A fistful of ticket stubs

This is the first of however many posts of it takes me to dispose of all the ticket stubs I've accumulated over . . . what? . . . the past year? the past 18 months? Whatever: to the extent I can curb my blabbery, these will be quick and dirty mini-micro reviews.

• Bee Movie (11/3/07, P14)--Some fine moments, but mostly routine (except, of course, for the implication of not only interspecies, not only intergenus, but interfamily sex, for which I'm searching in vain for some sort of honey pun).
• Lars and the Real Girl (10/28/07, Crit)--Surprisingly sweet--not at all what you associate w/ the phrase inflatable doll w/ French and Greek features.
• The King of Kong (9/16/07, Crit)--Full disclosure: my ticket stub read only "The King of," and I had no idea what this was, so searched that phrase on IMDb, finally finding it at position 270. An OK film about souls perhaps even more pathetic than those who blog movie reviews.
• Steal a Pen for Me (11/24/07, Quad)--A perfectly worthwhile movie, but much like the hundred other Holocaust survivor films we've seen.
• Wristcutters: A Love Story (11/24/07, Quad)--Oh, my, what a mindfuck! Most of the world will never see this in a theater, but glom onto it when it breaks in DVD: basically, it's The Wizard of Oz with a Repo Man sensibility. A top 10 candidate.
• Control (11/24/07, VE)--See Steal a Pen comment just above, but for "Holocaust survivor" read "self-destructive rock dudes." The revelation here was that the Village East multiplex has preserved what presumably is what used to be its lone theater: a gorgeous, Egyptian-themed, double-balconied movie palace. I had been here probably at least a dozen times without realizing they had any screens that weren't in chop-boxes, and my ex, who lives in Brooklyn and goes to a lot more movies at VE than I do, was equally ignorant of the place. The explanation, I assume, is that since VE shows a mix of arthouse and blockbuster stuff, the big auditorium is usually reserved for the blockbuster; why they were screening this distinctly arthouse flick there that day is beyond me--but I'm damned glad they were.
• Who Is Norman Lloyd? (11/24/07, FF)--A beautiful little picture about an amazing if fairly obscure actor (hint: he was the Dr. Auschlander in St. Elsewhere, and in In Her Shoes [aka the most underrated film of 2005] he was the blind guy who makes Maggie read poetry to him) and blacklist survivor.
• "Crin-Blanc (White Mane)" (1953) and "Le Ballon rouge (The Red Balloon)" (1956) (11/24/07, FF)--Had never seen either of these: beautiful, but everyone but me already knew that. (Must say I was surprised, though not in a bad way, by the roughness, even violence, of the first film--and [SPOILER ALERT!!!]by its suicide-pact conclusion.) Superalert readers will have noticed that I saw the past five films (well, six films, five programs) in a single day in Manhattan. Some other time we'll discuss the M5. But now it's time for dinner . . . and a movie!