A few months ago, I saw two new sci-fi movies at the San Francisco International Film Festival, and now both are in limited release: Duncan Jones's Moon (21 screens) and Aristomenis Tsirbas' Battle for Terra (2 screens). And it got me thinking. These two movies couldn't be more different, and the main distinction between them is this. Moon is sci-fi based on an actual sci-fi idea. That means that science actually figures into the fiction somewhere. And Battle for Terra is the perfect example of a war film decorated with sci-fi trimmings; its big "twist" is that the humans are the bad guys and the aliens are the good guys, but aside from that the story unfolds exactly like a regular war film. The aliens, spaceships and other gizmos don't really figure into the major themes or plot.

It got me thinking about how many science fiction movies are really just war movies in disguise. (The current Terminator Salvation is another one.) It's very easy to transform the combatants of a war to alien races and make the cause of the war something fictitious, like the "spice" in Dune (1984). It's much easier to explain why people are fighting over that powerful stuff than why they're fighting over differences in religions or beliefs. And it's much nicer to justify battling alien invaders than it is to justify humans fighting humans. Frankly, I'm all for this little bit of deception, provided the sci-fi movies have three things. Battle for Terra has none of them.

A few movies out there, specifically Easy Virtue (255 screens), The Brothers Bloom (209 screens) and the new Cheri (opening this week on 80 screens), have taken it upon themselves to try and re-capture something of the style of old movies. Easy Virtue is based on a 1926 Noel Coward play, which was previously filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1928. Cheri comes from a 1920 novel written by the creator of Gigi (1958). And The Brothers Bloom is a new, original screenplay but it comes with some of the sensibilities of old films, namely snappy dialogue and hats.

I'm all for this, since many of today's movie fans who name their "all time favorite" films rarely list anything made before 1999. Aside from that at least half the cinema buffs out there is generally aware of a short list of classic films, which includes things like The Godfather, Dr. Strangelove, maybe some Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, Casablanca, etc. And those are, of course, great places to start for those interested in looking at something beyond the IMAX screen. But there's a danger in labeling all that stuff "old movies." Not all of them come with country estates, or hats, or even dialogue.

400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

I'm rather dismayed by the huge success of the awful He's Just Not That Into You (21 screens). I mean, I like Bradley Cooper in general, and Justin Long's character is interesting for a while, at least until his stupid Hollywood redemption during the third act. And it does pose an interesting question: if you were married to Jennifer Connelly and had the chance to sleep with Scarlett Johansson, would you do it? I prefer to think of this question as a koan, or an unanswerable riddle meant to be pondered during meditation. Now, I know what you're thinking: this guy just doesn't like chick flicks. Not true. I love chick flicks, provided they're good, which they rarely are. Chick flicks are almost like horror films; the filmmakers have their audience hooked already and so most of them do the minimum amount of work required to crank out another just like the last one.

400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

Well, seven seconds has gone by and here I am, thinking about sex again. Not like that, you little perverts... I was thinking about sex in movies. It seems like, lately, the movies have learned to become sexy again. In the late 1960s, it became slowly acceptable to show nudity in American films. By the 1970s, many filmmakers were running with it. At some point during the 1980s and 1990s, some kind of conservative mood took over and the MPAA and other forces began taking sex out of movies, replaced with violence. As one clever soul put it: "if you show a breast, you get an R rating, but if you cut it off, you get a PG-13." Perhaps people have grown tired of conservatism lately because this year has been a good year for sex. In movies.

If you like sexy, funny women, for example, you can do no better than Anna Faris, who played a Playboy bunny last year and this year plays mall makeup countergirl Brandi, who listens to vulgar hip-hop and wears her good-time girl attitude like a revealing halter top. Her sex scene with Seth Rogen in Observe and Report (119 screens) contains so far one of my favorite lines of dialogue this year. She's downed several shots of something or other and a few pills on top of that. She's about 99% passed out as Ronnie Barnhardt (Rogen) pounds away on top of her. He stops, concerned about her well-being: "Brandi?" he asks. Suddenly, from between smears of lipstick: "Why are you stopping, motherf----r?"

400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

State of Play (240 screens) continues playing this week, and despite its lukewarm performance and reviews, something about it makes me happy. In mid-2003, I got myself into hot water with a Russell Crowe fan club. I reviewed a very minor film called The Hard Word, starring Guy Pearce, who of course had been Crowe's co-star in L.A. Confidential (1997). I took the opportunity to compare the two actors, praising Pearce for his work in interesting films like Ravenous and Memento, and questioning the much more fashionable Crowe. I did this mainly because I was irritated at the enduring popularity of two terrible films, the sludgy, brooding mess Gladiator (2000) and the manipulative Oscar bait A Beautiful Mind (2001).

