My Grade	Movie Title	My Review
A+	21 Grams	Intellectually and emotionally engaging, with great performances all around. Still trying to determine if the fractured time-shifting works---or rather, was it necessary? Sean Penn is as good here as in Mystic River, with another understated, nuanced performance. The grainy color-cast look provides a feeling of squalor even in the suburban settings.
A+	Adaptation	This is one of the best films I've seen in quite a while. It is a gimmick flick, but one with more substance than meets the eye. Starting with a fantastic script, the movie features great performances from Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, and Chris Cooper playing richly drawn characters, and it's highly amusing to boot. Very creative and clever without being irritating because of it. Self-referential material can be annoying, but Adaptation is so "intellectually engaging", I forgive it that. I can't say, though, that I care less, or more, about screenwriting than I care about orchid-growing, ditch-digging, investing, or mink breeding. Well, OK, strike "investing". That he says it's solipsistic and whatnot only wraps it in another layer, and I like that. It's a script and a movie that can laugh at itself. I can't imagine that they didn't get Susan Orlean's buy-in on this project. If nothing else, it gives her a fame she probably wouldn't have had without it. The book may be interesting, but not all books are appropriate for movies---one unexplored question in the movie was why this book was chosen as a project in the first place. Larouche's quirky character, perhaps. The movie discredits the book only if you accept the premise that all books are filmable. I know there's something deeper in this movie that encompasses all of these themes and more, but unfortunately, I can't yet put my finger on it. "You are what you love, not what loves you" comes to mind. That's why I like this movie so much---while it's intellectually engaging, it also struck me emotionally. The "third act" is great, and probably the only existing movie in which such an ending is appropriate. Again, I can't see Orlean objecting. Besides, listen to the ending she provides in her book, showing yet again that not all books should be filmed. Yes, everything in the "third act" is SUPPOSED to be a cliche. From the moment that Susan says "We'll have to kill him", it's clear that Donald has taken over as screenwriter. Like Susan, Charlie couldn't find a neat ending; he half-reluctantly goes to his brother for help. What we get at the end is yes, completely untrue, but so what? It's just a screenplay! Donald tidies things up as so many bad films do, as we might expect his screenplay "The 3" to do, complete with alligator ex machina and even the scripting of his own overdramatic death. It's a satire of bad screenplay endings.
A+	Antwone Fisher	A deeply moving story with really great, sensitive performances by Denzel Washington, Joy Bryant, and especially Derek Luke. The "Meeting Antwone Fisher" and "Making of" featurettes on the DVD are worthwhile too---meeting the real-life Antwone is just as touching as the film. Great directing by Denzel W.
A+	Company, The	What a great film about beauty and business, and the keenly observed details between the two worlds. It begins with the pre-show announcements before a night of ballet---a warning not to videotape the show (ha ha), and a request to turn off cell phones; it ends with the credits rolling during the curtain calls of another, different night of ballet. Beauty and business, as well as the business of beauty. The storyline follows the early careers of several members of the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, in particular an emerging young star (Neve Campbell) who has emerged by virtue of happenstance---a seemingly slight neck strain that befalls another dancer, which is enough reason to cause her replacement. Three times in the film, a strained neck, a broken tendon, and a broken arm: you are replaced and your career is probably over. Like vultures, ambitious, entrepreneurial understudies wait in the wings or off to the side, mimicking and synchronizing with the moves of the star dancer---at rehearsals, during performances, it doesn't matter---like on-deck batters swinging at pitches to get the pitcher's motion and timing down, ready to step in at the break of a bone. These understudy routines seem to be entirely voluntary, and the mimicking movements seem surreal amid the mundane backstage business going on about them. In early scenes in mirrored rehearsal rooms, the reflected images seem to say, "There are many of you---slip up and another just like you will rise to take your place," and this does in fact happen three times in the film. In the big, contemporary production number that ends the film (some kind of fantastical New Age piece, but with better music), a huge giant head (which is to say, the big head of a giant) gathers dancers to him using huge giant arms, and stuffs them into his gaping maw---literally---as the dancers disappear into it. Yes, this life will devour you, and spit you out, when your dance is done. Remarkably, there is the almost constant sound, throughout the entire film, of the Chicago streets---car horns echoing in the canyons between skyscrapers, car doors slamming, tires screeching, short, sudden