So, are there two or three movies opening this week? Well, that’s still not clear—thanks to the Monday holiday. In other words, what I know at this point is that No Strings Attached and The Way Back are opening, and The Company Men either is or it isn’t. I’m not in the least sure that anyone cares that much. All in all, this simply doesn’t look like a week designed to set the box office ablaze.

About a week ago a friend of mine argued that Hammer horror movies were considered adult fare and were “rated accordingly,” which I knew was demonstrably wrong—at least in America for the first 11 years of the studio’s heyday. Yesterday my mother forwarded me one of those annoying e-mails extolling how “great” things used to be that asserted that movies didn’t used to need ratings because they were made by “responsible people” who made sure they were suitable for “everyone.” I knew that was pretty much banana oil. These two things—along with various bouts of balderdash I’ve heard over the years—prompted me to offer this column in an attempt to set a few things straight.

Assuming that you can get out of your house this weekend (something that’s not at all certain with me), there are three new movies opening on Friday: The Green Hornet, Made in Dagenham and The Dilemma. One of these I’ve seen. One of them I’m curious about. One of them makes me think being snowed in might not be so bad.

This Screening Room is something of an experiment. It’s the result of me having started keeping a not-entirely-comprehensive diary of movies I’ve watched that I didn’t have to review in some fashion—and which I think it reasonably improbable I’ll ever have occasion to review. The results are more reactions than reviews, but I thought they might be of some interest. They might ultimately be of some referential value, too, if someone in the technical department of the paper can come up with some method of cataloguing them in a separate archive alphabetically—and if I keep doing them. In any case, here are my short reviews on ten movies—mustered in alphabetical order.

The holidays have come and gone, and while the snow played havoc with the usual Christmastime-viewing rush, Asheville more than made up for it over New Year’s. Now, it’s time to face the grim reality of what appears to be the usual January White Sale of movies nobody much wants to see. Oh, sure, we’re slated for a few choice—or potentially choice—offerings that haven’t yet made their way to the provinces. But all in all, the prospects for a bright new year at the movies aren’t too good for at least the first couple of months—as witness Season of the Witch and Country Strong, which invade local theaters this week.

So that’s another year down, which means it’s another year of movies down. As usual that means that Justin Souther and I will be listing our picks for best and worst in the first Xpress of the new year. But I’m going to take a different kind of look at the year in terms of movies—not individual titles, but a broader picture of where movies are in Asheville. In that regard, this was a year of some note, especially from my perspective.