I would agree with Blame It On Fidel’s premise that you cannot control the world around you, and that all of our political and religious ideologies do not give us answers. Finally, this movie makes me think about our kids, and the way they process the world we force them into. I guess this is what we have all gone through; but is there a way to help them process these grand events in their lives in ways that are less confusing? Have we forced our children to be what we want them to be, without shaping them in a way that gives them the ability to choose well?

Director David Slade does a good job ramping up the tension in the opening act of the movie. Too many horror films jump the gun and give away too much, too soon. I didn’t get that feeling with 30 Days of Night. Unfortunately, that doesn’t carry through the rest of the film. The plot tends to jump around, leaving gaping holes the audience just has to try to ignore. And don’t even get me started on the silly ending. It may be true to the source material but it really didn’t work for me at all. I had high hopes for this film but I left the screening I attended disappointed.

The good news is that this is an accurate biblical extraction of the story of Moses and the children of Israel from the book of Exodus. The story is a good one and bears retelling. After all, the Israelites have told the story to their children for millennia. But The Ten Commandments would be better reserved for Saturday morning cartoon time. Perhaps some churches and synagogues will stock it in their children’s libraries; I cannot see any other viable interest for this cheesy, garish film. I attended a free screening for press and the public. Twenty of us started the movie; sixteen of us finished it.

Outsourced is a romantic, cross-cultural comedy about Todd Anderson, a manager at a Seattle-based customer call center until his job—and the entire office—is outsourced to Mumbai, India. When he is manipulated by his insensitive, greedy boss to go to India to train his replacement, the movie does a wonderful job of presenting the beauty of India, and the cultural faux pas of many Americans traveling to such different and exotic cultures. While it is a movie about outsourcing and its consequences, the issue is presented in a way that made me reconsider the practice, forcing me to look behind the symptom to the root of the issue: contentment.

“For the last month, I have been presented with the most extraordinary, beautiful, worked-out—I’m not kidding you—the most remarkable spectrum of interpretations of that scene,” says Gilroy of a pivotal scene in Michael Clayton featuring a trio of horses. “I can’t believe all of the stuff that I’ve heard. Some of it is so beautiful and so powerful—I’m not getting in the way of any of it. I’m not saying a thing about this. It started in Italy: What did you mean by this? I’ve never worked on anything where one scene or one sequence seemed to have so many different possible, really cool interpretations.”

The Darjeeling Limited is perhaps the closest thing we’ve seen to a Beatles film since, well, The Beatles. But what makes Wes Anderson’s latest film seem so Beatles-esque is not music—it’s Anderson’s trademark good-natured whimsicality crossed with a Beatles road-trip vibe and seasoned by an open-minded, Eastern-tinged spirituality. Those who struggle with their own baggage and long to throw it off will probably enjoy the college-literature intelligence of Anderson’s film, as will those whose spiritual journey has only recently embarked. More jaded spiritual and cinematic travelers will likely be less impressed—though the film may still produce fond reminiscences about the days when life on the rails was still an optimistic adventure.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age has ambitions to cover a lot of ground in its 114 minutes and personally, I think it tries to go a little too far. Too much time is spent on minutiae of the conspiracy. Action sequences of the battle with the Spanish Armada seemed grafted in, only to provide a boost of adrenaline near the end of the film. Honestly, the acting, the lush costumes, and historical settings are the main attractions and these extended CGI sequences at sea are just distractions. Overall though, I have to confess I liked the film. Despite it’s shortcomings it is still a visual treat to behold and Blanchett’s onscreen presence is captivating.

I’m beginning to suspect that Past the Popcorn’s big-town, West-Coast cynicism may be showing—because The Final Season is predicated on the same living-for-sports ethos that We Are Marshall traded upon, and I found Final Season no more convincing than Mike Smith found Marshall. Still, I’ve got a strong, strong hunch that this film’s target audience—folks from small towns that really do revolve around the success of their sports teams—would be best off completely ignoring my “critical” opinion of this film. I’m just another dude trying to rain on their parade; and if you really like parades, you know that predictability and tradition are almost entirely the point.

Michael Clayton is one of those intelligent, tightly-plotted films in which, really, not an awful lot happens. But everything that does happen takes place very deliberately, very intensely, and quite gravely. If you’re looking for comic relief, you’ll have to duck out to visit another auditorium of your local multiplex. Very early on, though, you’ll know that, at the very least, you’re in for a visual treat—and something of a mystery. About the only shortcoming I could find in the film was that I never got the sense that Clayton is much good at his job—despite the fact that everyone holds his work in highest regard.

In The Treatment, Freudian psychotherapy gets Jake Singer pointed in the right direction—but it’s no silver bullet. “A good therapist, I think, does that,” says screenwriter Housman. “You see some of this dispassion in him, in the way that he can be cold and distant from Jake. And in other scenes, there’s what we call a ‘counter-transference’—where he gets attached Jake, and his ego is hurt and he feels a little betrayed. So that’s part of the humorous human element, and what’s so endlessly interesting about therapy. You have other human beings trying to use their objectivity and push you along—but they’re still human beings, and they’re going to see you from their own window.”