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Avid filmgoers know that the last six weeks of the year is when the best films are released. This has everything to do with the Oscars, as nominations come out in January and to assuage short memories, a studio wants the film’s viewing to be fresh. In order to be eligible, a film must have been screened in New York or Los Angeles for at least one week before December 31. See, living in Tinseltown has its advantages. Over the Christmas holidays, everything is playing.

When Stef and Sara were here, we did our customary binge. Here’s my yes or no review.

The Fighter: Sure the down-and-out boxer story is familiar, but this movie proves the Siskel & Ebert adage that subject matter is neutral: it’s either done well or done badly. This is done well. Loved the white trash sisters with their mom jeans and teased hair. Big YES.

The Motley Crew Reunion Tour

The King’s Speech: Studio filmmaking at its absolute best. Has all the elements of a Best Picture: Topnotch actors and production values, historical drama, Nazis, the Royal Family, big themes like scandal and honor, family duty, overcoming adversity. Colin Firth deserves Best Actor if there’s any justice in the universe. Massive YES.

127 Hours: He gets stuck at the 30-minute mark, and Stef leaned over and said, “It’s going to be a long movie,” meaning how could they possibly hold our interest for the next 90 minutes. But they do. The director of “Slumdog” makes it visually interesting and James Franco is a babe. The arm-chopping scene was not nearly as shocking as I thought it would be. Big YES.

The Rabbit Hole: I saw the stage production at the Geffen last year and didn’t particularly like it, but felt that I should see the movie anyway. In the play the husband has an affair, whereas in the movie is only tempted to have an affair. It works better to have him a little more flawed because in the movie he is too damned perfecy. Nicole, stop with the injectibles! Sure she’s given up botox for the role, but the collagen-puffed lips are incredibly distracting. Middling YES.

True Grit: This was something of a disappointment, given the source material, the actors and the fact that I LOVE the Coen Bros. “No Country” is a masterpiece, as is much of their catalogue, so perhaps the people around them are reluctant to critique their work. The set-up was exhilarating, but then they get on the trail and it was an hour of monotony. I couldn’t wait for everyone to get shot so I could get out of the theater. I’m giving it a reluctant yes, because, hell, it’s the Coen Bros.  Reluctant YES.

Black Swan: This film had potential but ended up being an over-the-top mess. The two-thirds of the film that deals with real life was great: Natalie Portman’s relationship with her teacher, her mother, her fellow dancers; the ballet scenes, the significant details. But the supernatural one-third of the film ruins it. Natalie Portman shoes no acting range in this role, she’s a one-note and it’s tedious. NO.

Fiddler on the Roof: Well, not exactly a new release, but a movie I saw over the holidays with my family, on Christmas Eve to be exact, in a sing-along format at the Laamle Theater in West L.A. We were the only non-Jews in the crowd as they passed challah bread for Sabbat. The movie really holds up — three hours long plus an intermission, but never sags, proving another Siskel & Ebert adage that I good movie can’t be too long and bad one can’t be too short.  I knew every word of every song.  Big YES.

Some movies depict circumstances so harrowing that as the final credits roll and you’re filing out of the theater, you are grateful to return to your own trifling problems. I saw two such movies over the weekend both involving female protagonists: Fair Game and Winter’s Bone.

Fair Game is the true story of how Valerie Plame, secret CIA agent, was outed in retaliation for an op-ed piece her husband wrote in the New York Times criticizing the Iraq War. Her cover was intentionally exposed by the Bush Brain — Karl and Dick — during a huge operation involving dozens of Iraqi scientists who were later tortured and killed. At one point Valerie is counseled by one of her CIA colleagues not to fight back because, those are the “three most powerful men in the history of the world.” Chilling. They were monstrously evil then and the fact they continue to operate on the political stage is a travesty. People, wake up! Valerie Plame of course does fight back with cogent and clear testimony.  YES.

Winters Bone is an indie fav that centers on the personal fallout from the meth epidemic in small town America.This ground was covered brilliantly in last year’s book Methland by Nick Reding. Seventeen-year-old Ree has care of a catatonic mother and two younger siblings when her meth-cooking dad goes missing. She is notified that the dad put the house up as a bond to secure his appearance at court, which he misses. She has a week to find him before losing the land and her family, and the movie is her personal Odyssey meeting up with all manner of dangerous characters. It is the most brilliant piece of heroism I’ve ever seen on screen. Add it to your Netflix now! Very enthusiastic YES.

