You didn’t need a crystal ball to figure out that, once the Lord of the Rings flicks and the Harry Potter series started setting the box office on fire a few years back, Hollywood would start churning out fantasy flicks faster than you could say “Hufflepuff.”

And soon, sure as a Hobbit has hairy feet, the attempts to capitalize on those series’ success started to pile up. Unfortunately, most of them proved to be less than magical from a critical and commercial standpoint, with misfires like Eragon and The Seeker: The Dark is Rising threatening to send the genre back to the obscure realm of late night Dungeons and Dragons tournaments and the aisle at Barnes & Noble you’d be loath for your coffee date to catch you hanging out in. Still, one franchise did manage to make some bank in the wake of Harry and Frodo: the Disney co-produced Chronicles of Narnia series, whose bigger, badder, more epic-looking second installment, Prince Caspian, hits screens this week. Having never made it through more than a chapter or two of the C.S. Lewis books the Narnia movies are adapted from, I was surprised as how thoroughly I enjoyed the first film, The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe, and I’m happy to see the series – thinly-veiled Christian allegory or not – continuing to pick up speed.

As much as I’m looking forward to seeing Prince Caspian, though, the fact that the Narnia series is getting a second installment irritates me just a little because my personal favorite fantasy trilogy, after a disastrous box office showing last year, may never make it to a movie screen again. That’s a shame, because The Golden Compass – the little $180 million fantasy movie whose U.S. box-office failure essentially killed New Line Cinema – is actually a pretty awesome movie, even if few people in this country appreciated it (the film, at least, pulled in some decent bucks overseas).

Adapted from the first novel in Phillip Pullman’s controversial "His Dark Materials" trilogy, The Golden Compass is a triumph of production design and special effects that, although it can’t really elaborate on some of the more interesting ideas in the book, is still a compelling fantasy story, very interestingly told. Set in a fantasy version of Earth where religion and science are involved in a centuries-old slugfest and all humans have talking animal familiars (“daemons”) that follow them everywhere they go, Compass is a “chosen one” tale about a young girl named Lyra (played by newcomer Dakota Blue Richards) who’s entrusted by her adventurous Uncle Asriel (Daniel Craig) to protect a sought-after, future-predicting device called an “alethiometer” from the clutches of a villainous, supposedly divinely controlled world governing body called the Magisterium. Not even counting the daemons, the film’s world is richly populated with intriguing fantasy elements: a mysterious substance called “Dust” that may possibly allow passage to other universes (awesome), high-flying airships like the one piloted by sky cowboy Sam Elliott (really awesome), giant armored polar bears that battle each other to the death (really, really freakin’ awesome), etc.

The film, which careens between locations and introduces difficult-to-explain fantasy concepts at a way-too-rapid clip, is probably best enjoyed after digesting the novel on which it’s based, but there’s plenty to appreciate in the film version anyway – from Nicole Kidman’s deliciously icy performance as the Magesterium’s number-one villainess Mrs. Coulter (named after Ann, perhaps?) to the aforementioned polar bear battle royale to a creepy sequence set inside a lab where the baddies experiment on innocent children. Director Chris Weitz, who’d previously worked only on comedies both broad (American Pie) and more subtle (About a Boy), keeps the film flowing at a pretty good pace throughout, and shows some serious flair during the action sequences – the climactic sequence, in which humans, daemons, polar bears, and the kitchen sink scrap on an icy battlefield, is almost Lord of the Rings-quality.

In hindsight, I guess I’m not exactly shocked that The Golden Compass didn’t find its foothold with stateside audiences – it’s a lot to take in one sitting, it lacked the fanatical built-in fanbase that the Harry Potter series enjoys, and its subtle but still-there commentary on religion certainly didn’t make it an appealing prospect for the churchgoing audiences generally credited for boosting Narnia’s box-office take. Still, the film remains an uncommonly intelligent and inventive stab at the big-budget fantasy genre, and is nowhere near the failure that some critics made it out to be. And although we may never see the next two installments in the trilogy hit the big screen, what happens after the film’s cliffhanger ending can pretty easily be picked up in Pullman’s novels – and, hey, when’s the last time a Hollywood movie actually made you want to read something?

The live-action/CGI Speed Racer movie is out this Friday, which I thought would make for a good occasion to check out the Japanese sci-fi flick Casshern, another anime-inspired film that features real live actors interacting with surreal, hyper-detailed computer-generated sets.

Unfortunately, technology failed me as usual when I attempted to watch the film – after about 20 minutes of eye-popping coolness, the dvd did that awful, unfixable skip-‘n-stop thing that dvds sometimes do, leaving me wondering just what the hell a “Casshern” really was and, also, what I was going to write about for this week’s Movie Match.

And then it hit me. Technology may have crapped out on me this weekend, but there’s one guy who it worked out pretty damn well for: Robert Downey, Jr.’s fictional billionaire Tony Stark, whose superpowered Iron Man suit blasted him toward a $100 million-plus box-office payday last weekend that surpassed even the most generous predictions for the film’s success. I had high hopes for Iron Man, and was impressed by just how much the movie lived up to them – and so, in order to cover my ass this week, er, share my enthusiasm for this season’s first major blockbuster, I will devote the rest of this column to a few reasons why Iron Man is well worth catching in theaters a second time.

