Worldwide grosses are likely the primary reason the Joes earned a second chance at box office redemption, since GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra was a CGI mess of epic proportions with leaps of logic and science that would defy even the most playful imagination using action figures in the yard.  

With The Twilight Saga over and done with, it’s time for Phase Two of the Stephanie Meyer assault on romantic popular culture. Writer-director Andrew Niccol (Gattaca and In Time) would seem to b  

An ambitious counselor (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) with a marriage and relationship consulting firm for wealthy clients struggles within the confines of the organization and under the strain of her own  

Admission ropes that sensibility closer to the mainstream with Tina Fey as a Princeton admissions officer eager to take over the program, but she ends up supporting a risky underdog (Nat Wolff) from an alternative school who might be the child she gave up for adoption when she was in college.   

What happens when a sassy drag queen (Alan Cumming) and a buttoned up lawyer (Garret Dillahunt) seek to gain custody of a young man (Isaac Leyva) with Down syndrome who has been abandoned by his drug-addicted mother?  

The world is a-changing and, like the times, it can get a little testy and tempestuous, so it’s time for the cave dwellers to adapt or die off.   

First, there was the superhero craze, then the fixation on undead creatures (especially those caught up in teenage angst) and now it seems that the latest Hollywood trend is on White House attacks.   

In a dreamy bit of voiceover narration at the start, India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) tells us, “We are not responsible for what we have come to be.”  

The Call focuses on Jordan Turner (Halle Berry), an experienced 911 operator who takes over a call from a young woman (Abigail Breslin) caught in the clutches of a serial kidnapper/murder from Turner’s past.  

Steve Carell and Jim Carrey team up once again — Remember Bruce Almighty back when Carrey ruled the box office? — but this time, it’s Carell who’s the real draw   

This dramatic look at the end of the Pacific efforts of World War II from director Peter Webber (Hannibal Rising) focuses on General Bonner Fellers (Matthew Fox) as he’s charged with deciding the fate of the Japanese emperor — whether or not he should be executed as a war criminal — while attempting to find an exchange student he met in the US.  

Colin Farrell stands at the crossroads. He’s a good looking actor known for a brand of old-fashioned masculine intensity that doesn’t quite seem to be of or for this modern screen world, but he finds ways to slip into character roles that allow him to breathe real life into otherwise flat frames.  

West of Memphis is one of those stories that we would like to believe can’t really be true.  

Sam Raimi (the Spider-Man trilogy) tackles the backstory of the greatest and most powerful wizard this side of Gandalf; that would be Oz (James Franco), who starts off as a small-time magician before landing in an enchanted land in dire need of rescuing.   

I have to admit to a little critical bias here. Having grown up in the 1980s with Porky’s and Meatballs, Risky Business and the whole oeuvre of John Hughes, I’m finding it hard to get excited about any teen debauchery comedy since Project X swept through theaters because, in my estimation, that’s the new raunchy standard-bearer.