jake kasdan's WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY (2007)

Walk Hard has a pretty impressive pedigree in front of and behind the camera, which makes it that much more disappointing that it very, very rarely scales the walls of standard parody; it's a much more graceful, intelligent animal than most other genre entries from the past decade, sure, and picks at an enormously deserving target in the Oscar-Bait Music Biopic, but it plays so broadly with its conceit that it squanders the audience's connection to it. the performers are all terrific, the look is appropriately self-impressed, and, lest i forget to mention it, the film is funny throughout, but it respects its audience and itself a little less than it could have, opting instead to merely please.

nicholaus goussen's GRANDMA'S BOY (2005)

a surprising number of friends have recommended this movie to me, so i took advantage of a late-night showing on HBO, and was unsurprised; it's essentially everything i had pegged it as when i steered so carefully clear of it when it was released - crass, poorly assembled, and ruthlessly inessential - but it's also not too hard to see why someone in the right mood might find it perfectly diverting. overwhelmingly non-talented "star"/mastermind Allen Covert hasn't the least excuse to ever appear in front of the camera, but there's good work from the supporting cast (particularly co-writer Nick Swardson, whose faculty for arrested development in a smaller role surpasses Covert's to an embarrassing extent) and a surprising degree of watchability. a lot of press seemed to peg it as Adam Sandler's sloppy seconds (it was made by frequent collaborators but apparently passed on by Sandler, who produced instead) but the least you can say about Grandma's Boy is that it's far closer in spirit to his own heyday than anything he's made in a while.

christopher guest's FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION (2006)

jean-luc godard's BAND OF OUTSIDERS (1964)

perfect. absolutely perfect.

john mctiernan's DIE HARD (1988)

david cronenberg's EASTERN PROMISES (2007)

chris columbus' HOME ALONE (1990)

Home Alone is what it is, but it deserves the reputation it's built as a contemporary christmas classic; subsequent slow, boring declines don't dull Macaulay Culkin's precocious charisma or John Hughes' superior script (which coincidentally falters only when it comes to Culkin's too-cute fourth wall-breaking), and i suppose it counts as praise to say that Columbus has never made a better film.

francis lawrence's I AM LEGEND (2007)

i've not read the book, or seen the other screen versions, but i'm even more interested to now, because Lawrence's I Am Legend starts out strong and engaging, and i'm interested to see if the others stumble so clumsily between the story and its telling as they near their ends. (my guess is that Matheson's novel, at the very least, probably does not. so why not put it on the screen?) for what it's worth, Will Smith is characteristically solid, even affecting, and the film's first half makes some handsome design/fx choices that make the postapocalypse (so pointed as our society reaches a probable cusp) as curiously beautiful as it is terrifying. but the film's hard-earned horror supsense is suddenly upended halfway through by some stunningly mediocre CG zompires, and finally loses its grip completely as the third act takes a detour into corny pandering. and it's a shame: I Am Legend is on its surface one of the most impressive big-budget horror flicks in recent memory, but it doesn't survive the night.

liam lynch's TENACIOUS D AND THE PICK OF DESTINY (2006)

alfred hitchcock's NOTORIOUS (1946)

i watched this late at night a month ago, but i will share my enduring impression: Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman have absolutely unbearable chemistry. i've never seen anything like it.

joel coen's BARTON FINK (1991)

Barton Fink confirms, as No Country attests, the Coens as mean sumbitches, meaner than they seem. Fink, written in the midst of Miller's Crossing writer's block, is above all an uncomfortably damning examination of the writing process, and the writer himself; Fink is occasionally a sympathetic character when he gets in over his head, but it's more important to the Coens that he's callow and deluded, so lost in his patronizing ideals that he actively dodges honest perspective. ("Boy, I could tell you some stories." "I bet you could.") his inability to write anything truly genuine, or in fact anything at all, forces the question of art's relationship to reality, and the pathetic folly of all the hacks gumming up the works on both sides.

still, it's got That Coen Brothers Feeling (in spades!), so there's ample comedy beneath the peeling wallpaper. ("Have you read the bible, Pete?" "The holy bible?") writerly pretension saturates the craft as much as it does the story, as the brothers Coen, born with tongues grafted to their respective cheeks, further scene by scene the symbological goofery they toyed with in Raising Arizona and Miller's Crossing, reaching a fever pitch in the final shot (an all time favorite.) and all the while it's a small cinematic marvel. it's little wonder the film was so well-received at Cannes, as it draws wittily on the European traditions (and merits the rarely-deserved adjective "Kafkaesque"), but it's also as solid a piece of Americana as exists in their filmography.

chris weitz's THE GOLDEN COMPASS (2007)

Weitz gets an A for effort (okay, maybe a B) but winning intentions don't save Pullman's book from the tragedies of adaptation, especially an adaptation co-scripted by New Line's anthropomorphic desperation. it succeeds to a pleasant degree visually, affected though its epic touches may be, and it's nice to see that Pullman's vitriol isn't critically dulled despite the Chruch's well-anticipated uproar, but the elegance of the book's metaphysical conceits (primarily dust & daemons) is sullied almost entirely by an uncontrolled rush. of course, doling out information slowly (or smartly) isn't a luxury typical of a family fantasy film, and therein's the folly of adapting a book just because it sold well, but The Golden Compass' main crime is the ending, or lack of one; the final scene is a lot more upbeat than the book's, sure, but there's no excuse for adapting a book with attempted reverence and then second-guessing its author as to where the story ends, not to mention squandering every cent of Daniel Craig's salary by reducing his Lord Asriel to little more than a plot device. The Golden Compass aims to differentiate itself from the overwhelming crop of kid-lit cash-ins surrounding it (lord, please get this fad over with, i've seen all of those trailers five too many times) but the self-respect just isn't there.