400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

I'm thankful for Rachel Getting Married (300 screens), for making me feel as if I were at an excruciating wedding without actually having to be there, and for making me feel as if I knew the extraordinarily wounded lead character, Kym (Anne Hathaway), no matter how monstrous she acts sometimes. But most of all for making me feel something.

I'm thankful for The Dark Knight (345 screens), for being like a 1940s film noir, reflecting the utter despair we feel about the world in 2008, but for making it entertaining and making us feel as if there's still a tiny scrap of hope left. Mainly, I'm thankful for movies that took on despair as a theme, but didn't show it.

I'm thankful for smart villains, like Heath Ledger's Joker. But I'm also thankful for quiet villains, like Ralph Fiennes in The Duchess (154 screens), who does all those terrible things for what he thinks are pretty good reasons, not simply because he's hateful or evil. I'm especially thankful for no moustache-twisting (and no moustaches).

I usually don't do this. Once I post or publish my year's ten best list, I try not to tamper with it. But 2006 has been gnawing at me. At the time, it didn't seem like such a good movie year, but the more I think about it, the more I realize there were gems right there in front of my nose. (It certainly seemed like a better bet than 2008.) Some of the films had to blossom a bit, to age a little. Some I had to see again. But now that a couple of years have gone by I feel the need to re-visit 2006 and once again sort through the best films of the year.

If I'm honest with myself, my favorite film from 2006 was Rian Johnson's Brick, which I included all the way down at #10 on my list. I've since seen it three times, and I'm continually astounded by just how delightfully perfect it is, from its language to its tone and plot. It even includes some emotionally devastating performances on top of its twisty crime story. Terry Zwigoff's Art School Confidential is another one I had to see three times, but it keeps getting better. Zwigoff is one of our singular American talents, absolutely incapable of making something impersonal. This was his darkest film, and I think it turned off most viewers upon initial viewings. But I've spoken with people lately who have been re-discovering it, and it may have a second life someday.

400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

Frankly, I'm a little surprised at the reception to Clark Gregg's Choke (12 screens). It has pulled in nearly $3 million, which is fairly respectable, although it's apparently still shy of recouping its production budget. Critics have banded together to rate it a low 56% on Rotten Tomatoes (I contributed a "fresh" review), but fans have ranked it a high 7.3 out of 10 on IMDB. I guess this means that the film has its fans, but only a small group of them. And so it goes when filmmakers try to adapt cult novels.

Cult novels are a far more difficult prospect than a mere best-seller or Pulitzer Prize winner. These are novels that people love fiercely, oftentimes written by a novelist that they love fiercely. Many of these novels resist filmic adaptation for some reason or another (The Catcher in the Rye, On the Road, A Confederacy of Dunces, The Crying of Lot 49, Kitchen, Snow Crash, etc.). But when a movie of a cult novel hits, it hits big. It crawls under the public's skin and nestles there beside the novel itself. David Cronenberg made a classic out of William S. Burroughs' "unfilmable" novel Naked Lunch. Danny Boyle made an energetic, powerful, disturbing crazy-quilt out of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting, and Ridley Scott made a flat-out masterpiece out of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (a.k.a. Blade Runner).

Considering Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married (133 screens), Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky (60 screens), Penelope Cruz in Elegy (21 screens) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (52 screens), Kristin Scott Thomas in I've Loved You So Long (20 screens), Meryl Streep rising above the ineptitude of Mamma Mia! (178 screens), and several others, it has been an exceptionally good year for roles for women -- all except The Women (164 screens). To date, I've spent a good deal of time railing against that movie, without ever asking: what happened to some of those amazing actresses that they should end up here?

Meg Ryan, for example, was once a top star -- one of a trinity of "America's Sweethearts" (with Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock) -- and a sure thing. She was irresistibly adorable, and she mastered a kind of self-conscious, nervous eye-flick that won over audiences time and again. And she made her debut in the final film by George Cukor, for goodness sake! Her highest point was probably When Harry Met Sally... (1989), where her effortless performance was not as easy as it looked. She had a hard time branching out into serious films, mainly because her cute, sweet, funny quality made it seem as if she had a lack of depth, and she looked out of place in hardcore, delirious movies like The Doors (1991). Her last ten years has given us a string of flops. But I maintain that her best films are the ones that nobody understood.

For Halloween week, I thought I'd go back and challenge one of the biggest movie myths of recent years: that Gus Van Sant's Psycho (1998) is the worst remake of all time. On the contrary... it's actually one of the most fascinating of all remakes, and a great deal more satisfying than almost any other horror remake. Let me explain. If we go back and look at the history of horror movies, we can divide up the last 100 years into sections. There were the Expressionist horrors of the silent era, then the Universal monsters, then Val Lewton's RKO films, the British Hammer films, the Italian horrors, the American Renaissance of the 1970s, the 1980s tongue-in-cheek films, the Asian horrors of the 1990s, and now -- remakes.

There were three factors that made Psycho different from other horror remakes. It was based on a high-quality, undisputed classic rather than some slapdash, B-level monster movie. It was shot-for-shot, and a respected art house director made it. Van Sant had earned some fame, acclaim and an Oscar nomination (for Good Will Hunting), and so by signing on to do the remake he unconsciously indicated that he was stepping into Hitchcock's shoes, which was unforgivable, and also impossible. If a fourth-rate hack had tried it, it would have been laughed at, or ignored, out of existence. But Van Sant's skill and reputation made it stick.

Okay, so Righteous Kill (381 screens) wasn't the world's greatest movie. At best it was rudimentary -- and at worst, it was outright stupid. But I have to admit, I got a giant-sized kick out of seeing Robert De Niro and Al Pacino together for the first time (aside from not appearing together in The Godfather Part II and appearing together only briefly in Heat). They had a wonderful banter going that suggested they'd been pals for 30 years. However, we had a right to expect more from two guys who are considered among the greatest screen actors of all time.

