50/50
50/50 tells the story of Adam (played perfectly by Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a seemingly healthy 27-year-old who gets diagnosed with cancer. On his team: a sucky girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard), an overbearing mom (Anjelica Huston), a newbie therapist (Anna Kendrick), and his stoner BFF, Kyle, who has deep supplies of both blowjob jokes and weed. (Kyle is played by Seth Rogen. Of course Kyle is played by Seth Rogen.) The trailer is calling this movie a comedy, which it technically is—but cancer can't not be heavy. You might cry, but you'll also laugh. And then you'll also probably need a big cocktail when you get home. ELINOR JONES Laurelhurst Theater.

The Adventures of Tintin
See review this issue. Various Theaters.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
So this exists. Various Theaters.

Arthur Christmas
I am pretty Grinchy, so me saying that this too-long Christmas movie is not terrible means something. It's hardly a must see, and I'm not sure what the "message" is, but if you have kids who insist on holiday merriment, this has got to beat Happy Feet Two: Die Happier. ELINOR JONES Various Theaters.

The Artist
See review this issue. Fox Tower 10.

The Big Lebowski
"It's like what Lenin said... you look for the person who will benefit, and... uh...." Clinton Street Theater.

Christmas in Space
A slew of nerd-tacular, nostalgic sci-fi Christmas junk: The utterly execrable Star Wars Holiday Special, Planet of the Apes and Star Trek toy commercials, Christmas-y musical performances from both the Ramones and Bing Crosby (feat. David Bowie), and more. Hollywood Theatre.

A Dangerous Method
See review this issue. Fox Tower 10.

The Darkest Hour
A not-screened-for-critics alien-invasion flick. Various Theaters.

The Descendants
There are, perhaps, more identifiable figures in contemporary cinema than the members of an exceedingly rich family who are about to become even richer. The Descendants is about the Kings, a well-off Hawaiian family that's about to sell a huge chunk of unspoiled paradise to a developer. More specifically, it's about Matt King (George Clooney), the patriarch upon whose shoulders that decision rests—and also a man whose wife is in a potentially deadly coma, whose rebellious teenage daughter (Shailene Woodley) is less than impressed with his parenting, and whose life seems to be slipping from his grasp with every moment. There is, on the surface, a lot that's great about The Descendants—beginning with Clooney and Woodley's fantastic performances—but below that surface, there isn't much. ERIK HENRIKSEN Various Theaters.

Drive
I don't know if you will love Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive like I do. It's a Frankensteined thing—part revenge flick, part western, part noir, part heist movie, part car commercial, part music video, part SWEET CHRIST I DID NOT EXPECT THAT SPLATTERED BIT OF BRUTAL ULTRA-VIOLENCE. Each of Drive's parts slides slickly into my brain's receptors. There's one way to find out if it'll do the same thing to you, and I would recommend trying it. ERIK HENRIKSEN Academy Theater, Fox Tower 10, Hollywood Theatre, Laurelhurst Theater.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
See review this issue. Various Theaters.

The Hedgehog
One part The Royal Tenenbaums, one part Babette's Feast, and with enough pint-sized ennui to choke a goldfish, The Hedgehog follows Paloma (Garance Le Guillermic), a bright little girl (and possibly Camus reborn) set on killing herself on her 12th birthday rather than going on to live the absurd life of wealth and malaise she sees before her—but, whaddya know, first she has to get through a Gruff Character and a Wise Character with some Truths to impart. Whimsical and lovingly shot, The Hedgehog pulls from a lot of playbooks, but it works, probably better than it should. Leave it to the French to make the feel-good movie of the year about suicidal children. MELANIE "THE INTERN" JOHNSON Living Room Theaters.

Hugo
Martin Scorsese is still writing mash notes to cinema's past, but where last year's silly Shutter Island failed, Hugo is heartfelt and touching. It's a kids' movie that wistfully, almost cloyingly, ruminates about what it means to have a creative purpose, while treasuring historical artifacts—like good ol' silver nitrate film, stacks of leather books, and rusted automatons. If this sounds like the ramblings of your grampappy, you wouldn't be too off base. But that old coot's really loveable and he's got a point. COURTNEY FERGUSON Various Theaters.

Ian Berry Mixtape
Short films from local "serial dater/filmmaker" Ian Berry.Hollywood Theatre.

