If last week was a cornucopia of delights—a couple titles to one side—this week is a small cheese tray. When the best-looking new movie gives every appearance of being lower-tier horror that might at least be fun—even if not intentionally—you know things are looking a little grim.

I’d like to pose a question—or at least ask for some prognostication from readers—as concerns where we’re headed cinematically speaking now.  So break out your Tarot decks, brew up those tea leaves, don your turban and polish up the the crystal ball and weigh in on what the future holds.

After last week’s mixed—but better than usual for January—bag of movies, this week ought to have been a comparatively light one. Well, that wasn’t taking into account the Fine Arts opting to open both Pedro Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces and Tom Ford’s A Single Man, nor did it factor in Paramount going wide with The Lovely Bones.

I freely admit that this particular column has its roots in one of the very first Screening Room entries. Cut me a little slack. I’m coming to you from my bed of pain—OK, so at the moment it’s a chair of pain—with not one, but two throat infections.

After last week when nothing opened, we’re looking at four new movies coming our way this week—as well as the return of World Cinema and the Hendersonville Film Society. Assuming you’re prepared to cross the frozen tundra we seem to have turned into (I think a reindeer just went by my window), that affords you six possible movies this week that weren’t here last week.

Generally speaking, the first of the year traditionally means a certain number of films that have simply not made it to the provinces yet—and a lot of junk that the studios dump on us in the dead of winter as a kind of cinematic January white sale. In fact, except for the leftovers, the first three months of the year are pretty grim. This year stands at least a chance of being a bit different.

After weeks of heavy-duty release schedules, it turns out that nobody is opening anything on Jan. 1. In fact, if it weren’t for a press screening of The Imaginarium of Dr. Paranassus (which opens next Friday), we wouldn’t have any movie reviews in next week’s paper—something I can’t recall ever happening.

None of the traditional answers for Christmas fare were appealng to me. (Much as I love Darren McGavin, I think I’m prepared to forego A Christmas Story for the rest of this life.) Even less traditional fare was quite right either. Even my standard of The Lemon Drop Kid (1951) wasn’t doing it for me, so I started casting about in my mind for possible new traditional Christmas fare.