It was an unsuspecting Friday night when I got the text-message, “Come see 2012! It will be fantastic!”

“Questionable,” I thought to myself.

Already almost two months old and nearing the end of its big-screen stint, Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story calls attention to an ongoing epidemic: the delusion of American government about unrestrained free enterprise. As expected, Moore’s portrait is maddening.

Ah, the gloomy world of cinematic prostitution. The ups, the downs, the moustaches, the hearts of gold … all contributing to a seedy cinematic underbelly that’s been on screens across the globe for decades. Out of Austria comes Revanche, the 2008 film from Götz Spielmann.

Ice Bears of the Beaufort opens with two distinct roars. The first is a roar of words, with text moving across the screen calling for action against human interference in the Arctic, as “the present is upon us.” The other roar is more literal. It’s the sound of the wind ripping through the Alaskan air, coupled with cries from what can only be the polar bears of the title.

Do you believe in ghosts? It doesn’t matter. The best films on the subject will have you incontrovertibly convinced until the theater lights come on. There have been good and bad films claiming to be “horror,” on slashers, poltergeists, cannibals, plagues, zombies, vampires and even vaginal teeth. None quite spook the soul like an old-fashioned ghost yarn. Ghosts are often felt and not seen, the icy spot in the empty room or the creak of tree branches overhead in a dark wood. Ghosts are: the door that shuts on its own, the piano that plays in the dark, the distant train miles from any tracks. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take a hockey-mask wearing killer.

Everything I love turns to shit. It’s like the world loves playing these sick little filmic jokes on me. “Oh, Graham, you liked this? You thought it was a good movie? Well guess what, we just got Nicolas Cage to do the remake. And he’s bringing his worried face.” Nicolas Cage is the worst. But they did it with Rambo, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and now the fat greasy suits pumping Scorsese’s brain are threatening to remake Taxi Driver.

In the newest Coen Brothers’ film, A Serious Man, the writing and directing duo draw from personal experience to create an interesting story about a middle-aged Jewish man whose life is falling apart before his eyes. The film is set in Ethan and Joel Coen’s home state, Minnesota, specifically in a suburb where religion plays a significant part in everyday life. In his first lead role, Michael Stuhlbarg is brilliant as Larry Gopnik, and is supported by a wonderful cast including Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick and the wonderfully pathetic Richard Kind.

We all grow tired of our realities — the weight of peoples’ expectations, the feeling of needing to provoke others into reciprocating our love. Amidst all of this, who wouldn’t want to, say, sail off to run through the woods in their PJs and sleep in a gigantic pile of down-covered limbs and furry backsides?

Spike Jonze (Adaptation, Being John Malkovich) once again does just what he wants in his film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, one of the most beloved bedside stories of all time; he executes a minimum of editing in his fantastical vision and preserves his stylistic edge. Meanwhile, he reminds us how the playgrounds of our creativity can help us to recognize flaws in the ways we treat other people as well as remind us that, at the end of the day, we’re all only human. Whether it is between king and subject, monster and kin or mother and child, love is beautifully imperfect.

“Girl power” movies occupy a tenuous space between the comfortable niche reserved for genre and cult status films, as feminist pieces, and on the other side, self-parody, all yap and no bite. Films with the best of intentions can accidentally swing both ways. Let’s rephrase that …

It’s difficult to release a film about women and issues facing women without preaching about century-old patriarchal ills. Make the film too effeminate or girly-celebratory, and you risk losing the Y-chromosome audience. What better way to strip a woman of power than to avoid taking her seriously?

In the latest Captain Planet effort, Earth Days is more like watching a screen saver on your computer of historical errors then a political statement. It’s not a bad film; it’s just lacking that “what we do next” phase. Directed by Robert Stone, the documentary serves more of a lesson then an actual movement towards environmental change.