I felt that Crowe went through the former film with one single expression, a glower, and through the latter with an unchanging collection of tics and actor's tricks; neither one was a particularly interesting or deep performance. Both performances received Oscar nominations, and Crowe won for Gladiator. I was also irritated that the immeasurably superior Memento, and Pearce, didn't get the same attention. In any case the Crowe fan club grabbed my review, posted it on one of their forums and went to town. I started getting all kinds of angry, nasty e-mails. The fact that I presented one, small opinion contrary to their perfect, orderly world absolutely infuriated them.

400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

This week we face an existential crisis as we approach the box office and must decide between Fighting (253 screens) and Knowing (264 screens). Let's listen in on this inner conflict.

Mind: Clearly we must choose Knowing.

Body: There you go again. You're forgetting that there can be no Knowing without Fighting.

Mind: How so?

Body: Just think about the cavemen days. No one would have had the opportunity to learn anything if the caveman hadn't learned how to hunt dinosaurs.

Mind: That's ridiculous. What have you been watching? "The Flintstones"? And how could the caveman have fought dinosaurs without stopping and thinking about how to make weapons?

400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

I suppose everyone knows by now that Gran Torino (218 screens) was Clint Eastwood's final screen appearance as an actor, and that he plans to concentrate on directing from now on -- though the film's nearly $150 million gross and a spot at #77 on the IMDB All-Time Top 250 will probably result in many phone calls begging him to reconsider. But this raises an interesting question: was it Eastwood's appearance onscreen make the movie such a popular favorite? Does he still have all the right stuff, 40 years later, to rank as one of the all-time great movie stars? Or was it his skill as a director that paid off?

Any actor who also decides to direct must eventually face the choice of whether or not to direct his or her own performance. There's a long list of people who chose one side or the other with varied results. But though it's probably the more difficult choice, I think any actor would agree that it's easier to sell the film with his or her face onscreen. Even Spike Lee admitted to this when he acted in his first three films, up to and including his masterpiece Do the Right Thing. And certainly when someone like Woody Allen initially decided not to appear in his films, his fans did not take it well.

400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

Every few months I find myself sitting down for another "coming of age movie." It's taken awhile, but I think I have these things sorted out now. There are essentially three categories. In the first, a young boy befriends a crusty, cynical man -- sometimes a grandfatherly old fellow. The man coaxes the boy out of his shell, and the boy reminds the old man of what it's like to live. Examples include Cinema Paradiso, About a Boy and the new Is Anybody There? In the next category, the boy befriends another boy (or girl) of roughly the same age. The second boy is knowledgeable, outgoing and/or unique and coaxes the first boy out of his shell. Examples include Son of Rambow or The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Then we get the "sexual awakening" kind of film, in which the boy falls in love with a grown woman, as in Malena or Mister Foe.

400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

Of the 100 or so new movies I've seen so far in 2009, only two of them have been great, and both of those have been animated. The first was Henry Selick's Coraline (111 screens), about which you've no doubt heard. The second one has been quietly playing on a few screens around the country and it opens this week at the Red Vic Movie House in San Francisco. Oddly, if you go to the film's official website, you'll find that it's also available for free streaming or download, and you can request that your local PBS station broadcast it. You can also order DVDs -- when they're finished. The film is not in 3D, it's not CGI-animated, and it has no fart jokes. It's Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues.

Billed as "the Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told," Sita Sings the Blues is based on the epic Ramayana. It tells the tale of Sita, who falls in love with the king's son Rama. Rama is banished from his kingdom for 14 years, and Sita accompanies him; they make the best of their life in exile. Unfortunately, an evil multi-headed king kidnaps Sita. Rama eventually rescues her with the help of a monkey-man called Hanuman, but he can no longer trust her "purity." Paley does not adapt this story literally. Rather, she takes several, simultaneous approaches, with several different artistic styles. In one version, Sita lip-syncs to old records by jazz singer Annette Hanshaw and magically, the songs ("Lover Come Back to Me," etc.) fit exactly.

400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

The world's oldest film festival, the San Francisco International Film Festival, continues this week. Diving through the myriad of titles, I came up with a couple of winners, neither of which has a U.S. distributor as of this moment. I'll start with the latest from the infuriatingly brilliant French director Claire Denis. Following her baffling, free-flowing, poetic epic masterpiece L'Intrus (The Intruder), Denis returns with a relatively simpler, more narrative-based feature, 35 Shots of Rum, though without sacrificing any of her unique flow. The new film focuses on an all-black Paris community of friends, relations, former and current lovers and colleagues. Lionel (Alex Descas) is a train engineer and lives with his beautiful, grown daughter Jo (Mati Diop). They don't speak very often, but they share an obviously tender relationship full of hugs and kisses on the cheek. Near the film's beginning, Jo buys herself a rice cooker, and Lionel coincidentally brings one home as well. Jo opens her father's and cooks rice, keeping her own in the package and hidden away.