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Considered one of François Truffaut’s early masterpieces and a quintessential film of the French New Wave, JULES AND JIM remarkably captivates us with characters that seem so real and a perfectly calculated style that only enhances everything we witness.

Jules (Oskar Werner, THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD) is a shy, Austrian young man living in Paris in 1912. He meets the more outgoing French writer Jim (Henri Serre), who brings him into the carefree bohemian lifestyle of the city. Jules and Jim quickly become inseparable, taking in all that life has in store, especially wine, art and women.

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I hadn’t seen his film previous to now, but I do remember the trailers making a big impression on me as a kid. A young Stephen Dorff (BLADE) plays Glen, a kid who always seems to get himself into trouble. His parents are heading out of town and they are allowing his 15-year-old sister Al (Christa Denton, MICKI + MAUDE) to babysit him for the weekend.

In the meantime, lightning has struck a tree in their backyard and opened up a large hole in the ground, where Glen finds geodes. His heavy metal-loving best friend Terry (Louis Tripp, DETROIT ROCK CITY) wants to search for more, finding an enormous one. When cracked open, the rock emits a strange smoke. After finding some strange symbols in Glen’s room, Terry discovers from one of his rock albums that the hole in Glen’s backyard is really a gate to hell.

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I recently read THE EXORCIST director William Friedkin state that FUNNY GAMES was the scariest movie he’s ever seen. That of course made me want to see it right away. It’s not as scary as Mr. Friedkin’s pea-soup spitting little girl, but it has a chilling and disturbing quality that reminded me of HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER and IRREVERSIBLE.

FUNNY GAMES, like the previously mentioned two films, addresses the way we view violence on the big screen. Anna (Susanne Lothar, THE PIANO TEACHER), Georg (Ulrich Mühe, AMEN) and their young son Schorschi (Stefan Clapczynski) are on vacation at their lake house. While Georg and his son are down by the water, Anna begins preparing dinner when a clumsy, fat young man named Peter (Frank Giering) comes asking to borrow some eggs. Anna is cordial with the young man, but soon becomes more and more frustrated with him as he wrecks her kitchen.

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This spin-off of DAREDEVIL doesn’t contain any of the really silly parts that hampered its predecessor, but it doesn’t have any of that film’s originality either. I’m not saying DAREDEVIL was groundbreaking in anyway, however when that film worked it had nice original touches whereas this film never reaches above “been there, done that” territory.

Elektra (Jennifer Garner, TV’s ALIAS) is an assassin, who was brought back from the dead and then trained in martial arts by the blind master Stick (Terence Stamp, THE COLLECTOR). Elektra leaves the tutelage of Stick to become an assassin and is assigned to kill Mark Miller (Goran Visnjic, TV’s E.R.) and his daughter Abby (Kirsten Prout, ONCE UPON A CHRISTMAS), who is a born fighter.

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Not usually listed high in the rankings of Robert Altman’s work, BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS, OR SITTING BULL’S HISTORY LESSON is still a sly skewering of the myth of the Wild West and the falseness of celebrity.

Paul Newman plays Buffalo Bill Cody, who, we learn from writer Ned Buntline (Burt Lancaster, FROM HERE TO ETERNITY), is less a true legend of the Wild West and more of a concoction of show business. Cody’s famed Wild West Show is abuzz with the impending arrival of their latest celebrity Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts). At first the performers mistake Sitting Bull’s large spokesman William Halsey (Will Sampson, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST) as the legendary chief. Buffalo Bill is quite baffled by the quiet and short chief, who has only joined the show so he can meet the president. Even worse, Sitting Bull isn’t there to have Cody take advantage of him, demanding his rightful cut.

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Sometimes smaller films that I hear are good sneak past my radar. Most of the time in lieu of a disappointing Hollywood film that has been beaten into my subconscious by millions of dollars of high-profile marketing. Thank God for lots of movie channels and TiVo. But I digress.

This French film is the most erotic picture I’ve seen since I first watched Luis Buñuel’s masterpiece BELLE DE JOUR. It reminded me of that film a lot, which hurt the impact at first, but once AFFAIR moves into territory that BELLE does not it takes on a true emotional poignancy.

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This quirky film is in the small sub-genre of “kids dealing with emotional stress because of the turbulent relationship of their artist parents” films. Reese Holdin (Zooey Deschanel, HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY) is a struggling actress in New York City, who can’t even drum up the strength to go to her mother’s funeral. Then a book publisher named Lori Lankey (Amy Madigan, FIELD OF DREAMS) informs Reese that her mother has willed her a collection of letters that she and Reese’s father Don (Ed Harris, APOLLO 13) wrote to each other while they were working on some of their best known books.

With the promise of $100,000, Reese heads back home to find former Christian rock guitarist Corbit (Will Ferrell, ANCHORMAN) and Shelley (Amelia Warner, QUILLS), Don’s much younger, former student, living in the house while Don has moved into the garage. Don is so distraught that at times Shelley has to spoon-feed him. And like all “great writers” in films, he’s eccentric/borderline crazy. He has Corbit move all his bedroom furniture out onto the lawn so they can hit golf balls in the room. Oh, those kooky creative types.

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Having been released in January 2006, I had little faith that this film would be any good for the start of the new year is often the dumping ground for the studios’ crap. However, I am surprised to report that TRISTAN & ISOLDE might not be BRAVEHEART, but this Romeo and Juliet-like tale does understand that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Well, these three people aren’t little, but you get my point.

Set during a time when the united Irish wrecked havoc on the various clans of Britain, Tristan (James Franco, SPIDER-MAN) is adopted by Lord Marke (Rufus Sewell, DARK CITY) after the boy’s parents are killed by the Irish. Lord Marke is fighting to unify the British clans so that they can stand up to the brutal Irish king Donnchadh (BRAVEHEART). During a battle, Tristan is believed killed and then set afloat on a raft in the ocean for a burial at sea.

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This road trip film is pretty typical of parent-child bonding films, but with an interesting twist — the son doesn’t know that his father is a pre-operative male-to-female transsexual when he meets him.

Stanley (Felicity Huffman, TV’s DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES) is about to have surgery and fully become Bree. However, her psychiatrist Margaret (Elizabeth Pena, LONE STAR) won’t sign off on the operation, unless Bree comes to terms with Stanley’s past being her own past, which includes a son named Toby (Kevin Zegers, WRONG TURN), who has been arrested in New York City for prostitution.

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Steve Martin adapts his short novel and stars in this perceptive story of how love needs two people on the same path for it to work.

Mirabelle Buttersfield (Clare Danes, STAGE BEAUTY) is an aspiring artist, who works at the glove counter in Sak’s in Beverly Hills. While at the Laundromat, she meets frumpy, graphic designer Jeremy Kraft (Jason Schwartzman, RUSHMORE), who asks her out on a date. His disorganized and self-centered life is hardly what Mirabelle is looking for or needs.

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