Hollywood keeps returning to author F. Scott Fitzgerald’s American-lit masterpiece of Roaring Twenties excess, undying love and a mystery man named Gatsby, and for good reason. “The Great Gatsby” is a juicy tale with social, dramatic and emotional fruits that remain just as ripe as when the story first hit the page in 1925.

Being a superhero comes with super-sized problems. That’s certainly the case with Iron Man and his cocky creator, Tony Stark, who’s suffering from a mega case of job-related stress at the beginning of this third movie spun from his Marvel comic exploits.

Two adventurous young boys come across a scruffy vagrant living in a boat in a tree, and become involved in a plot involving murder, obsession and revenge.

The first big-budget, sci-fi blowout of the year, “Oblivion” stars Tom Cruise as a survivor of a futuristic space battle that has turned Earth into an uninhabitable, post-nuclear wasteland. Now, 60 years later, he’s one of only two humans left after everyone else has been evacuated to live on a moon of Saturn. 

Truth, we’ve always heard, is stranger than fiction. Sometimes truth is better than fiction, too.

Given the price of movies today, the saturation of advertising and the wide selection of modern multiplexes, it’s highly unlikely that anyone just saunters into a local “movie house” anymore, buys a ticket to whatever’s showing and settles in without any idea of what they’re about to see.

As the often stressful decision deadline for college-bound high school seniors (and their parents) looms across the country, the lite ’n’ leisurely comedy “Admission” arrives with a well-timed lift to the spirits.

At any given time, it’s never hard to find someone who thinks Washington is in ruins and a dangerous extremist is running the White House.

Some people go to movies to relax, laugh, kick back, forget their troubles or release the tensions of the outside world.

“Side effects may include …”

Everyone knows the story of “The Wizard of Oz.” But that story, at least the one in the 1939 movie, begins and ends with Dorothy. What about the wizard, the guy in the title, the “man behind the curtain” who was already at the end of the yellow brick road?

In “Snitch,” a parent’s valiant effort to help his son has a sobering message underneath its action-movie surface — and behind the marquee power of its muscle-bound leading man.

A young woman runs down the street and into the night, frightened and fleeing from something — or someone. She’s carrying a large kitchen knife.

Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy put a crazy, comedic spin on an all-too-serious subject in “Identity Thief,” a rollicking romp about a mild-mannered businessman who gets taken for the ride of his life when he falls for an “identity theft” phone scam.

A zombie tale with a young-love twist, “Warm Bodies” puts a contemporary spin on an old story — a really old story.

Something’s rotten in the core of the Big Apple, and Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe and Catherine Zeta-Jones are all tangled up in the festering mess of politics, crime and corruption.

In “Mama,” when two little girls left alone in the forest after their father murdered their mother are found five years later in a remote cabin, they’re living in filth, scampering around like spiders, and unable to speak.

“Zero Dark Thirty,” a gripping Oscar-nominated drama about America’s decade-long manhunt for Osama bin Laden, was making sparks fly even before it hit the screen.

A young sniper trains his high-powered rifle on a group of unsuspecting citizens in a crowded plaza, scans possible targets through his scope and then opens fire. Five victims fall, including a young woman carrying a small child.

Billy Crystal and Bette Midler are big stars, and they’ve made some big movies, but now they’ve made a big mess.

By now, if you haven’t seen “Les Miserables,” you’ve probably heard the buzz about Anne Hathaway’s hair-raising performance.

The “D” of the title may be silent, but director Quentin Tarantino’s super-charged, explosively violent, sporadically comical movie mash-up of sweaty ’60s spaghetti Westerns and Old South pulp starts out with a bang and gets even louder.

In the spirit of the last-minute holiday scramble, here’s a father-son heart-tugger wrapped around a mushy reconciliation rom-com sprinkled with the tinsel of shiny Hollywood supporting stars acting like they’re in another movie entirely.

An epic tale of faith, survival and the circle of coexistence, the stunning-looking “Life of Pi” loads a lot — and a lot to think about — into its more than two hours of running time.

Do you believe in Santa Claus?

After all this time, it’s not surprising James Bond is showing a bit of his age.

The bad news: We’ve been invaded. The good news: Kids are taking America back!

After what was obviously a wild night, a hungover Whip Whitaker rouses from his stupor. He groggily argues with his ex-wife on the phone, curses, takes a puff from a cigarette, a toke off a joint, and a swig from a stale beer, then ogles his naked bedmate when she walks into his blurry line of vision.

It’s based on a true story, but don’t worry if you don’t recall it. Only a handful of people even knew it was going on at the time — or for years afterward.

If you’re looking for a last-minute Halloween jolt or two, here’s a scary-movie treat that’ll do the trick.

Before director Tim Burton struck box-office gold, he toiled away in obscurity as a 22-year-old animator apprentice for Walt Disney Studios.

Imagine a future America in which mobsters use time travel to zap anyone on their hit list back 30 years to 2044.

Fans of TV’s “Glee” and TV’s numerous popular singing competitions will dig the high-spirited, youthful comedy romp “Pitch Perfect.” But anyone who’s ever been specifically bitten by the bug of ultra-competitive college a cappella singing groups, which make all their musical noises vocally, will especially find plenty to like and laugh about.

He’s been an American Gigolo, an Officer and a Gentleman, and a Pretty Woman’s prince charming. And now Richard Gere has found another memorable, meaty role — just not in a movie with a title anywhere near as catchy.

A Hollywood icon takes a swing at America’s pastime in “Trouble With the Curve,” a cross-generational crowd-pleaser about an elderly professional baseball scout who strikes out when it comes to relating to his now-grown-up daughter.

Like a familiar song goes, the hills of “Lawless” are alive. But the thing that keeps the Prohibition-era community of Appalachian mountain men humming in this movie isn’t music, but moonshine.

Do you think movies are too mushy? Does romantic comedy make your eyes roll? Have you ever wondered if a motorcycle could be revved off a rooftop to blow up a helicopter, how effective a kitchen skillet would be in hand-to-hand combat, or what testosterone looks like when it’s expanded to critical movie mass?

In “Premium Rush,” an everyday routine turns deadly when a corrupt cop tries to intersect an envelope that’s been handed over to a bicycle delivery courier.

Politics sure can be polarizing, but laughter has the power to bring people together.

The fourth movie based on the espionage-thriller novels of Robert Ludlum comes to the screen with its name brand intact and its dark, dangerous, cloak-and-dagger world as treacherous as ever, but with its familiar leading man in hiding.

Four suburban citizen patrollers find themselves facing down an army of space aliens in “The Watch,” a comedy that sounds funnier than it turns out to be.

“Calling out around the world, are you ready for a brand new beat?” goes a classic ’60s Motown hit. “Summer’s here and the time is right for dancing in the street.”

It opens with a funeral, ends with a burial, and fills the nearly three hours in between ramping up to an apocalyptic nightmare.