Screen

Christmas is coming, and if you have an extra ha' penny or two you can go to the movies to see the dozens of films the producers hold for release until Christmastime. House film societies seem already to have closed down, and there's not too much to see in Cambridge, so if you're not going home for the holidays you'll have to make the trek into Boston.

The Cambridge exception is the Welles, which continues its cartoon festival this weekend and shows King Kong at the beginning of next week. Look carefully at Kong and you'll see how he sort of quivers even when he's standing still. What you'll be noticing is the result of the animation methods the filmmakers used: it's one of the few ways you can tell for sure that King Kong isn't real.

Mike Nichols's new Day of the Dolphin, starring George C. Scott and five dolphins, has some provocative moments. But when you consider Nichols's previous films, this one winds up a major disappointment. By the time Scott's talking dolphins get mixed up in international intrigue and he sends one dolphin to chase down the other, you'll think you're watching a remake of some animal story from Walt Disney's TV show. What's worse, after the world premiere press screening last week, Producer Joseph E. Levine revealed to Boston film critics that plans are already underway to make Day of the Dolphin into a TV series.

Woody Allen's new movie, Sleeper, will be all over the country by the time this column is printed, and it sounds amazing: Among other things, Allen plays Blanche opposite Diane Keaton's Stanley in a weird version of A Streetcar Named Desire; Allen wakes up (or, rather, is defrosted) 200 years in the future.

Two of the greatest Chaplin films, Modern Times and City Lights, are at Park Square over the weekend, and Papillon, with Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen, about prison life and escape, starts at Beacon Hill. Have a Merry Christmas.