Your entertainment dollar is precious. Please, please save it for next week (Frost/Nixon and The Wrestler). Or any other week really.

The high-profile new release this week is The Reader, featuring Kate Winslet's Oscar-winning performance. But it didn't even feature the best Kate Winslet performance last year -- that would be Revolutionary Road -- and as a whole it's yet another lugubrious, self-important prestige drama that operates under the misguided impression that anything having to do with the Holocaust simply must be of worth.

Then there's Frank Miller's adaptation of the vintage Will Eisner comic strip The Spirit, which takes the stylized look of Sin City and makes it louder and dumber. Gabriel Macht may be the least charismatic guy ever to put on a super-heroic mask, and Samuel L. Jackson once again chews scenery mercilessly. Maybe it's good for heckling with your buddies, and at least it won't suck you in by stamping an Oscar on the DVD case.