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I had considered collecting up a number of reviews of the Golden Compass, but since everyone but Roger Ebert seems to have hated the thing, I think I'll just see what else is out there instead.

March Hare from The Mad Tea Party was looking forward to Beowulf, but alas, was disappointed. "The tragedy of this movie is that it didn't engage me." she says. But at least her daughter got extra credit in English for going to see it.

D. G. D. Davidson at the Sci-Fi Catholic  was more than simply disappointed over Beowulf. Disgust might be a better word. "I dislike this film adaptation of Beowulf for the same reason I dislike 300. Besides displaying violence, sex, and masculine posturing for their own sake, it wants to score philosophical points, yet is consistently dumb." D. G. D. and Snuffles had a little better luck with Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium.  "You could do a lot worse... [the movie] is like whole wheat bread: it's bland, but it's wholesome." sums up Snuffles' opinion.

Not quite wholesome, but certainly not bland is Barbara Nicolosi's take on the teen pregnancy drama Juno. "The film makers absolutely know that the principle element in a movie is character. And Juno has some of the best I've seen in the movies in recent memory." In the same vein, she's also fond of Lars And The Real Girl, the story of a withdrawn man who shows up at his brother's home with his girlfriend, a lifelike rubber doll. "Lars is a satisfying, charming and compassionate movie that handles its central improbable plot-point with the patient sigh in which so much of the freakishness of modern life has been met in the unweird, measured life of a small town."

Amy Wellborn over at Charlotte Was Both was not quite as impressed with No Country For Old Men. Her discontent seems to be based on the near universally accepted dictum that the book is always better than the movie. Plus, she dislikes the Coen brothers. "Like so many other Coen brothers films, layers of meaning, interesting internal struggle and moral slogging are stripped clean, leaving nothing more than style and idiosyncrasy, both of which are interesting to watch, but which ultimately leave you cold." (The comments on this one are particularly fun as Coen fans converge on the blog.)

And finally, while not technically a review, Crystal from Perspective gives an impassioned defense of... Christopher Lambert! Her primary evidence is, of course, Highlander. She exclaims, "You've got to love a movie that has an Irish/American playing a Carpathian(?), A Scotsman playing an Egyptian, and a Frenchman playing a Scot :-)"

That's about it for this week. Be sure to stick around as we continue our trip to Mars this week.