1. The first action sequence
Most fans will walk out of the theater raving about Tony Stark’s ass-kicking exploits in his trademark fire-engine red Iron Man suit (I could watch that scene with him and the tank about a hundred times in a row), but let’s not forget the first time we get to see him wreak some havoc in a mechanical suit of armor, as comparatively low-tech as his prototype Iron Man getup is. There’s a real sense of fun that underlines the carnage in the film’s initial action setpiece, which has Stark blasting his way out of a terrorist stronghold while still awkwardly learning the finer points of mechanized combat – thankfully, his inexperience doesn’t prevent him from chucking freedom-haters around like ragdolls or unleashing a pair of arm-mounted flamethrowers that may just be the must-have movie accessory of 2008. It’s the perfect lead-in to the sparing but spectacular superhero mayhem to follow.

2. The dialogue
Robert Downey, Jr. slings one-liners like nobody else in Hollywood, and the filmmakers behind Iron Man were smart to let him go full-throttle with them throughout the film – even if his sense of humor is a bit over the heads of the action-figure buying segment of the film’s audience. Whether cracking wise about MySpace pages or delivering awkward romantic come-ons a la Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (if I mention that movie enough in this column, will somebody please see it?), Downey’s Tony Stark is outfitted with a gift of gab that far surpasses any screen superhero we’ve seen so far. I’m not sure how much of the killer dialogue to credit to the film’s writers as opposed to Downey himself, but either way this is easily the wittiest movie this genre has produced to date.

3. Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts
Female characters tend to get sidelined in even the best comics-to-screen adaptations, but despite her limited screen time, Paltrow did a fine job carving out some space for herself as Tony Stark’s devoted assistant and schoolboy crush Pepper Potts in this one. Crafting a poised, down-to-earth character who’s the perfect foil for Downey’s wisecracking, big-kid persona, Paltrow was one of the big reasons that Iron Man seemed like a much classier, more grown-up superhero movie than we might have expected. Plus, if you’ll allow me to get my chauvinist on for a second, she also looked better in this flick than in anything she’s done since the late 90s.

4. The visuals
Matthew Libatique is one of my favorite cinematographers, having been responsible for the jaw-dropping camerawork in all three of director Darren Aronofsky’s films, so I expected great things from Iron Man in the visual department. For the most part, it was hard to be disappointed – from the dimly-lit caves where Tony Stark fashions his clunky original Iron Man suit to the futuristic Malibu mansion where he tinkers with servos and beds the occasional Vanity Fair reporter, the film’s settings and characters pop off the screen as vividly and stylishly as anything you’d see on the comics page.

5. The bit after the end credits
You probably need to be a bit more of a hardcore Marvel acolyte than I am to fully appreciate it, but the two-minute scene that ran after Iron Man’s end credits was pretty cool nevertheless -- it not only featured my favorite celebrity cameo of the year so far, but also dropped some really tantalizing clues as to where the next Iron Man movie, and the onscreen Marvel universe as a whole, will be headed in the near future. Based on this little teaser, we geeks have a lot to look forward to.

Normally here in Movie Match I’m all about looking back on films you might have missed, but this week – it being the unofficial start of summer movie season and all – I thought, just this once, it might be more fun to look forward.

I’ll tell you exactly what I’m looking forward to: the awesome-looking comic book adaptation Iron Man, which finally arrives in theaters tomorrow after tantalizing fanboys like myself for the better part of a year with its Robert Downey Jr. wisecracks and cooler-than-Transformers-looking robo-slugfest action scenes. Early reviews – even some of the more negative ones -- have pegged this film as a surefire start to a lucrative new franchise, and that’s probably a good thing for comics-to-screen fans. Why? Because Hollywood lately seems to have exhausted all the superheroes your mom might be familiar with (Spider-man, Batman, Hulk, that blue tights guy, et al) and is soon going to have to rely on lesser-known comics properties like Iron Man to keep butts in the seats. That may actually end up being a positive, since it frees filmmakers up from having to pay lip service to the well-worn origin stories and character traits of the heroes everybody already knows and allows them to cut loose with unique and original visions of less-famous characters, like Guillermo Del Toro did with his Hellboy series. I’m not saying all second-tier superhero flicks are necessarily worth catching (Elektra, anyone?), but here are just a few of the ones coming out in the next year or so that should give the genre a shot in the arm.

Wanted
This eye-popping adaptation of Mark Millar and J.G Jones’s comics miniseries is sure to be one of this summer’s hot tickets – if the film can live up to one of the coolest trailers I’ve seen in a while, that is. The story of an average office drone (James McAvoy) who discovers that his murdered father belonged to a super-secret, superpowered band of assassins who now want to recruit him, Wanted promises over-the-top action by the truckload, as energetically directed by Timur Bekmambetov – the guy behind the stylish (if not entirely coherent) Night Watch trilogy. The cast is a big asset here, with Angelina Jolie stepping into familiar bad-girl territory as the veteran hit-woman who shows McAvoy the ropes; co-stars Morgan Freeman, Common, and Terence Stamp should give the flick a big boost, too. You can catch it starting June 27 – if your local multiplex is willing to pull a few screens away from The Dark Knight, that is.