shouts---as within the Joffrey, ballet masters instruct students using language and terminology that might seem bombastic or pretentious in other contexts, but which seem perfectly natural, even necessary, when discussing the artful movement of the human body. The car sounds are not an intrusion of the workaday world into the world of art and beauty, but a reminder that for the dancers, this is the workaday world, and we are hearing two workaday worlds in coexistence. Similarly, beautiful dance performances are punctuated by brief cuts to the stage manager's desk, to people milling about in the wings, with the dancing continuing in the background, suddenly seeming like real work. As for the dancing, the film features way cool contemporary dances, with perhaps only a few minutes of the Giselle kind of stuff I was expecting (that's not a value judgment). Included is a beautiful, romantic, and contemporary pas de deux (Neve Campbell's breakthrough dance), at an outdoor evening performance in Grant Park, as winds from an approaching thunderstorm gust through the audience and we see the performance through a veil of light but intensifying rain. On another night, there is a---yikes, I can use only the word "lovely"---solo performance in which a gossamer-gowned dancer uses a sling suspended from the ceiling, first like a turn-of-the-century swing in pinafore days, swinging breezily on a summer day; then, more nearly like a pole dancer; and then back again. We see her from the audience, from nearly overhead, and from floor level at close range, this last point of view showing how perfectly near her toes almost---almost---come to touching the floor as she swings back and forth. In fact, throughout the film, we see productions from the audience, from the ceiling, looking from or into the wings, from backstage, and from any other angle you care to name. In contrast to the dances, we see the offstage lives of the dancers, at bowling alleys, pool halls, and the chain, leather, and tattoo bar where Neve Campbell works when she's not working (!), going home to her apartment where the L fills the view out the window when it rumbles by. Also thrown in for good measure are the stage mothers, the prima donna, the tragic failure, and the rest. Malcolm McDowell is really great as the Joffrey's artistic director, and Neve Campbell is also very good, in an understated way (and is to be commended for doing her own dancing, as well as co-producing the movie and co-writing the story). One of the most amusing episodes is the school's annual Christmas roast, where the students perform little send-ups of production numbers we have seen performed in deadly earnest earlier in the film, as well as spot-on impersonations of McDowell's character and of the ballet instructors. Finally, the music is as wonderful as the dancing, though in the end credits I managed to pick out only Chopin and the Kronos Quartet, which shows the range covered in the music.
A+	Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind	I expected the highly contrived premise to fall flat and silly, but this is a thoroughly engaging and enjoyable movie---and certainly not the convoluted mess I'd been led to believe it would be from some early reviews. Jim Carrey is very good (again, I didn't see the struggling manic within him yearning to breathe free, as some reviews had it), but Kate Winslet is fantastic. This is an outstanding cast---to Carrey and Winslet, add Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Wilkinson, and Elijah Wood. Somehow, the romance and the sci-fi mix nicely. The high-tech sci-fi is nicely understated and matter-of-fact (almost low-budgety), rather more in the spirit of "Brazil" than "Total Recall". The main plot line, an endearing if unlikely romance, is nicely interwoven with two interesting subplots, which grow naturally out of the premise and are integral to the final outcome. The dialogue is natural and well-crafted. The sound design (trying to pay more attention to that) is both rich and nuanced, with spatial qualities that can help your understanding the film. To top it off, the film is very often funny, and it has heart, which, though it emerges late, comes to a crisp flourish at the end.
A+	Finding Nemo
A+	In the Bedroom
A+	Monster's Ball
A+	Moulin Rouge
A+	Mystic River	Very fine acting throughout, and the first performance of Sean Penn that I've really, really liked. Example: when Jimmy's sitting on the porch with Dave after he's learned of his daughter's murder, he's getting all weepy, but he's not actually weeping tears, and I'm thinking, cripe, he should be bawling his eyes out now---not believable, Sean. Then he says, "My own daughter, and I can't even cry!" Some acting control, in my opinion. It's a tribute not only to Penn but also to Clint Eastwood, who sprinkles these kinds of moments throughout the film (mini-surprises? Mini-gotcha's?). It also features a fine screenplay and a soundtrack fortunately not littered with popular songs or Oscar-nominee ditties.
A+	Pianist, The
A+	Road Warrior, The	A rescreening of a favorite. This is just about my favorite action movie of all time, as well as one of my favorite films. The chase scene at the end of the film is unparalleled. Some wonderful, colorful characters as well. Other Mad Max films don't measure up, however.
A+	Shrek