I enjoyed the performances in this film. As Roy, Woody Harrelson channels the small-town aw-shucks nature of his Woody Boyd from Cheers, whereas Ben Kingsley (as Grinko) continues an incredible run this year. Is there a nationality that this guy can’t play? This tale of an innocent couple caught up way over their head in criminal acts echoes the work of Alfred Hitchcock. If fact, when Jessie first discovered that Roy was missing from the train, I thought for a minute that this film may actually be a remake of Hitch’s 1938 classic The Lady Vanishes, which we actually got a couple of years ago with the Jodie Foster vehicle Flightplan. But Transsiberian is a terrific thriller. Director Brad Anderson and co-screenwriter Will Conroy keep us on our toes, and we are never quite sure where the film is taking us next. I think Hitchcock would be proud.

“I feel like everybody is dealt a certain hand, so to speak,” says Gil Cates, Jr., the director of Deal, just out on DVD. “And it’s up to you how you want to play it. You can’t just look down and go, I’ve got an Ace-King, so I’m definitely going to do this, or I’ve got a Two-Seven, the worst starting hand in poker; I’m definitely going to fold. There might be an opportunity, or a reason— You know, Joe Hachem won the 2005 World Series of Poker with a Three-Seven, and then a Four-Five-Six came on the board. But you just don’t know. It’s all circumstantial. So that is kind of the way that I like to live life.”

Although on the surface the film seems somewhat like a new version of Jack Black’s School of Rock, I never got the feeling that I was watching a rehashed plotline. Sure, the plot is fairly predictable and you can pretty much guess its climax from the get-go, but it was so entertaining that I really didn’t care. A lot of the credit goes to actor Rainn Wilson in his first starring role, who is far from your typical leading man; but he’s able to pull off some Will Ferrell-style antics (remember, “the naked drummer”) without going overboard. I was also impressed with the music, which is quite a compliment considering I just came from the EMP. It’s a little too Pop and not near the level of the music in recent films like August Rush and Once, but it works well for the film.

Right from his striking opening sequences, director Wang Quan An delivers old-school storytelling, posing intriguing questions rather than delivering distilled exposition so we can quickly move on to “what happens next.” Even stylistically, Wang keeps us guessing. One way to read the film is as modernist realism; another possibility is that the film is intended as an impressionist farce of sorts, along the lines of what Jim Jarmusch was doing twenty-odd years ago. And yet there’s a riveting seriousness to many of the intervening scenes. My guess is that Wang is trying to tell a parable about the roles that men and women in Mongolian peasant culture—and world culture at large—are taught to play. You might find it fascinating, and you might find it dull.

To me, Death Race is a sure bet. It’s hard to imagine anyone watching the trailer and being confused about what they’re going to see when the lights go down and the movie starts. Either you like this kind of action movie and you plan to see it or you don’t. Still—like the story—you don’t watch Death Race for the acting. You might have picked up on this already, but the film is mostly about cars. And guns. And lots of explosions. Say what you will about the rest of the movie, but director Paul W. S. Anderson gets this part right. The action sequences come at you like a runaway freight train. It’s all the sweeter because most of what you see on the screen was filmed the old-fashioned way: using cameras, skilled stunt performers, and actual vehicles.

Hamlet 2 could have been a very funny movie if screenwriters Pam Brady and Andrew Fleming had shown a little restraint in the use of sexually profane language… and Dana Marchz’s portrayal of Jesus Christ. While I do not consider myself a rabid religious fundamentalist, I do take exception with the way Jesus’s name and person are so slandered by this movie. It’s as if Brady and Fleming deliberately put a chip on their shoulders so that they could call out the religious right, hoping for publicity. As the credits rolled, my final thought was, “is this the future of movie making?”

As soon as Anna Faris gets in front of the camera, it seems she is immediately anointed Queen of the Ditzes. That persona worked well for Faris in the goofball spoofs that made up the Scary Movie series, and it even served her nicely as a supporting player in the Oscar-winning Lost in Translation; but like Will Ferrell’s shtick, it is getting very old very quickly. The House Bunny is far less entertaining and creative than last year’s Sydney White; but to be fair, White did have a classic fairytale to start from. Even with a talented young cast, director Fred Wolf can’t save this movie from feeling as ditzy as its main character. It’s one of those films in which I leave the theater feeling that my intelligence declined a bit while I sat in the dark.

“We’re inviting total insanity into our house!” ejaculates the lovelorn, broke, and creatively blocked Wilson early on In Search Of A Midnight Kiss. As it turns out, he’s mostly right, as this mostly autobiographical tale of L.A. angst plays out like a cross between Barfly, Something Wild, and a Kevin Smith film. And with that setup, be warned that watching this movie is itself something akin to inviting insanity into your presence. Early on, I was thinking: So… this is the kind of film where women find porn fantasy flattering, eh? Well, yes; and no. Wilson and Viv are a lot like people I’ve both known and been—and loved. And Holdridge’s film holds out hope for their maturity and happiness.