Punisher: War Zone
2004’s Punisher movie, starring Thomas Jane as vengeance-driven antihero Frank Castle, was not one of the better adaptations out there, but the film’s impressive dvd business and the character’s enduring popularity still paved the way for a sequel that’s set to drop this fall. Jane’s out as Castle this time – “creative differences,” so he’s said – so Ray Stevenson of TV’s Rome will be taking his place as the new Punisher, with 300’s Dominic West joining the franchise as disfigured villain Jigsaw. The film is reportedly darker, bloodier, and more in the spirit of the “adult” Punisher comics than the somewhat sanitized (but still pretty violent) 2004 film, and director Lexi Alexander’s rough and critically acclaimed soccer flick Green Street Hooligans proved that she’s definitely got a handle on this type of testosterone-soaked material. The tentative release date is December 5.

The Spirit
The solo directorial debut of comics guru Frank Miller, The Spirit takes a character created by late comics guru Will Eisner and throws him into a very cool-looking live-action/animation hybrid a la Robert Rodriguez’s Miller adaptation Sin City. Relative newcomer Gabriel Macht plays the title role, a dedicated cop who’s resurrected as a darkness-dwelling crimefighter who has a way with the ladies and a Batman-like bond with the city where he does his bidding. Samuel L. Jackson handles villain duties as The Octopus, while a rather amazing lineup of female costars – Scarlett Johansson, Eva Mendes, Jaime King, and Paz Vega – play the many women in The Spirit’s life, both good and evil. The film releases January of next year, but to whet your appetite you can check out the short but very promising teaser trailer at the film’s official site, http://www.mycityscreams.com/.

Billy Batson and the Legend of Shazam
This one’s still in the scripting stages, but actually, that has a lot to do with why I’m so excited about it. A take on the not-exactly-well-known Captain Marvel saga, this clunkily titled adaptation (expect that to get shortened by the time it’s actually done) comes to us from super-scribe John August, best known for working with Tim Burton on films like Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and my favorite, Big Fish. Since the Cap’s story is one of the cornier ones in the comics universe – Billy Batson is a teenager who becomes the superpowered Captain Marvel when he utters the magical word “Shazam!” – you can expect August to have some tongue-in-cheek fun with the adaptation; this sure as hell ain’t gonna be Batman Begins, but I think a more lighthearted, campy, self-aware kind of superhero movie could be a blast if done right. No word yet on when we’ll get to find out, but the film does already have a director (comedy guy Peter Segal) and a lead villain: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who’s agreed to play the Cap’s nemesis, Black Adam.

Here's another late-posted Movie Match for you, this one written before Forgetting Sarah Marshall wound up getting beat at the box office by the forgettable-looking Forbidden Kingdom. If you haven't yet seen Sarah, I can't recommend it highly enough -- it definitely lives up to the hype, and will hopefully "have legs" at the box office like most of the other Judd Apatow-produced comedies have.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: producer Judd Apatow may be the current king of R-rated Hollywood comedy, but if New England’s own Peter and Bobby Farrelly hadn’t paved the way, then critically acclaimed, crowd-pleasing yukfests like Superbad, Knocked Up, and this week’s seemingly destined-for-greatness Forgetting Sarah Marshall probably never would have happened.

I’ve got no beef with Apatow or the stable of up-and-coming film comedians – like Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and Sarah Marshall scribe/star Jason Segal – that have suddenly become mega-popular under his tutelage, but I’ll always have a soft spot for the Farrellys, whose first three films (Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, and There’s Something About Mary), proved beyond any doubt that genuine, old-fashioned romance could share the screen with gags involving body fluids, functions, etc. Those movies, in this fan’s humble opinion, also outdo everything put out thus far by the Apatow camp in terms of sheer laughs – and this is coming from a guy who hovered dangerously close to incontinence from chuckling so hard at Superbad (if only more films could truly be called pee-your-pants funny…).

Anywho, Sarah Marshall is already netting the expected critical raves, and if it isn’t a big hit I’ll definitely be surprised. One thing, though – for some reason, every time I see the trailer for this movie, I can’t help but be reminded of last year’s misbegotten Farrellys effort The Heartbreak Kid, another sweet/gross romantic comedy set mostly (like Sarah) at a tropical vacation resort. And, unfortunately, thinking of The Heartbreak Kid makes me a little heartbroken myself, since the movie received so little love from, well, everyone.

I’m not saying that Heartbreak was perfect in any way, but the little-seen, very-little-respected film marked the Farrellys’ return to the go-for-broke adult humor that made them a household name, and even reunited them with Mary star Ben Stiller. I had high hopes for the flick, and although it promised a lot more than it delivered, I think it’s still worth catching for anyone who enjoyed their early work.

A remake of a 1972 rom-com that starred Cybill Shepherd and Charles Grodin, Heartbreak stars Ben Stiller as forty-year-old Eddie, a longtime commitment-phobe who’s never found a woman he’d be comfortable settling down with. As luck or contrivance would have it, he soon “meets cute” (to borrow a phrase from Roger Ebert) with an impossibly attractive and lovable environmental researcher named Lila (Malin Akerman) and, after a whirlwind courtship, ends up marrying her and heading off to Mexico to honeymoon.

