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We've finally escaped the dreaded fall movie season and entered into that strange mixture of popcorn cinema and academy award bait that is the holidays at the cineplex.

Paul J. Cella from What’s Wrong with the World leads things off with a look at Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner hunting terrorists in The Kingdom. He finds the film flawed but noteworthy for a number of reasons including it's "clearheaded" depiction of Islamic terrorism.

While Jamie is busy with jihadists in Saudi Arabia, his Ali co-star Will Smith is off in the near-future fighting CGI mutants in I Am Legend. John W. Morehead at TheoFantastique finds this third adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel thought provoking in the way it "taps into several contemporary fears of late modern Westerners, such as apocalypticism at our own hands, genetic engineering gone awry, widespread death by disease, fears of loneliness, societal breakdown and the resulting massive chaos, and questions about meaning and purpose in response to an apparently nihilistic and godless universe." Pretty heady stuff for a Big Willy flick.

Apparently not quite as deep is the latest installment of Nick Cage's new franchise National Treasure: Book Of Secrets. Nevertheless, Andrew of Anglican Orthodoxy considers the movie "an entertaining diversion and keeps you on the edge of your seat, even if its plot is a bit outlandish."

You might think outlandish would also be a fit description for Sweeney Todd, Tim Burton's film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's broadway musical. Allen, from the appropriately titled It Came From Allen's Brain, however, discovered it to be "a very well-made film. Nice camera work, effective lighting, quality acting, impressive art direction. Oh! and a guy singing a love song to his razors--what's not to love about that?" Sounds like a review after my own heart.

Nowhere near my heart is the CGI/live action take on Alvin And The Chipmunks which is inexplicably doing well at the box office. Sr Rose Pacatte,FSP director of the Pauline Center for Media Studies tries to be positive in her review, but ultimately admits that the film "suffers from too many writers (three) who don't know what they want to say - at least it seems that way." In her defense for even going to see the thing, looking over the other movies from this week, it was probably the only film suitable to take her two nephews to.

That should give everyone plenty to choose from until next week when, hopefully, someone gets around to seeing Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem and let's us know if it's any good. Come on, it's got a Predalien in it, how bad could it be?