It has occurred to me that I discuss my personal goings-on a bit less than my fellow News-Sentinel columnists do, but in the interest of partial disclosure, I must confess that life has gotten significantly more difficult for me in the past few months. I’ve started a new job that requires many long, grueling, thankless hours in an undesirable environment. The possibility of complete physical and mental collapse is now very real.

I always try to get as excited as possible about the Academy Awards, that time-honored annual tradition in which Hollywood enrages the nation’s cinephiles by consistently displaying the most remarkable lack of good taste and common decency imaginable.

As evidenced by this week‘s review, the quality of new wide releases appears to be dipping again — a definite disappointment, considering how strong the year started off.

Quite unexpectedly, the first couple months of 2012 continue to offer some quality choices for discriminating movie-goers.

Technical complications at the “Haywire” screening I attempted to attend have left me without a film to review this week (we’ll catch up with that one next time, along with the Liam Neeson survival thriller “The Grey”). But this is just as well, I suppose, considering that the recent Oscar nominations have inspired more controversy than I’ve ever seen associated with the Academy Awards, and of course I have some choice thoughts about that.

Typically, I spend the first six weeks or so of each new year playing catch-up with all the Oscar bait that was released around Christmas. But as it turns out this awards season didn’t produce as many true prestige pictures as expected, so starting next week we’ll be returning to new releases with a look at Steven Soderbergh’s acclaimed action flick “Haywire,” followed by a review of the Liam Neeson vs. wolves survival thriller “The Grey” (I’ll also briefly return to the 2011 awards contenders with a piece on “The Artist,” if it ever opens in the Lodi-Stockton area).

Hope you all enjoyed my top 10 list last week, and gleaned some useful recommendations. This week I’ll take a very quick look at “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” which made my “most promising films I didn’t see” list but ended up being one of the most spirit-crushing disappointments of the year. I honestly don’t have much to say about such an empty film, so I suppose I might as well squeeze in my predictions for the Oscar nominations, set to be announced on Tuesday, Jan. 24, at which point you will surely marvel at my peerless prognosticative abilities.

How quickly things can change. Just a week ago, I was so desperate for a movie to review that I actually sat and watched “The Twilight Saga — Breaking Dawn: Part 1” for two hours. (I’ve broken bones, suffered through mono, gotten tattooed and had a wisdom tooth wrenched out of my head without Novocain, but honestly, all pale in comparison to the sheer unpleasantness of the “Twilight” experience.)

“In Time.” “The Three Musketeers.” “Footloose.” “Johnny English Reborn.” These are among the films now playing in multiplexes across the country. I find this roster to be strange and unsettling, as I have apparently been laboring under the misapprehension that we were supposed to be smack-dab in the middle of awards season. Silly me.

"A Christmas Carol"

We're now in the early stages of the fall movie season, that delightful time of year when studios attempt to atone for the transgressions of previous months by releasing an onslaught of pedigreed awards bait from October through December.

Well, this week was a bust. Between that Jonas brothers concert movie, a gender-bending university comedy, an "Eagle Eye" rip-off and a new "Street Fighter" movie, I just assumed that "Street Fighter" would be the most worthy new film to review this time. It turns out I may have been tragically wrong, but no matter: This weekend brings "Watchmen," and the ensuing weeks bring a whole slew of high-profile pre-summer releases that are sure to be better than this lot.

Everyone knew "The Dark Knight" would be a major success. Between the brilliant marketing, glowing reviews and incredible hype surrounding the late Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker, there was no way this wouldn't be one of the biggest hits of the summer movie season.

I used to be obsessed with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. From the age of 10 until my mid-teens (when I finally realized the fallacious nature of most, if not all, conspiracy theories), I formulated different theories as often as I changed socks. On any given day, I was as likely to be convinced that Fidel Castro was behind the plot to kill Kennedy as I was to believe that it was an elaborate plan by the Mafia. JFK's assassination is unusual in the realm of conspiracy theories, in that everyone is a suspect, and it is impossible to rule anyone out. Unlike other popular conspiracies (from the moon landing to 9/11), there is no iron-clad explanation that holds up under intense scrutiny.