Things blow up right and left, muscle cars are pulverized, sexpots vamp and brawny men wallop the tar out of one another. Yet there are enough pauses between adrenaline-packed driving sequences, shootouts and explosions to make room for three romance subplots and two babies.

"Me and Orson Welles" is a little velvet sack of diamonds. It's a sparkling love letter to a gigantic talent, a romance, a comedy, a drama. Above all it's a tale of puberty, the period between childhood and adulthood for both of its title characters, and for America. The story is retro but the subject matter is familiar to indie director Richard Linklater ("Dazed and Confused," "School of Rock" and "Before Sunset").

Airports, with their endless corridors, encourage a kind of tunnel vision. In Jason Reitman's new film "Up in the Air," Ryan Bingham is focused on moving forward, ignoring what we can see around him. Reuniting couples embrace. Fellow travelers vanish behind partitions, never to be seen again. Posters of smiling pilots thank him for his loyalty.

The Road is a prophecy of a blasted world. The unchanging sky resembles hammered lead. The trees are leafless, lifeless, crashing to earth like poleaxed cattle. Animals have vanished. Cities are rubble fields. Houses are empty.

Once upon a time there was a weird little thrift-shop comedy called "Napoleon Dynamite." It came out of nowhere (well, almost nowhere: Utah) with a no-name cast, adhered to no known comedic formula, and became a smash.

An improbable true story of bloodlines and color lines, "Skin" dramatizes the life of Sandra Laing, a black girl born to white Afrikaner parents in apartheid-era South Africa. Sandra's birth certificate classified her as white, though a genetic quirk had given her dark skin and curly hair. In her youth Sandra attended a whites-only school where her appearance created an uproar. She was reclassified as colored under apartheid laws, and her parents mounted a judicial challenge to establish her "whiteness."

You cannot ruin the essence of "A Christmas Carol." The example of a man who learns that wealth is not happiness, but happiness is wealth, is surely eternal. It's been Muppet-ified, musicalized and Bill Murray-ed with great success. And yet it's possible to wrap Charles Dickens' entrancing story in layers of humbug that diminish it. The odious Matthew McConaughey romcom "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" made viewers hold their heads and moan like Jacob Marley. Still, the resilient tale survived.

Morgan Spurlock, look lively. Sacha Baron Cohen, watch your back. Chris Rock's bright, wisecracking expose Good Hair is the mane event. Let's not call it a documentary; it's just too entertaining. Untangling the knotty issues of identity, sex, culture and commerce surrounding African-American hairstyling, Rock has made his funniest film ever, "Madagascar" and "Pootie Tang" included.