Woody and the gang are back for Toy Story 3, a tale of plastic prison break with new characters and a post-pubescent Andy. I’ll talk about Andy’s post-pubescentism in a bit. I had some reservations about Toy Story 3. I wrote an article for my school newspaper explaining that a “Toy Story” movie 15 years after the original—and 11 after the sequel—just wouldn’t be the same. Was I right? Yes… but the movie is still really good—on par, in fact, with first two films.

Inception—much like an ogre—is an onion. Layers upon layers upon layers upon layers. You won’t get any plot points or character names from me. This is one of those rare ones that you simply can’t and shouldn’t describe with words. My mouth is duct-taped and my fingers are in one of those Chinese trap things. So what will I do? Tell you to see it.

The opening shot of Get Low is spellbinding. We see a long shot of a rural house aflame against an inky night sky. The house is positioned on the left side of the frame, working its way toward the center. As we admire the building’s illumination in contrast to the pool of dark blue air, it comes as a shock when we see a faint figure of a man jump out of the second story window. The camera is stationary, remaining at a long distance, as he runs around the front of the house, flames dancing all over his body. He runs toward the left side of the frame until he disappears into the darkness. A few slow seconds pass. Then the dark figure—still silhouetted by night—runs past the camera, temporally engulfing the frame in black. The sequence is executed in one take, and it’s a haunting way to begin a motion picture.

Call it Paul Dano overload. There are many similarities between The Extra Man and The Good Heart—too many. In The Good Heart, which I screened yesterday, Paul Dano stars as Lucas; In The Extra Man, Paul Dano stars as Louis. The Good Heart examines the relationship between Dano’s character and a wacky old man; The Extra Man examines the relationship between Dano’s character and a wacky old man. In The Good Heart, this wacky old man loathes women and freezes his money in the icebox to keep it safe. In The Extra Man, the wacky old man is “against the education of women” and freezes his ex-roommate’s mail in the icebox to keep it safe. Both films, I found, are or were distributed by Magnolia Pictures. And, the most important similarity I observed: both films ultimately fail as entertaining motion pictures.

The Rebound, written and directed by Bart Freundlich, is a stale attempt at entertainment, a film that follows an old formula well-known to moviegoers everywhere. There is nothing here you haven’t seen before. Even the opening title sequence, with its stick figures set against solid-color backgrounds, is a complete rehash of the title sequence in Catch Me If You Can.

A young homeless man named Lucas (Paul Dano) tries to take his own life; an old bar owner named Jacques (Brian Cox) fights to survive. This is the basis for Dagur Kári’s English-language debut, The Good Heart, a scrambled egg of a film with a few sparkling moments.

Adrien Brody plays a cracked-out drug dealer named “Psycho Ed” in John Stalberg’s stoner comedy, HIGH School. Ed, if I may, is a walking tattoo parlor and a threat to barbers everywhere. He’s from a different world, and he’s in a different world: he’s eternally stoned. He’s the Wal-Mart of drug dealers, and two high school students, Henry (Matt Bush) and Travis (Sean Marquette) are about to steal his secret stash.

The tone of Edward and Rory McHenry’s Jackboots On Whitehall can be summed up in one image. Before the opening credits of the film begin, we see a superimposed logo: “Panzervision.” This film mocks everything in sight. It’s distasteful, scatterbrained, and a few years too late, but Jackboots On Whitehall is just too entertaining to pass up.

Fresh off its Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Winter’s Bone screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival today. I was surprised to see only one screening of this film on the lineup, and in the smallest theater facility. All of those who attended received an honest hour and a half of storytelling. The film, shot entirely on location in the Ozarks of Missouri, is about Ree Dolly, a 17-year-old girl who is forced to take care of her younger sister and brother due to her mother’s sickness and her father’s run-ins with the law.

I still haven’t seen Director Sylvain Chomet’s Oscar-nominated film The Triplets of Belleville, but take a look at its trailer and you can quickly conclude that Chomet’s animation isn’t conventional in any sense of the word. In fact, the trailer for The Triplets of Belleville has stuck with me as one of the most unsettling advertisements I’ve ever seen.