Ty's movie picks for Friday, April 18

Oh my. Whole lotta movies opening today, and some fine ones to boot. Ten reviews in today's paper, and that's not counting the two that are opening without screening for the press due to prevailing awfulness or insanity (see below). Is the spring box-office drought over? One big hit won't soothe studio ulcers, but it'll keep the Tums at bay until the summer season kicks in next month. Until then you'll have to be content with movies that are, you know, good.

"Forgetting Sarah Marshall" will be the hit, and I don't have a problem with that. The latest splattery farce from the Judd Apatow factory delivers some big bellylaughs along with its too-predictable storyline, and Jason Segel reminded me of one of the guys from "Animal House" with actual soul. The fun of the Apatow movies is all those wiseguys schpritzing on the sidelines and in that "Marshall" is no different. Still, I believed Segel's crisis of dude conscience more than Seth Rogen's in "Knocked Up."

The best movies opening this weekend are in the art houses, which doesn't mean they're pitched only so dogs and aesthetes can hear them. On the contrary: "Young@Heart," about geriatrics singing punk songs, is the kind of documentary crowd-pleaser it's impossible to not love and respect (trust me, the movie's not as cute as it sounds. Well, it is, but an awful lot more besides) and "The Visitor" is a small, satisfying drama with a huge but very quiet performance from Richard Jenkins, a character actor getting a rare lead role. Yeah, that guy.

Hou Hsiao-hsien's "Flight of the Red Balloon" is a magical fictional essay on childhood in Paris (we should all be so lucky) but it's not for the casual moviegoer, being one of those films where nothing seems to be happening because, in fact, everything is. But Juliette Binoche is heartbreaking as a frazzled mother. Go on, I dare you. It's at the Kendall Square.

Or maybe you're excited by the prospect of Hong Kong action legends Jackie Chan and Jet Li in a movie together for the first time? I know I was. Too bad they had to stick Michael Angarano in there too and turn Chan into Mr. Miyagi. As long as it's moving, "The Forbidden Kingdom" is decent martial arts popcorn, and your kids will have a good time unless they're little Shaw Brothers experts and know this is a watered down approximation. It'll be a box-office hit anyway. By the way, my new movie crush is Li Bingbing. Or maybe I just like saying her name repeatedly.

You could attend "My Blueberry Nights," the new Wong Kar Wai movie, the way you'd visit a sick friend in the hospital who's still keeping up his spirits. The cast in this, Wong's first English-language movie, is weird in good ways: Singer Norah Jones in the lead and singer Cat Power in a cameo, actors Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz, and David Strathairn milling around with varying degrees of creativity. The movie's visually stunning but dramatically slack, a road movie about self-discovery that a twee college girl could have written. The funny thing is I still liked it, even when Weisz is acting all Southern gothic and screaming "Ah hate yew!" at Frankie Faison.

"Zombie Strippers"? Not as good as it sounds, sadly. "Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden"? An annoyingly glib sophomore slump from Michael Moore-wannabe Morgan Spurlock ("Super Size Me"). The new Pacino flick "88 Minutes"? A black hole of errant star badness.

The two films that didn't screen for the likes of Wesley and me are "Pathology" (Milo Ventimiglia of "Heroes" meets the old brat pack suspense drama "Flatliners," apparently, though with trendier gore and sex) and "Expelled." This last is a special case: A pro-intelligent design documentary -- written and starring Ben Stein! -- that has been trying to sneak into town without attracting the attention of the press. I've been hearing about a few screenings here and there, but clearly these folks are scared of attention and would rather play to the committed (or spillover audiences from "Forgetting Sarah Marshall"). What, they think there'll be a backlash? A review will run in tomorrow's paper.

At the area art-houses and institutions -- I told you, a ton of movies this week -- the MFA has feminist sexual musings and more Bob Dylan, while the Harvard Film Archive has the films of Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun but not, unfortunately Haroun himself, since visa problems have scotched the filmmaker's scheduled appearance. Tonight (Friday), the Archive is screening classic avant-garde short films of the 60s and 70s, so you should get your Bruce Baillie and Bruce Connor freak on. No, really, you should.

The Brattle, meanwhile, is unspooling a retrospective of Japanese action films from the 60s, mostly courtesy of the splendidly bonkers Nikkatsu studio. Drooler alert: a lot of these films, like "A Colt is My Passport" (poster above), aren't available on video.

I'm on vacation until a week from Monday, so if this blog is silent until then, it's because I'm far away from a computer and happy about it. Email Wesley and poke him with a stick.