This week is a little up in the air. Three movies—Restrepo, Mao’s Last Dancer and Resident Evil: Afterlife 3-D—are definitely opening. A fourth—a low-budget indie sex comedy called The Virginity Hit—is listed as opening in wide release, but it has yet to show up on any booking lists that have come my way from local theaters. So if anyone is hanging by a thread just dying to know if The Virginity Hit is really opening this week, check back.

Everyone has an actor or two whose name on a film increases the chances of attending said film—or possibly even demands it. That’s natural enough, though it’s often incomprehensible to the outsider. But more and more, it seems to me that I encounter the opposite outlook—folks who wouldn’t see a movie on a dare because some performer has so alienated them that the very idea of looking at them on the screen is a deal-breaker.

Apart from the special screening of Tommy at The Carolina on Wed., Sept. 1, at 7:30 p.m., this week belongs to more or less mainstream offerings—three of them to be exact. One of the films is probably negligible, but The American (which opens Wednesday) and Machete hold more than a little interest—much more than you’d expect for traditionally dull (cinematically speaking, of course) Labor Day weekend.

I realize the title of this sounds like it’s connected in some way with Miss Goldilocks and her adventures with that bear family, but it grows out of a question that arose the other day concerning how much a person should know about a movie before seeing it. Of course, this is not a one-size-fits all proposition. Some movies rise or fall on surprising the viewer, but those are specialized cases. But how much is enough for most movies?