Ambitious of vision and swooping of camera, 'I, Frankenstein' is no 'I, Robot,' let alone 'I, Claudius,' but it's definitely watchable on a cold Jan. evening or, a few months from now, on your I, Pad.

No question that 'Birdman' is a breathtaking technical achievement, not a stunt. Shot in 30 days after a long rehearsal period, with the actors' and the camera's movements calibrated to the inch and the millisecond so the action flows smoothly, the picture has the jagged energy of a long guerrilla raid choreographed by Bob Fosse.

Jimmy Stewart lived for movies, fought for his country, and died for love. Now isn't that a wonderful life?

On the page, 'Gone Girl' was a literary game: a tennis match of alternating chapters from Nick and Amy, with the reader offering to take each character's side every few pages.

In 'Blade Runner,' the here is quite enough: a vision of dark, cramped, urban squalor. This is Los Angeles in the year 2019, when most of the earth's inhabitants have colonized other planets, and only a polyglot refuse heap of humanity remains. Los Angeles is a Japanized nighttown of sleaze and silicon, fetid steam, and perpetual rain.

We all recall what is or was important to us and are astonished when it slips other people's minds. Perhaps we dismiss as irrelevant matters of crucial concern to those we love. That's life as most of us experience it, and which few movies document with such understated acuity as 'Boyhood' does.