A la recherche des talons des billets perdu

• Dragon Wars (9/15, Crit)--Great goofy fun until it suddenly tries to mean something at the end.
• What Would Jesus Buy? (12/1, Crit)--A much different and much better film than I expected. I had read about the Reverend Billy years before in the Times, but the tone of those stories had encouraged me to dismiss him as a self-aggrandizing nut. Not so: he may be a nut, but he's absolutely sincere in his mission to convert us away from the religion of consumerism.
• Enchanted (11/23, Post 14)--Oh, hell, yeah, I'd follow Amy Adams though a space/time/genre warp too. The film's 100% predictable, but who really cares. Scariest moment is when Susan Sarandon's witch finally appears in the flesh; what's scary is the cognitive dissonance between the crone makeup and the eyes, which, are, jesus!, still Susan Sarandon's eyes.
• Sanshô dayû (Sansho the bailiff) (1954) (12/2, IFC)--I went in ready to be all reverent and shit, and yeah, it was good, but except for Seven Samurai, I guess I just don't get the Japanese-cinematic-masterpiece thing. It's an interesting revenge story, and it looks damned good on the screen. Beyond that, I'm not prepared to go.
• Gone Baby Gone (10/21, Crit)--This suggests that Ben Affleck will direct a great film someday, but this--while terrifically entertaining and occasionally surprising--ain't it yet.
• Michael Clayton (10/14, Crit)--Oh, yeah, right: here's one for the top ten list. Clooney's great, Wilkinson's spectacular (but remember: Oscar doesn't love Afflicted Supporting Guy), and Swinton is so slimy against type that I kept waiting for her to redeem herself. And the scene with the horses is one of the most beautiful, most harrowing of the year--so nice of them to give it to us twice!
• Elizabeth: The Golden Age (10/14, Crit)--Three questions to ask about this: (1) Cate, for god's sake, what were you thinking? (Oh, hey: just realized that's the title of the novel made into Notes on a Scandal, and what Cate's character was thinking in that even made more sense than this.) (2) Were there enough Golden movies last year or what? (3) Do you suppose they gave any thought to titling this Elizabeth I II?
• Se jie (Lust Caution) (10/13, Crit)--Better than generally given credit for, I think--if nothing else, it certainly didn't seem like the 153 minutes or whatever. Sort of a companion piece to Brokeback Mountain, I think: there, love leads to highly inconvenient, potentially fatal lust; here, lust leads to highly inconvenient, potentially fatal love.
• Across the Universe (10/13, Crit)--Filled with trepidation when the lights went down for this. On the one hand, the Beatles represent a huge, sacred, chunk of my life; on the other hand, I've liked Julie Taymor's previous film work (no, I never went to The Lion King, though I guess that was pretty terrif too); on the third hand, the trailer and the reviews led me to believe it quite possible that I would run screaming from the theater. No so! It works, mate--or mostly it works; there are too many risks for every one to pay off. The "She's So Heavy" half of "I Want You/She's So Heavy," e.g., is obvious and weak; but who'll even notice after the absolutely amazing "I Want You" half? Likewise, the story is pretty much obvious and weak (Hair-redux), but that ain't the point.
• No Country for Old Men (11/16, Crit)--At the time I saw it, unquestionably the best film of the year; now I'm less certain. But I am certain--and I say this as a fan of the boys since Blood Simple--this is the Coens' best ever. And part two of a fantastic year for Mr. Jones.
• Rendition (10/20, NoHa)--Yeah, I know the deck's being stacked is part of the point, but it just didn't work for me.
• Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (12/2, IFC)--Wonderfully moving look at a man whom I had long underestimated (and I didn't even know about his wife, who essentially has made him possible). Worth seeing if only for the Smothers Brothers "Big Muddy."
• 65 Revisited (12/2, IFC)--A little more than an hour of outtakes from Bob Dylan: Don't Look Back (which I haven't seen yet, incidentally--though it's high in my queue)--what's the point of that? Hey, sometimes you just have to let art wash over you. Here, here's an answer: you see this and the Seeger film the same day and you get to be reminded how beautiful Joan Baez was and see how beautiful she still is.
• Protagonist (12/2, IFC)--Some have this on their top ten list. Not I. Essentially what I saw were four really interesting shorts edited together into something meant to be synthetic in a good way that's really just synthetic like polyester. The synthetic link is that each of these people goes through the stages of a Greek tragic hero. Well, guess what: the Greeks came up with that formula because it's pretty common, and if you stretch the tropes as much as Jessica Yu does here, we can all be tragic heroes. I'll say this, though: the Greek-theater marionettes are way cool.
• Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten (12/2, IFC)--Yes, that's right: an M5 (see Sansho above), all at the same plex, four of them documentaries, three of them music documentaries. None of those coincidences was the point, but it worked--and the three music docs especially worked, each one hooking into the others. (I'd forgotten, e.g., that before John Mellor became Joe Strummer, he was for a while "Woody," as in Guthrie, as in Seeger's musical godfather. And you get to hear Dylan sing "To Ramona" in both his own film and Strummer's.)