Maybe it’s because the Oscars got it so very right last year—so far as I was concerned—but I find it hard to work up any great enthusiasm for this year’s awards.

Three movies open this week: Crazy Heart (review in this week’s Xpress), Dear John and From Paris With Love. The first is worth consideration. As for the other two …

In just two weeks the much anticipated and much delayed remake of The Wolf Man comes howling into town. With that in mind, it strikes me that maybe we should go ahead and take another look at the original—and allow enough time for anyone so inclined to actually watch or rewatch the 1941 parent film.

More than the light dusting of snow I awoke to this morning, this week’s mainstream releases are a testament to the fact that winter is still very much upon us.

Perhaps it’s because horror was the genre that seriously attracted me to movies in the first place, but I’ve never found them to be wholly deserving of their reputation as somehow less than films of just about any other genre.

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.

I’m sure this collaborative list from Justin Souther and myself (and it really is a collaboration—we’ve been batting these choices back and forth for weeks) is going to have its fair share of detractors—and that’s fine. I can already make a pretty good guess at the outrage over the omission of certain titles, and what […]

I think it’s fair to say that 2009 was an unusual film year—if only because my number-one film has been more or less constant since June, while everything else has been in flux. On the other hand, I can’t think of a year where my 10 best list altered so much between voting for the […]

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.

Well, here we are at the week when Hollywood decides what people are just dying to see on the biggest moviegoing day of the year: Christmas. The prophets and visionaries have declared that this year that comes down to Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, It’s Complicated, Nine, Sherlock Holmes and Up in the Air.

Since we have snow, let’s take a cursory glance at snow in the movies. Most cineastes are, of course, well aware that most of the time movie snow has only the slightest relation to real snow. Anyone who’s seen Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night knows that it might easily be soapy foam. Anyone who doubts this should look at the feet of Woody Allen and Harold Gould during the snowy duel scene in Allen’s Love and Death. That’s merely the tip of the snowflake.

Before we get down to the theoretical event of the week—and possibly of the year—I want to note that something else is showing up locally this week. I’m not sure I’ve ever fielded more questions about when a movie is going to get here than I have in the case of The Road. Well, here it is.

The other day during the press screening of Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, I happened to notice that Jackson made a cameo appearance in the movie. Aptly enough, he showed up as a customer in a camera shop playing around with a movie camera. This isn’t the first time, Jackson’s put himself in one of his movies.

Perhaps because I’ve already seen The Damned United and Invictus (reviews for both are in this week’s paper), this seems like a very light week, especially this close to Christmas. Once you cross those off the list—and you really shouldn’t, especially The Damned United—the only big release you’re left with is Disney’s The Princess and the Frog.

These days the onset of the festive season means one thing – movies. Movies I haven’t seen and movies I need to see again. They come to me in various ways – mostly these days in the form of screeners, which are less expensive than setting up theatrical screenings.