Sometimes a story taps into a primal human desire, a need so intrinsic that it makes belief come to life. Screenwriter (and director) Peter Hedges, working from a story conceived by Frank Zappa’s son, Ahmet, dares to make audiences hope and believe in something so real with The Odd Life of Timothy Green.  

For Ruby Sparks, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine) tag team with first-time screenwriter and co-star Zoe Kazan to tell the incredible story of Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano), a young author who finds himself struggling to complete the follow-up to the debut novel that made him one of the brightest literary stars of the late 20th century.  

Take This Waltz focuses on Margot (Michelle Williams), a freelance writer married to a cookbook author (Seth Rogen) but who develops feelings for a neighbor (Luke Kirby), an artist and rickshaw driver. Waltz feels like an avant-garde performance devoted to women on the verge. What happens to women who long for more than life has given them but then encounter an opportunity to grab hold of something more?  

Manny (Ray Romano), Diego (Denis Leary) and Sid (John Leguizamo) are on the road again — well, this is the Ice Age, so it’s really a pre-road time, but these three seem to be laying the pathway out with each new adventure — which means that they are edging closer and closer to drifting into the modern age.  

Tyler Perry’s Madea has long been a rough shelter in the storm for an assortment of outcasts and miscreants in need of tough love, so in Witness Protection, she’s taking in a Wall Street investment banker (Eugene Levy) and his family who are on the lam from the mob. The cross-cultural mash-up is old hat and likely stale, but somehow you just know that Perry’s audience will remain loyal.  

Imagine a team of eager magazine employees investigating a classified ad seeking a companion for time jumping (mis)adventures. Aubrey Plaza, Jake M. Johnson, Karan Soni and Mark Duplass who seems to jumping from project to project this summer (you can catch him in People Like Us and in the upcoming Your Sister’s Sister) star.   

Channing Tatum just might be a real Hollywood swinger and one shrewd customer. Dreaming of fictionalizing his early days as an exotic dancer, Tatum teams up with Steven Soderbergh (after approaching Nicolas Winding Refn of Drive fame) for Magic Mike, which, from the spirited trailers, gives the impression of a return to the fun-loving Ocean’s franchise box office form for Soderbergh.  

Film, as a medium, provides writers and directors the opportunity to tell great stories. But sometimes, as is the case with Jonathan Demme's latest effort, Neil Young Journeys, film simply goes along for the ride with an even greater storyteller as he does his thing.  

Christopher Nolan is daring us to ask the question. Is The Dark Knight Rises the best third film in a series ever? After going through this exercise for a few days now, there really isn’t much of a list to delineate and rank. Let’s review the obvious candidates and determine how Nolan’s finale stacks up.  

Beasts of the Southern Wild, the savage visual poem from debut director Benh Zeitlin (which he co-wrote with playwright Lucy Alibar), takes us on an adventure from its opening frame, yet what makes it so special and downright impossible to imagine in any other form, is Hushpuppy’s voice.