Unfortunately for Eddie, overnight – or rather, in the course of the newlyweds’ drive down to Cabo – Lila turns from dream girl to nightmare; he discovers in short order that his new bride is a debt-ridden former raging cokehead with a deviated septum and a string of skeevy ex-boyfriends, is dangerous as a rabid animal in the sack, has some particularly unsavory flatulence issues, and perhaps worst of all, is a huge Spice Girls fan. After she contracts the nastiest sunburn in cinema history on their first day of wedded bliss, Eddie ventures off on his own at the resort – where he meets the lovely and unattached Miranda (Michelle Monaghan), who’d be a perfect woman for him to settle down with had he not already tied the knot less than 48 hours earlier.

That’s a great plot for a comedy right there, and a perfect framework on which to hang the kind of gross-out humor that has become the Farrelly trademark. Unfortunately, the film is only partially successful at mining its potential, rendering this a subpar Farrelly outing at best. Still, there’s plenty to laugh at here, from Eddie’s pervy septaugenarian father – played, of course, by Jerry Stiller – to an interlude in a pastoral Mexican village where Stiller and Monaghan pet some friendly rodents and enjoy a “Mexican Folklore Dance” that is far less culturally stimulating than it sounds.

Stiller essentially plays the same character he’s been riffing on since Mary and Flirting With Disaster, but his female co-stars really pick up the slack – Monaghan, as in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, pulls off the idealized dream-girl schtick pretty damn well, and Akerman deserves credit for being one of the most abrasive and unbearable characters I’ve ever seen in a comedy. I’m sure she’s a swell person in real life, and I look forward to seeing her in the long-awaited upcoming Watchmen movie, but based on her convincing work here I’ll bet the poor woman couldn’t get a date for months after the movie’s release (maybe in that respect it’s a good thing that this failed at the box office).

I can’t stand by this movie quite as enthusiastically as most of the others I’ve written about in this column, but with so many comedies lately seemingly getting by without a single well-executed gag, I can honestly say that The Heartbreak Kid made me laugh out loud enough times to win me over. It may not make you forget Sarah Marshall, but it’s definitely worth a look.

Every Hollywood career has had its share of both triumph and tragedy, but give George Clooney some credit – his has leaned pretty heavily toward the former.

Yes, he unfortunately is the guy who donned the be-nippled Bat-suit in the abysmal Batman & Robin, but aside from a few lesser duds here and there his filmography boasts a pretty high ratio of stellar projects – from last year’s terrific legal thriller Michael Clayton to late 90s masterpieces Three Kings and Out of Sight. Clooney’s track record behind the camera is even better – he actually netted a Best Director nomination for his second film, Good Night, and Good Luck – which bodes well for this week’s Clooney-helmed release Leatherheads: a rough-and-tumble period football flick that’s also a screwball romantic comedy.

For all of Clooney’s success, however, I’ve always felt like some of his films never connected with audiences or critics the way they should have. Here they are, in no particular order:

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)

Clooney can’t take all the credit for the awesomeness of his directorial debut – with a script by the great Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation., Being John Malkovich) and Sam Rockwell playing the lead, he was in pretty good shape from the get-go. Still, as first efforts go, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is a minor miracle, a whip-smart and highly offbeat black comedy about possibly deluded "Gong Show" creator Chuck Barris (Rockwell), who claimed to have led a double life as a covert operative for the CIA.

An energetic and visually rich film about a one-of-a-kind character, Confessions is a self-reflexive comedy, a bizarre spy thriller, and an oddly moving tale about self-image all at once, and provides enjoyable change-of-pace roles for Clooney, as Barris’s gruff CIA handler, Julia Roberts, as an alluring Company woman, and Drew Barrymore, as the television impresario/international superspy’s long-suffering girlfriend.

O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000)

This stupendously original Coen Brothers outing might be better known for its terrific vintage/modern bluegrass soundtrack than for the movie itself, but it’s actually become one of my favorites in their entire canon (and that’s saying a lot).

Kinda-sorta inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, O Brother is set in the Depression-era South and follows a charismatic ex-con named Ulysses (Clooney) who teams up with two other chain-gang escapees (Tim Blake Nelson and John Turturro, both great) to journey back to his wife and family and retrieve some buried treasure en route. Their comedic misadventures along the way – involving everything from a devious one-eyed Bible salesman (John Goodman) to the trio’s inadvertent brush with fame as a bluegrass group called The Soggy Bottom Boys – make for some of the most enjoyably silly Coen comedy since their early hit Raising Arizona, but the gorgeously photographed film somehow manages to live up to its epic inspiration by the end, too.

Ocean’s Thirteen (2007)

It’s true, this series is little more than a live-action GQ photo spread with a little sub-Guy Ritchie heist mayhem thrown in, but as pure popcorn cinema, you could do a lot worse than the Ocean’s flicks – especially the most recent one.

The most laid-back, low-stakes film in the series, Ocean’s Thirteen isn’t really even about a robbery; in this one, playboy Danny Ocean (Clooney) and his all-star lineup of cronies are out simply to ruin the opening of scumbag Vegas mogul Al Pacino’s luxury hotel-casino, after he screws over their ailing pal Reuben (Elliott Gould, still one of my favorite people in the movies).

