[Pickups: March current]

* Carbon Nation is a fun but slight documentary on climate change. I liked that it was the sort of movie one could plunk their Tea Party parents down in front of (Who cares if climate change is real or not? There’s money to be made!), but it came at the expense of showing why these positive changes aren’t happening (there’s more money to be made — at least for a select group — by preventing it).

* I’m a huge, vocal fan of Moon, so I was perhaps unduly excited about director Duncan Jones’ follow-up feature, Source Code. And then it let me down, perhaps inevitably, by cheesy dialogue and a pasted-on romance. However, Gyllenhaal & Monaghan are both damn pretty, Vera Farmiga is always great, and the more you think about it, the more depressing the ending *actually* is. So, perhaps, hooray!

* My other highly-anticipated film of March, however, did not let me down. Sure to earn a spot in my Best of 2011, Win Win was another perfect small film from Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent, The Visitor). Seeee it. See all of them. All three feature characters who could so easily veer into stereotype under another director, but which remain firmly, fully real and true people in the worlds created by McCarthy.