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Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) lives in a fairy tale, in both senses of that word. He's not troubled with real-life adolescent bagatelles like homework, and he lives unsupervised in the clock tower of a Parisian train station, where he's in charge of keeping the clocks running. But Hugo is unsupervised because his parents have both died. (…I believe? I'm not entirely clear on what has become of his mother; his father, played by Jude Law, is consumed by a fiery backdraft in flashback, and this is not explained either.) Hugo's druncle Claude (Ray Winstone) takes custody of the boy, sticks around long enough for Hugo to learn the station-clock trade, then goes on walkabout, and Hugo is left to fend for himself. Fortunately, he's gifted at fixing things, so he keeps the clocks running in the hopes that nobody will notice Claude has gone missing, and dodges the station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), an orphan-phobe with a mechanical leg and an equally hostile Doberman. Hugo nicks pastries from bakeries, and spare parts from Georges, the sour proprietor of a toy stall (Ben Kingsley), because on top of keeping the time and staying out of the boys' home, Hugo has a third job: trying to fix an old automaton repatriated by his father from a museum, in the hope that the machine will send him one last message from beyond the grave. And it does, in more ways than one.

A serviceable but obvious animated tale about a blue macaw named Blu (Jesse Eisenberg, typecast even in avian-cartoon form) who reluctantly returns to his roots in Brazil, then finds love…and his wings. Awww! But also, kind of zzzz! "Rio"'s most striking visuals and renderings of animal physicality will only remind you of "How To Train Your Dragon," a smarter and more thoughtful film across the board, which you will then want to watch instead!

Robin Hardy’s "The Wicker Tree" could have been a much stronger film had it not been directed by Robin Hardy. Which is a weird thing to think when you actually waste time thinking about it. Hardy is the director of the original 1973 film "The Wicker Man" and the author of "Cowboys for Christ," a thematic sequel to "The Wicker Man." He’s now synonymous with "The Wicker Man," a canonical British horror film about a murderous community of Scottish pagans. Hardy’s the first guy that balked in terror and dismay when Neil LaBute’s "The Wicker Man" underdone parody-cum-remake came out (also in 2006). So while playwright Anthony Schaeffer scripted the original "The Wicker Man," it is now considered Hardy’s baby. So who else could direct "The Wicker Tree," an adaptation of "Cowboys for Christ," but Hardy?