Why, look! It’s Friday and there are many, many movies opening! Shall we dive right in?

“Chloe”: Atom Egoyan finally abandons his pretenses and makes a full-on erotothriller — which plays like a fascinating glimpse into an alternate reality where he never followed “Exotica” with “The Sweet Hereafter”, and instead forged a career making glossy B-movies that nobody cared about. Jason and Susan are a little more delicate about it, but we all know the deal.

“City Island”: Raymond de Felitta’s dramedy casts Andy Garcia as a prison guard taking acting classes on the sly — leading his wife (Julianna Margulies) to think he’s having an affair and triggering all manner of wacky consequences. Susan liked it .

“The Coca-Cola Case“: German Gutierrez and Carmen Garcia attempt to link the world’s largest soft-drink conglomerate to union-busting and murder in this agit-prop documentary … but fall well short of their goal, settling for indignant finger-pointing over the low wages paid to Coke’s South American workers.

“Greenberg“: Noah Baumbach brings his magical misery tour to Los Angeles for this sharp drama about a fortysomething New Yorker (Ben Stiller, excellent) determined not to engage with the world, and the younger woman (Greta Gerwig, also very good) who complicates things.

“Hot Tub Time Machine”: The title says it all, right? Andrew enjoyed it.

“How to Train Your Dragon“: DreamWorks Animation makes good on the promise of “Kung Fu Panda” in this exhilarating — and surprisingly moving — tale of a young Viking who befriends a fire-breathing scamp. Not a single pop-culture reference to be had, which must have seemed risky, but it works wonderfully. And it’s great in 3D. My review should be up shortly. UPDATE: Linked!

“Mother“: Bong Joon-ho follows “The Host” with another tale of familial devotion; this one’s about a single mother (Kim Hye-ja) who will do just about anything to clear her son (Won Bin) of a murder charge. Part social study, part murder mystery, and entirely compelling.

“Neil Young Trunk Show“: Mr. Shakey’s 2008 tour is captured by Jonathan Demme and six handheld cameras. It’s not as accessible as “Heart of Gold” was, but that 21-minute performance of “No Hidden Path” will send Young’s die-hard fans over the moon.

So there’s something for everyone, really …

I’m back from Los Angeles, and happy to be home — no slight intended to California, but I’m just more comfortable with variable seasons. (And it looks like there’s going to be plenty of variation in the next few days.)

Anyway, the latest issue of NOW features my interviews with Noah Baumbach, writer-director of “Greenberg”, and Jonathan Demme, director of all manner of features and documentaries, most recently the concert picture “Neil Young Trunk Show”, which is what put us in the same room at TIFF last year. I’ve also tackled Cinefranco, the French-language film festival returning to town this week.

Sure, L.A. has the Cinerama dome, but do they use it to showcase obscure Franco-Belgian biopics about the singing nun who made “Dominique” a worldwide hit? Non, they do not.

The L.A. marathon was yesterday, and my hotel was on the route — right at the 12-mile marker, apparently. It’s a bit of a challenge, keeping one’s mind on a press conference when literally hundreds of people are streaming past the window.

I took this shot when I got back to my room — the crowd had thinned somewhat by then, but you get the idea.

In other news, I’m not surprised to realize that when I see hordes of people running through the streets, my first instinct is to look for the zombies chasing them.

Mr. Romero, I hope you’re proud of yourself …

My latest MSN Movies gallery uses “The Bounty Hunter” as a springboard to look at a few other bad-breakup movies, and the actors who’ve clashed so memorably in them.

Now that I think about it, I should have included “Casablanca”, too …

Tomorrow I head off to Los Angeles for a junket run — earthquake season’s over, right? — so I find myself speeding through a whole bunch of stuff today in order to get ahead of my deadlines. And yet there are still movies opening this weekend! Damn movies!

“The Bounty Hunter“: Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston do the love-hate thing in Andy Tennant’s miserable romantic comedy. My review should be up any minute now, but you already know the deal, right? UPDATE: Linked!

“Cooking with Stella”: Newly arrived in Delhi, Canadian househusband Don McKellar finds himself squaring off against scheming housekeeper Seema Biswas in Dilip Mehta’s modest comedy of manners, which deserves points for confronting stereotypes but loses a few for being kind of dull. Susan and Jason were more forgiving.

“Diary of a Wimpy Kid”: I have no idea what this is.

“Hubble“: The latest IMAX space movie is worth seeing for the glorious views of distant galaxies, as captured by the titular telescope. The stuff about repair missions is just window dressing, really.

“Repo Men“: It’s “Logan’s Run” with credit ratings instead of an age cap, but there’s enough meat (sorry) on Miguel Sapochnik’s dystopian action thriller to hold your attention, and Jude Law is solid in the lead. Audiences will be split on the ending, but I thought it was pretty savvy, myself.

“The Runaways”: Floria Sigismondi’s scrappy story of Joan Jett, Cherie Currie and the original girl-power movement is your basic rise-and-fall rock movie, with the “rise” part far more satisfying than the “fall”, thanks to Michael Shannon’s pop-eyed Kim Fowley. And the music’s pretty great, but you knew that already.

Right, that’s everything. I’ll check in with y’all later …

Spring must be near, because we’re already wading through the wave of micro-festivals that always takes over Toronto when the snow melts.

This week’s NOW finds me tackling the Female Eye Film Festival and the Toronto Japanese Short Film Festival, with plenty more to come — there’s Cinefranco next week, Images the week after that, and Hot Docs looming at the end of April. Oh, and Sprockets and the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, too.

It’s exhausting being me right now.