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Writer-director Robert Zemeckis wisely chose the most unquenchable of stories for his technological marvel. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, already filmed with everyone from Michael Caine to Patrick Stewart, George C. Scott, Vanessa Williams, and Mr. Magoo in the role of the skinflint who learns to give, can hold its own even surrounded by the most dazzling of special effects.

I actually gasped at one moment as the camera flew over London. It was not just that the Victorian setting was so meticulously created, though I plan to go back just to revel in the details. It was that I had never before seen a camera move so fluidly through so many different vantage points in the midst of a convincingly immersive 3D experience. It evokes a visceral sense of buoyant jubilation and freedom that immediately connects us to the movie's setting, making us feel completely present in the story as it unfolds.

We meet Ebeneezer Scrooge (voice of Jim Carrey) as he is bidding farewell to his partner, Jacob Marley, now laid out in his coffin. Scrooge literally removes the coins from Marley's eyes. It may be a custom, but money is money. Seven years later, Scrooge is well into his bah, humbug mode, turning down a Christmas dinner offer from his nephew Fred (voice of Colin Firth), turning down a charitable donation, and grudgingly agreeing to allow his poor clerk Bob Cratchit (voice of Gary Oldman) a day off to celebrate with his family. Scrooge goes home to eat his gruel by himself when, in one of the film's most thrilling effects, Marley's flickering greenish ghost appears, heaving the heavy weights he bears through the door ahead of him. As we all well know, he is there to announced that Scrooge will be visited by three spirits who will teach him about Christmas past, present, and yet to come.

Our familiarity with the story is an anchor in the sea of new visual stimuli, and it keeps our focus on what is happening to the characters, even when the technology goes slightly askew. Zemeckis said that the good news about making a motion capture film is that you can do anything. Whatever you imagine can be realized. But, he added, the bad news is that you have to do everything. The blank screen is there and every single detail, every button on every coat, every log in every fire, every reflection, shadow, and snowflake have to be separately created in three dimensions and designed to interact with every other element we see. Some of the figures are more solidly created while others seem a bit stiff and rubbery. Firth's Fred is particularly awkward. Some of the scenes are hyper-realistic while others, like a dance at the Fezziwig's Christmas party, play with space and weight, not always in aid of the story. It gets too frantic, especially during a non-Dickensian insert of a chase scene that has Scrooge shrinking like Alice in Wonderland. The decision to double up on voices (Carrey plays all three spirits, Oldman plays Cratchit, Tiny Tim, and Marley and Robin Wright Penn plays both Scrooge's sister and his girlfriend) is distracting and occasionally confusing.

But oh, there is a visual sumptuousness here to rival even the merriest Christmas celebration. Scrooge's flights through time, the glorious bounty of the Ghost of Christmas Present, the Victorian streets, the costumes, the warmth of the fire, the magic of Scrooge's first dance with Belle -- make this an instantly indispensable classic. It's all there, Scrooge's bitter loneliness to his thrilling giddy-as-a-schoolboy realization that he can change, and that the power of giving is greater than any power of having. And for the people who gave us this great gift, God bless them everyone.

"More of this is true than you would believe," "The Men Who Stare at Goats" cheekily informs us as it opens. And while its tone is high satire, even farce, the story it tells is not hard to believe at all. Military officials are portrayed as credulous, ineffectual, and petty. But they are also portrayed as candid, open-minded, and forthright. Much of what goes on in the military's 20-plus-year exploration of what we used to call the "human potential movement" seems outlandish, but those were outlandish times. And one aspect rings especially true. According to this film, based on the non-fiction book by debunking Welsh journalist Jon Ronson, the real reason the US and the USSR entered into these "new age" programs was that each was convinced the other was doing it. So much for the efficacy of "remote viewing."

That would be the power to see something mentally that could not be seen visually, either because it was too far away or on the other side of a wall. This division, led by Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), whose long, gray braid hangs down over his fatigues, experiments with all categories of extra-sensory perception including telekinesis (the ability to affect objects without touching them), clairvoyance (the ability to read minds), and precognition (the ability to predict the future).

Jeff Bridges, as a Viet Nam vet who explores the new age fads of the 1970's, one hot tub at a time, conveys slightly seedy optimism in the early days of the program and shows us the consequences of too much mind-bending at the end. Kevin Spacey is the ambitious psychiatrist who guides the program as it mutates from exploring what our troops can do to exploring how what we have learned can take away from the humanity of the enemy troops we capture. George Clooney centers the film as the most gifted of the program's subjects, a man who seeks some way to integrate his abilities and experiences to find some meaning in the effort. But Ewan McGregor never convinces us that he is a dumped husband, a reporter, or an American. The reference to Jedi warriors just reminds us of his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the "Star Wars" movies and makes his appearance seem like an in-joke.

The light-heartedness of the movie's tone goes from pratfall humor to a wrenching depiction of the consequences of foolishness. It is smart enough not to be entirely dismissive of the idea that some or all people may have some uncharted capabilities we should try to understand and focus. But it is clear that none of that will do much good against a gun and that the efforts to pursue it may lead to extensive personal and organizational trauma. The main character is unhappy that his scoop is almost entirely ignored when it is published. The media picks up only on the side detail that Barney music was used to break the spirits of prisoners. The pernicious influence of that song appears to have been the only usable information produced by the program; something that any parent of a toddler could have conveyed with great enthusiasm. If this movie directs more attention to Ronson's findings, that will be gratifying to him, but to us it should also be an important lesson about how one factor in allowing large organizations get out of control is that no one is paying attention.

