LOVE & MERCY

Receiving a wide national release on the same weekend as Inside Out's debut, director Bill Pohlad's Love & Mercy is also an exploration of the brain - specifically, the brain of Beach Boys wunderkind Brian Wilson, alternately portrayed by Paul Dano (during the film's Pet Sounds-era 1960s sequences) and John Cusack (during Wilson's heavily-, and incorrectly-, medicated period in the late 1980s). And rather astonishingly for a work of its type, it boasts numerous scenes in which it really, truly feels like we're allowed to roam around in a legendary musician's head, feeling what he feels and, even more importantly, hearing what he hears.

SPY

Writer/director Paul Feig's Spy opens with an incredibly funny gross joke involving a sneeze, closes with an incredibly funny reveal involving a one-night stand, and somehow manages to stay incredibly funny - in addition to smart and clever and sweet - for most of the two hours in between. It's an action spoof about a gifted yet timidly self-conscious CIA desk jockey (Melissa McCarthy) who finally gets to release her inner Jane Bond, but the numerous vehicular chases and shoot-outs and danglings from helicopters are practically beside the point. Here, the comedy is the action.

TOMORROWLAND

To the credit of Disney's marketing team, the intriguingly vague previews for Tomorrowland provided just enough (a grizzled George Clooney, "directed by Brad Bird" in the credits, no number at the title's end or colon in its middle) to make the film appear promising without explicitly stating what it was about, or whom it was meant for. Having now seen Bird's futuristic adventure, I know what it's about - mainly because, from its first seconds, Disney's latest live-action endeavor keeps spelling out its themes in big block letters. Whom it's meant for, however, remains a mystery.

PITCH PERFECT 2

Pitch Perfect 2 opens strongly, with the peerlessly funny Elizabeth Banks (who also directed the film) and John Michael Higgins performing an a cappella rendition of the Universal Pictures theme song and launching into the hilariously bitchy byplay that made their vocal-contest judges among Pitch Perfect's many highlights. And while it's true that this musical-comedy follow-up, like director Jason Moore's 2012 predecessor, is set in the world of collegiate a cappella groups - and specifically the world of Anna Kendrick's fledgling mash-up artist Beca - it's more accurately set atop a steep precipice. Because although it starts promisingly, as the saying goes, it's all downhill from there.