It seems that the light of summer has already begun to dim. The very worthwhile “The Avengers” continues to dominate the global box office, and will for some time, but the release schedule for the coming month or so is a tad worrisome.

February typically serves as a dumping ground for weak studio films that offer an easy alternative to “mainstream” audiences who don’t see Oscar bait, but this year has brought some welcome surprises.

Just one review this week, as I didn’t make it to “My Week with Marilyn,” playing in limited release. A look at that will come next week, along with reviews of the wide releases “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and, time permitting, “The Sitter.” The studios’ insistence on conducting a take-no-prisoners December blitz with their prestige pictures has left things a tad crowded for the next few weeks, but I’ll do what I can…

“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.

I was even less excited than usual about hitting the multiplex this week, because really, who needs to pay for fake action and thrills when you can turn on CNN and watch accounts of awesome real-life badassery for free? The righteous and appropriately brutal killing of Osama bin Laden has kept me glued to the tube these past few days, and frankly, in light of such events, I fail to see how something as pedestrian as “Fast Five” is continuing to rake in obscene amounts of cash at the box office. Priorities, people.

Vacation season is almost upon us, and few people have more reason to be excited than I do. After about a year of 100-hour work weeks split between several different jobs (including serving as a substitute teacher for Stockton Unified School District — ouch), I’m more than ready for the precious few days I get to spend with Heather living the high life at Disneyland.

Another possible sign of the end times: It seems that our multiplexes are in danger of being overrun with meta-level exercises in self-aware genre filmmaking. Strange thing, that, because this time last year I would have thought such a prospect a dream come true, if completely at odds with Hollywood’s bottom line. After all, in this increasingly post-modern, ironic-chic world, genre retrospective is becoming an invaluable tool to connect audiences not only to the immediate story being told, but indeed an entire rich history of genre lore.

Time just keeps slipping away. It seems like just last week we were looking ahead to the promising pre-summer releases, and now in about a month’s time the summer movie season is set to kick into high-gear with the new “Pirates” movie. I suppose it’s just as well that these past couple months have passed in a blur, because frankly there wasn’t too much worth getting excited about. Save for “Rango,” I never encountered anything truly worthwhile — and last week’s “Sucker Punch” provided one of the most physically painful and soul-crushing movie experiences I’m ever likely to have. So yeah, I’m ready to look ahead to greener pastures. In that spirit, here are 15 upcoming movies (compared to the usual 10) that I’m counting on to alleviate the cinematic doldrums for the foreseeable future. Gotta look on the sunny side.

I should have listened. For the past few weeks, everyone who’s caught a glimpse of Zack Snyder’s much-anticipated would-be magnum opus “Sucker Punch” has been screaming from the rooftops about how indescribably horrible it is, but here’s the thing: I didn’t think it was logistically possible for a filmmaker of Snyder’s caliber to release a truly bad movie -- let alone one that warranted the mounting calls for him to be drawn and quartered for his crimes against cinema. I assumed they were a bunch a fuddy-duds who lacked the hipness to share in Snyder’s singular vision. So despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the Snyder fanboy boy whispered into my ear, “Come and see.” And I saw.

Although I am not very familiar with the work of Elizabeth Taylor (my film interests tend to run more toward the post-1965 New Hollywood), I would be remiss not to acknowledge her death on Wednesday at the age of 79. And although I definitely need to brush up on my 1950s melodramas, I know enough to admire the woman. In addition to delivering strong performances in the few early roles I’ve seen her in (most notably the Tennessee Williams adaptations “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and the oft-neglected “Suddenly Last Summer”), she was also key to the success of 1966’s monumentally important “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, which served as a much-needed slap in the face to the era’s Hays-code social mores, and also won Taylor a second Oscar as best actress.

I was supposed to review “Battle: Los Angeles,” but due to a litany of reasons I ended up skipping the multiplex this week (I will venture back next week for a look at “Paul” — in the meantime, just see “Rango” again). I could carry on about tight work schedules and tsunami-induced cinematic apathy — both of which were certainly factors in my decision — but mostly I just didn’t wanna.

I love it when a movie surprises me. God help me, I love it more than life itself. You’re having a bad day, you’re going off four hours sleep, you’re obligated to see a movie that you’re pretty sure will be mediocre at best — and then BAM, you’re knocked flat on your ass by a truly transportive movie experience that makes you visibly giddy with excitement. No sir, there’s nothing in the world quite like it.

I  spent much of 2010 bemoaning the sad state of Hollywood studio filmmaking. But looking over a roster of the year’s most worthwhile releases, it struck me that it might not have been such a bad year after all. If you’re simply looking at the number of good films released, then 2010 was certainly not one for the books — but if you focus on the quality of the very best releases, few as they may have been, things start to look a bit different.

Sure, it's easy to rattle off a list of your favorite movies -- but what about your favorite individual scenes? This can be tricky, because even your favorite films don't necessarily have a specific scene that stands out above all others. And I'm not talking about scenes you "like"; I'm talking about the scenes that make you want to throw on a DVD at 3 a.m. when you're tired and drunk and slovenly but can't bear the thought of going to bed before you catch just that one scene... for the 250th time.

It's Oscar time again, and it's got me to thinking about why we as a culture place so much importance on and devote so much energy to following the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).

"Shutter Island"

I have to sit down each Sunday evening to draft a headline for the weekly box office news report, and I am becoming increasingly disheartened by the words I have to write.

In all the years I've been writing this column, I have never discussed Roman Polanski's film noir classic "Chinatown" at any length. It's a film of such beautiful perfection, of such deep personal meaning to me, that it seems that anything I have to say about it would be rudimentary - meaningless, even - in the context of such an overwhelmingly grand piece of cinema.

People think being a movie critic is all fun and games, and that would be true if every movie in release was worth seeing. Unfortunately, trying to see the "big" movies every week means wading through a lot of unmitigated trash. Far from fun, it can often be genuinely disheartening to be confronted with such mediocrity week after week, and then have to evaluate such wastes of time in order to warn others away.