Actually, I always have questions, but I’m limiting myself here to questions that involve movies, since those are germane to this column. In this case, I’m posing two questions. I don’t necessarily expect any answers, but these seem to be worth some contemplation. Let’s start with this PG-13 version of The King’s Speech that crept its way into theaters this week.

I’m going to revisit—albeit briefly, since I don’t have a lot of time this week—one of my earliest (March 2008) “Screening Rooms,” which was called “In Praise of Trash.” Why? Well, because I think there’s a lot to be said for “trash,” and because I was recently taken to task (I’d have rather been taken to Paris or London, frankly) for praising Drive Angry 3D. I was told I had “lost all credibility” with the reader, which actually suggests that the reader was not quite the regular follower of my reviews he claimed to be, since it was hardly the first time I’ve given an exploitation picture a good review. It doesn’t really matter, but what does matter to me is the idea that there is some etched-in-stone rule about what sort of movie can and can’t be liked. I don’t buy that.

The Asheville Jewish Film Festival is back with a new slate of six movies that will be shown at Fine Arts Theatre.

This week brings us two mainstream offerings—Sucker Punch and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules—and two art titles—Today’s Special (Fine Arts) and Somewhere (The Carolina)—in limited release.

Officially, it may be that today is only the first day of spring, but the movies—so far as the studios are concerned—have their own idea of time. That’s to say that they’re officially in the countdown to summer mode. This year, it appears that summer—that time when the studios unleash what they fervently hope will be the Really Big Pictures—starts on May 20 with the release of Rob Marshall’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, or possibly even on May 6 with Kenneth Branagh’s Thor, though that’s a more dicey proposition.

What do Night of the Hunter (1955), Carrie (1976), City Lights (1931), The Hours (2002), Shanghai Express (1932), and The Old Dark House (1932) have in common? Well, nothing really—except that at recent Asheville Film Society and Thursday Horror Picture Show screenings, I spent all but one of those titles standing up. Why? Because there weren’t any seats or even supplementary chairs left and I’m too old to sit on the floor. The only one where I got a seat—The Old Dark House—was a very near thing. I’m not complaining, mind you, but I am on the perplexed side.

I thought I had good news for you this week, but then the good news got moved to next Friday and that leaves us with three—well, not that exciting-looking movies opening on Friday. Try as I may, I can’t seem to work up much enthusiasm for Battle: Los Angeles, Mars Needs Moms, or Red Riding Hood. Maybe I was spoiled by last week.

Probably no genre of filmmaking is so generally disdained as the biopic. It’s actually less the films themselves than it is their often somewhat-to-extemely dubious veracity. I would not deny this aspect of the movie versions of the lives of the great. It’s certainly there, though most times I’d argue that it’s no worse than your average high school history book, especially as concerns older biopics where anything too disturbing tends to be given as fine a coat of whitewash as Aunt Polly’s fence ever saw. But it seems to me that even these films served a function in terms of general knowledge that was not without its value.

Well, here it is—Oscar weekend—and what had started out as a seemingly predictable year at the Oscars now looks a little less predictable, and has also become one of the most promoted ceremonies I can recall. It’s certainly evolved into the busiest Oscar season I’ve ever had since I’ve been Svengali’d into—along with Justin Souther—this Oscar party at The Carolina on Sunday night.

Oh, yes, it’s a slack week at the movies—only two movies are opening. That said—and in full knowledge of the fact that I’m setting myself up for a huge letdown—one of those, Drive Angry 3D, is the first mainstream offering of 2011 I’ve actually been looking forward to. Come on, breathes there a fan of trash cinema who can resist the prospect of Nicolas Cage breaking out of hell in an effort to redeem himself by saving his infant grandchild from serving as the centerpiece of a human sacrifice by a cult? If so, you’re made of sterner stuff than I am.