THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

In all honesty, I was a little bored by Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey before the movie even started. A nearly three-hour fantasy adventure with a colon in the title based on (one-third of) a beloved J.R.R. Tolkein title? A tale of dwarfs and elves, and a kindly old wizard played by Ian McKellen, concerning a perilous trek across New Zealand? An epic narrative involving an innocent's coming of age, and inanimate objects that prove surprisingly ambulatory, and a shriveled schizophrenic with bulging eyes who mourns the loss of his "Precious-s-s-s"? Haven't we all been here before? And beyond securing gazillions of dollars for New Line Cinema, was there really any need to go back?

RISE OF THE GUARDIANS

There appears to be a certain amount of bafflement, among those who track such things, as to why Rise of the Guardians has failed to make its expected dent on the late-autumn box office. Did the action comedy open too soon after the release of the similarly animated Wreck-It Ralph, thereby splintering its audience? Was the casting of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy as makeshift superheroes an idea deemed too juvenile for viewers over the age of three? Was the film's title generic and confusing, leading potential crowds to expect the arrival of the owls of Ga'Hoole?

If I may, I'd like to posit a different, simpler theory: The movie just sucks.

LINCOLN

Steven Speilberg has never directed a talkier movie than his presidential biopic Lincoln, and only on rare occasions, it seems to me, has he directed a better one.

FLIGHT

Within the first 15 minutes of director Robert Zemeckis' Flight, you'll witness what must rank as one of cinema's most frightening, emotionally wrenching plane crashes. Yet in the end, and as harrowing as this passage is, I'm not sure that it's actually more terrifying or heartbreaking than the scenes of Denzel Washington's Whip Whitaker - the pilot whose heroic actions save 96 lives aboard that ill-fated flight - battling his urge to drink and, with only the mildest feelings of regret, losing that battle again and again and again.