The Ides of March
Ryan Gosling plays Stephen Myers, a staffer working on the presidential campaign for Pennsylvania Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney). With strategist Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman) leading the campaign, they're gearing up for the Democratic primary in Ohio. At the start of Ides, Stephen's a young-buck idealist who's entirely enamored with Governor Morris, a character loosely based on pre-"yaaargh" Howard Dean—in other words, a liberal's wet dream. Paul Giamatti plays the head of the opposing campaign, and while he seems to be an unscrupulous trickster, Stephen soon discovers that there isn't really room for absolute idealism when a presidency is at stake. There's almost no bloat to The Ides of March—it's a lean, clean thriller that steadily ramps to a sharp climax. NED LANNAMANN Academy Theater, Laurelhurst Theater.

Melancholia
On the surface, Lars von Trier's latest documents the end of the world: Earth collides with another, larger planet in a massive, fiery explosion. But unlike most films with a similar premise, there is neither panic in the streets, nor is there any heroism: There are just the slow-motion reactions of a select few on the grounds of an enormous castle estate. Far from a literal apocalypse film, Melancholia is a metaphorical portrait of a hallmark of depression: that its sufferers tend to handle catastrophe better than those who feel they have something to lose. MARJORIE SKINNER Hollywood Theatre, Living Room Theaters.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
See review this issue. Various Theaters.

Moneyball
As the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is dealt a permanent losing hand: running an undesirable team in an undesirable small market that can't afford to re-sign its elite players. Frustrated by the futility of modern baseball, Beane teams with Peter Brand (a composite of Paul DePodesta and J.P. Ricciardi, and played by Jonah Hill, in his very first role without a single dick joke), a Yale graduate and numbers geek who reexamines the very foundation of the game based upon Bill James' sabermetrics philosophy. Masterfully directed by Bennett Miller, Moneyball visually bolsters the absorbing tale told in Michael Lewis' bestseller of the same name without utilizing any winded sports clichés. In a sense, Moneyball is the anti-baseball baseball film: It stays off the playing field and focuses firmly on a central concept that values math and percentages over actual physical performance. Gently paced and well written (thanks, Aaron Sorkin!), Moneyball captures Beane's noble attempt to achieve perfection in an imperfect sport. EZRA ACE CARAEFF Various Theaters.

The Muppets
A joyless bastard could nitpick the hell out of The Muppets: The way Jason Segel & Co. reintroduce the Muppets—via a new Muppet, Walter, and Walter's brother (Segel) and his fiancée (Amy Adams)—is clunky. The pacing's weird. There are two bits of painful Disney product placement (Cars 2 and Selena Gomez). And there's not enough Gonzo. But then, there's never enough Gonzo, and to focus on those complaints would be to ignore all that's right here: Kermit has a couple of heartbreakingly great and melancholy songs. Fantastic one-liners zip through the air. Fozzie's jokes are magnificently stupid. Segel, Amy Adams, Chris Cooper, and cameoing celebrities all have a phenomenal time. There are gleeful song-and-dance numbers. And the tone that defines the Muppets' best stuff—that blend of self-aware comedy, loveable characters, and bright-hearted optimism—is solidly in place. When it comes to the Muppets, that's what matters, and here it is. ERIK HENRIKSEN Various Theaters.

My Week with Marilyn
There's a scene in The Prince and the Showgirl—which is the movie that the memoir-based My Week With Marilyn concerns—in which Marilyn Monroe throws a raincoat off a balcony. It's a tiny moment, but it's just great: You could watch Marilyn Monroe throw a raincoat off a balcony all day long. Watching her act, generally badly, in the generally bad The Prince and the Showgirl is not the pinnacle of cinematic experience, but it is better than watching Michelle Williams attempt to portray her in My Week With Marilyn. No one should ever try to play Marilyn Monroe. The entire point of Marilyn Monroe is that she possessed an ineffable thing that none of the rest of us ever will (call it an F-able thing, if you want to be rude). Williams isn't even especially terrible at it, though the breathiness and the moues do get mighty tedious; she's just a failure, as she is doomed to be. BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT City Center 12, Fox Tower 10, Hollywood Theatre.

Mysteries of Lisbon
Director Raul Ruiz's "sprawling tale of interlinked adventures, coincidences, revelations, vengeance, betrayals, and love affairs." Northwest Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium.

