“Eclipse” may be set to conquer the world over this long weekend, but there are still plenty of movies opening. If you’re considering the counterprogramming, be advised — the selection seems pretty weak.

“Fuel“: Biodiesel activist Josh Tickell would very much like you to stop using petroleum products, and he makes his case at length in this insistently bouncy little documentary-cum-informercial, which alternates insightful observations with really irritating cutesiness. That said, I do think he has a point.

“Hey Hey It’s Esther Blueberger”: Screened at Sprockets two years ago, Cathy Randall’s pleasant little Australian comedy about a Jewish misfit (Danielle Catanzariti) who reinvents herself to fit in with the cool kids finally lands a proper theatrical release. Susan really wants to get behind it, but can’t quite make it happen.

“The Last Airbender”: M. Night Shyamalan tries to recover from the back-to-back disasters of “Lady in the Water” and “The Happening” with a great big fantasy adventure epic based on a popular TV series — though you’ll notice his contractual “Written, Produced and Directed by” credit hasn’t gone anywhere. Andrew hated it, and so has pretty much everyone else thus far.

“Pax Americana“: Denis Delestrac would like you to be very, very worried about the possibility of killer satellites hunting each other in orbit high above the Earth. He’s gone to very great lengths to make that very theoretical possibility as scary as possible. I call bullshit, but that’s just, like, my opinion, man.

“Solitary Man”: Michael Douglas dresses himself down as an aging hedonist doing a terrible job of facing his own mortality; Jesse Eisenberg is the college kid he Roger Dodgers into his capers. Susan found it passable; Jason, less so. Me, I’ll just watch “Wonder Boys” again.

“Tehroun“: Gritty, low-budget movies about petty criminals in big cities all tend to play out the same way, unless there’s by a very talented filmmaker at the helm … and Nader T. Homayoun doesn’t have the chops to claim this totally derivative material as his own. The novelty will carry you for about 40 minutes, but then you’ll start thinking of all the other, better movies that have used this plot more effectively.

… um, I dunno. Have you seen “Mother” yet? It’s at the Bloor all weekend, and it’s terrific. Go see that.

In case you haven’t heard, “Eclipse”, the third film in the unstoppable “Twilight” saga, opens everywhere today. I haven’t seen it yet, thanks to a last-minute scheduling conflict the other night, but Glenn has, and he wasn’t impressed. I shall take his word for it, at least for the moment.

Oh, and though I included it in last Friday’s review roundup, “Love Ranch” didn’t actually open until today. But it’s terrible, so don’t waste another minute thinking about it, okay?

Far more noteworthy today is the reopening of the Carlton Cinemas, now under the stewardship of the Magic Lantern chain seven months after Cineplex gave up on the place.

I visited the theatre earlier this week (for a piece that should go up on the NOW site very soon — UPDATE: Here it is!) and was impressed by both the practical and aesthetic aspects of the renovation — and they’re screening free movies today and tomorrow (PDF link) to show the place off, so you should totally drop by.

What a difference a day makes, right? Along with thousands of other Toronto residents, I’ve gone from admiring the restraint of our police officers to a sense of sickened disgust at their abuses of power yesterday — the attacks on peaceful demonstrators (singing “O Canada,” for fuck’s sake), the unjustified detention of bystanders (in the pouring rain, for four hours), the unlawful search and seizures, the denials of basic rights, all of it designed to push back against Saturday’s wave of vandalism.

If you were following my Twitter feed, you doubtless caught the exact point where it all clicked over from sympathy to revulsion; if not, the exceptional coverage on Torontoist should catch you up in short order.

The abuses of police power need to be explained, and they need to be explained today. Perhaps someone will be kind enough to put the question to our mayor this afternoon at the Pride Week launch, an event dedicated to openness and harmony and all that stuff for which our city is supposed to stand. If nothing else, he’ll squirm in an inclusive manner.

Oh, and since some of you come here expecting box-office news on a Monday, here you go: “Toy Story 3” held the top spot over the weekend with $59 million, with “Grown Ups” earning $41 million for a respectable second place and “Knight and Day” limping into third with $20.5 million. Somewhere, Tom Cruise is vowing to put everything he’s got into his Les Grossman project — which will doubtless be the scariest comedy ever made.

My latest MSN Movies gallery is up, looking at the romantic thrillers that “Knight and Day” would very much like to be. It’s not, though. It’s quite terrible. Really, I can’t make that point often enough this week.

I left “Killers” off the list because (a) it’s terrible and (b) the whole mysterious-stranger-who-saves-the-girl thing doesn’t really apply, since the characters have been married for three years before the mystery kicks in. But I kept “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”, for reasons you’ll discover when you read the piece.

Just sitting around today, wondering when all the G20 tensions I’ve been hearing about will explode into mob violence and/or police brutality. I’m hoping the media hysteria will dissolve once everyone realizes that we’re all Canadians here.

We don’t need to smash each other’s heads in; we can just sit down and discuss our differences over a bowl of poutine, like sensible folk. I’m sure Louis Riel would have been down for that, had he ever been to Caplansky’s …

If Tom Cruise’s “Knight and Day” doesn’t conquer the box office this weekend — and it’s looking like it might not — at least there’s plenty of other movies opening to jockey for placing second to “Toy Story 3”. Let’s check them out!

“Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky”: Jan Kounen’s other Chanel biopic — which played TIFF just days before Anne Fontaine’s “Coco Avant Chanel” opened last fall — stars Anna Mouglalis and Mads Mikkelsen as the titular historical figures. Susan and Jason found it sumptuously appointed but dramatically middling.

“Cyrus“: Jay and Mark Duplass drag name actors into their strange little world, come up with something just as intimate and fascinating as “The Puffy Chair” and “Baghead”. Not quite the comedy it’s being pitched as, but awfully funny all the same.

“Grown Ups“: The last time Adam Sandler and Kevin James got together, they gave the world “Paul Blart, Mall Cop”. Before that, “I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry”. So this lightweight comedy which casts them (and Chris Rock, David Spade and Rob Schneider) as high-school buddies turned middle-aged schlubs is easily the best thing they’ve ever done. Backhanded praise indeed.

“Love Ranch“: Helen Mirren is a lovely woman, and she must love her husband very, very much to have chosen to make this particular picture with him. That’s all I’m saying.

“This Movie is Broken“: Bruce McDonald and Don McKellar reunite for their first rock project since “Highway 61” — a fusion of concert movie and scripted drama that follows two people through Toronto on the day of last year’s Broken Social Scene blowout at Harbourfront. It’s a little uneven, but when it clicks, it’s exhilarating.

And that, my friends, is everything. If you’re in Toronto, don’t even think about venturing downtown this weekend; stock up on canned food and shotguns, fortify your basement and wait for the G20 to blow out of town on Monday. Me, I’ll be hiding under the bed.

NXNE may be over for another year, but its cinematic legacy lives on, with “Stones in Exile” hitting DVD this week and “This Movie is Broken” opening in Toronto tomorrow. Which is why this week’s issue of NOW finds me sitting down with Bruce McDonald, director of the Broken Social Scene movie — and of last year’s “Pontypool”, which you really should see if you haven’t caught up to it yet.

But it’s not all rock; I also talked to Jay and Mark Duplass, about their new comedy-drama “Cyrus”, also opening tomorrow. That conversation was much too wide-ranging to fit into a 500-word space, so you’ll definitely want to play the audio clips on that one.

Oh, and here’s my “Knight and Day” review, as promised. Please heed its warnings.