The good, the bad, and the ticket stubs

• Goya's Ghosts (7/22, Crit)--Courageous performance by Portman, but a generally weak narrative and a waste of talent.
• You Kill Me (7/21, Orange)--Hadn't heard much good about this, so was pleasantly surprised. Nice weird chemistry between Leoni and Sir Ben and an interesting and sympathetic treatment of AA.
• In the Valley of Elah (9/28, Crit)--OK, let me just say right now that Crash was the most overrated film of 2005, one of the front-runners of the millennium, so I was as predisposed to resist Paul Haggis as his namesake Scottish "food." But everywhere the earlier film was obvious and heavy-handed, this is morally blurred and ambiguous. Excellent performances all around, including what I assumed was the best I'd ever see from Tommy Lee Jones, an assumption that lasted about ten weeks.
• In the Shadow of the Moon (9/22, Crit)--A bunch of old talking heads talking about what a swell time they had a generation ago . . . going to the fucking moon! The universally good reviews could not prepare me for how captivating those old guys and their storytelling would be. Remarkable film.
• King of California (9/21, Crit)--Jeez, is Michael Douglas a freakin' national treasure, or what? This could have been nothing but goofy, but Douglas's belief in his role and in the story make it--while no less goofy--irresistible. And Evan Rachel Wood adds the right touch as the daughter who is tired of trying to believe in him but can't resist him any more than we can. Heartwarming but also smart.
• No End in Sight (9/3, Orange)--Haven't we been made angry about this enough by now? Why is there still a place for films like this? In any case, this is utterly convincing and somehow manages to teach us things we didn't already know about what a fucked-up situation the Iraq occupation is.
• Young Frankenstein (1974) (8/26, Crit)--I'd been saying for years that I needed to see this again, so I appreciated my friendly downtown cinema's showing it on a Sunday a.m. for four bucks. Everything was as funny as I remembered, and "Puttin' on the Ritz"--though it's the politically correct, non-Harlem version--reminded me of a song I needed to add to the New York songs collection I was putting together at the time.
• Resurrecting the Champ (8/25, Crit)--Sam Jackson's scenery chewing beats the hell out of Josh Harnett's blandness, but: no.
• (The Earrings of) Madame De . . . (1953) (10/7, IFC)--Wonderful Max Ophüls film about deception, hilarious throughout in its breakneck rush to inevitable disaster. Currently unavailable in a region 1 DVD, dammit.
• Romance & Cigarettes (2005) (10/7, Quad)--How in the hell can a film with so much fun and so much brains sit in the can for two years after a successful debut at the Venice Film Festival, while things like . . . well, like Resurrecting the Champ hop right onto the screen. Three words: James Gandolfini sings. Five more: and so does Chris Walken (not just talk musically, per Hairspray). Not a great film--it falls off considerably in the thrid act, when it feels compelled to get serious, but if you haven't seen it--and unless you saw it in Venice or New York or LA, you haven't--pop it to the top of your Netflix queue as soon as the DVD breaks.
• Helvetica (10/7, IFC)--Yeah, it's a documentary about a text font; got a problem with that? Actually, it's about the idea of fonts, about how the way we react to products and candidates (sorry: that's a subset of the first) and transit systems is shaped by . . . the way the letters are shaped. Still not convinced? Trust me: see it.
• Toots (10/7, Quad)--A documentary about legendary restaurateur Shor and the decline and near-fall of the New York that had made him, and that he'd helped make. No indication of a DVD coming.
• The Kingdom (9/29, Crit)--Solid actioner, with just enough ambiguity about Westerners sticking their noses into the Middle East to make it a not quite guilty pleasure.
• Margot at the Wedding (12/14, Crit)--Don't ever tell me that Nicole Kidman isn't fearless--I hated her character in this and The Golden Compass on consecutive days. This didn't measure up to Squid and the Whale for me, but Noah Baumbach is still the go-to guy for pathological family dysfunction.
• I'm Not There (12/15, Cine)--I don't get it: are people not canonizing Cate Blanchett because she just makes it look too damned easy? An amazing film, though I have to agree with those (including the Harvey Weinstein, I gather) who pleaded with Todd Haynes to shorten this by about the length of the Billy the Kid (Richard Gere) version of Dylan. Not that Gere isn't good, but it's the least compelling and the least integral part, and it would have been a better film as, say, 115 min. than at 135. Still, that's a quibble: seems likely to be on my top 10 for the year.
• Atonement (12/23, Crit)--A noble effort at greatness, and it comes pretty close--but I guess the effort shows too much. I will say that I finally found James McAvoy impressive instead of annoying, and of course I'll follow Keira anywhere. But like everyone else who saw this, I'm most eager to see what Saoirse Ronan has in store. By the way, this is one of my favorite novels of recent years, but fortunately I'd forgotten enough of it not to do that picky "Hey, that's not the way he does it in the book!" thing.
• Charlie Wilson's War (12/23, Crit)--The most rollicking good fun movie to have a really depressing ending in a long time. Well, actually, I was wondering about the depressing ending throughout--sorry, but it's kinda hard to cheer for dudes knocking down MIGs with Stingers they're gonna be using against us soon enough. Tom and Julia do their bits, but the movie really belongs to Philip Seymour Hoffman--and then, of course, there's Amy Adams's ponytail.
• The Kite Runner (12/24, Crit)--Logistics weren't quite right to see the two Afghanistan movies on the same day, but successive days was sufficient. A well-made film with an utter lack of moral ambiguity.