Let’s say that one night you attend a party with your husband, during which you meet one of his coworkers and discover that she is, like, very good looking, perhaps even better looking than you, though this is debatable as she may be merely voluptuous with an “okayish” face and you are undoubtedly “classic” all the way, a lot skinnier — but do guys even want that anymore?

Late in Everything Must Go, off-the-wagon alcoholic Nick Halsey (Will Ferrell) suggests that expectant mother Samantha (Rebecca Hall) paint her child’s nursery blue, because the color is soothing. Blue, of course, also symbolizes sadness, and the moment sums up the tone of the film, which is soothingly sad throughout — from its hazy, sun-soaked photography (it was shot on location in Phoenix), to its bluesy soundtrack, and to, most of all, its quietly moving performances.

As I prepare to write a review of City of Life and Death, the latest dramatization of the Rape of Nanking — oddly enough, it’s just barely the latest: German director Florian Gallenberger’s John Rabe was released two weeks earlier — I am beginning to wonder if there isn’t some value in possibly ‘getting over’ all of the horrible things the Japanese did during World War II.

In Daniel and Diego Veda Vidal’s Octubre, the fraternal filmmakers explore the myth of middle-class respectability in modern day Lima. The title derives from the celebration of the Lord of Miracles that occurs in the month of October, with the implication that most residents of the city need a miracle in order to get by each day. The absence of money creates a place in which everyone becomes a criminal or con artist in order to make ends meet in the face of overwhelming poverty.

The amateur farrago that calls itself Bob Dylan Revealed doesn’t deserve a critical appraisal, so consider this a consumer advisory. If I can spare one innocent person from spending time and money on this exploitation, I will have done my job.

Director Kelly Reichardt has taken the last few years to quietly establish herself as one of the most subtle and relevant filmmakers in America. The two features she released in the aughts, Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy, both set in the Pacific Northwest, are comments on and products of a stultified generation: they deal with the everyday problems of interpersonal relationships, lack of money (or other bothersome necessaries), and the emptiness of feeling lost, both literally and as mental malaise.

Although it amounts to little more than a lazy pastiche of every well-known zombie movie ever made, Stakeland has two things going for it: (1) photographically, it looks surprisingly professional, despite the fact that it was made for very little money; and (2) it reaches for a new angle on the post-apocalyptic zombie movie, an angle that would have made it stand out had the reaching amounted to anything grabbed.