This label, I think, has only hurt their careers, because now we tend to think of them in terms of hot and cold. Everyone remembers De Niro in Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and Pacino in The Godfather films and Scarface, but what have they done for us lately? And why on earth did Pacino win an Oscar for Scent of a Woman, of all things? Then we have their most recent films to contend with, De Niro's amiable but lightweight What Just Happened? (36 screens) and Pacino's ultra-lame 88 Minutes. But let me suggest that we ignore the hot-cold concept and concentrate instead on some warmth? After all, both actors have given terrific performances in recent years that deserve some consideration.

400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

Not long ago, newspapers began showing signs of trouble, which included the laying off of film critics. At around the same time, and probably not connected in any way, studios began increasingly to open movies in theaters without screening for the press, realizing that stupid Tyler Perry movies, or horror remakes, or what have you, would probably make money regardless of what the reviews said. These combined factors led to a series of editorials asking about the necessity of film critics. Thankfully, that discussion has died down, and we're still here. And I can add that I don't think The Dark Knight (375 screens) would have done such monster business without the enthusiastic approval of nearly every critic on the planet.

But what needs to be discussed now is the necessity of directors. If film criticism was viewed yesterday as a job that anyone could do (no knowledge of film or film history necessary!) then film directing today is viewed in much the same way. Take a look at the colossal mess that is Mamma Mia! (279 screens). Here's a film that cost $50 million, and it was entrusted to Phyllida Lloyd, who had no experience. From the looks of things, Lloyd probably decided that, as long as it looks like everyone is having fun, then it doesn't matter if things like tone, moods and pacing ever matches up. You can have self-conscious musical numbers one moment, then moody, emotional ones the next. You can have a knockout performance by Meryl Streep and a mixed one by Pierce Brosnan.

400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona (221 screens) has earned some good reviews, but not particularly great ones. I'm not sure many critics have really understood its significance. I think they just stayed on their usual pro- or anti-Woody Allen bandwagon and reviewed it according to how funny or not funny it was, or how Woody Allen-ish the dialogue sounded. Or worse, they brought Allen's private life into it and attacked it for its supposedly twisted sexuality. But Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a major step in the career of this tricky artist, more so than the critical darling Match Point three years ago.

One drawback to Allen's career is that he started out as a blatant comic filmmaker with films like Bananas, Sleeper and Love and Death. Then, movies like Annie Hall, Manhattan and Crimes and Misdemeanors cleverly melded comedy into dramatic situations, but the damage had been done: he was once and always "just" a comedian, forever lower on the scale than his contemporaries (Altman, Scorsese, Coppola, etc.). His other drawback is that he keeps making "Woody Allen" movies, in which the credits always look the same, the musical choices are always the same, the cinematography always looks great, and everyone talks the same. Often, but not always, the same actors appear. Who does this remind you of?

I don't know about anyone else, but I thought that was a pretty exceptional summer, as far as good, entertaining movies went. I've seen summers in which almost every movie seemed mediocre and not one standout ever emerged (2000 and 2006, for example). But this year, there were at least five standouts and at least five more really good movies. Call me crazy, but I caught up with Speed Racer on DVD this week, and even that one didn't seem so bad. (Sure, it's no Iron Man. I think it probably plays better on the small screen, although I did have trouble with the length and with the annoying Spritle character.) And, of course, we saw a lot of stars at their best this summer: Robert Downey Jr., Heath Ledger, Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Ben Stiller, James Franco, Meryl Streep, Penelope Cruz, etc. Good times! It was all so exciting that I nearly forgot about some of my other favorite stars.

It's weird. You can get caught up in the ebb and flow of this business and it may not occur to you that, say, Neve Campbell hasn't been around lately. I miss her. I interviewed her in early 2004, just after Robert Altman's The Company came out. That was a masterful film, a great piece of work, on which Neve had writing and producing credits. It looked like she was really going places: from there, she was poised to play the great silent film star Louise Brooks in a biopic. I saw her again in James Toback's twisted When Will I Be Loved, which I liked more than just about anyone else.

As a kid I fell in love with movies mainly for the stories and characters, and every once in a while, maybe some special effects. As I got older, my love affair was renewed when I discovered the Cult of the Director. The Cult of the Director allows one to look at movies in a far more personal way. It's an ongoing game; one can discover long-forgotten works, or piece together old puzzles, but one can also look ahead and guess how a director's career arc will come together. Basically, there are roughly four kinds of directors. The most common is the kind with no personality, and perhaps very little skill, someone like Brian Robbins, the director of Meet Dave (58 screens). Many of these folks eventually disappear without ever making much of a mark. After that, we get the craftsman, someone with lots of skill and talent but still no personality. These guys are the most interesting to talk to; they're unpretentious and tell the best stories. Brad Anderson, the director of Transsiberian (81 screens), is a good example.

Then there's a weird category of directors who have somehow come to popular attention, despite a lack of skill and/or a lack of personality. These can range from moneymakers like Brett Ratner to Oscar winners like Ron Howard. But of course, since we're talking about live human beings here, there's a lot of wiggle room in these categories, and I could probably establish several sub-categories. Not to mention that any director's career can suddenly change course at any point. Yes, even Brett Ratner could suddenly make a good film. (I'm not saying he will, just that he could.) These people manage to stay on top through a lucky combination of subject matter and promotion. Even though films like Brick Lane (31 screens) and Mongol (16 screens) have no skill or personality, they seem like great films because of their stories and packaging.