Worn out by all the Michael Jackson eulogies? Pissed that now you can’t pick up that remastered 25th-anniversary edition of “Thriller” you’d been meaning to buy since last fall without looking like a dick?

Well, I can’t help you with that, but I can offer a distraction — check out my latest Sympatico/MSN movie gallery, which picks up Megatron’s gauntlet to list eight movies in which life on our little blue marble is at risk of being snuffed out forever.

Help us, Bruce Willis, you’re our only hope!

It’s supposed to be a hot, sticky weekend. If you don’t fancy sweating your way through Pride, you’re not interested in the giant robot movie and you’ve already seen “Summer Hours“, here’s what else is opening.

“Cheri”: They were advertising the crap out of this in the London Underground last month. It’s the reunion of Michelle Pfeiffer with her “Dangerous Liaisons” director Stephen Frears and screenwriter Christopher Hampton. That was two decades ago; the North American ads are going out of the way to emphasize the Frears-Hampton connection without quite dragging Pfeiffer into it. That might make her look old, you see. Susan and Jason respect the effort without quite tipping over into endorsing it.

“The Girlfriend Experience“: In which Steven Soderbergh turns porn star Sasha Grey into a respectable actor — or lets us understand she’s been acting all along. Soderbergh’s short, stark and semi-experimental deconstruction of expectations is very good, and you should see it.

“My Sister’s Keeper”: Nick Cassavetes’ new film has something to do with parents who conceive a sibling in the hopes of saving their ailing child. I think. Deirdre says it’s effective, but seems to feel dirty about it.

“Tokyo Sonata”: Kiyoshi Kurosawa started the J-horror movement with his brilliant “Cure”, and spent a decade refining genre filmmaking. Now, he’s put that all aside to tell a simple story of a splintering Japanese family, and it’s a stunner. Andrew and Adam agree.

“Whatever Works“: Woody Allen uses Larry David as a mouthpiece to rant about the stupidity of his fellow humans, the pointlessness of existence and the redemptive power of boinking a worldly older guy — whomever you might be. I think I speak for all of us when I say: Ick.

And speaking of ick: Michael Jackson has died. I expect the sordid stories to start leaking out over the weekend, once his former friends and associates fully understand that libel law no longer applies and start jockeying for bookings on “Larry King Live”.

… yeah, let’s see them put that on the poster.

Charlie Jane Anders reviews “Transformers: Rise of the Fallen” for io9. Perhaps the single best piece of film criticism you will read this year.

My review — nowhere near as good, but the one with my name on it — hasn’t gone up yet. (There seems to be something amiss with NOW’s site.) I’ll put up the link as soon as I can. UPDATE: Here it is!

“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” opens today. Please proceed to the nearest shelter and wait for further instructions.

That is all.

Although it’s practically unwatchable, “The Proposal” enjoyed a $34.1 million opening over the weekend, which means Sandra Bullock will keep on cranking out vile romantic comedies well into her forties, the poor thing. I mean, I guess it’s nice that Ryan Reynolds finally has a hit on his resume; I just wish he’d landed his breakout role in something that was actually respectable. His part could have been played by anyone in a nice shirt, really.

But this sucks more: Variety is reporting that Sony Pictures has abruptly shut down Steven Soderbergh’s new film, “Moneyball”, which was to start shooting today in Arizona. Script concerns, apparently.

As someone who believes that Soderbergh is one of the most interesting filmmakers of his generation, and should be allowed to follow his interests wherever they lead — even if that results in intriguing failures like “The Good German” and “Che” — I am saddened by this turn of events. I mean, “Moneyball” is a baseball movie with Brad Pitt in the starring role, so it’ll probably find a home at another studio.

Soderbergh has a pretty good relationship with Warner, so here’s hoping everything works out. But still. That’s got to hurt.

Schedules being what they are, I’ve got a couple of Sympatico/MSN pieces to share with you today instead of just one.

First, there’s a look at bad movie marriages, to tie into the horrror of Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds’ impending nuptials in “The Proposal”.

And with “Away We Go” slowly expanding across the country, here’s a gallery of other road movies that similarly do the whole emotional-journey thing.

See? I can totally be contextual!