Throwing plausibility and seriousness out the window, Ocean’s Thirteen is the snappiest and goofiest of the trilogy, with highlights including Matt Damon wearing a hilarious prosthetic nose and the bumbling twosome of Casey Affleck and Scott Caan inadvertently sparking a labor dispute in Mexico (while involved in a patently ridiculous scheme involving magnetized dice).

The Peacemaker (1997)

A pre-9/11 “serious” action movie about terrorists plotting on U.S. soil, The Peacemaker seems a little quaint these days, but the film – the first release from Dreamworks, actually – still packs a punch thanks to Mimi Leder’s tight, tense direction and the couldn’t-miss pairing of Clooney and Nicole Kidman. He plays a cocky Special Forces officer, she’s a buttoned-down government scientist, and they’re both on the trail of some nukes stolen from a former Soviet state, which – of course – eventually end up on American soil.

No, this isn’t the most original action movie you’ll ever see, but it’s a cut above Hollywood’s usual Tom Clancy ripoff, and suggests that Clooney could have been a credible action hero if that’s the direction he wanted his career to go in. And although some folks, like Roger Ebert, weren’t crazy about the film’s clichéd defusing-the-bomb finale, for my money the ol’ “red digital readout” sequence has rarely been executed as intensely as it is here.

The Perfect Storm (2000)

This one did decent box office and earned a few solid reviews, but I’ve always felt that it deserved a level of appreciation it somehow never got – it has tons more heart than your average “big summer movie.”

Based on Sebastian Junger’s nonfiction bestseller, the film concerns the crew of the Andrea Gail, a Gloucester-based swordfish boat that gets caught up in a cataclysmic Nor’easter while making a last-ditch expedition to the dangerous area of the Atlantic known as the Flemish Cap. Clooney plays the Andrea Gail’s dedicated captain, Billy Tyne; he’s joined by a terrific supporting cast that includes Diane Lane, Mark Wahlberg, John C. Reilly, and the ever-underappreciated John Hawkes.

The film’s storm sequences – handled expertly by Das Boot director Wolfgang Petersen – are visually spectacular and grippingly intense, but I think The Perfect Storm actually works best as a tribute to a particularly blue-collar brand of heroism; it’s the only summer blockbuster I’ve ever seen in which providing for one’s family and doing an honest days’ work are shown to be just as brave and courageous as, say, battling aliens or hunting for the Ark of the Covenant. Clooney’s monologue about the small joys of being a “swordboat” captain gets me all choked up every time.

Let me quickly put one thing out there, and you can feel free to agree or disagree: Will Ferrell is an incredibly funny guy.

I know, he has his detractors. But, if you think about it, all the great screen comedians – the Marx Brothers, Jerry Lewis, Chevy Chase, uh, Rob Schneider – had ‘em, too, and that didn’t stop any of them (well, maybe Schneider) from still doing everything in their power to make people laugh, even if some folks just simply refused to ever find them funny. There’s an art to what guys like Ferrell do, and of everyone working in comedy today, he’s one of the most charismatic and naturally talented guys out there.

Of course, that’s just my opinion, but it’s one that I stand behind without hesitation – the still-funny SNL “cowbell” sketch and the entire movie Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy have made me laugh as hard as anything I’ve ever seen. And this week, I’m very much looking forward to catching Ferrell in Semi-Pro, which is looking more and more like an R-rated throwback to the great raunchy sports comedies of yore – a Slap Shot or Longest Yard for our generation, but with more bear-wrestling and orgy gags. Chances are it won’t live up to those classics, but if the raunchy-sports-comedy genre has taught me anything over the years, it’s that a beer-guzzling underachiever like me can dream, at least, can’t he?

One thing the film has in its favor is that Ferrell is a sports-comedy veteran by now, having taken on everything from NASCAR racing to figure skating in the last couple of years. My favorite Ferrell sports comedy, however, is a movie that had no business being as entertaining as it was: the formulaic and derivative, yet somehow still hilarious, PG soccer comedy Kicking and Screaming.

Executive produced by Judd Apatow – before he was quite the movie-comedy wunderkind he’s become – the movie wraps a pile of bad news kiddie sports comedy clichés around some choice Ferrell bits aimed squarely at his adult audience. It’s ostensibly a family film, and there is plenty in it for the elementary school set to enjoy, but its sense of humor is ruder and more in line with Ferrell’s SNL/Funny or Die-type material than you’d ever expect. And, hey, it’s got Mike Ditka in a supporting role – you can’t not love that.

Ferrell stars as a pushover family man whose father (Robert Duvall, enjoyably slumming it) is one of those hardass, uber-competitive guys who’s made life a living hell for his never-good-enough son. Ferrell’s own young son Sam (Dylan McLaughlin) warms the bench on the undefeated peewee soccer team his grandpa coaches; tired of seeing his boy suffer the same athletic humiliations his father inflicted on him, Ferrell ends up coaching Sam when he’s traded to a ragtag, last-place team.