Part of the charm of "An Education," a bittersweet coming of age story based on a brief memoir by Lynn Barber, is how much we know what its main character does not. Jenny (an incandescent Carey Mulligan) is a teenager in 1961 London, over-protected by her overly-cautious and conventional parents and eager to be independent and to have adventures. She is used to being the smartest one in the class and so even more than most teenagers, she is convinced that she understands many important things her parents cannot possibly comprehend. She is eager to grow up, to seem sophisticated, to be sophisticated. She is innocent, filled with potential, willing to be taught -- and she has no idea how powerfully attractive those qualities are to a predatory older man.

But we know that, and when David (Peter Sarsgaard) rescues Jenny and her cello from a rainstorm by giving her a ride home, we know she will confuse urbanity with wisdom, that she will think that because he lies on her behalf he will not lie to her. But the most important thing we know is that like Jenny, London is also on the brink of enormous changes. We know that a world of opportunities she could never imagine will open up to her. Unlike Jenny, we know she is going to be fine. After all, we know she went on to tell her story, in itself a triumph over whatever went wrong and whatever she lost.

Danish director Lone Scherfig perfectly captures London just as it is about to move from the drab, stiff-upper-lip, world of post-WWII deprivation to the brash and explosive era of mods and rockers, Carnaby Street and the Beatles, Twiggy, "The Avengers," and Joe Orton. Part of what makes David so exciting is that Jenny believes that the only options available to her are teacher and housewife and the only examples of both she has seen appear dull and unrewarding. David gives her a glimpse of a life that is never dull. It is always shopping and parties and travel, pretty clothes and lovely restaurants. If in order to have all of that she must lie to her parents and defy her teachers, that makes it all the more exciting. It binds her to him even more, creating a set of rules that is just for them.

That is how it seems, anyway. The education referred to in the movie title tells us that she will learn some difficult lessons. But its conclusion reminds Jenny and us that it is only the end of her beginning. She thought meeting David was the beginning of her future; she learns that the real beginning only came afterward.

The screenplay by Nick Hornby ("High Fidelity," "About a Boy") is sympathetic but insightful, skillful in sketching in each of the characters. Sarsgaard also makes David more than a predator. Jenny is not just smarter than he is; she is stronger, too. As Jenny goes from school girl to dressed-up doll to the beginning of adulthood, from the make-it-do, wear-it-out modesty of her home to Paris hot spots, Production designer Andrew McAlpine and costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux show exquisite sensitivity in giving Jenny a look that tells the story. Every performance is a gem: Alfred Molina, proud but fearful as Jenny's father, Emma Thompson, starchy as the headmistress, and Olivia Williams, a teacher who wants more for Jenny than she wants for herself (it must have been quite a challenge for hair and make-up to turn Williams into such a dowdy character). Rosamund Pike is utterly charming as a dim but kind-hearted party girl. And Carey Mulligan, in a star-making turn, makes this into one of the best films of the year.

Vampires are everywhere these days. There are the Romeo and Juliet-style stories of Twilight and the steamier True Blood as well as the love triangle of the CW's Vampire Diaries. And now there is "Cirque Du Freak," based on the best-selling series of YA novels by Darren Shan, who shares his name with the title character.

I think it is because in this open-minded and permissive era it is hard to find a reason to keep an ordinary romantic couple apart. In the old days, parental disapproval, not having enough money, or societies' strictures could fuel an entire movie until the happily-ever after ending. But these days it is difficult to create narrative tension to keep a couple separate for 10 minutes, much less two hours. That may be great for society, but it is tough on story-tellers. And so in order to get transgressive, a bit of cross-species romance seasoned with the risk of death and the prospect of an unleashed id can make a story very captivating.

Teenager Darren Shan (Chris Massoglia) feels that his life is just fine. He gets good grades. Kids at school like him. His parents are proud of him. He has a life-long best friend named Steve (Josh Hutcherson of "Bridge to Terabithia"), who is restless and unhappy.

Darren does not want to admit that he also has his restless moments and is not always comfortable being what Steve calls "perfect boy." Darren wants to make sure we understand that he is no longer close to a former friend who has become "a freak," meaning that he does not dress like an ad for a soft drink. He is not sure that he will be satisfied with what his parents tell him is "the path to a happy, productive life: College! Job! Family! And one day, if you're lucky, you'll be yelling at a teenager of your own."

And there's Darren's lifelong fascination with spiders, not studying them, more communing with them. Steve is obsessed with vampires and dreams of becoming one himself. They pick up a mysterious flier about a freak show and sneak out to see it. When Darren steals a poisonous spider and it bites Steve, Darren agrees to give up his life as a human to become the vampire's assistant in exchange for the antidote.

It makes some changes to the story in the book series but it is true to the tone -- a nice combination of teenage angst and outrageous grotesquery, with the implicit recognition that sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference. Massoglia and Hutcherson come across as bland at times, but then they are sharing the screen with a snake-boy and a lady who not only has a beard but is the mesmerizing Salma Hayek. The story can be exposition-heavy as it lays the foundation for the next episodes in the series by starting up a war between two vampire factions. But it benefits from small details around the edges that attest to the fully-realized world of the novels. It balances the scary moments with humor. And it has good guy and bad guy vampires, a rock music-loving snake boy (Patrick Fugit, one of the film's highlights), a woman whose limbs regenerate, a super-tall guy who kind of looks like Edgar Allen Poe, and a world of freaks that knows how to make the Cirque feel like home.

If you saw Where the Wild Things Are this week and loved it -- or if your children are too young for it but want to enjoy Sendak on film, try the Sendak collection from my favorite Scholastic Storybook series. It includes not only the title story but other Sendak favorites like "In the Night Kitchen" and the wonderful Nutshell classics that teach letters ("Alligators All Around"), numbers ("One Was Johnny"), and the months ("Chicken Soup with Rice") to wonderful songs by Carole King. Our family favorite was the one about Pierre, who learned not to say "I don't care!"