You can tell we're dealing with Hollywood-izing of the story, however. As a biopic based on the life story of Louise Randall Pierson, you know that the hard times are glossed over pretty smoothly. Polio, abandonment by divorce, and multiple bankruptcies are hardly ever this lightly overcome in the "real" world. Still, highly recommended for all you Carson and/or Russell fans.

Notice how studiously they avoid the word "kidnapped"? It's almost awkward. Guess they had settled on the title Taken, and they had to keep pounding that word home. The title choice of Kidnapped must have been voted down. Probably too literate -- too Robert Louis Stevenson.

Liam Neeson . . . why do I keep doing this to myself? And with a tragically bad American accent. Didn't someone suggest to him that he was too old to be convincing in this role? Brother . . .

On the up side, plenty of guys who need killing get killed in this one, and that is very, very satisfying. What a waste of Janssen though. You can tell she actually wanted to do some acting, but I think she must have been told not to.

It is still a great joy to see these actors grow up in their roles. That is the best thing about the HP enterprise. End update.

Now that they all know how the series ends, it will be interesting to see if that knowledge colors the actors' performances. These last two should be the two best. I can hardly "effing" wait -- to roughly quote Ron Weasley. That and JKR's use of the word "bitch" in DH were unexpected and very pleasant surprises. Now we're talking the intersection of the wizarding world and the muggle world. Do wizards curse? Well, yes in the sense of curses, charms and spells, but what I should ask is: Do wizards swear? Why of course they do : )

First the good news. The visuals are pretty slick in this one, and . . .

Man, I have to mourn when so much money is spent on 10% interesting and 90% stupid. And it's not just that the story itself is dumb, it's that the good people who put this project together think that all of us are brain-dead as well. That borating kills me.

Okay, so I was stupid enough to throw this on my Netflix queue. Maybe they're right.

Absolutely frustrating, like the hum-drum life of quiet desperation as an average account manager -- who suddenly discovers he's "the chosen one." Sound familiar? And then you think they turn the corner with their brilliantly borrowed Star Wars twist: Wesley, I am you father.

But that corner is never turned; it's a feint.

I would go on, but I know that there's no one reading this far anyway. Okay, for the possible one person who might be still reading: You maybe understand what I'm talking about, Grasshopper . . . Quickly as you can, grab the pebble, er, weaver's shuttle from my hand, er, loom.

Pssst, Angelina, either you gotta fire your make-up person, or you gotta have at least one friend who can be honest with you and tell you that you look old enough to be McAvoy's mother in this one.

On second thought, my apologies. Maybe these comic book dudes were also big borrowing fans of Oedipus.

Having said all of this, and if you're still following me, I have to say that as a wholly contained story -- which is what I truly want to believe -- I actually prefer Fight the Future to I Want To Believe. Let me quickly add that my favorite episodes of the TV show have nothing to do with conspiracy theories, Mulder's sister, alien abduction, or creepy black-blood crawly body invasion thingies. I absolutely came to hate those episodes over the full course of the series. What I prefer are the nearly self-contained episodes that present some odd phenomenon, have Mulder and Scully jump on the case, and have the story resolved by the end of the 60-minute episode or the end of a two-episode story. Most of these self-contained episodes are really very well-wrought gems.

So why, you may very well ask, do I prefer the first movie, the one that deals with all the stuff I like least about the X-Files? This is a question which I cannot actually answer, specifically, but I think it may have something to do with Billy Connolly's character and with Dana Scully's terminally ill little patient. I like the weird Dr. Frankenstein transplant aspect of I Want To Believe, but I have a very strong suspicion, from a writing standpoint, that the whole Billy Connolly character may have been invented near the end of the creative process in order to fill out a story that may have been a little too thin and too short to begin with.

Ask yourself this: What does Scully's very very very secondary -- almost tertiary -- story about the boy who needs radical stem cell transplant surgery have to do with the overall story? I would submit that if that whole sub-plot disappeared, the movie would be none the weaker for the loss. Just shorter.

That leaves us with the crazy Russian Frankenstein types. What if Mulder and Scully stumbled across a frozen pile of body parts all by themselves, without any help from pedophile priest psychics? Or let's say an average guy doing a little beer drinking and ice fishing runs across this gruesome stockpile, starts reeling in an arm here and a head there. What would you have then? Well, I think you would have a pretty nifty little 60-minute TV episode.

