I don’t really think Guy Ritchie is willing to take his Sherlock Holmes movie quite that far, but Robert Downey, Jr. could totally pull it off. After “Tropic Thunder”, I’m pretty sure the guy can do anything; hell, if Downey wanted to play Holmes through the filter of Kirk Lazarus, I would be the first in line.

Anyhow, somebody visited the set of Ritchie’s movie for Sympatico/MSN this week, so they asked me for a movie gallery about other famous detectives and their drugs of choice.

Just remember, what works for Sherlock Holmes and that nice Dr. House may not do anything at all for you, so don’t blame me when injecting Tom Cruise’s daddy issues directly into your eyeball doesn’t make you able to Handle The Truth.

You know those weeks where a jillion movies open and I manage to miss out on covering anything, just because of the way the schedule falls? Well, this is not one of those weeks. Let us begin.

“The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins”: Okay, I haven’t actually seen this one. But Susan loved it enough at last year’s Hot Docs to put it on her Top Ten of 2008, and she continues to champion it now.

“Duplicity“: In which Tony Gilroy does for megastar caper flicks what he did for 1970s moral thrillers in “Michael Clayton”, which is to say he throws a lot of money at the production and offers a couple of plot reversals that will be unexpected if you went out for popcorn at just the wrong moment, and then sits back and waits to be called a genius. But aren’t these movies supposed to be entertaining?

“I Love You, Man“: Paul Rudd and Jason Segel turn their brief comedic sparks in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” into a feature-length goof on romantic comedies — and yeah, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost did the man-crush thing two years ago in “Hot Fuzz”, but that was in the context of the buddy-cop genre, so this is different. My review should be online any minute now. (UPDATE: There it is!)

“Knowing”: Thanks to the prophecies on a fifty-year-old scrap of paper, Nicolas Cage knows things! Scary things! Things that man was not meant to know! Okay, I haven’t seen this one, either, but I really want to … even if Adam thinks I shouldn’t.

“The Magic Flute“: In which Kenneth Branagh once again demonstrates the dangers of critics throwing around words like “genius” and “wunderkind” at emerging actor-filmmakers. Because twenty years later, they make us want to eat them. The words, I mean.

“Polytechnique“: After almost a decade’s absence, Denis Villeneuve comes roaring back to features with this harrowing meditation on survivor guilt, viewed through the horrific prism of the Montreal massacre. Gus Van Sant only wishes Elephant was this powerful. (Also, check out my interview with producer-star Karine Vanasse.)

“12“: Nikita Mikhalkov moves “Twelve Angry Men” to modern-day Moscow. (The accused is Chechnyan.) It works better than you’d think, though there’s no reason it needed to clock in at 159 minutes.

“24 City“: Jia Zhang-ke’s documentary fiction about the death and resurrection of the Chinese factory town of Chengdu wowed ’em at Cannes. No reason it shouldn’t wow you now, right?

Also of note today: Cinematheque Ontario screens a restored print of Max Ophuls’ “Lola Montes“, and “Battlestar Galactica” fraks off forever with a two-hour finale.

No spoilers, please; it might take a day or two to catch up to it. I’m awfully busy right now.

They’ve got to be happy at Disney this weekend: “Race to Witch Mountain” is the number-one movie in North America, pulling in $25 million, easily besting runner-up “Watchmen”. Which couldn’t have been difficult, given that “Watchmen” is rated R and runs fully an hour longer than the Disney picture.

New entries “Last House on the Left” and “Miss March” came in third and tenth, respectively. And “Taken”, the Luc Besson-produced thriller in which Liam Neeson beats up Paris to rescue his daughter, held strong in fourth place — it’s the sleeper of the year, having grossed approximately $126 million in a little over six weeks.

The good news: Liam Neeson is back on top, baby! The bad news: Disney’s probably going to sign him to play the befuddled government agent chasing Zac Efron in a 21st century update of “The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes”.

You think I’m kidding, don’t you?

Reboot. Re-imagining. Re-invention.

These are words that get thrown around a lot by the movie industry these days — usually when they’re trying to launch a new version of an old, half-remembered property, or fix a franchise its producers believe should have been more successful the first time around.

Sometimes it even works: Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies and Martin Campbell’s “Casino Royale” are reboots in the best sense of the term. But what happens far more often is that someone like Michael Bay gets his monster claws on a horror movie he vaguely recalls seeing as a teenager and produces a new version that resembles the original property in name only, with everything that made the first version powerful or resonant drained away in the name of faster-bigger-louder.