The tykes on the team are cute enough, and cover all the usual kiddie sports flick clichés (you know, the fat kid, the diminutive Asian kid, etc.), but Kicking and Screaming is savvy in the way it shifts its focus to Ferrell, who starts out as one of those “winning isn’t everything” kind of guys, then gets nastier and more competitive as the film goes on – at one point, he even flips out on Ditka (playing himself, as Ferrell’s celebrity assistant coach) in a rant about juiceboxes that’s easily the highlight of the movie.

The plot grunts and strains under the weight of its well-worn premise – you just know Ferrell’s team and Duvall’s are going to meet up for the “big game” in act three – but it’s the unexpected edges (like the caffeine addiction Ferrell’s character develops after Ditka buys him his first-ever cup of coffee) that make it a lot more fun than it should be. I’ve got to give Duvall some props, too, since he rarely appears in anything this frivolous – unlike his Godfather co-star James Caan – but seems to have a blast playing a pompous jerk that makes his browbeating character from The Great Santini seem like a pretty easygoing guy.

If, essentially, Kicking and Screaming is nothing but a Bad News Bears remake with a wackier star and a touch more political correctness, then so be it – again, it’s funnier than it has any right to be, and works best as a vehicle for Ferrell to explore his various forms of inspired goofiness.

If you hate the guy, this isn’t the movie that’s going to warm you up to him (try Stranger Than Fiction for that), but if you feel the same way I do, the laughs are definitely there.

More of a rough-edged, 70s-style cop flick than the gangster epic it was promoted as, Ridley Scott’s American Gangster is a consistently entertaining – occasionally stunning – movie built around two fine performances and a handful of scenes as electric as anything you’d see in an urban drama by Scorsese or Sidney Lumet.

The only problem is, it takes a little longer than it should to give up the goods.

Marred by a slow, shaky and narratively muddled first act – which certainly isn’t helped by the additional 18 minutes of footage included in the DVD’s “Extended Unrated Edition” – the film eventually establishes a compelling, energetic groove in its parallel stories of Harlem heroin kingpin Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) and downtrodden cop Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe).

Washington is spot-on, as usual, as Lucas, who’s expectedly ruthless and calculating but also possesses a highly developed business sense, values loyalty and integrity, and sees himself as something of a man of the people. Inspired by his mentor, Harlem gangster “Bumpy” Johnson (Clarence Williams III), Frank goes to dangerous lengths to set up an unprecedented heroin-importing operation, buying uncut product from Southeast Asia’s opium-rich Golden Triangle during the Vietnam War and shrewdly using his military connections to ship it home. Determined to run his own business on his own terms, he begins seriously undercutting his rivals – selling better dope at better prices – and thereby secures his place at the top of New York’s criminal underworld.

Roberts, meanwhile, ends up shunned by his mostly-corrupt department when he refuses to keep nearly a million dollars in illicitly obtained cash; his personal life also in a shambles, he throws himself into a last-ditch gig heading up a ragtag (but honest) drug-enforcement squad tasked with locating the source of the ultra-pure “Blue Magic” heroin that’s begun flooding the streets.

Both of these stories provide enough juice to keep the film cranking along, but Scott and writer Steven Zaillian frustratingly take their time in getting things rolling and, worse, don’t really let us inside Frank’s head until after he’s returned from the Golden Triangle with his plans already in place. Once American Gangster finds its focus, however, it’s riveting almost through to the end, covering everything from Frank’s relationship with his devout mother (Oscar-nominated Ruby Dee) to Richie’s run-ins with a brutal unit of on-the-take cops (led by an especially surly Josh Brolin) while never losing sight of the escalating violence and disloyalty that put Frank and Richie on an unavoidable collision course with each other.

Their meeting comes fairly late, and those expecting Crowe and Washington to share a ton of screen time will likely be disappointed. But American Gangster does a better job than most films of bouncing back-and-forth between both sides of the law, as absorbing in its scenes of Frank’s rise to dominance of the Harlem drug trade as it is in those of Richie and his team’s ill-supported attempts to find out who’s running it. The sequences taking a Scorsese-like approach to the day-to-day operations of Frank’s business are particularly well-done and realistic; a late-in-the-game raid on a dingy New Jersey drug lab is as tense and well-directed an action scene as anything in Scott’s canon. Scott and Zaillian also conjure up some unexpectedly powerful scenes from Frank and Richie’s personal lives, revealing both as fleshed-out, flawed characters with well-defined codes of honor but imperfect consciences backing them up.

Crowe again impresses in a damaged, gritty, blue-collar kind of role, and the film features an excellent and appealing roster of supporting actors, including the great Chiwetel Ejiofor (Washington’s police partner from Spike Lee’s Inside Man), Cuba Gooding, Jr., Ted Levine, Common, John Hawkes, Armand Assante, RZA, and Joe Morton. They’re complimented by some very strong cinematography and production design that effectively recreates 70s Harlem from the glamour of the historic Muhammad Ali/Joe Frazier fight to the gut-wrenching squalor of drug-soaked slums.

