Unless you live in Los Angeles or New York, there isn’t a title on this week’s new release list that’s available to you. So, that makes this a perfect extended holiday weekend for catching up on other recent movies you haven’t yet seen.

The story of a sexually confused teenager in Brooklyn, ‘Pariah‘ opened on four screens Wednesday. I haven’t seen the film, but it sounds like a standard “edgy” coming-of-age-in-the-inner-city tale. There’s heartbreak, bad friends and family and… separate identities? Pass.

Also opening on four screens is ‘The Iron Lady‘, another bland bio-pic with more emphasis on making the lead actor look like a historical figure than on the screenplay itself. Meryl Streep plays Margaret Thatcher, the former U.K. Prime Minister. The film takes its time showing how much Thatcher and her family went through while holding the position. If Streep earns an Oscar nomination for this role, a little bit of the faith I hold in the Academy will die off.

Easily one of the very best foreign flicks opening this year, the much-hyped Iranian film ‘A Separation‘ finally hits U.S. soil this week. The movie throws you feet first into Iran’s social and political culture, showing the reality of divorce, crime, trials and punishment. Because the actors play their characters so perfectly, you’ll empathize with them on intimate levels when their lives are thrown into tumult. This is my pick for the year’s best foreign film.

‘Angels Crest‘ sounds like a heavy and hard-hitting drama about a small community torn apart when a 3-year-old boy wanders into the woods and dies of hypothermia by the time rescuers find him. While this may well be an amazing film, the synopsis is a little to grim for me on this happy New Year’s weekend.

When your house is put back together or you’ve come-to after the wild New Year’s Eve parties, what movies do you plan to see this weekend?