Those movies are the ones I’m addressing in today’s Sympatico/MSN gallery. You’ll understand.

After the build-up to “Watchmen”, the lack of an Event Picture this weekend seems like a bit of a let-down. But there’s still plenty of other stuff landing at the megaplex, the better to vie for your Spring Break dollars:

“Crossing Over“: Wayne Kramer, director of “The Cooler” and the Paul Walker edge-fest “Running Scared”, weighs in on American immigration by turning every facet of a complex and intractable issue into pap. Harrison Ford glowers; Ray Liotta oozes slime; Jim Sturgess murders Jewish folk songs and Australian actress and Australian actress Alice Eve is sexually exploited in the role of a sexually exploited Australian actress. (Irony alert!) Seriously, this makes “Crash” look like “Traffic”. And I liked “Crash”.

“Gomorrah“: I wasn’t as enthused about Matteo Garrone’s overstuffed Mafia drama as some of my Cannes colleagues, and I’m still not sure it’s as revolutionary or as important as Martin Scorsese and David Cronenberg would have me believe. That said, I did like it a lot more on the second go-round, and if either Messrs. Scorsese or Cronenberg wants to take a shot at persuading me over lunch or something, I’m totally open to that.

“The Last House on the Left”: Wes Craven’s grotty revenge flick — still the only grindhouse film freely adapted from an Ingmar Bergman movie, though a case could probably be made for “Angel” as a transposition of “Nights of Cabiria” — gets fed into the Michael Bay remake machine. Andrew is repelled, but not in the good way.

“Miss March”: The guys from The Whitest Kids U Know have made a movie! And it wasn’t screened until the last possible second! So we have no idea whether it’s any good, but I’m thinking “wasn’t screened until the last possible second” is not a positive sign.

“Race to Witch Mountain“: Still doubting the boundless charm and appeal of Dwayne Johnson and Carla Gugino? Watch them make their way effortlessly through this dopey, chaotic reimagining of the Disney chestnut without ever once condescending to the material. Actually, just take my word for it. You’ll be better off. (My NOW review should go live any minute now. UPDATE: There it is!)

“RiP: A Remix Manifesto”: Brett Gaylor’s documentary investigates copyright and intellectual property. I missed the press screenings, but Susan liked it, so I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for the bootleg DVD.

Nah, I’m kidding. I’ll download it.

(Still kidding.)

Feeling experimental? Can’t wait for the Images festival to start up next month? Head over to the Revue Cinema tonight for a themed commission of short works on the nature of the villain in popular culture, why don’t you? I mean, if you think you might like that sort of thing.

Also of note today: The Onion AV Club adds Claire Denis’ “Beau Travail” to its New Cult Canon, and on a similar note, Cinematical shows a little love to Darren Aronofksy’s misunderstood gem “The Fountain”.

Maybe now that “The Wrestler” has redeemed Aronofsky among the cineastes, people will give that movie another chance and see what was really going on amidst all the conquistadoring and tree-sucking.

Yeah, you heard me.

The box-office reports are in, and “Watchmen” has won the weekend — though with a three-day gross of just $55.7 million, industry reports are pointing out that we’re not looking at another blockbuster on the scale of “The Dark Knight”.

I’m not entirely surprised. An R-rated, 160-minute adaptation of a property few outside the comics world will recognize was never going to compete with Batman, or even pull in Spider-Man-scale numbers. You need to go beyond the core fans for something like that. Same thing happened to the first “Hellboy”, and that was a good 50 minutes shorter.

Still, this is a solid opening, and there’s more cash to come with the international run, and after that there’s the home-video bonanza, what with all the different cuts Warner is planning to release.

And then, of course, there’s the inevitable Saturday morning spinoff.

No, not really. But it’s awesome, isn’t it?

With “One Week” and “Pontypool” turning the lens of Canadian film back on Canada itself — the first being a travelogue of national landmarks, and the second being a more practical consideration of our nation as a wintry hellscape filled with cannibalistic maniacs — it seemed like a good time to do a Sympatico/MSN movie gallery about all the clumsy attempts to repurpose Canadian locations as American cities.

I’m sure you’ll come up with other examples, but I could only fit eight into the piece — and I didn’t want to keep it too Toronto-centric, so I had to leave out such gems as Norman Jewison’s “The Hurricane”.

Remember that one? With Dan Hedaya’s (non-existent) American cop threatening John Hannah and Deborah Kara Unger right in front of a Toronto Star box? Yeah, maybe it’s best that you don’t.