This weekend sees the release of Kimberly Peirce's Stop-Loss, about a soldier who returns from a grueling tour of duty in Iraq only to learn that he's being sent back for another one. The movie's not bad: very passionate, very angry, a bit didactic, and liberal to the core. (See our own Eric D. Snider's SXSW review here.) The "liberal" part is no surprise, at least not if you've been listening to the conservative pundits who have torn into Hollywood for what they see as anti-war propaganda masquerading as entertainment. Those same pundits like to gloat about Iraq War movies' perceived financial failure, holding up their box-office receipts as proof that the American people either aren't interested or aren't on the same page.

But have the Iraq War movies we've seen in the past couple of years actually performed all that poorly? And even if they have, does that have anything to do with public distaste for liberal Hollywood or its "propaganda"? Take a look at some numbers and share your thoughts after the jump.

No, it won't be a movie based on the duet between Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. It will be a movie version of the Ernest Hemingway novel, posthumously published in 1970, about an American painter who lives the quiet life in the Bahamas and ends up getting entangled in some naval activities-adventures at the tail end of World War II. The book has already been filmed once, in 1977, with George C. Scott in the pivotal role but that version wasn't well-received. Tommy Lee Jones tells The Telegraph in a new interview that this project is likely to be his directing follow-up to 2005's very well-received The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Jones says of the project "In the 1970s it was made into a bad movie. I reckon there's a good movie in that book and that's the one I want to make." The actor-director is currently at work on a script for the film, but offered no other details about how far along in the process he is.

The interview also contains some other interesting tidbits, such as Jones' assertion that his character in In the Valley of Elah is intensely dislikeable. "I was really interested in the more disgusting aspects of the man," Jones says. "Old Hank is the kind of character that I, personally, would dismiss. He's certainly ethnocentric and blindly, unquestioningly patriotic. I looked upon him as typical of the sort of person who can be led by the nose by jingoistic headlines into a fraudulent war." He also gets into the subject of No Country for Old Men and how he approaches acting and working with directors -- all in all it's a pretty interesting read.

Want to know a dirty little secret?

Contrary to what you've heard recently, critics hate writing bad reviews.

No, they're not fun to write; they're exhausting. No, they're not less work than a good review; they're more difficult. And when you love movies -- which you better, as a critic -- you don't sit down in the dark before a film and think, "Boy, I hope the next two hours of my life will be wasted." But every movie is not, in fact, good -- and these were the high marks among the low points in 2007, from one critic's highly subjective perspective.

1. The Heartbreak Kid

Racist, sexist, misogynist -- and, even worse, not funny. The Farrelly Brothers proved their "King Midas in reverse" touch by turning a classic piece of comedy gold into a lump of trash. The only possible bright side comes in the fact that the Farrelly's status as box-office kings has now been tarnished, hopefully hastening their slide to straight-to-video film making.

The best movie year since 1999, 2007 offered a staggering bounty of cinematic delights. I keep track of all the movies I see in a given year and give each a letter grade, "A" through "F". Usually my Top Ten list consists of all of the "A's" and a few "B's." This year, "A" pictures made up my top twenty. With so many great films, I won't wallow through a "Worst of the Year" list, I'll simply present you with a few that didn't fully satisfy:

The Biggest Disappointment: The Darjeeling Limited -- A Louis Vuitton commercial stretched to feature length. The Darjeeling Limited is a perfect title for the film because it makes plain what a limited filmmaker the once great Wes Anderson has become. Hey Wes, people running in slow-motion while a Kinks song plays is always going to look pretty neat. But if there's absolutely nothing else going on in the scene, then that's all it is -- people running in slow-motion while a Kinks song plays. We all think it's really cool that you like The Kinks. Hell, I love those guys! The Rolling Stones are awesome, too! But I wouldn't ask them to do my job for me.

and...

The Biggest Question Mark: There Will Be Blood

Undoubtedly one of the year's most impressive technical achievements, There Will Be Blood is frequently stunning. It's so stunning, in fact, that it's easy to overlook how infuriatingly empty it all is. The film focuses on two main characters, and neither one changes a lick in thirty years and 158 minutes. How did Paul Thomas Anderson, creator of such deeply emotional rides as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch Drunk Love come up with a movie completely devoid of human emotion? (I'm not counting greed.) Beautiful, brilliant, and boring in equal doses, I've seen Blood twice, and I still don't know if it's a masterpiece or a mess. I just know I felt...nothing watching it. It's as hollow, as frustrating, as difficult to know as its "hero," Daniel Plainview.

On to my list. First, ten that didn't quite make the cut. Here's #20 through #11: (#20) Breach, (#19) Once, (#18) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, (#17) Sicko, (#16) Sweeney Todd, (#15) The Lives of Others, (#14) Eastern Promises, (#13) Zodiac, (#12) Atonement, (#11) Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

And my Top Ten is after the jump...

Screenwriter and director Paul Haggis gives a pretty good interview over at the Guardian, parting with some amusing anecdotes, like the fact that David Cronenberg is apparently "quite upset" with him over using Crash as the title of his 2004 film, despite Cronenberg already having a film with that title. He also talks a bit about In the Valley of Elah, and defends its box office, saying that it did well in the Midwestern markets, where people go to see a movie because "I like Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron, she's pretty." Gee, who would have ever thought Paul Haggis had a condescending attitude toward red-staters? Haggis also gives his views on the writer's strike and talks a bit about Million Dollar Baby, but the most interesting thing for me to note is that he's still not ready to part with the title for Bond 22, apparently because he doesn't have one.