Who knows what courage lies within us?

I’ve been loving Peggy Noonan’s column in the Wall Street Journal these past few months. It’s much less partisan and more observational than it was last year during the election, as if to say: “I’ve been on this planet for over six decades and let me share what I’ve learned.” Her Memorial Day piece focused on American heroes, specifically war heroes, a designation that has fallen out of favor.

The category of military hero—warrior—fell off a bit, in part because of the bad reputation of war….somewhere in the 1960s I think we decided, or the makers of our culture decided, that to celebrate great warriors was to encourage war. And we always have too much of that.

I’d have to disagree slightly with her on this. Consider the depiction of the soldies in Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers or of the surge of patriotism kicked off by Desert Storm a decade ago when George Bush Sr enjoyed a 90 percent approval rating. Maybe our acceptance of war heroes depends on the moral gravitas of the war being fought. Another of Ms. Noonan’s interesting ideas is about the nature of America’s need to create heroes:

More than most nations, America has been, from its start, a hero-loving place. Maybe part of the reason is that at our founding we were a Protestant nation and not a Catholic one, and so we made “saints” of civil and political figures.

Her column tells the stories of two American farmboys, Alvin York and Audie Murphy, who were drafted into battle and fought heroically. Who knows what happens when ordinary people get thrust into extraordinary times.

Day Six Intinerary:
Girls try to go to Versailles
Musee d’Orsay
Boys make it to Versailles

The boys were too tired to wake up — they’d been out until 6 am wandering around Paris looking for a nightclub that would admit a couple of scruffy 17-year-old American boys — so the girls and I ventured off to Versailles without them. There was a three-hour line to get tickets, so we decided not to wait.  We regrouped and headed off to the fabulous Musee d’Orsay. We had a plan to get an early start tomorrow and be the first people in line for the Versailles Palace when it opened.

The D’Orsay is a spiritual experience for me. I went around checking in with my favorite paintings and just feeling very grateful to be there. We met up with the boys for dinner and heard about their adventures. They’d taken the train to Versailles, had jumped the line for tickets because they’re under 18 and are admitted free, and explored the whole palace.

You’re not your job.  You’re not how much money you have in the bank.  You’re not the car you drive.  You’re not the contents of your wallet.  You’re not your fucking khakis.

You buy furniture.  You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life.  Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled.  Then the right set of dishes.  Then the perfect bed.  The drapes.  The rug.  Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.

And I wasn’t the only slave to my nesting instinct.  The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue.

— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

(I KNOW I’M two weeks late getting this posted, but I work on a non-linear timeline.) My oldest friend Garth and his husband David have a terrific Academy Awards party every year. In the old days they would send out fancy invitations and it was a big affair. But the last couple of years it has distilled into a group of eight hardcore participants who confidently toss their five dollar bill into the golden orb and play to win. We exchange ballots and at the end of each category go around the room to see who got it right. Points are tallied on a whiteboard.

Cakes are my specialty

The food is always thematically consistent with the movies. This year we had Slumdog Curry, Pat Nixon Salad, Tropic Thunder Punch and The Curious “Cake” of Benjamin Button. We always sit in the same spots on the couch, Garth, Ed and I take turns winning or tying for first place.  David is in the kitchen whipping up another batch of “crack popcorn” — named because it is so addictive. Here’s the recipe: Make popcorn in heavy pan with oil, add lots of real butter, Parmesan  cheese and salt. Don’t expect to fit into your skinny jeans the next day.

Children were exploited horribly in this movie

WHEN ‘HOUNDOG’ WAS SHOWN at Sundance last year, there was a passionate outcry and harsh complaints from religious groups, parent associations, and Hollywood in general  because the movie contained the scene of a 12-year-old girl played by Dakota Faning, being raped. Writer/director Deborah Kampemeier went to great lengths to explain that the scene in question was with an older teen boy, that it lasted less than a minute and that no nudity was involved. The “rape” takes place in the editing room. Despite critical acclaim, ‘Houndog’ did not find a distributor.

My question is this: So it’s an outrage (understandably) to simulate the rape of a child on film, but it’s permissible to torture them, beat them with a club, drop them in a hole of human execrement, sell them into prostitution, beat their mother to death while they watch, and blind them with hot oil? I’m referring of course to ‘Slumdog Millionaire,’ the Best Picture Winner and the so-called ‘feel good’ film of the year. Has the Academy lost its mind? The relentless brutality towards children in this film should have resulted in protest not a gold statuette.