The folks at Pixar have created a filmmaker’s utopia. Working almost entirely without obstruction, they’ve established a work ethic in which artistic integrity is of primary importance, and where a personal vision is given room to flourish. It is an auteur’s paradise—never before has a studio placed so much faith in individual imagination. Each new film has a different feel compliant with the quirks of its director. (Hence, The Incredibles, though clearly the handiwork of many talented craftsmen, is distinctly Brad Birdian both for its aggressive nostalgia and its emphasis on the nuclear family.)

Pixar’s latest project also bears the unmistakable stamp of individuality. The writer-director is Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo), and he’s fashioned an entirely worthy hero-cum-artistic-foil in WALL·E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class), a lonesome robot with binoculars for eyes and the soul of a romantic. To see him is to love him.

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I’ve got a review of Wall*E in the pipeline, but for now, here’s the remainder of my all-time top twenty, which seems to reveal a liking for gloomy thrillers. Strange, I don’t feel gloomy…

Knife in the Water—A master of sophisticated unease, Roman Polanski specializes in macabre, moody thrillers (often with an occult theme) of a peculiarly personal strain. A thorough understanding of his idiosyncratic filmography begins with this stripped-down drama. Set almost exclusively aboard a tiny yacht and featuring a cast of three characters (a husband, his wife, and a hitchhiker they pick up), it’s a meticulous study in triangular tension, and perhaps Polanski’s finest, subtlest work.

Le Boucher—Claude Chabrol has often been called the French Hitchcock, but that title doesn’t really do justice to this neglected member of France’s New Wave. Chabrol’s thrillers are more relationship-oriented, and less emphatic in their suspense devices. This might be his most perfectly realized film, a deceptively serene chiller about a schoolteacher and the lonely town butcher, who may be a murderer. It builds to a climax that invites and repays close scrutiny.

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Making my rounds…

Iron Man, another superhero franchise kick-off from the Marvel stable, has the privilege of being the first in line at the summer box office. It sets the bar high. Helmed by Jon Favreau and starring a buffed-up Robert Downey, Jr., the film is strong where most other blockbusterly films are weak: in its pacing, wit, and character development. The storyline and moral questioning are comic-book simple, yet the film craftily manages to critique America’s penchant for slaughter without succumbing to liberal piety. And the action is genuinely thrilling—the benefit of patient characterization.

David Mamet’s Redbelt functions as a rebuke to the traditional Hollywood martial arts picture, taking the well-trod theme of the moral hero tested by corrupt influences and finding fresh meaning in it.

Two anticlimactic reviews, to be filed under “T” for tardy.

What was I saying about the Narnia movies? Oh yes. By now audiences have had ample time to accept that Walden’s contributions to the fantasy genre will be homogenized, sanitized, and above all commercialized versions of C.S. Lewis’s fragile children’s books. But once that important step is taken, one can begin to enjoy them for what they are: buttered popcorn. Fractionally less involving than its predecessor, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is still a high-class family film, though languidly paced and lacking a villain on the order of Tilda Swinton’s white witch Jadis (the very mention of which sends an appreciative quiver up the spine).

Among its virtues is a graspable depiction of a faithless Narnia in which Aslan is nowhere to be seen, a situation that lends itself to explorations of faith—specifically Christian faith—in a seemingly wicked world. The film lacks the medieval literacy of Lewis’s prose, but director Andrew Adamson occasionally stages a scene that outdoes its source in excitement. The emergence of a wolfish assassin (“I am hunger, I am thirst.”) is shudderingly effective, and the scene leading up to Aslan’s first appearance (in which the very trees fall into line in allegiance) is dreamily atmospheric.

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There is a tendency within Christian circles to disrespect Walden Media’s first C.S. Lewis adaptation, and with the second one coming up fast, I thought it might be useful to scribble down a few ideas before the reviews come cascading in.

First of all, let me say that an astute piece of Lewis scholarship has forced me to reassess my view of Lewis’s books, which I enjoyed as a grade-schooler but never recognized as the product of a great intellect. Thanks to Michael Ward’s erudition, I am now beginning to appreciate them as works of profound subtlety and ambition.

While the two Narnia movies don’t even begin to address the complexity of the books, I still find them underrated, and believe they compare favorably with the Lord of the Rings movies and the Harry Potter movies, to name a few comparable examples.

