The female actors, particularly Hudgens and Ashley Benson, are game for the ride. And Franco is indispensable, bringing humor and pathos to one of the more repulsive cinematic creations in recent memory.

The movie deals with themes of secular and religious love, of how they may intersect and diverge, that are suggestive of Bergman or Carl Theodor Dreyer.

The best of the longer segments is "Steve," a piece of Pinter light starring Firth as a passive-aggressive neighbor from hell who repeatedly turns up at the door of a bickering couple (Knightley and Tom Mison) to register a series of baseless complaints.

Two things hold back Don't Stop Believin' as a documentary. The first is that it presents the world of Journey and the people in it through such a lens of love and light that it begins to seem like a publicity film...The second flaw is that it leaves out vital information. It doesn't, for example, answer the big question, "What happened to Steve?"

The movie reveals itself as not merely dull, but pointless.

All Upside Down has is its love story, which despite the undeniable appeal of Sturgess and Dunst, never ignites. So the movie is like a huge package, wrapped in gold leaf, but containing a 10-dollar toaster. Fine. It's a toaster. It works. It's not garbage. But who can pretend it's not a disappointment?

The movie is pleasant. It's reasonably funny. But the one who gets the real laughs here, the hard laughs, is Carrey, who plays the kind of role he should be playing - a complete lunatic.

The Call might not be a classic for the ages, but for a Friday night? For a movie to take people out of themselves? And to make them marvel at the viewing experience that just happened to them? This one is hard to beat.

It's a stoner movie all the way, with much deep thought but little active conflict.

The movie examines the possibility of maintaining one's humanity in a truly oppressive society.

Like Someone in Love is best suited to viewers already familiar with this extraordinary filmmaker's better work.

Whatever the film's faults, though, it's safe to say that you may never view childbirth in the same way.

Watching the film is like being on a jury in which you know the defendant is probably guilty, but alas, there's not enough evidence to convict.

That's why the more you like the Judy Garland film, the more you might appreciate Oz the Great and Powerful. Appreciate. Enjoy. Admire. Be glad to see. Have fun with ... But as for love - well, love will be harder to come by.

In the end, probably the best way to watch Emperor is to pretend that the Supreme Command of Allied Forces in Japan after World War II was Tommy Lee Jones. If you do that, the movie works surprisingly well.

As entertainment, this approach might be questionable. As a service, it would be valuable.

The film bolsters its case with plenty of facts, charts and expert testimony - evidence typical of this sort of advocacy documentary. But what makes the movie compelling is its focus on a handful of victims, who make the statistics painfully real.

Heavy-handed dialogue, flurries of melodrama and a silly ending make the whole enterprise sink like a stone.

The movie has a certain integrity and creates an interesting atmosphere, largely thanks to the soundtrack, of all things, which gives most moments a dreamy undertone.

Bernal is quite good as the young media specialist - it's always surprising to see how strong a presence he is in his Spanish-language films and how he all-but disappears in his American films. Is it a matter of the roles or the language? The jury is still out.

Rosendahl brings a wonderful innocence and burgeoning sexual awakening to the role, while still evincing inner strength and complexity. In her unconscious attempts to regain her soul, Lore pays the ultimate price as she discovers the stink of who she and her family and her country had become.

In the end, the filmmakers don't reveal a lot of new insights into Dahmer's character, or answer questions about how all these murders went unnoticed before Dahmer was apprehended. In some ways, we are left to fill in the blanks - and that can be a queasy experience.

By the end, I was adding my own internal "Deadwood"-style profanities to McShane's clean dialogue. "For the sake of the (God-@#$%) kingdom, cut it (the @#$%) down!" Movies about mile-high beanstalks shouldn't require additional audience imagination.