Britt Robertson in TomorrowlandTOMORROWLAND

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.

Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson in Fifty Shades of GreyFIFTY SHADES OF GREY

Everyone knows that movies aren't books. Yet it's amazing how many people - critics, specifically - have chosen to forget that fact when discussing Fifty Shades of Grey, director Sam Taylor-Johnson's and screenwriter Kelly Marcel's adaptation of E.L. James' pop-porn phenomenon.

Mila Kunis in Jupiter AscendingJUPITER ASCENDING

After months of previews in the wake of its delayed release, the big-budget sci-fi spectacle Jupiter Ascending - originally scheduled for summer 2014 - finally landed this past weekend. And with its opening, a question can now be asked: Was there any point at which Warner Bros. executives seriously considered pulling the plug on writers/directors/siblings Andy and Lana Wachowski's epic stinker? Maybe when Channing Tatum was cast as a human/wolf hybrid with a blond goatee and pointy ears? Or when an incensed Russian beat the hell out of his son with a throw pillow? Or when, for the performer's first scene, the Wachowskis handed Mila Kunis an all-too-symbolic toilet brush?

Cameron Diaz, Jamie Foxx, Quvenzhane Wallis, and Rose Byrne in AnnieANNIE

Sony's last-remaining grab for the holiday box office, the much-downloaded reboot of Annie, opened this weekend, and it must be said that as a musical - especially as a musically faithful interpretation of the stage show - it kind of sucks. The choreography's a shambles and the mixing is poor and the original numbers are terrible, while familiar, enjoyable Annie tunes such as "Little Girls" and "Easy Street" are merely sampled, their melodies and lyrics awkwardly woven into new pop and hip-hop arrangements. (Three of the film's myriad producers are Jay-Z and Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, so I guess we should just be grateful that the titular orphan is played by Quvenzhané Wallis and not Willow. Or Jaden.)

Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks in Saving Mr. BanksSAVING MR. BANKS

Saving Mr. Banks concerns the efforts of the crinkly-eyed Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) in getting the persnickety, Hollywood-averse British author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) to sign over the book rights to Mary Poppins. (Spoiler Alert: He does.) And as it's a Disney movie about a Disney movie with Disney products and Disney people - including Uncle Walt himself - popping up nearly every time you blink, the cynic in me resisted director John Lee Hancock's dramatic comedy for as long as humanly possible. Then Thompson's seemingly impenetrable Travers broke down while watching the Banks family sing "Let's Go Fly a Kite" at Mary Poppins' first public screening, and I was a goner. Aw crap, I thought while wiping away tears. Two more minutes and I would've been fine.

Martin Freeman in The Hobbit: The Desolation of SmaugTHE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG

The first great sequence in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - and, sadly, one of the few truly great sequences in Peter Jackson's second (or fifth, if you'd rather) J.R.R. Tolkien installment - is an escape scene. At its start, hobbit protagonist Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and his dwarf companions sneak out of the Elven dungeon cells in which they've been imprisoned, and hope for clean getaways by stashing themselves in empty wine barrels and floating down a nearby river. Sounds simple. And it might have been if it weren't for the rapids, and the waterfalls, and the whizzing arrows, and the savage orcs, and Orlando Bloom gingerly bouncing atop our heroes' heads.

Stanley Tucci and Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games: Catching FireTHE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE

My unfamiliarity with its source material was, I'm convinced, a large part of why I enjoyed last year's The Hunger Games movie so much. To be sure, I dug the film itself, with its exciting and moving survival-of-the-fittest encounters, and its fierce Jennifer Lawrence performance, and its bevy of grandly outré supporting figures (and, in the Capitol sequences, beyond-outré production design). But not having read any of the three books in Suzanne Collins' seminal young-adult adventure series, what I was most taken with was the surprise of the experience. Hunger Games newbies such as myself were allowed to take in Collins' richly imagined dystopian saga with gradual understanding and horror, much the way (I'm presuming) the books' readers did, and while we had every reason to expect Lawrence's teen warrior Katniss Everdeen to survive, the storyline was just spiky and unpredictable enough to make us wonder how, exactly, she ever would.

Eric Bana and Ciaran Hinds in Closed CircuitIt's a commonly held belief, mostly because it's generally true, that no worthwhile movies open on either the last weekend of August or Labor Day weekend. So I hope I wasn't alone, among reviewers, in feeling trepidation about my most recent cineplex duties, given that this year, in a calendar rarity, those weekends were one and the same. (Would the films be twice as bad as usual? Would there be twice as many bad films to contend with?) But I'm pleased, and somewhat shocked, to report that my latest movie-going experiences weren't relentlessly grim. They were just relentlessly weird, especially considering I had the best time at the weekend's worst picture, and the lineup's most professionally rendered offering made me fall dead asleep.

Suraj Sharma in Life of PiLIFE OF PI

Some 45 minutes into director Ang Lee's Life of Pi, there's an image that's so deeply resonant and beautiful and sad - one that's presented with so little melodrama or fuss - that I immediately welled up and felt compelled to stifle a sob. I remember the image clearly because I rarely stopped feeling that way for almost the entire hour-and-a-half that followed.

Julia Roberts and Lilly Collins in Mirror MirrorMIRROR MIRROR

Mirror Mirror is a slightly modernized, family-comedy version of the Snow White fairy tale, and offhand, I can think of few directors less suited to the material than this film's Tarsem Singh, the music-video veteran whose big-screen credits include those wildly baroque (and decidedly adult) spectacles The Cell and Immortals. Yet every once in a while, when a director is spectacularly wrong for a project, the results can be much more interesting than if he were right for it, and that certainly seems the case here; this aimless, pointless little trifle is mostly a drag, but I can only imagine how deadening it might've been without Singh at the helm.

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