Within a budding ticket stub

• 3:10 to Yuma (9/9, Crit)--Fine filmmaking, fine acting, probably too fine for the material. Saw the 1957 original not long after, and its rougher edges (and rougher-edged actors) do the material better justice.
• Rocket Science (8/17, Crit)--This was pushed as this year's Napoleon Dynamite, which was not a great selling point for the one moviegoer in the country who dismissed that flick as Quirkiness for Quirkiness' Sake. But I went anyway, 'cause it was downtown, and while I'd say it's not altogether devoid of QfQS syndrome, most of the quirkiness here is in service of a story that reads as real.
• Joshua (7/13, Crit)--Wow! I'd seen the trailer several times and, as is my wont, read only enough of the Times review to know that it came up to the Downtown Threshold, so I went in thinking there was some actual supernatural shit going on, like in all those flicks in the Creepy Little Kid subgenre. So to discover that there's not made it way creepier. Clearly Jacob Kogan has a great acting future, unless of course he actually is a psychopath, which I'm fully prepared to believe. Also, you know what? Wait, let me check something . . . Yes! Three years older than my daughter, so, having recently lost Frances McDormand to an egregious grammatical error on one of the Fargo DVD extras, let's just start referring to My Future Wife Vera Farmiga.
• Ratatouille (6/30, Post 14)--Yup, the Bird dude does this stuff about as well as anybody. My best six-year-old friend is currently too old to enjoy animation, but once she gets past that stage, this is a likely birthday or Xmas gift.
• Live Free or Die Hard (6/30, Post 14)--Please don't report me to the authorities, but this is the first film in the franchise I've seen, but even without a thorough grounding in the John McCain--er, McClane--mythos, I thought it was a hoot and a half, though it was tough seeing Seth Bullock (aka Timothy Olyphant) cast as a nasty, nasty villain.
• A Mighty Heart (6/23, Orange)--OK, I'm not gonna say that AJ got screwed out of an Oscar nom. here, but what I will say is that if a certain product of the Yale Drama School--who, don't get me wrong, is absolutely fantastic, one of my favorites, deserves almost all the accolades she's ever received--had done the accent-and-complexion thing for this (granted, it would have been more difficult for her, since she's blond, not to mention lots older), she would have gotten her 15th nomination (damn! now I've given it away!). Anyway, the film does exactly what it sets out to do, which is to grab you and shake you and make you ineffably sad and at the same time vaguely hopeful for the future of a species that has at least three or four such people in it.
• Blonde Venus (1932) (6/24, Crit)--Well, how could I resist: Marlene, Cary, $4? But jesus, god, what an awful, awful film. Not currently available on DVD, so unless you can find it on VHS, you'll just have to take my word for its not even being worth seeing Dietrich sing in a gorilla suit. Hell, it's not even worth seeing her swimming in the ostensible nude at the start, and that's the highlight! Good god--did I mention how awful this is?
• Brooklyn Rules (6/23, Orange)--Oh, right: another one so memorable I had to look it up. A Sopranos writer--must've been the final snoozen.
• Sicko (7/1, Orange)--The theory of Moore's filmmaking strategy seems to be tipping from a balance between laughmaking and angrymaking to the splenetic side of the scale. Well, I did laugh some, but mostly I seethed. What kind of fucking country is this anyway, that we just lug our poor sick people out onto the sidewalk? And what the fuck kind of Democratic Party is it whose candidates aren't all hammering on this? Did I mention that Moore does angrymaking well?
• 1408 (6/30, Post 14)--OK, I guess I need to take another look at The Shining, but didn't that film, which I decided the last time I saw it, maybe ten years ago, I don't really like much, push all these buttons much better? Pretty shitty year for Cusack.
• Hairspray (7/20, Crit)--Oh, I so wanted to love this. So let me accentuate the things I did love: (1) Waters's cameo; (2) Amanda Bynes's performance (and face). I'm just not going to say anything about Travolta, and you can't make me.
• The Nanny Diaries (8/24, Crit)--Another one I desperately wanted to like, if only for Scarlett's sake, but it was pretty much a waste of time. But look at this on IMDb: Johansson's in another upcoming Woody Allen movie, w/ Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, and My Future Wife Patricia Clarkson! I'm in!
• Cama adentro (Live-in maid) (9/1, Quad)--I didn't go all gaga over this as a lot of people did, but I gotta say, it's stories like this one, of a love-hate relationship between bankrupt employer and self-sufficient employee, that get told only in (foreign) films, not in (American) movies, and that take me to Manhattan every month or two.
• Crazy Love (6/10, Crit)--Again, to quote Stan Marsh, this is some pretty fucked-up shit going on here. So your jealous boyfriend blinds you with acid. When he gets out, you do what? You marry him? Hey, you can't make this shit up: maybe not one of the best docs of the year, but certainly one that got my attn.
• Mr. Brooks (6/13, Crit)--Barely came up to the Downtown Threshold--never would have seen it if I'd had to take a busride. And I would have saved seven bucks and suffered nothing. Kevin: get help!