But I like American music best.

Frost/Nixon is among Ron Howard's best films. And there's no doubt in my mind that Howard is one of this country's first-rate auteurs working within the studio system, even if I don't always care for his films. Howard's themes and preoccupations are always thoroughly American and Frost/Nixon is no exception.

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian was tolerable despite its terrible anachronisms and generally lame humor. Seeing it with a guy who laughed hysterically at monkey slapping helped my appreciation quite a bit. I'm also willing to forgive a lot thanks to the Oscar cameo. Here's to hoping that the film actually inspires kids to learn about these historical figures instead of (what I think actually happens) falling in love with bad pop misappropriations of these same cultural icons.

Bad Company is interesting as an example of how elastic the Western is. It's also fun to see Jeff Bridges so young. The dismantling of the protagonist's pretensions is handled well as he breaks down and accepts doing bad with his bad company. Mostly, though, the film has no real hooks to hang any cares on, so I mostly didn't care.

I would have loved 9 when I was 9. At 30, I appreciate the art design and the animation as among the best of the year, but the story and especially the dialogue are major disappointments.

Thunder Road is fun as a Robert Mitchum vehicle, but fairly average for what it is. Still, watching Mitchum is enough. Mitchum + Moonshine = Satisfied Mind.

Robert Altman's The Gingerbread Man just isn't very good.

I tried giving The Dark Knight another chance on DVD, but I found myself getting irritated and gave up about halfway into it and fell asleep while Abby finished watching. I do think that the movie suffers on the small screen and I wonder if the critics who were most vocal about the editing being incomprehensible only saw the film on a DVD screener and not on the big screen. Besides the editing, I just don't think that the story is all that tight (or all that interesting) and the dialogue and performances are laughable in places. I'm not a fan. Sorry to be a hater.

United 93 is a well-crafted film, dignifying the events it depicts rather than exploiting them. Here is horror. Look no further.

In a Lonely Place is hard for me to write about because it means a lot to me and I don't want to dismiss it with a couple of sentences like all of the rest. Like Killing of a Chinese Bookie (which I have written about, but don't feel like I've written adequately about enough to publish), it's one of the best films I've seen all year and I can't stop thinking about it, but I also feel like it needs my undivided attention and devotion if I'm going to do it any justice here. I'm not worthy.