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Halle Berry, left, as Meronym, and Tom Hanks as Zachry in the epic drama 2/3"Cloud Atlas". The movie weaves plot lines of several characters over the course of 500 years. The disparate characters are all played by the same actors.

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"Cloud Atlas" (R, 172 minutes, Warner): At its simplest, "Cloud Atlas" tells the interlocking stories of several characters over a 500-year span. How these disparate players intersect becomes the labyrinthine game, in which each story line gets its own distinctive look and tone. Those visual…

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Tom Cruise takes on the iconic role of surly vigilante in "Jack Reacher," but the movie seems an effort to put Cruise into as many Cool Guy scenes as possible. "I'm just a guy who wants to be left alone," he intones.

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"Jack Reacher" (PG-13, 131 minutes, Paramount): Presumably taking a long, self-indulgent glance at his What Would Clint Do? bracelet, Tom Cruise takes on the iconic role of surly vigilante in "Jack Reacher," resulting in a mismatch of wincingly epic proportions. This movie is designed primar…

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"The Master" (R, 138 minutes, The Weinstein Company/Anchor Bay): It's the end of World War II and sailor Freddie (Joaquin Phoenix) hits the road, finally stowing away, drunk, on a party boat under the command of Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Seeing that Freddie has been on a bende…

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Liam Neeson stars as Bryan Mills in "Taken 2." Mills, a former CIA operative, is in Istanbul, where a tangle of kidnapping, torture and revenge unfolds, driven by the bad guys he earlier vanquished.

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"To Rome With Love" (R, 112 minutes, in English and a fair amount of subtitled Italian, Sony Home Entertainment): The comic roundelay opens with narration by an anonymous Roman traffic cop talking directly to the camera as cars whiz by. Filmmaker Woody Allen's Rome-set story unfolds as a bum…

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"Frankenweenie" is designed to appeal to discriminating adults and older kids, but it's definitely not for little children. In this scene, Victor Frankenstein, voiced by Charlie Tahan, chats with Sparky, his resurrected pet dog.

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"Frankenweenie" (PG, 87 minutes, Disney): The story of a young science nerd who brings his dead dog back to life with a blast from a lightning bolt is an expansive adaptation by Tim Burton of his 1984 live-action short of the same name.

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Colin Farrell brings realism to a hyper-real situation in "Total Recall." The futuristic gadgets in the film get fresh, fun updates, such as cell phones that can be implanted in human hands.

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"Total Recall" (PG-13, 118 minutes, Sony): Try to erase from your mind the first "Total Recall," that campy, 1990 Paul Verhoeven blockbuster in which Arnold Schwarzenegger pays a company to implant Mars vacation memories in his brain. While it may not be a fully realized take on Philip K. Di…

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Jeremy Renner plays Aaron Cross in "The Bourne Legacy." It's a character whose struggle lacks the narrative propulsion of Jason Bourne in the Matt Damon "Bourne" movies. Still, the film is intense and highly watchable.

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"The Bourne Legacy" (PG-13, 135 minutes, Universal): The fourth installment of the hugely successful franchise starring Matt Damon as the memory-depleted assassin Jason Bourne does not star Damon (or his character), nor does it arrive by way of director Paul Greengrass. But "The Bourne Legac…

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Batman (Christian Bale) is on the move in "The Dark Knight Rises." The movie frames a story line that pits the action hero against a terrorist thug named Bane.

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"The Dark Knight Rises" (PG-13, 164 minutes, Warner Home Video): Christopher Nolan has made a completely satisfying movie, one steeped enough in self-contained mythology to reward hard-core fans while giving less invested viewers a rousing, adroitly executed piece of popcorn entertainment. R…

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Animated "ParaNorman" is a spooky, creature-infested campfire story laced with lessons about teamwork, responsibility and the celebration of our inner outcast.

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"ParaNorman" (PG, 92 minutes, Universal): This animated film comes from writer/co-director Chris Butler, a storyboard artist who honed his skills on Tim Burton's "Corpse Bride" and Henry Selick's "Coraline." Butler's own movie is a spooky, creature-infested campfire story laced with valuable…

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Sylvester Stallone, left, Jason Statham and Terry Crews are among the aging actors in "The Expendables 2." There are loads of horrendous one-liners, some lame attempts at humor and glimpses at plastic surgery gone way wrong.

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"The Expendables 2" (R, 102 minutes, Lionsgate): Released in the summer of 2010, "The Expendables" grossed nearly $300 million worldwide. Sensitive to fans' complaints that several of the biggest names in the cast barely appeared in the first movie, Sylvester Stallone made sure that Bruce Wi…

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From left, Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively and Aaron Johnson star in "Savages," a story about Southern California marijuana dealers who find themselves in conflict with a Mexican drug cartel. The film is directed by Oliver Stone.