It's Tuesday of the week that I'd hoped would be the beginning of the end of the usual December insanity for critics, and already things are falling apart: I was all set to see We Are Marshall today, when at the very last minute the Warner Bros. publicist said, "Oops, guess what, your screening is cancelled, but hey: you can see the film next Tuesday, just a few days before it opens rather than a week and half before, and starting to run almost smack dab up against Christmas weekend." (Of course, there will be public sneak previews of the film this coming Saturday night, so maybe I'll catch it then, instead. But this sudden decision to withhold the film from critics till the last minute does not bode well for its prospects ....)

It's not all bad, though -- since I'm not seeing We Are Marshall today, I can pop into the multiplex and catch up with Volver. I am expecting to hate this, because I find Pedro Almodovar's films misogynist, and me being a girl and all, that tends to annoy me somewhat. But the film's ongoing spectacular performance in limited release and the awards attention it's getting from critics groups obligate me to give it a chance. I've been wrong before in my expectations (for instance, in my pre-viewing estimate of Rocky Balboa -- boy, was I wrong!), and I expect to be wrong again, so why not with this film?

After that will be a press screening of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, and I want desperately to be able to love this film. I adore the Patrick Suskind novel upon which this is based, worship the clever and creepy originality of its premise -- a mad perfumer who goes way beyond the bounds of sanity in the quest for the ultimate scent -- but of course it's hardly ever a good thing to expect a movie to be anywhere near as wonderful as the book. Still, director Tom Twyker has been clever and original before, with his Run Lola Run, so perhaps it's not too foolish to get my hopes up.

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