… by the way, please don’t see “The Proposal”. It’s really awful. I’m actually begging you here.

It’s always nice when a favorite movie gets a little love, isn’t it? This week, it happened twice.

At The House Next Door, Robert C. Cumbow revisited Walter Hill’s majestic rock-and-roll fable “Streets of Fire”, which looks a little more like an unrecognized masterwork with every passing year … and over at the Onion AV Club, Scott Tobias inducted Bill Murray and Howard Franklin’s brilliant “Quick Change” into the New Cult Canon, rightly hailing it as the point where Murray began his transition from smartass comic hero to proper actor.

“Quick Change” is also the film that introduced the word “blaftoni”, which has remained in my vocabulary for nearly two decades now. Bless its pointy little head.

I’ve spent most of this week working on my computer. Or rather, I made a small tweak to one element of my computer on Tuesday, and one thing led to another, and the next thing I know I’m rebooting for three hours straight and opening up the CPU to check a SATA connection and Thursday evaporated in a puff of smoke.

Anyhow, the end result is that I have a lot of catching up to do today, meaning our regular Friday movie roundup will be slightly abbreviated. But not too much, I guess, since there are plenty of openings.

“The Baby Formula”: A mockumentary about duelling lesbian pregnancies. Susan kinda hated it at Inside Out, and hasn’t warmed to it much since then.

“Food, Inc.”: An actual documentary about the state of American (and, by extension, North American) food production and preparation, built around the work of crusading journalist and “Fast Food Nation” author Eric Schlosser. See it, and you will probably crap yourself — either in terror, or due to E. Coli contamination on the hot dog you bought at the concession stand. Susan explains.

“The Green Chain”: A mockumentary about environmentalists. Neither Susan nor Adam has much patience for it, though the presence of Tricia “Six” Helfer means it’ll have a long, long life on the DVD shelves.

“The Proposal“: In which Sandra Bullock plays an ill-mannered, intimidating Canadian book editor who blackmails her American assistant into marrying her so she can stay in New York and … wait, what? A Canadian? Ill-mannered? Seriously, we can only suspend so much disbelief before we pull something.

“Summer Hours“: Olivier Assayas’ melancholy family study — starring Charles Berling, Juliette Binoche and Jeremie Renier as globally dispersed siblings trying to divide their late mother’s estate — captures something really powerful about the meaning of objects. It’s one of last year’s best films; don’t wait for the DVD release, see it with people.

“Victoria Day”: The directorial debut of Toronto author David Bezmozgis reflects on Toronto teenage life in 1988; Susan and Jason admire it enough that I’m intrigued to see it — especially since it’s set at Newtonbrook Secondary School, just one year after I graduated from that particular institution. I bet that entranceway mural is as horrible as I remember.

“Wind Man”: The year’s second Kazakh feature is an absurdist drama about isolated villagers dealing with the arrival of an elderly, winged man in the town square. “Nice, but it’s no ‘Tulpan’,” say Rad and Adam.

“Year One“: Jack Black and Michael Cera blunder through a series of Biblical misadventures (Cain and Abel! Sodom and Gomorrah!) for our mild amusement in Harold Ramis’ very silly comedy. Remember “Wholly Moses!”? It’s like that, except there are actual jokes, and you won’t hate yourself afterward. My review should be up on the NOW site later this morning. UPDATE: There it is!

That’s going to have to be it for today. Time to update my graphics drivers … say a prayer for me, would you?

Olivier Assayas’ “Summer Hours” is one of the best films you’ll see this year, and it’s barely getting a theatrical run. So when it opens tomorrow, please make time to catch it on a big screen.

After missing both the movie and the man at Cannes, I caught up with Assayas at TIFF to discuss his film — and distilled that half-hour conversation into an online Q&A in today’s NOW. And in the paper proper, you’ll find a couple of very different reponses to a casual observation in my review of the “Taking of Pelham 1 2 3” remake.

Such a loaded word, “terrorism”. But then, I guess that’s the point.

Breaking news: The excellent documentarian Allan King has died, aged 79.

I’m working on an appreciation for Thursday’s paper, so I have to get back to that … but, you know. Crap.

UPDATE: The piece will still be running in tomorrow’s paper, but it’s online right now, if you’re curious.