And so comes A Girl Cut in Two, which recently screened at the 51st San Francisco International Film Festival. I loved it. It's another superbly-made, highly enjoyable Chabrol film, but you probably won't see it on any top ten lists, nor will Chabrol be collecting any awards for it. I think "consistent" is a bad word among film people; we're more easily impressed by change and diversity, or by the newest, latest thing. Actors like John Wayne were routinely overlooked in favor of actors like Marlon Brando, though Brando could never in a million years have pulled off what John Wayne accomplished in The Searchers. Brando could do lots of things, but John Wayne was the best at being John Wayne. That's my standard rant, and that's how I feel about Chabrol. Now, onto the new film:

In the spirit of the season and goodwill and whatnot, I thought I'd forgo griping about the sorry state of things this week and instead send out some love to the downtrodden, the small films of 2007 that were somehow overlooked, underrated or outright ignored in some way. Let's start with the Russian film The Italian, released in January, which caused critics to dredge up the word "Dickensian" for the first time in a while. But for all that it was a surprising, deeply-felt story of an orphan who escapes the orphanage to find his birth-parents.

Kino released the documentary Romantico in January as well, and they're apparently counting it as a 2007 release. I wrote a few weeks back about the documentary format; there's certainly a place for journalism and reporting, but the very best documentaries, the ones that stand the test of time, are the ones that capture the details of life, like Crumb, Hoop Dreams and To Be and to Have. Romantico is one of those. It tells the story of a mariachi illegally based in San Francisco who decides to go back to Mexico to see his family, even though he risks never being able to return (of course, his income in the States is much higher than in Mexico). Romantico will most certainly be overlooked in any discussion of 2007's documentaries, but it's worth seeking out on DVD.

• James Aljian (c.1932-2007) - Vice President of finance for MGM Studios in the 1970s and then for MGM/UA in the early 1980s. He died of cancer April 12, in Los Angeles. (Variety)
• Dick Arnall (1944-2007) - British animator who worked on Yellow Submarine and produced the BAFTA-nominated shorts A is for Autism and Home Road Movies. He died of pneumonia as a consequence of a brain tumor February 6. (Guardian)
• Nair Belo (1931-2007) - Brazilian actress who appears in Heart and Guts and Alberto Cavalcanti's Simon the One-Eyed. She died of heart disease April 17, in Rio De Janeiro. (Globo)
• Ariane Borg (1915-2007) - French actress who appears in The Phantom Wagon. She died April 16, in Couilly-Pont-Aux-Dames, Seine-et-Marne, France. (IMDb)
• Kitty Carlisle Hart (1910-2007) - Actress best known for starring alongside the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera. She also starred opposite Bing Crosby in She Loves Me Not and Here Is My Heart and appeared as herself in Hollywood Canteen. After more than forty years away from the movies, she made appearances in Radio Days and Six Degrees of Separation. She was also the widow of Moss Hart. She passed away following a battle with pneumonia April 17, in New York City. (MSNBC)
• Jean-Pierre Cassel (1932-2007) - French actor (pictured) who worked with many of the great masters of cinema. He starred in Melville's Army of Shadows, Bunuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Renoir's The Elusive Corporal, Clément's Is Paris Burning? and multiple films by Chabrol and by de Broca. He also appears among the ensemble casts of Superman II, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, Murder on the Orient Express, Prêt-à-Porter, the upcoming Asterix at the Olympic Games and the 1973 version of The Three Musketeers and its follow-ups, The Four Musketeers and The Return of the Musketeers. His son is actor Vincent Cassel, with whom he appears in Matthieu Kassovitz's Café au Lait and The Crimson Rivers. He died April 19. (Playfuls)

Claude Chabrol's The Bridesmaid still hangs on this week, playing on one screen, having earned less than $100,000 in its United States run, despite mostly warm reviews. I can't say what it is people don't like about this movie; I think it's one of Chabrol's best.

It tells the story of an enterprising young man (Benoît Magimel) who meets the mysterious and eerily sexy "Senta" (Laura Smet) at his sister's wedding. She begins making pledges of love and devotion to him, and he responds with enthusiasm and even borderline obsession, but no one knows exactly how far the pairing will go. Chabrol masterfully carries us through the plot, but also delves headfirst into the story's more human, more erotic aspects.

The latest thriller from Claude Chabrol is, surprisingly, a French attempt at an overwhelmingly American genre. I don't think the genre has a name, but it always poses the same question -- can I have sex with a crazy woman and walk away unscathed? Made famous by Fatal Attraction and its successors, this special catalog of films is one that American males cherish, because it allows us to work out our natural terror of dominant women and relish the idea that nymphomania may actually exist, if only in short, homicidal bursts. Who knew French men were struggling with the same issues? There are problems with this particular entry in the genre, but they don't lie with the crazy woman at the center, thankfully. Parisian actress Laura Smet perfectly embodies Senta, a fleshy mope who looks like a soiled carbon copy of Kate Winslet, with a broad, Rubenesque frame and snarling lips. Senta is a bridesmaid at the wedding of Sophie (Solène Bouton), sister of the arrow-straight and unadventurous Philippe (Benoit Magimel). Before the cake is cut, Senta is shooting daggers at Philippe and serving up lines like "I wasn't born to have a bad time." To show she's not kidding, she insists on sleeping with him on their first date. It takes a lot of crazy to make a man see the flaws in a woman like that.

If you only see one movie in 2006, make it An Inconvenient Truth, which drops to 346 screens this week. And yes, that includes the heavily lauded United 93. Because, frankly, the point of that movie will be lost when 20-foot walls of water have crashed down upon and destroyed large chunks of the world. When you walk out of An Inconvenient Truth, you feel terrified, energized and hopeful. And if you're a Republican (or, in fact, one of many Democrats) that doesn't like Mr. Gore, please just put that aside for 100 minutes. Party politics will be the least of your troubles when the environment hits its critical tipping point as discussed in this film.

It keeps me awake nights to think that, while an estimated 3.1 million people have seen An Inconvenient Truth, some 33.8 million have seen The Da Vinci Code (now on 201 screens). I know I'm supposed to go into greater detail when I write a review, but The Da Vinci Code is really just about the dumbest movie I've seen in a while. And it has nothing to do with the book (which I haven't read) or its nifty little treasure hunt. I'm just talking about a work of complete cinematic incompetence by Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman, who -- inexplicably -- both won Oscars in 2002. (Howard beat out Robert Altman, David Lynch, Ridley Scott and Peter Jackson.) If this is a measure of our national intelligence, I think I'd better run out and invest in some scuba gear before it's too late.