This week’s MSN DVD column is up, using “The American” and Jean-Francois Richet’s “Mesrine” movies to get people to think about the way we relate to so-called smaller films in this age of megaplex spectacle.

And yes, including “The American” is kind of a cheat, since it can be boiled down to the crowd-pleasing log line “George Clooney runs around Europe with a gun.” But in execution, it’s a little more complex than that … as is the problem of getting people to appreciate what the movie is, rather than what it isn’t.

Ah, read the column, you’ll understand.