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The holiday movies are being shown to critics, and I’m champing at the bit to write about several I’ve seen, but I’ll hold off until closer to release dates. One quick preview: I’m not sure what audiences will make of 8 Mile when it opens November 8, but I was pretty darn pleased by a packed screening earlier this week. One notable contributor to Curtis Hanson’s smartly modest making-of-the-rapper tale is cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (Amores Perros), whose handheld camerawork, tight close-ups and gritty, grainy images, makes the movie seem like the first Mexican film shot entirely in Detroit.

I’m also excited by a small movie that has wriggled out of oblivion, called Tully, which debuted at Toronto in 2000, then suffered distributor woes until its debut on Sundance Channel in March 2002. Next week, I’ll try to explain why I think it’s a small, yet genuinely masterful bit of direction and performance.

The truth about The Truth About Charlie, Jonathan Demme's first cheerful, antic movie in all too long, is that it's very nice, like a smile or a wink. It's a cheeky flirt, sly and complicated, perhaps to its detriment. Superficially a remake of 1963's Charade" a Stanley Donen-directed comedy thriller starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, "The Truth About Charlie" has its own headlong rush that’s gratifyingly out of key with many modern movies, drawing on a visual vocabulary that stretches back to the French New Wave.

Demme also puts Mark Wahlberg in a beret for several scenes. He plays a man of many aliases and identities, and I asked Demme about the scene when we first see the former street kid wearing the French national hat. I tell Demme that it seems odd, like Wahlberg shouldn't be, but it doesn't totally throw you out of the picture, then you think, hmm, his character really does want to be immersed in the culture. I'm not even thinking what Cary Grant would look like in the same hat.

"I'm grateful for your impulse in that regard. For tolerating the beret and attempting to not think about the other movie!" the director said, laughing, putting down his espresso. "Mark Wahlberg as we know him and understand him previous to this movie would never wear a beret! I felt Mark's going to be doing something different here. At best, he'll look really cute in a beret and at worst, he'll look silly in a beret and I'm ready for either of those, either is fine. I did want to think of Mark's character as a guy who is immersed in French culture who also loves France and loves French movies like Shoot the Piano Player and enjoys speaking the language and speaks it quite well. I wore a beret when I lived in Paris for the six months I lived there, and I wore it back in New York for a while when I came back. He's one of those Americans who wants to fit in so much he wears a dadgum beret around town, take it or leave it!"

Updated: October 29, 2002

One of my favorite reviews (of a terrific, good-hearted movie) was Roger Ebert's three-and-a-half-star rave for Real Women Have Curves. Check out his lead at the very least. Then there's Elvis Mitchell's deserved love letter to the underappreciated talents of Thandie Newton. I'd hoped to have the time to write about Roger Dodger this week: it's turning out to be a funny litmus test of moralism about male behavior. For some reviewers, it's almost a throwback to the days of In The Company of Men, quickly noting that they, your noble reviewer, have never, ever done anything like Campbell Scott's character does in writer-director Dylan Kidd's scarily smart debut. One quick note: Scott's performance fully embodies his characters' mix of charm and loathsomeness, towards women, the world, himself.