According to the interviewer -- don't you wish the Guardian would just print Q&As instead of doing everything in profile, by the way? -- Haggis confirmed that the project is "still known only as Bond 22" and that his "contribution is unlikely to include advice on the title. He admits to never knowing what to call his scripts and when writing Crash, only used it as a working title." Although Haggis is known to have been not-quite-finished with the Bond 22 script when the strike happened, the producers were apparently satisfied enough that they decided to push forward anyway. I guess we'll find out how wise that decision was soon enough. In the meantime, what do you think the title of the next Bond picture should be? Take what you know of Casino Royale and Ian Fleming-sounding titles, and add in what you know so far about the next one -- it will be partially set in South America, it will have another Eurotrash villain, and will have Daniel Craig again.

One of the 78th Oscars clip montages was devoted to films about big social and cultural issues, and when the clips were done and the cheering muted, host Jon Stewart gave a resigned smile to the camera and delivered a cruel, cutting, it's-funny-because-it's-true joke about Hollywood high-mindedness: " ... And none of those issues were ever a problem again." And that moment came to mind watching In the Valley of Elah. You get a sense of what everyone involved, especially writer-director Paul Haggis, was trying to do -- to make a gripping, engaging drama about Iraq and America -- but as the movie stretches and grasps and strains with sweaty-palmed desperation and clumsiness, you can feel those aspirations slip out of reach. You can tell everyone involved wanted to make an important statement. What they would end up making was a fairly indifferent movie. But hey, if an expatriate Canadian Scientologist who used to write for The Facts of Life can't bring the boys home, who can?

And I may, perhaps, be a little over-the top in the above dismissal, but that might just be because In the Valley of Elah is one of a ever-growing class of movies -- released in the last quarter of the year, festooned with talent, and ostensibly about something -- that desperately want to be seen as 'political' and 'important' modern moviemaking. My initial revulsion at the clumsy coincidences and cardboard characters and cheap tricks in Haggis's previous directorial effort, Crash, gave way to a sort of grudging admiration for the fact that, all things considered, Haggis was trying to talk about race and class. The willingness to look at those topics -- so present in life, so absent on the mainstream big screen -- made Crash seem better than it actually was. And while heaping honors on Crash may not rank on the all-time list of Oscar's worst Best Picture Picks (Forrest Gump, Million Dollar Baby, Around the World in 80 Days, et al.), it's not exactly in the honor roll of Oscar's finest moments.

But we've already given Haggis rewards for his lazy storytelling, his cheap sentimentality, his glib and clumsy narrative tricks -- so who could fault him for coming back to them again and again? In the Valley of Elah is very much in the mold of Million Dollar Baby -- where an older man uses his lifetime of experience to try and do the right thing even though doing the wrong thing would be a hell of a lot easier. It's also got Crash's delusions of moral grandeur. Yes, In the Valley of Elah is about great and mighty topics, but it's somehow both self-satisfied and self-righteous, both preachy and predictable.

What I like most about Paul Haggis is how he can bring together a bunch of actors -- some truly loved and others who you might question -- and make a really solid movie. Matt Dillon was swimming in a sea of questionable thrillers and goofy comedies before Crash, Sandra Bullock had her romcoms and c'mon -- Tony Danza? It almost seems like Haggis was chatting with someone, saying that he could pull the good out of anyone. I can only imagine that someone then said: "Okay, you've got Sandy down from Speed 2, but what about Jason Patric?" Well, if you had any doubts about him or the rest of the cast for Haggis' latest, In the Valley of Elah, I don't think you have to worry any longer.

MSN has put up the first trailer for the real-life-inspired drama, which is about an Army vet (Tommy Lee Jones) whose son disappears after returning from Iraq. It's a pretty somber, but intriguing trailer that starts off with his son's worried voice, some fuzzy images and then the dreaded call to Tommy -- his son is missing. All the big players are shown -- Jones, Sarandon, Theron, Patric, Brolin and Franco. As much as I love Josh Brolin in Grindhouse, it's nice to see him get some serious drama, and I can only hope he gets more juicy roles after this, and even better -- James Franco isn't channeling any Osborne whineyness. The trailer's got tanks, darkness, ominous shots, chases with pounding music and those typical pesky military cover-ups. Of course, it's also got some war commentary on Iraq, but that's to be expected considering the themes in Crash. Now, if you head over there to catch it, you might want to avoid reading MSN's description to the right. It's pretty revealing -- more-so than the information we've shared in the past, or the trailer itself.

I have to admit, when I first read the names Tucker and Sarandon together, I had this amusing day dream about Chris Tucker teaming up with Susan Sarandon. The lights would dim, and then a Luhrmanesque explosion of color would soon reveal the pair surrounded by music. He would run around screeching with a strange bouffant while she would croon about her desire for dirty touching. At the end, they would share a passionate embrace, bringing the actress back to her campy roots while giving the actor a new film theme that didn't include cars. Alas, it's just a pipe dream.

Instead, Susan Sarandon and Jonathan Tucker have been added to the cast of In the Valley of Elah, the Paul Haggis-headed film also starring Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, and Jason Patric. While I was a bit off with the above love scenario, she's still getting an interesting match, playing the wife of Tommy Lee Jones. You might recognize Tucker as one of the obsessive teens watching the Lisbon girls in The Virgin Suicides.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, this won't be a biographical account, but a fictionalized one, where Haggis' screenplay is based on a story he wrote with Mark Boal, the writer of the original article, "Death and Dishonor." I don't know if that means he helped with the original piece, or if they wrote a story based on the article together before Haggis started on the screenplay. It will be interesting to see if he focuses more on the politics of the story, or on the thrilling mystery.