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I, for One, Welcome Our Animated Overlords.

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Kang? Is that you?It took eighteen years, innumerable rewrites and at least one spider-pig, but it’s all been worth it: “The Simpsons Movie” opens today, and I am firmly in its corner.

Oh, and there are some other movies opening, too:

“Mon Mellieur Ami“: Highbrow French director Patrice Leconte — maker of such marvelous meditations on fate as “Girl on the Bridge” and “Man on the Train” — tries his hand at a conventional relationship picture, and ends up making one of the year’s most intriguingly off-rhythm films. Is Daniel Auteuil socially awkward, or is he an asshole? Vous be the judge.

“No Reservations“: Expectations were not high for this Manhattan remake of “Mostly Martha”; the trailer’s atrocious, and I haven’t thought much of Scott Hicks’ films since “Snow Falling on Cedars”, where the indignities of Japanese-American internment during World War II unfolded in what seemed like real time. But it’s watchable enough, thanks to Aaron Eckhart’s marvelous freestyle turn as the charming sous-chef who reawakens Catherine Zeta-Jones to the (predictable) joys of life, tiramisu and snogging.

“Talk to Me“: A tremendously good rock and soul soundtrack, and the electric performance of Don Cheadle as cocksure Washington radio personality Petey Greene, gives the first two-thirds of Kasi Lemmons’ standard-issue biopic a marvelous bounce. But the script runs into a couple of brick walls when Petey’s career hits its zenith, and when the screenwriters decide to shift their focus to co-star Chiwetel Ejiofor, in the far less dynamic role of Greene’s manager and foil.

I have to see “I Know Who Killed Me” this afternoon, since Sony declined to screen it for the press. My instinct is to say their efforts to shield the movie from review would be better spent trying to protect Lohan from herself, but that doesn’t seem terribly funny right now.

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