Les Rendez-vous du cinéma québecois began this week. It's a chance to catch all the features, docs and shorts by local filmmakers made and distributed within the last year. You'll get everything from hits starring Louise-Josée Houde to unknown jazz fable musicals. And there's always plenty to love about Québécois film: this year's notables include Monsieur Lazhar and Starbuck. Some pretty hot docs being screened include porn star biography, Inside Lara Roxx, and The Corporation follow-up, Surviving Progress. RCVQ never misses out on special screenings of cult favourites like Robert Morin's Petit Pow! Pow! Noel, and even has gone so far as to celebrate a French (as in, from France) auteur director: Claire Denis (known for films Beau travail and 35 rhums). (+)

Valentine's Day is coming and there's nothing more romantic than a beauty queen turned drug runner, an obsessed voyeur who saves a woman from drowning or a new wife that finds out her husband's ex may have been murdered. These last two are Hitchcock films: part of Cinéma du Parc's extensive series Alfred Hitchcock: Master of Suspense. Starting tomorrow evening, this week brings classics such as Vertigo, The 39 Steps, Suspicion and Rebecca (my personal favourite) to the big screen. As a fun perk, by writing your contact information at the back of each ticket, you have a chance to a stay at Le Chateau Frontenac's Hitchcock sweet (a room for two!), or film posters by artist Fred Jourdain. (+)

I may have missed the boat on Friday and Saturday screenings, but there's still plenty on the radar this week. Surprisingly, Cineplex is offering the most exciting program of films with its Digital Film Fest, a chance to catch some cult and commercial favourites for the very low price of $5! Films include: The Terminator, RoboCop, The Big Lebowski, Pulp Fiction, Scarface, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Sixteen Candles, Jurassic Park, Serenity, Shaun of the Dead, the Back to the Future trilogy, Spaceballs, Three Amigos!, Airplane!, Stand by Me and Lost Boys. (+)

(Film screening suggestions for the week of Jan 27-Feb 2) Gummo. What can I say about Gummo? Not until it appeared on the Cinémathèque québécoise's calendar did I even revisit my memories of Harmony Korine's doc-style portrait of a sad little American town. Or should I say memory, because (apart from visions of bunny ears and taped breasts), my sole concrete memory of Gummo is pictured above. Beautiful in exposition, it is also revolting: the underfed homely kid, dirty bath water, stunning azure blue tiles, rotting wood, milk and plastic, and a perfectly fine plate of spaghetti. The film plays Saturday. (+)

Film screening suggestions for the week of January 20-26 | Unless you're a Satanist (and I'm not judging), you'll want to check out Ghost World this Saturday at the Cinémathèque québécoise. It's part of their doom generation program of films, painting a large black swatch of apathy on a generation raised by Columbine and matured by 9/11. Unsurprisingly, the following film on the program is Gus Van Sant's Elephant playing on the 25th. (+) For those unsuccessfully beaten down by his Metamorphosis and The Trial, Kafka, a 1991 film by Steven Soderbergh, paints a fictional account of his life based on the moods of his writings. This also plays Saturday. (+)

Welcome the new year by expanding your horizons with the cinema. In the coming week, you have the opportunity to view film as art, film as politics, film as history and film as divertissement. If you only like your film in one of these flavours, make it a resolution to try another one. Film can at turns entertain and challenge, be game changers or trash. Transformers was all these things.