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Director Francis Lawrence (I AM LEGEND) and writer Richard LaGravenese (THE FISHER KING) do a rare cinematic achievement when having a book as the source material — they make the story better. They made all the right choices in what to cut, keep and change. The changes make the film more dramatic, but not in a maudlin way. Everything that happens is more immediate. The Depression-era setting only reminds us of the melodramas of that age, which this film fits in with surprisingly well.

Jacob (Robert Pattinson, TWILIGHT) was taking his last final in veterinary sciences at Cornell when he gets word that his parents have died in a car accident. They had mortgaged their house and business to pay for his education, so the bank takes everything. Now orphaned, he decides to jump a train. Luckily, he ends up on a circus train in the car of Camel (Jim Norton, STRAW DOGS), a friendly, drunk roustabout who helps him get work. When it’s found that he is an Ivy League vet, he is taken before the boss, August (Christoph Waltz, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS), an intimidating man who isn’t unfamiliar with violence as a way of making people do what he wants.

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Director Andrew Jarecki seems drawn to crime stories where the guilt of the accused is in question. He made the remarkable documentary, CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS, which told the tale of a father and his son who were both charged with child molestation. Now he steps into a fictional tale, but one based on true life. Those who watch ID or read true crime books will know this as a veiled version of the bizarre case of Robert Durst, whose wife Kathleen McCormack mysterious disappeared one day without a trace.

In this film, the “Robert Durst” character is named David Marks (Ryan Gosling, THE NOTEBOOK), the son of a wealthy land owner in NYC named Sanford Marks (Frank Langella, FROST/NIXON). Sanford wants his son to follow in the family business, which includes the ownership of strip clubs and peep shows on 42nd Street. David has other plans. The young man meets Katie (Kirsten Dunst, SPIDER-MAN) when his father is too cheap to send a plumber over to one of his buildings to check out a leaky sink. She’s from a working class family, which is exactly the kind of girl that will adequately piss off his father.

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Over the history of cinema, the oppression of Christians by Romans has been well documented in sword and scandal epics. This historical film moves forward in time from those tales to a time when the Roman empire was well in decline and Christianity had begun to take hold. It argues that oppression isn’t the sole flaw of any given belief system, but a result of fundamentalism fueled by power.

The story purposes the work of Hypatia (Rachel Weisz, THE CONSTANT GARDENER), and I say purposes because none of her work remains and details about her are sketchy at best. What is fairly established is that she was a mathematician, philosopher and astronomer, who taught in 4th century Roman Egypt. She was the daughter of Theon Alexandricus (Michael Lonsdale, MUNICH), the last librarian of the Alexandria Library in the Museum of Alexandria. She was been created as the inventor of the hydrometer, which is used to determine the relative density and gravity of liquids, and along with her father, the astrolabe.

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The latest animated feature from Blue Sky Studios is like a Disney film circa OLIVER AND COMPANY. It’s safe entertainment that skews for the younger crowd. And there isn’t anything wrong with making a film for a specific audience. I certainly don’t miss the crass pandering to the older viewers. It’s replaced with the joy of love and song.

The story follows a blue macaw who ends up in Minnesota. He is adopted by Linda (Leslie Mann, KNOCKED UP), who names him Blu (Jesse Eisenberg, THE SOCIAL NETWORK). They live a comfortable, conservative life running a small bookstore. But they are challenged one day to step out of their comfort zone when Tulio (Rodrigo Santoro, 300) shows up and informs them that Blu is the last male of his species. The Brazilian scientist wants to try and mate Blu with the last female blue macaw named Jewel (Anne Hathaway, RACHEL GETTING MARRIED).

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Certainly not one of the pinnacle of Abbott and Costello’s career for sure. When it came to them meeting fictional characters, they should have stuck to monsters. This pirate spoof does little to skewer the genre. The pirate theme serves only as a new dressing for their old routines.

Bud Abbott plays Rocky Stonebridge and Lou Costello is Puddin’ Head, a duo of tavern workers. On the way to work, Lady Jane (Fran Warren) gives them a love letter to give to the tavern singer Bruce Martingale (Bill Shirley, I DREAM OF JEANIE). Dinning at the tavern that evening are notorious pirates Captain Kidd (Charles Laughton, MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY) and Captain Bonney (Hillary Brooke, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH) and Puddin’ inadvertently switches the letter for a treasure map. Captain Kidd spends the remainder of the film trying to get the map back.

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There are a bunch of movies that this thriller brings to mind. It’s like THE PROFESSIONAL crossed with the BOURNE series and a touch of KICK-ASS. The first and last of those films because of the young female protagonist and the middle one for its reality grounded action. But then you get a dose of fairy tale woven in as well.

Hanna (Saoirse Ronan, THE LOVELY BONES) is 16 and has been living in the frozen woods with her father virtually her whole life. He is Erik (Eric Bana, HULK), a rogue CIA agent who has trained his daughter to be a ruthless killer. She is a smart girl who speaks multiple languages and can best her dad in a physical fight. He has prepared her for the inevitable day when Marissa, known as The Witch (Cate Blanchett, INDIANA JONES AND THE CRYSTAL SKULL), finds them. His motto is “adapt or die.”

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Duncan Jones follows up his ingenious “ideas” sci-fier, MOON, with this more conventional sci-fi thriller. That said I’m not saying that film is mindless in the least. It actually has lots of ideas, maybe too many. It’s like watching GROUNDHOG DAY filtered through Hitchcock and 12 MONKEYS.

Solider Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal, DONNIE DARKO) wakes up on a train. Christina (Michelle Monaghan, GONE BABY GONE) sits across from him and keeps calling him Sean. He thinks he’s going crazy. The last thing he remembers is flying helicopter missions in Afghanistan. Then a bomb blows up on the train.

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