It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. This week we get three pretty darn terrific — and wildly diverse — new films. It’s also that time of year where the line between art and mainstream blurs to a degree we don’t see at any other time of the year. This is both pleasant and mildly distressing, since the big-box theater chains get into the picture. Regardless, we have three choice movies this week — and a couple of others.

Last week wasn’t very much fun, was it? There we were gathered together— gloomy and despondent — huddled around a single, meager mainstream release and a documentary no one cared about. (The situation was so bad from my perspective that I opted to make the Weekly Pick one of the Special Showings.) This week is somewhat more promising — in its way. (What we’re really waiting for are the next two weeks.) Exactly how promising you will find it depends a great deal on how much you are jazzed about yet another Hobbit movie — that and your Tyler Perry tolerance.

I’m not going to mince words, gloss things over or put a brave face on it. This week is pathetic. There are two movies opening — one of limited audience appeal (it’s a documentary) and one about which there is cause for some skepticism. It’s a good thing that there’s still a large quantity of good things that are still playing. That’s the most comfort I can give. I can’t even bring myself to use an image from this week’s crop and have settled on a movie from 10 years ago, which is a special screening this week.

Since it has been authoritatively proved that a significant portion of the American public can only survive an entire day with their family if at least two or three hours of that day are spent in a darkened movie theater — offering the illusion of togetherness without actual interaction — it is my civic responsibility to enlighten you on your options. This year — filling that space between the turkey and the Alka Seltzer — we have a fairly pleasing variety of diversions at our disposal.