For all it does right, though, American Gangster doesn’t quite have the scope or the visceral impact – not to mention the completely satisfying resolution – to put it on the level of its genre’s well-known classics. It’s a notch below Serpico and The French Connection, and at least two below Goodfellas, but those are big shoes to fill, and this is still a better American crime epic than anyone has made in a while. The film went through a number of stars and directors before ending up in Washington, Crowe, and Scott’s hands, but it ended up being a successful and enjoyable showcase for all three of them.

ON DVD: American Gangster makes its debut on disc in a couple of nicely rounded-out sets, both of which include the original theatrical version (running two hours and 38 minutes) and the “Extended Unrated Edition” (running two hours and 57 minutes) – myself, I’d stick with the shorter version, but it is pretty cool to have both. The two-disc special edition also includes two additional deleted scenes, a five-part behind-the-scenes documentary, and a three-part “Case Files” documentary discussing the film’s nods to realism in its drug-bust sequences; the three-disc Collector’s Edition also throws in two music videos, a featurette focusing on the several hip hop artists that have roles in the film, two music videos, TV segments from BET and NBC on the making of the film, and a digital copy of the Extended Unrated Edition.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age, for both better and worse, is not your run-of-the-mill costume drama.

Not that it doesn’t feature plenty of fancy period garb – costume designer Alexandra Byrne clearly worked some overtime here, and her Academy Award nomination is well-deserved – but the film, rather than being a stuffy, literate affair, is instead a fast-paced, flashy, sweeping period piece that mostly foregoes both long-winded discourse and historical precision. As such, it’s a lot more fun than your average cinematic dip into British history, though sticklers for detail (and, for the most part, dialogue) will almost surely be disappointed.Cate Blanchett, an Oscar hopeful herself, easily jumps back into the royal role she originated in 1998’s Elizabeth, though the Queen here is an older, much more practiced ruler than we saw before. It’s a good thing, too, since The Golden Age catches up with her during a particularly trying time; as Spain’s Catholic King Phillip II (Jordi Mollá) plots against her – with her imprisoned cousin Mary Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton) a key part of his cunning strategy to invade England – she also finds herself desperate to find a proper suitor and produce an heir. One possible solution to the problems posed by the looming Spanish Armada and to Elizabeth’s own biological clock is represented by the dashing seafarer Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen), who shows up to appeal to the Queen’s repressed sense of adventure in order to secure funding for a colony in the New World. Of course, Elizabeth can’t actually settle down with the handsome, non-royal Raleigh (though they surely spend a lot more “cuddle time” together in the film than they did in real life) but he does prove to be a fine man to have around when the greatest fleet of ships ever assembled shows up at Britain’s back door, cannons a-blazing.

That climactic sequence, and many scenes that come before it, speak to the film’s rich visual splendor; there isn’t a corner cut or a detail overlooked in the fussed-over shot compositions, the meticulous production design, or the previously mentioned costuming. Blanchett is pretty radiant, too, and still lends the role the gravity it deserves – except for an immature outburst or two that seems forced and out-of-character. But, again, that might be more the fault of the filmmakers, who are confident to let The Golden Age play out as operatic melodrama rather than serious historical filmmaking. Only a few elements – like a sniveling Catholic conspirator played by Rhys Ifans – come off as way over-the-top, but in all its bluster the film really does miss a lot of opportunities for small, engaging moments (Geoffrey Rush, as Elizabeth’s military mastermind Francis Walsingham, feels especially neglected).

Overall, though, Elizabeth: The Golden Age succeeds where many other period pieces fail: it’s actually entertaining. That’s not a small accomplishment, and this film does have a lot to offer to the more accepting audience.

DVD features include the behind-the-scenes documentary The Reign Continues, an in-depth look at the creation of the climactic ship battle scenes, featurettes on the film’s locations and production design, nine minutes of deleted scenes, and commentary with director Shekhar Kapur.

I finally had a chance to see There Will Be Blood this week, and now all I want to do is talk about it, see it again, spend way too much time analyzing every cut and camera angle and acting nuance until my eyes bug out.

Relax, I’m not gonna go all Howard Hughes and lock myself up in a screening room with a copy of the film and a steady supply of empty milk bottles, though I guess if somebody wanted to obsess over a movie while slowly losing their grip on reality, this would be as good a film as any to do it with.

I’m not quite that obsessed – truth be told, it’s not my favorite movie of the year, or even my favorite Paul Thomas Anderson movie – but I did walk out of the theater pretty overwhelmed, and certain that I’d seen something that will be talked about long after its (probably inevitable) Oscar victories are old news.

Rather than bore you with the ten million or so questions I’d love to ask Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis if I happened to run into them at Starbuck’s, however, I’ll just spend a minute here focusing on one small, bite-sized chunk of what makes the film the incredible experience it is: it’s got, hands down, the most memorable opening and closing scenes I’ve seen in a movie all year.

Smart filmmakers never underestimate the importance of beginning and ending their films on the perfect notes – if you can grab your audience by their collective jugular within the first minute and send them out two hours later with a line or image that will bang around their heads for the next month, you’re golden. Everybody loves a great ending, of course, but beginnings are equally important, and most of the time don’t get the attention they deserve (except over at Jim Emerson’s blog Scanners, with its ongoing and awesome Opening Shots Project).

