Movies
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I have this recurring dream where I make lame comedies ...Last week was a really, really good one for movies — you had your “Borat“, your “Flushed Away“, your “Sleeping Dogs Lie“. All strong, interesting and genuinely creative films. And all very funny, too.

This week, there’s one: “Stranger Than Fiction“, a lovely little bit of surrealism that stands as the sort of mainstream cousin to Charlie Kaufman’s “Adaptation” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” — or, possibly, what those films might have been if they’d been made by a mainstream director.

I’ve never really enjoyed anything else Marc Forster has made — “Monster’s Ball” is posturing crap, “Finding Neverland” is competent but entirely uninteresting and “Stay” is an overly digitized mess — but this one’s just about perfect. It’s charming, it’s funny, it’s quite moving, and it doesn’t even matter that the trailer reveals a crucial plot point. Just see it.

Everything else, you can miss. Here are the quick-n-easy summaries:

“Conversations with God“: Remember that “Simpsons” episode where Homer skips church to watch the football game, and God drops by for a chat? This is a lot like that, only terrible.

“Driving Lessons“: Julie Walters dives fully into the role of a drunken, egomaniacal actress (apparently patterned after Dame Peggy Ashcroft), but the movie around her is kind of a slog. Oddly, Walters has no rapport whatsoever with her co-star, Rupert Grint, despite having played his mother in several “Harry Potter” movies.

“A Good Year“: Russell Crowe plays an asshole banker who learns to be less of an asshole when he inherits a French chateau and gets to know the wacky locals. Oddly, he’s much more convincing as an asshole.

“Harsh Times“: And speaking of assholes — “Training Day” screenwriter David Ayer makes his directorial debut with this jittery study of two jacked-up idiot friends (played with impressively misplaced commitment by Christian Bale and Freddy Rodriguez) who tool around Los Angeles making trouble. Ayer thinks he’s remaking “Taxi Driver”. He ain’t.

“The Return” was not screened for critics, so I’ll be catching that later today. The trailer makes it look a lot like “Carnival of Souls”. Hmm.

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