The fall movie season is often maligned for its less-than-respectable fare (or as we like to think of them, "the films that summer forgot"). But this past autumn actually did offer moviegoers some surprising hits like the crowd-pleasing "Couples Retreat," the frightening phenomenon "Paranormal Activity," and the very personal take on the children's book "Where the Wild Things Are." It also wasn't without some unfortunate duds like "Astro Boy" and "Cirque Du Freak," but this week we all can look forward to the official debut of the holiday movie season.

It kicks off with Robert Zemeckis' take on the Charles Dickens classic, "Disney's A Christmas Carol." The film features the multi-dimensional Jim Carrey, who plays Scrooge as well as all of the ghosts. Also opening in theaters all over this great harvested land of ours, you'll find "The Box" starring Cameron Diaz (from the director of cult favorite "Donnie Darko"), and "The Fourth Kind," an alien abduction thriller starring Milla Jovovich that's supposedly based on a true story. Plus, George Clooney enlists in the off-the-wall comedy "The Men Who Stare at Goats," and opening in limited release is the much talked-about urban drama, "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' By Sapphire."

Disney's A Christmas Carol

It's just the beginning of November, but 'tis already the season for director Robert Zemeckis' latest Christmas-time flick. His first film of this genre was "The Polar Express" in 2004, which starred Tom Hanks in many roles (remember the slightly awkward and vacant-looking train conductor?), and this time Zemeckis has enlisted the expressive, elastic talents of Jim Carrey to play all the key roles including Ebenezer Scrooge.

Keith Uhlich from Time Out New York says that Carrey was a natural pick to lead the cast: "Carrey endows the miser with a seamless depth of feeling -- a quality only enhanced by the fact that he also plays the three spirits (Christmases Past, Present and Yet to Come) who haunt Scrooge and push him toward redemption." Todd McCarthy from Variety, however, feels that in general the performance capture animation technique "robs actors of their full range of expressiveness."

Critical appraisals for the overall film were also divided. "Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' is about emotions. It's about how emotions can get stunted and tramped down, how they can be revived and how empathy and affection can bring joy to the human soul. One will find none of that here," writes Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter. He goes on to add, "Zemeckis' 'A Christmas Carol' is, in its essence, a product reel, a showy, exuberant demonstration of the glories of motion capture, computer animation and 3D technology. On that level, it's a wow. On any emotional level, it's as cold as Marley's Ghost."

On the other hand, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times totally commits to Zemeckis' vision, calling it "an exhilarating visual experience" and stating that the director "proves for the third time he's one of the few directors who knows what he's doing with 3-D. The story that Dickens wrote in 1838 remains timeless, and if it's supercharged here with Scrooge swooping the London streets as freely as Superman, well, once you let ghosts into a movie, there's room for anything." Ebert, though, isn't alone in suggesting that some of the action and characters might be a little too scary for young children... but this is a ghost story after all.

The Box

Director Richard Kelly became an indie darling after his mindbending sci-fi debut "Donny Darko." The film came out just after 9/11 and the flick's paranoia resonated with a generally freaked out movie audience. Kelly followed up that movie with "Southland Tales" -- a bizarro, semi-experimental allegory starring The Rock. By all accounts that film was a mess. So with Kelly's third outing, "The Box," he opts for a storyline that at first blush seems like a straight ahead thriller, though Kelly inevitably injects the film with his own obsessions.

"Richard Kelly retreats to the safe confines of mainstream genre filmmaking with 'The Box,'" writes Nick Schager of Slant Magazine. "Or, at least, he does so for the first 15 minutes, at which point his latest goes spiraling off into delirious lunacy." While Schager praises Kelly for wrestling "with issues of greed, altruism, and one's vital place in the (local, global, universal) community," David Germain of the Associated Press is far less patient with the director: "What button, on whose box, did Kelly push to get the money to make this awful, preposterous thriller? If Hollywood were a three-strikes, you're-out kind of place, Kelly would be flirting with permanent banishment."

Basically, if you were a fan of Kelly's "Donny Darko," you will probably dig his latest head trip. If you weren't, give this flick a pass.

The Fourth Kind

"Paranormal Activity," the no-budget surprise horror blockbuster, featured some serious frights using footage that looked like it was out of a documentary. "The Fourth Kind" hopes to bring in the same box-office haul by using a similar conceit. The movie, which stars Milla Jovovich, purports to be an enactment of real case studies of alien abductees. Documentary-style footage is even intercut within the story.

Some critics, like Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman, had a hard time with the premise: "[The] 'documentary' stuff... just hits you over the head with the fact that the movie itself is a cornball contrivance -- and a draggy, rote, and listless one at that. Too often, 'The Fourth Kind' makes the paranormal look disappointingly normal."

On the other hand, critics who cared less about the authenticity of the footage enjoyed the experience more. "'The Fourth Kind' was one of the scariest things I've seen in years. I'm going out to see it again, which tells you how much I care whether or not it's a hoax... I enjoyed every thrilling minute of it," writes Jenna Busch of the Huffington Post. "Like 'Drag Me to Hell' did earlier this year, 'The Fourth Kind' made horror fun again."

The Men Who Stare at Goats

George Clooney is set to appear in three -- count 'em, three -- movies this holiday season: "Up in the Air," "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" and this weekend's "The Men Who Stare at Goats." The latter movie is a satirical (yet supposedly factual) take on some very weird government programs. Just about every critic enjoyed the back and forth between leads Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor and the aforementioned Clooney.

Derek Elley of Variety gushed, "A serendipitous marriage of talent in which all hearts seem to beat as one, 'The Men Who Stare at Goats' takes Jon Ronson's book about 'the apparent madness at the heart of U.S. military intelligence' and fashions a superbly written loony-tunes satire, played by a tony cast at the top of its game." Others, like The New Yorker's Anthony Lane, found the acting to be top-notch even if the script was lacking: "Clooney gives it everything, but what does he get in return? A void where the story is meant to be."

Precious

"Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire" is harrowing look at the life of an obese, abused, and pregnant sixteen-year old girl in Harlem. The film won the audience prizes at Sundance and the Toronto International Film Festival, and it generally has been earning raves from critics. Rex Reed of the New York Observer writes, "The most unforgettable film I've seen also has the most forgettable title. But it is raw, electrically charged, heart-rending and completely shattering... [It's] a once-in-a-blue-moon experience that tests the boundaries of film."

Many critics single out a few actors for their powerhouse performance. Scott Foundas of The Village Voice raves, "The picture belongs... to the gale-force Mo'Nique, who transforms an ostensibly one-note monster mom into a complex portrait of a psychologically damaged woman... and to the magnanimous [Gabourey] Sidibe, who carries the alternately exhausting and exhilarating narrative on her formidable shoulders. For most of the movie, her stoically beautiful face stays wrought tight in a mask of sadness and self-loathing. When she relaxes those muscles ever so slightly -- one of the movie's few subtle touches -- it is like a weight of centuries has been lifted."