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This was a terrific movie. It was dramatic, exciting, and at times, even funny (Rene Zellwegger). I guess movies of this time of year, around the oscar season, are all a little bit of everything. This one comes disguised as a romance, but more of a drama than anything else. Yes, there are two stories going on at once. That seems to be another common theme of films of this season. The House of Sand and Fog is two stories, 21 Grams is 3. Cold Mountain is two, and since there is a romance there, it seems to be a little wierd that the members of the couple are split up for the film. It's not half as wierd as it might seem. This is because both stories are very, very good. You'd expect that Nicole Kidman staying at home, learning to take care of her farm would be boring. It isn't. She gets Zellwegger helping her out, sparking up life every time she opens her mouth, and she also gets a band of southern hunters who terrorize them and their neighbors. Meanwhile, we got Jude Law, as Inman, trying to make his way home and being detained at stop after stop. His story reminded me of one of those journey movies like Easy Rider or The Last Detail, where each stop is a story unto itself. One of his better stops involves Natalie Portman as a young mother and a bunch of Northern troops who terrorize her. So, you see how what has the seeds of a romance actually surprises everyone by springing up into a drama with occasional action. The movie might be long, but it doesn't feel it. That's because every frame is edge of your seat compelling. Anthony Minghella knows that his English Patient was boring. Yes it was beautiful and won the best picture oscar, but the general consensus is that it was boring, and he's been trying to make it up to us ever since.

At a certain point, Christmas movies started getting dumb. They just ran out of ideas and we started getting films like Jingle All The Way. Elf is the first movie since Bill Murray's Scrooged to do some good for the holdiay's cinematic potential. It's made by smart people and this is an obvious fact that shows itself in every scene. Yes, the plot looks silly and uncreative. An elf is really a human and has to go find his real Dad. It looks dumb. Part of the fun of this movie is how big a surprise it is that it turns out to be great. It's not about plot. It's about humor. Every role is perfectly cast, every scene is designed in terms of achieving maximum comic potential, and Will Ferrell, who is ussually more annoying than not, has finally found the perfect role for his style of humor. This movie uses Christmas right and keeps us laughing so often that it's almost impossible to walk away unsatisfied.

Theres no question that hong kong has the action market cornered when it comes to the greatest action ever put on film. Hard Boiled is, for my money, the greatest action picture ever made, but one has to consider that there are different kinds of action films. There are gun movies (Hard Boiled) and then there are more traditional, sword movies, such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Hero is in the later group. It is better than Crouching Tiger, has far more action and does cooler things. Both movies look amazing with the most beautiful scenery, and both have fantastic action choreography, but Hero just goes a little further. Take, for example, all of the scenes where herds of arrows are launched into the air. Or the two scenes where Jet Li shows off his skills without fighting any opponents (one involves splitting stacks, the other splitting an arrow). The Rashomon-like story is a little like Basic, which is to say that its not particulary easy to follow, but who cares. Its the action that counts in a movie like this, and the action in this movie is out of control. Hard Boiled has the gun movies beat and Hero has the sword movies looking up to it.