Colin Firth, hot off his Academy Award-nominated turn last year in A Single Man, returns to period work as King George VI, the father of currently reigning Queen Elizabeth. Bertie, as he was known among the royal family, was the stammering second son of George V (Michael Gambon) who ascended to the throne when his brother abdicated. We get the triumph, frankly, without much of the real struggle, but director Tom Hooper and his actors do their best to make sure we don’t care about anything other than what they give us. Grade: A-.  

Tom Ford arrives on the filmmaking scene fully formed, no doubt the product of a man who has been cultivating and manipulating images for nearly two decades as a bigwig fashion designer. His adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's 1964 novel benefits from strong performances, evocative, detail-rich production design and an effectively melancholy mood that only occasionally drifts into slick stylization. Grade: A-.  

Robert Zemeckis' remake of Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' follows on the heels of 'The Polar Express' and 'Beowulf' and strives to bring real human three-dimensional aspects to the characters, ideally to move us beyond video game-styled computer generated images. But Zemeckis and his crew have struggled to fully render soulful eyes complete with an intangible sense of movement behind the reflective surfaces. Grade: C-plus.