The Matador – Pierce Brosnan is an international hit-man with few morals, a taste for women, no family, little class, and the fashion sense of Ashlee Simpson.  Greg Kinnear is the opposite; essentially a slightly more animated (no pun intended) version of Ned Flanders.  Wouldn't it be a hoot if they became friends, with their yin/yang differences helping each other's shortcomings?

The answer is no.  This occasionally stylish effort from writer/director Richard Shepard just can't make up for its lightweight script, not to mention a stupid-ass ending that made me wish I had these 100 minutes back.  Hope Davis all but steals the movie with the few scenes she has.

Drawing Restraint 9 – Practically guaranteed to sell more soundtracks than it does box office tickets, Matthew Barney's two-and-a-half hour opus is, as expected, full of repetitive imagery involving similar symbols.  It also has very little dialogue; none for the first 90 minutes, even.  The highlights include a giant Jell-O mold, and a long series of scenes in which Barney (The Cremaster Cycle) and muse Björk (she provides the film's etheral score) take part in a strange Japanese tea ceremony, which culminates in them using knives to hack each other into the shape of sea creatures.  In other words, this movie is about as accessible to mainstream audiences as Katie Holmes' vagina is to Tom Cruise's penis.

Vegas was giving 5:2 odds that I wouldn't tough out the 150 minutes, but I shook up the world by making it.  Not the rest of the audience, though.  Can't say I blame them, considering this picture is big on tradition and ceremony, but never really tells up whose tradition and ceremony.

Transamerica – A large portion of these films I'm seeing were scheduled two weeks ago, and I no longer remember what they're about, who made them, or who's in them until I sit down and they start.  It is with great humiliation I write that, among the notes I made about Duncan Tucker's Transamerica, was this one: "Lead looks like Felicity Huffman's male twin."

Turns out I was watching the real Huffman, but had no idea.  I guess that's a testament to her performance in this film, which is about a pre-op male-to-female transsexual named Bree who learns she has a son just one week before her scheduled surgery.  When Bree's shrink refuses to sign the final paperwork for the operation until she deals with her new kin, she must go across the country and bail the son (Kevin Zegers) she never knew she had out of a juvie detention center.  He's a street hustler, and Bree poses as a church missionary do-gooder so she won't have to reveal her identity.  They end up driving from New York City to Los Angeles, hence the double-entendre in the title.

I eventually realized Bree was being played by Huffman, but man, what a performance (she won Best Actress at the Tribeca Fest earlier this year).  Anyone who can fool me like this deserves major kudos.

Mrs. Harris – Fresh off her shrill, irritating performance in last year's Festival opener Being Julia, Annette Bening makes her glorious return to the screen as . . . wait for it . . . another shrill, irritating performance in this debut film from Phyllis Nagy.  It's another love story featuring two jerks, a la Gabrielle, only Harris is based on the true story of the 1980 murder of a womanizing doctor (Ben Kingsley) and the trial of the woman who killed him (Bening).

Kingsley's accent (or lack thereof) might be the worst of the Festival, beating out Forest Whitaker in A Little Trip to Heaven by a hair.  And Bening: What can we say about her that hasn't already been said?  I mean, other than needing to pick scripts with a little more care.

Dear Wendy – If you're looking for a hardcore anti-American message just because you've seen Lars Von Trier's name in the credits (he's the screenwriter), you'll have to look elsewhere because Thomas Vinterberg's Dear Wendy is so wonderful, even the strongest anti-Von Trierian viewers will be too enraptured by the acting, sets, costumes, photography, editing, and direction to even think about hatin' my playa.  Von Trier wrote this script for himself to direct, but according to Vinterberg, he "got too wrapped up drawing chalk outlines on stage floors."

Wendy is the second film in as many years to the star super-talented Jamie Bell (Undertow) as a young adult in small town in the American South.  Shortly after the story begins, his Dick is left parentless in a burgh where anyone who doesn't work in the coal mines is practically invisible.  Being a pacifist, the last thing you would expect Dick to do is start a gun club with several of the town's other outcasts, holding meetings, lessons, and target practice sessions down in an abandoned mine.  The guns, though never used outside the confines of their club, gives the group a new self-confidence (and, in the case of Alison Pill's character, growth to the tune of a few cup-sizes).  Of course, things don't work out in the end, but that's kind of how guns are in the real world, too.

The film's attention to detail is amazing, and its dark irony (pacifists with guns, avoiding the mines by hiding out in the mines) is as rich as you're likely to see.  The town is purposely left unnamed, the setting is purposely left undated, and even though there are certainly modern devices in plain sight, Wendy is very much an old school Western, with the appropriate values attendant thereto.  Yet another gorgeous Festival winner for cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (Manderlay), and the best picture of the year (so far) for Vinterberg (Celebration) and Von Trier.