The Headliner

Pitch Perfect

I believe my esteemed colleague Mark Lisanti was the first person I heard refer to Pitch Perfect as Sing It On, which is at once an apt endorsement and an apt dismissal. Pitch Perfect is a well-executed, likable, and entertaining (unofficial) reboot of the 2000 film Bring It On, with a cappella choral performances in place of cheerleading. And I get it: If you're going to steal, you might as well steal from the best. The problem is that Bring It On is actually perfect, so as a ripoff, Pitch Perfect is merely a very good facsimile that will probably just make you want to watch Bring It On again.

30 Rock and New Girl writer Kay Cannon wrote the screenplay for Pitch Perfect, so there are lots of goofy jokes along the way that may remind you of either of those shows. Annas Kendrick and Camp star, and since we've already seen them playing real grown-ups — the former as a hot shot HR executive in Up in the Air, and the latter as a stay-at-home mom in her 30s on The Mindy Project — it's not quite believable to see them playing college students here (particularly Kendrick, who's supposed to be a freshman). But despite its deficits, Pitch Perfect is still worth seeing, if for no other reason than for its many a cappella renditions of recent pop hits to knock "I Dreamed a Dream" out of your head, where it's been since you saw Les Misérables last week.

The Bourne Legacy (August 3)

Silver: For as good as the Bourne films are, they inexplicably always seem to get lost in the shuffle of summer movie marketing. So I was treating The Bourne Legacy just like I did the previous three, as a film that was just going to magically appear to be the perfect late-summer, high-quality digestif after a long summer of gorging on sugary and fatty cinematic fair.

Until now. I just circled August 3 on my calendar in red marker.

The Muppets (November 23)

In the last few years, has there been a better marketing campaign than the one for The Muppets? Maybe not. The latest is a send up of David Fincher’s kick-ass trailer for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. This briskly edited spoof reveals a ton of new stuff, and if you look closely, you’ll even see Chris Cooper singing and dancing.