My December screening madness continues, though I get a bit of a break today and tomorrow: I've got "only" two films each day to sit through. Whatever will I do with all that extra time? Watch a couple of DVD screeners from the studios that have been piling up, maybe. (I'm dying to see The Queen again, for one, and Shortbus is in the teetering pile waiting for me to see for a first time, and I really should watch Half Nelson again ....)

Here's what I'm off to screenings of on Wednesday, and what I hope -- and fear -- for them:

Miss Potter: Movies about writers can be tough, because writing is such a sublimating activity and writers can be very internal, introverted people. And there are other issues to be overcome: director Chris Noonan hasn't made a film since 1995's Babe, and the script is by a songwriter who, if he's even written another script, hasn't seen it produced yet. I never actively hope for a film to be bad -- unless it can promise to be so awful that it's hilarious, and that's not a vibe I'm getting off this one -- so I do want to be wrong about this, but everything else aside, I simply have trouble seeing cold-fish Renee Zellweger as anyone warm and cuddly onscreen, never mind the woman who created Peter Rabbit. At least there is sure to be some cinematic pleasure to be had in her costars, Ewan McGregor and Emily Watson, who are always intriguing, even in otherwise dull movies.

Curse of the Golden Flower: It's Chow Yun-Fat and Li Gong and gorgeous costumes and star-crossed romance and royal secrets. It's Yimou Zhang, whose House of Flying Daggers was spectacular. But I'm hearing some less than encouraging stories from fellow critics who've already seen the movie, including one that involves wildly inappropriate reactions from a large audience that was, apparently, close to unanimous in its insistence that the emotions the film evokes are not at all what it thinks its evoking. (See what I just said about awfulness that appproaches hilarity ....)

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