So the reason why I like the first movie more is simply this: It reads like a full-length feature story with all of its parts very well integrated. I Want To Believe, on the other hand, reads like a great TV episode that someone wanted to flesh out, by accretion of parts, by hashing stuff together into a full-length feature. You cut out the excess window dressing, and you'd have yet another very good self-contained TV show episode.

Like Olivier, Hopkins is very good at playing characters, but he can never completely disappear in a character, so you're always stuck with thinking, "Okay, I'm watching Anthony Hopkins do an Anthony Hopkins' idea of a character." Olivier, same problem. You're always watching Olivier acting, not able to fully believe that you're watching someone else. That ability to become absolutely the character you're playing, to lose yourself in that character, is a rare talent. Folks like Newman and Nicholson, for instance, are supremely gifted in their ability to do this.

Just as in Silence of the Lambs, the Lektor/Lecter character is actually a Hopkins caricature, and the result is fairly ridiculous. In just a very brief appearance in the 1986 William Petersen Manhunter movie, Brian Cox is able to do a much more chillingly natural Lektor/Lecter than Hopkins could ever hope to pull off. Cox's Lecktor/Lecter doesn't have to kill anyone, or skin anyone, or cook anyone. He accomplishes a fully realized character just through his words and actions when he's already behind bars. No leering facial expressions, no lip licking, no almost comical character traits of any kind.

Hopkins was pretty ludicrous in Lambs, but at least he had Foster to save the movie. No such luck here. Even more poorly equipped an actor than Hopkins, Julianne Moore couldn't hold up a helium balloon, let alone a movie opposite a talent as tenuous as Hopkins.

Just because you try to write a more involved story doesn't mean that it can't turn out dumb. That's it. The story was a little bit stupid.

I liked seeing and especially hearing less from Fox -- her voice should be harnessed as a secret weapon -- and LeBeouf was good again, but the inane story killed this for me, and all the great action couldn't save it from becoming anything more than humdrum. Too many yawns for me. See the first one, if you want to see either.

And maybe the biggest disappointment of all was the waste of Jet Li. He's one of my favorite martial arts stylists. Very little of that here. Really not worth seeing once, even if you enjoyed the first two.

So you can imagine my surprise when I finally bit the bullet to watch this and found myself pretty much blown away by DiCaprio's work.

Now unlike my turning point with, say, Tom Hanks in Da Vinci or Brad Pitt in Devil's Own, I'm not going to be able to say that I might try to re-evaluate my position on DiCaprio's past work. I'm sure my evaluation of his past work is correct: He's not (been) much of an actor. I will say this, however. I'm willing to watch with an unjaundiced eye what DiCaprio does from here on in, to see if he's finally matured into a good actor.

Kate Winslet does not disappoint, by the way. I believe she is easily the finest actress of her generation. Stunningly good, really. So good, yet again, that she really does deserve to be listed with the greatest actresses of all-time.

But to reiterate, especially for those of you who know how I've talked about DeCaprio in the past, this is a must-see for his work as well.

NB: Be in a good mood when you catch this one. I tell you true that this is a draining full-fledged tragedy with little to bring you up from the depths when the final credits roll.

I don't think the West Virginia Visitors Bureau appreciated this movie as much as they did John Denver's love song for their homeland. Just guessing . . .

I tell you, if the Wrong Turn franchise were a publicly traded stock, I would invest -- even if they can't get Eliza Dushku to play in every one. Now this is a horror film series that has the kind of sense of humor about itself that you really need when you make movies like this. I will grant you that there is no moment as hilarious as Paris Hilton getting the pipe through her noggin in House of Wax -- her brain of course, being her most vulnerable spot -- but the laughs here are pretty good, and the cannibal family in #2 is really kind of adorable compared to #1 -- and there are females this time. One of the problems with #1 was that there were no women in the clan, so you know we were talking about some type of really deep inbreeding.

Nuclear waste and inbreeding. It never ceases to amaze me how that combination can never ever be good news. For sustained horror humor, this one is a real Halloween treat : )