J. Edgar frequently looks like a high school play wherein the kids have all dressed up in hand-me-down clothes, applied their own makeup, and started shuffling around on the stage, bobbling their heads in what they believe is an imitation of how old people move. It has an annoying — and needlessly distracting — chalky color palette, apparently meant to indicate that we’re in the past. And it has Leonardo DiCaprio acting his brains out without internalizing a thing: he seems incapable of portraying a man thinking.

Revenge of the Electric Car, the sequel to 2006’s Who Killed the Electric Car?, is meant to be a rousing ode to the resurgence of the electric automobile movement, and it’s full of enough style, maybe, to fool you into thinking that it is just that, for awhile.

In politics, the so-called “CNN effect” references the need of any office-holder to address whatever images currently stream from the round-the-clock cable and internet newsfeed.

“What is it with these titles? Studios may think that they can palm us off with flat, sour recitations of what their products contain, but, back in 1975, no one would have paid to see a Spielberg film called ‘Nasty Fish.’” —Anthony Lane, on the movie Bad Teacher, in The New Yorker

The idea of the painter as god’s craftsperson, diligently using talent to express faith and create undying works of devotion, is as antiquated in 2011 as the pace of The Mill and the Cross, which crawls across the screen at about the speed at which Flemish masters covered their canvasses. Yet set against the tired image of the tortured, complaining artist that’s been fashionable in films for the past 30 or 40 years (since the effect of Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev wore off), the idea is welcome.

Philipp Stölzl’s Young Goethe In Love, the light romance loosely based on the early life of German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, is as frolicsome as a puppy. It dashes around with enthusiasm, shrugging off any clumsy missteps along the way. Ardent fans of the writer, or those expecting a biopic, will be disappointed: it’s a romantic comedy in historical clothing. That said, Stölzl has elevated the game with a committed cast and far more panache than the genre typically offers.