Anderson is particularly skillful at both beginnings and endings, so I sort of figured he’d do something impressive with his latest. Who could forget the tracking shots that open Punch-Drunk Love and Boogie Nights, introducing and drawing us in to two very distinct film worlds right from the get-go? Or the spellbinding Ricky Jay-narrated bit about coincidences that kicks off Magnolia? Or that famous shot that closes Boogie Nights, where porn king Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) finally takes a good look at, er, himself in the mirror?

So, right, There Will Be Blood. Consider this a spoiler warning – I’m not going to reveal anything that doesn’t happen in the first five or so minutes, but it’s still better to go in cold and just experience it for yourself.

The film opens with one of its many arresting landscape shots, then provides us our first glimpse of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) – the man we’ll get to know in frightening detail over the next two-and-a-half hours – as he descends into a subterranean silver mine that’s more foreboding and otherworldly than any of the fantastical underground hellholes in the Lord of the Rings movies. The opening sequence, like the rest of the movie, plays out with deliberate intensity; between the creepily slow camera movements and Jonny Greenwood’s nerve-jangling score, it’s unsettling on levels both palpable and subconscious. By the time the scene is over, we know several things: one, that no risk or sacrifice or rationality can stand in the way of Daniel Plainview getting what he wants; two, he’s as hard and unforgiving as the rocky, barren country where he does his bidding; and three, most importantly, that the movie to follow is going to take us to places darker and scarier than that hole in the ground could ever hope to be, and – like Daniel – we’re going to be too fixated to even consider looking away.

Spoiler warning or not, I’m not going to reveal what happens in the closing scene, since I couldn’t hope to do it justice. Suffice it to say that it takes place in a mansion as eerie-looking as the silver mine in the opening scene, it reunites two characters that we absolutely needed to see together one last time, and contains a dramatic speech that will twist your guts in knots. It’s an exclamation point of an ending, the kind of thing that even viewers who didn’t appreciate the rest of the film will have trouble dismissing. It’s also the best few minutes of screen time in Day-Lewis’s already amazing career.

It’s true, these are only two scenes in a very lengthy movie, but they do so much to elevate everything that falls between them that they deserve to be singled out.

Alright, that’s enough out of me for now. I’ve got to go track down a screener copy of There Will Be Blood and a few dozen milk bottles… so, see you when I see you, I guess.

Post-apocalyptic action movies may not be as trendy now as they were in the 80s — I guess that's one of the downsides of the Cold War being over — but every once in a while a filmmaker comes along and reminds us of how cool Mad Max and all its many imitators could be.

This time around, it's Neil Marshall, director of The Descent, who'll be unleashing his end-of-civilization thiller Doomsday on March 14. The trailer is up now at Yahoo! Movies — you can check it out here — and, from the looks of it, this one's taking a decidedly old-school approach to the post-apoc genre, tattooed psycho-punks and all.

I have faith that Marshall, who whipped up some very well-orchestrated scares in The Descent, will knock this one out of the park. Still, the trailer seems a little scattered thematically, recalling both the grim, super-serious, politically inclined approach of most recent post-apoc movies (Children of Men, 28 Weeks Later) and the comic book thrills offered by Escape From New York, the Resident Evil series, etc. If Marshall can successfully combine the two angles, as George Miller did so successfully in The Road Warrior (also an obvious influence here), then Doomsday could very well end up being a genre classic.

Plus, Bob Hoskins and Malcolm McDowell — you just can't go wrong with those guys.

A first blog post is sort of like a first kiss – sure, it’s very exciting and all, but it’s also pretty clear to all parties involved that you don’t have a clue what you’re doing.

So let’s just keep it simple, shall we? The aim of this blog, Cinematic for the People, is to share some information, discussion, and opinions (and yes, I am aware of what certain unsavory body part that opinions are like) about anything and everything involving the movies. I’ll be touching on all the big-deal Hollywood blockbusters, of course, but also as many independent, foreign, classic, or otherwise obscure films as I have time and space for. My goals is to have something to offer to both the casual cinema-goer who catches a flick or two per month as well as the hardcore movie-geek who owns every Criterion Collection DVD or scours the internet hourly for the latest tidbit about what material Spider-man’s eyeholes will be constructed out of in the series’ next installment.

My taste in movies is all over the map – Nosferatu, Singin’ In the Rain, Oldboy, and, uh, Half-Baked all comfortably share space on my DVD shelves at home – so I hope to cover as wide a range here as possible, and not to trash anything that isn’t actually trash (though I certainly believe there's a distinction between “good trash” and “bad trash”).

I do have a particular affinity for the great “underdog” films that, for whatever reason, didn’t connect with the majority of critics or moviegoers – like Punch-Drunk Love, whose incredible closing scene supplied the title of this post – and also for movies made by scrappy, resourceful filmmakers who didn’t let their lack of money, access, or support get in the way of them getting their vision to the screen.

What’s to come? Well, we’ll see – 2007 was a particularly terrific year for movies, so here’s hoping that this year will give us lots more memorable films to talk about in the coming weeks and months. Feel free to drop me a line here at the Register at nscalia@nhregister.com, and check back every few days for updates of all shapes and sizes.

Until then, try to have yourself a transcendent experience in a darkened room surrounded by loud noises and complete strangers. Trust me, you’ll love it.