Starbuck

The French sperm-donor comedy "Starbuck," which may evoke repressed memories of the Corbin Bernsen vehicle "Frozen Assets," is made with that inimitable Gallic sense of humor -- that everybody hates.

Eden

"Eden" opens a fascinating window into the world of human trafficking, showing how quickly and easily a smart New Mexico teenager named Hyun Jae (Jamie Chung) can be disappeared into a seemingly inescapable life of sex slavery.

Mental

I'm dumbfounded that P.J. Hogan, whose "Muriel's Wedding" was so sweet and charming, has directed the loathsome lost-in-translation Aussie comedy "Mental," about a family of wackos (or are they?) saved from the bin by a homily-spewing hitchhiker (Toni Collette). "Mental" is tawdry and trashy, with a cheap, oversaturated look and nobody to like or to laugh at or with. Collette, Liev Schreiber as a shark hunter (?!), and Anthony LaPaglia as the preoccupied patriarch will all want to edit this insta-bomb out of their career retrospectives.

Renoir

Michel Bouquet cuts an impressive figure as the elderly and arthritic Pierre-August Renoir in "Renoir," which satisfies my friend Sally Aminoff's criteria: she'll only see pretty movies about pretty people in pretty clothes. Actually, Renoir's young muse Andrée (Christa Theret) and assorted other bathing beauties spend much of their time here in the altogether. The movie is lovely to look at, with some strikingly beautiful images and the gay insouciance of a summer in the country free of quotidian concerns. Andrée's romance with Renoir's injured-in-WWI soldier son Jean (who later became the renowned film director), though, goes nowhere, and she herself isn't as interesting a character as the filmmakers think. The central presence is the artist himself, who despite his infirmities never becomes that querulous valetudinarian of cliché. For him, the work is paramount, and this oblique biography ends with just the right shot of him in serene contemplation.

The Sapphires

The Australian import "The Sapphires," about a singing girl group composed of fair-skinned Aborigines, is one of those cliché-infested "feel-good" movies that almost inevitably doesn't.

Blancanieves

My top pick of the week - one of the few best films of the early year - is Pablo Berger's "Blancanieves," a black-and-white silent (though full of Spanish music of every kind, from romantic guitar to heel-clicking flamenco) that will finally purge the aftertaste of "The Artist" from your mouth.

Gimme the Loot

Are we supposed to care about Malcolm and Sophia, the young taggers at the center of Adam Leon's "Gimme the Loot"? Are we supposed to find these little petty thieves cute?' I found them - and their movie - exasperating, a charmless celebration of criminality and the destruction of property.