Oscar is knocking at my door. Better get in my licks… 

The Blind Side. A rich white Memphis housewife takes in a hulking homeless black teenager and teaches him about God and football. He returns the favor by becoming a first-round NFL draft pick and an inseparable member of the family. Surefire, straight-arrow inspirational sports film succeeds as family entertainment and even manages to be mildly—microscopically—critical of the privileged social elite. Sandra Bullock does the subtlest acting of her career while director John Lee Hancock (who also adapted the bestselling book) does some careful steering through choppy emotional waters.

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire. Despite the accolades and celebrity endorsements, an enormous slog. The title character, an obese African American single mother, illiterate and pregnant, battered and raped, finds sanctuary from her miserable existence in a pilot program that equips her with the strength to leave her wicked mother. Lee Daniels directs in a schizophrenic style that mutes the impact of the abuses while the melodramatic details of the protagonist’s home life refuse to take any significant dramatic shape, although Gabourey Sidibe’s performance is a model of Bazinian realism. Big, loud, showboating work by Mo’Nique as the foul-mouthed couch-dwelling mother; small, quiet, modest work by Lenny Kravitz as a male nurse.

The Princess and the Frog. Disney’s generously animated, politically corrected fairy tale is a successful “return to form” after a long drought in that field. The locale (Depression-era New Orleans) is shrewdly selected for its cultural niceties, much of which—the jazz, the cuisine, the art deco styling—comes across exuberantly. All but the most ravenous Disney fans are apt to feel a faint whiff of disappointment at the noncommittal safety of some of the choices. Not even dedicated practitioners of voodoo will walk away offended.

Up in the Air. George Clooney at his George Clooniest: a honey-tongued “career transition counselor” specially hired to downsize high-profile employees—a man well below the tax collector on the social pecking order. His eventual crisis of conscience leads to several well-telegraphed epiphanies, and director Jason Reitman is a smooth enough operator tobring them all off with little resistance. Undeniably relevant, timely, topical, the film carries with it a sense of its own gravity such that the lessons learned are tainted with a false sense of grandiosity.

The Last Station. Handsome period piece finds Tolstoy in his retirement years looking after his country estate, lording it over his idealistic disciples, and eternally arguing with his wife of many years over what to do with his valuable legacy. James McAvoy plays the young secretary who comes to spy on the family and winds up at the great author’s deathbed. Michael Hoffman’s film builds to a moving conclusion although it remains up until that point little more than superficially attractive. Savory performances by Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren.

Invictus. Clint Eastwood’s respectful, respectable Nelson Mandela biopic turns out to be not much of a biopic at all, but a modestly proportioned sports movie with historical legitimacy. (The 1995 Rugby World Cupis distant enough in the collective memory to justify its retelling.) What the filmlacks in excitement it makes up for in feeling. Slowly but surely paced and carefully acted (most notably by Morgan Freeman, though Mandela’s princely dignity and measured cadence doesn’t present much of a challenge to this distinguished actor), its only goal is to spread goodwill, and apart from some phony, “just kidding” suspense devices, it does exactly that.

The Lovely Bones. Peter Jackson’s over-scaled rendering ofan Anne Seabold bestseller isn’t remotely competent as a mystery and only fitfully effective as an afterlife fantasy. (The former provides at least one authentic Hitchcockian suspense scene while the latter gives us a New Age-y depiction of a heavenly waiting room.) Jackson never settles on an appropriate mood for the story’s wide fluctuations, which veer from harrowingly dark to sticky-sentimental. Stanley Tucci, acting behind horn-rimmed glasses, a blonde toupee, and blue contact lenses, works hard at his role as a pedophilic serial killer, but even he is compromised by the artsy cutting and expensive special effects. The mind is given plenty of opportunity to wonder at what Scottish director Lynne Ramsay, who’d once been attached to this hot property, might have brought to the morbid scenario.

Broken Embraces. An Almodovar cocktail: secrets, lies, multiple identities, an ambiguously folded narrative, long rounds of vigorous lovemaking, and Penelope Cruz. The warm bright color (courtesy of Rodrigo Prieto) is a constant delight, as is the superb strings score (AlbertoIglesias), but one cannot shake a feeling of déjà vu. Were a less experienced behind the camera, this would probably be considered some kind of tour de force. For Pedro Almodovar, it’s about par for the course.

Avatar. The tall blue humanoid aliens, with their lemureyes and long canines, are visually intimidating protagonists, but they are only one of many creations lobbying for attention in this eye-gorging spectacle, James Cameron’s first since Titanic. The “revolutionary” 3-D imaging incorporates a wide palette and large depth of field, such that several planes are allowed to exist simultaneously with perfect clarity. The results can be accurately described as a transporting experience in spite of the corny storyline. The heavy cliché doesn’t seem to worry Cameron in the least, and he coordinates several exciting action sequences before submitting to a “happy” ending, the disturbing implications of which he appears to be completely oblivious.

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done. The increasingly eclectic Werner Herzog directed this low-budget indie about a depressed mama’s boy who experiences some kind of epiphany in the jungles of Peru and comes back to San Diego a crazed mystic. Based on a bizarre case history, its sadness and weirdness are not lost on Herzog, whose partnership with David Lynch (who executive produced) seems to have coaxed out the same scabrous humor typical of the latter. Apparently written, shot and edited in a mere five weeks, it exists in a vacuum far removed from the intrusions of real life. While not especially good, it remains something to see.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. The immortal proprietor of a raggedy circus sideshow, doomed to wander the earth with agenuine magical chamber in tow, serves as the perfect subject for Terry Gilliam’s obsessive musings on the visionary artist in a an unbelieving world. An authentically bedraggled Christopher Plummer fills out the lead role sympathetically, and the surrounding players (especially Tom Waits as a dapper Satan) round out the strangeness. Ramblingly plotted, it is genuinely inventive both in its zany effects (echoes of Monty Python) and in its ingenious use ofseveral actors (Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell) to patch over Heath Ledger’s untimely death—a special effect in itself. The ongoing battle between the extraordinary and the mundane is Gilliam’s primary occupation, and he wrestles with it boldly and bravely.

Sherlock Holmes. Guy Ritchie gives us a souped-up Holmes in a comic book plot that could “alter the very course of the world.” (Sigh.) A manic Robert Downey, Jr. and a dashing Jude Law provide passable panache, and Ritchie gives the Victorian locations a dingy, filthy sheen, but the ominous intimations of black magic—by far the most piquant ingredient in the mix—remain largely unrealized. There’s energy to spare in this overblown adventure, especially in the rousing Irish jig that closes out the credits.

The White Ribbon. A quiet, unprepossessing, pre-WWI German town is gripped by a series of disquieting events: a barn burning, a cabbage patch mangling, a hit-and-run flogging, an eye gouging, a mysterious death or two. Who is responsible? The stringent, unyielding, corrupt patriarchs of the community, or their sullen, morbid, browbeaten children? Since this is a Michael Haneke film, the mystery lingers well past the closing credits. It’s a great mercy that the romance between an open-faced schoolteacher (who narrates as an old man) and a bashful nanny—the sole sympathetic characters—is allowed to give some contrast to the bleak goings-on. A mood of all-encompassing dread is sustained for all of the film’s two-and-a-half hours, though the significance of what we’re seeing is telegraphed from the very first scene. In other words, the depiction of evil is trite.