Portlandia
A sold-out show in which Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein "perform live music, present sneak-peek clips from the show's second season, and share personal anecdotes about the creation and inspiration of Portlandia and its variety of eccentric characters." Enjoy being mocked to your faces, attention-hungry Portlanders! Hollywood Theatre.

Rid of Me
The latest from Portland director James Westby exudes the same raunch and camp that made 2008's The Auteur quirkily fun, but here the story takes on an emotional earnestness that both deepens the film and makes it even stranger. Katy O'Grady stars as Meris, a young wife who moves to her husband's small Oregon hometown only to be hamstrung by social awkwardness in the face of his crew of bland, yuppie friends. When Storm Large shows up as his old flame, it sets off a downward spiral of heavy drinking and dated punk rock antics that are amusing, if embarrassing and bewildering. (I completely lost the sense of how old Meris is supposed to be. Thirty? Fourteen?) From its overall look to its bad fake blood, there is something staunchly, perversely amateur about this film, but like its studded wasteoid good guys, I think that's how they want it. MARJORIE SKINNER Living Room Theaters.

The Rum Diary
Based on the trailers, one could scarcely be blamed for thinking The Rum Diary was going to be Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas all over again. There stands Johnny Depp, after all, starring as another shade of Hunter S. Thompson in a trashed hotel room with bloodshot eyes. But Diary—based on the early novel Thompson abandoned until its eventual publication in the '90s—is only somewhat autobiographical, and its dedication to its characters' extremes of alcohol consumption is given stiff competition from the story's real meat—that of a writer finding his guiding light. For all its roughhouse antics, Diary's an earnest, somewhat naïve transmission of the reckless young reporter Thompson once was. MARJORIE SKINNER Laurelhurst Theater.

Scrooged
"Well, I'm sure Charles Dickens would have wanted to see her nipples." Academy Theater.

Shame
It's awkward, being a sex addict. There's the possibility that your boss might discover all the porn you've got on your hard drive, or your sister might walk in on you while you're masturbating, or someone might casually open your laptop only to be propositioned by a topless girl on a webcam. In Shame, sex junkie Brandon (Michael Fassbender) runs into all of these difficulties, in between meaningless trysts with women he meets at bars and women he pays for. There's not much pleasure in watching Brandon hit rock bottom, but it's to the credit of both Fassbender and director Steve McQueen that Brandon is a complex and almost wholly sympathetic character even when behaving reprehensibly. ALISON HALLETT Cinema 21.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
War is brewing in Europe, but Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) is convinced an evil hand is guiding the conflict—particularly that of his arch nemesis Professor Moriarty (the wholly excellent Jared Harris, best known as Mad Men's Lane Pryce). Very nearly ruining the wedding of his cohort Dr. Watson (the equally excellent Jude Law), Holmes drags his unwilling pal to France, Germany, and finally Switzerland for a final deadly conflict at the edge of Reichenbach Falls. (Holmes' fans will perk up at the reference.) Ultimately however, the mystery itself becomes secondary to watching three great actors (four, if one counts Brit comedian Stephen Frye as Sherlock's "smarter" brother Mycroft—and you should) build their scenes like master carpenters working on a spiral staircase. Downey and Law's repartee crackles like a Victorian era Abbott and Costello, while Harris' Moriarty is calm, calculated evil personified. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY Various Theaters.

The Skin I Live In
With his provocative new film, Pedro Almodóvar runs with the idea that Frankenstein's monster would be much more disturbing if sex were involved. This notion proves very, very correct. It'd be a laughable understatement to describe The Skin I Live In as "not for everyone"—it's strange, disturbing, and utterly unflinching in its literal deconstruction of gender and selfhood. But Almodóvar also baits this trap seductively—every surface is elegant and crisp, every shot so artfully composed that even the most grotesque medical footage has an undeniable beauty, and it's all leavened with a lurid smear of melodrama that plays with the line between horror and camp. ALISON HALLETT Fox Tower 10.

Sleeping Beauty
See review this issue. Living Room Theaters.

Steven Spielberg's Battle Pony
See review this issue. Various Theaters.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
See review this issue. Fox Tower 10.

We Bought a Zoo
See review this issue. Various Theaters.

Young Adult
Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody have made a film that's difficult to classify: It's either a comedy with no laughs, a drama with no character movement, or a social critique with no insight. ALISON HALLETT Various Theaters.