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Some more reporting from the land of the moving image:

Leatherheads is a colorless comedy (literally—the sepia-toned photography turns 1920s America into a perpetual autumn of burnt leaves, mud, and crabgrass), although not without a few brightspots. Directed by and starring George Clooney, it offers a glimpse of the early tumultuous days of professional football, when the players had to compete with the more popular college market. The film is rudderless and a trifle boring, although a few of the visual gags (a human shape emerging from a slough; a grazing cow taking notice of a scrimmage game) are well executed. With Renee Zellweger, John Krasinski, Jonathan Pryce.

My Blueberry Nights is Wong Kar-wai’s first film to use the English language, though it makes rather better use of his favorite language of all—the language of love. Except for the unusually coarse image, the film has a seductive surface—everything seems to be lit by neon lights, traffic lights, candlelight. It’s a film to get lost in. Lawrence Block collaborated on the screenplay, and it resembles a good short story—lightly plotted, but rich in detail. Wong’s game plan is to cast a moody spell based entirely on shared experience. If you’ve ever been kicked in the groin by love, you will empathize with these characters. With Jude Law, Norah Jones, Natalie Portman, Rachelle Weisz, David Strathairn, and, in a particularly arresting cameo, Cat Power.

I’m biding my time until my review of Expelled hits the ‘net. Until then, here’s something to break the silence.

I recently discovered a website called YMDb (your movie database), which appears to be nothing more than a massive collection of favorite movie lists from users around the world. Anybody can join, so I quickly logged my top twenty. It’s fun, and it’s free!

Choosing favorites can be as painful as passing a kidney stone, but it’s also a healthful exercise in decision-making, and sometimes you discover things about yourself in the process. Here are my current choices, culled mostly from memory and subject to change at a moment’s notice.

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Gus Van Sant continues his odyssey through the inner landscapes of wayward youths with Paranoid Park,a film of ambitious formal invention and negligible impact. In tellingthe story of a skater kid (Gabe Nevins) trying to cope with hisinvolvement in a horrible tragedy, Van Sant once again turns toexpressive slow motion to isolate and extend moments of great emotionalturbulence. All of this is very lyrical, some of it strikingly so (theace cinematographer is Christopher Doyle), but for all the time spentwith this uncomprehending lad, the film never reaches beyond theobvious.

Snow Angels marks another step in the devolution of David Gordon Green, the promising young director of George Washington, who with each successive film seems to shed the qualities that made him interesting in the first place. His scenario, a small town gripped with grief over a recent tragedy, promises much, delivers much less. We also get something we haven’t yet seen from Green—mild condescension toward his characters (though they are sensitively acted by all). The ill-judged ending, in which a character does an extremely desperate deed, doesn’t come across as honest. The trick is to make the final moments seem both excessive and unavoidable. In Green’s hands it only seems like a filmmaker’s conceit.

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In Bruges is a smart-alecky dramedy that finds two hitmen hiding out in the medieval city of Bruges, Belgium, a pretty little tourist town peppered with chocolate shops. As if the idea of trash-talking killers weren’t already run into the ground (thank you Quentin Tarantino, Guy Ritchie, Troy Duffy), writer-director Martin McDonagh seizes every opportunity for snarky sadism and casual violence, then tries to switch gears and get profound in the last third. Nevertheless there are a few clever snatches and funny jokes, and Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell have fun playing up their conflicting personalities (Gleeson wants to go sightseeing, Farrell feels like he’s entered the ninth circle of hell). For a while, McDonagh manages to sustain a delicate balance of drama and comedy, but the task proves too daunting. When the mob boss (a snarling Cockney Ralph Fiennes) turns up to sort things out, the film self-destructs in an orgy of blood, sweat, and snow.

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Cassandra’s Dream, Woody Allen’s third film shot during his extended stay in England, is a noose-tightening thriller of concentrated power. One of the few directors in Hollywood still making overtly moral tales, Allen seems obsessively fixated on the workings of chance, fate, and destiny in a world he perceives to be cruel and chaotic. The film feels swift, almost rushed, as though the workaholic Allen were trying to speed through the proceedings so he could move on to the next project. (He averages about one movie per year.) Less of a downer than Match Point, whose fatalistic storyline felt like posturing, the film proves that Allen has the courage to follow his frightened worldview to its logical conclusion. The weight of sin hangs heavily in the air, but this time, he doesn’t let the characters off the hook.

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