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.

Essentially there are two kinds of gangster movies: those made during the time when men wore hats in real life and those made during the time when men wore hats that came from wardrobe. The first type are usually in black-and-white, punchy, nervy and full of wisecracks. The second type are usually longer and more violent, but slower-paced and nobler of purpose, as if the hats suddenly carried an extra weight, an extra sadness. What Michael Mann has achieved with the new Public Enemies is an often fascinating, striking combination of the two.

I walked into the new film, convinced that it could never top lean, mean B-movie classics like Max Nosseck's Dillinger (1945) or Don Siegel's Baby Face Nelson (1957) in which these gangsters were initially immortalized. But it equals them, capturing some of their raw energy and allure and clocking in as a longer, but equally fast-moving and adrenaline-pumping example. Somehow Mann only manages to use the extra time for flash and spectacle, and hardly any for depth or detail, but that only helps to speed things along. Happily, he also avoids the typical origin story, and plunges right in.

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.

The French writer Colette, born Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873 - 1954), lived one of those witty, charming lives you've read about, doing things like performing at the Moulin Rouge and having affairs with Josephine Baker, while marrying several rich husbands. She wrote, among many other things, what would become the famous musical Gigi, which Director Vincente Minnelli turned into a dull, immobile Oscar-winning hit in 1958. The English film director Stephen Frears would have been 13 when Colette died, though at that age, he had most likely never heard of her. But now, 55 years later, the two have teamed up for the new movie Cheri, based on Collete's 1920 novel about a passionate affair between an aging courtesan and a spoiled younger man.

Frears seems like the right man for the job. After all, his similarly sexy costume drama Dangerous Liaisons (1988) was another Oscar-winning hit. And in his Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005) he dealt with issues of sexuality and censorship on the stage, so he seems prepped to make something really sexy and full of wit and charm, especially given that he's re-teamed with his Dangerous Liaisons star Michelle Pfeiffer. It's a win-win scenario that quickly turns lose-lose. For some reason, Cheri is dead on arrival, a cold fish. It just lies there, too lethargic to be funny and too timid to be sexy, but not deep enough for any real drama.

he Hurt Locker opens this week, and one of the most remarkable things about this remarkable war movie is that it plays more like a gut-busting Sam Fuller/Don Siegel WWII action film than it does one of today's somber, navel-gazing, message-driven war films. Perhaps even more remarkable -- though it's sad that it has to be so remarkable -- is that director Kathryn Bigelow is a woman, out-shooting most of today's male directors. But thankfully she's not the only one to give men a run for their money in guy-oriented genres.

1. Near Dark (1987, Kathryn Bigelow)
Bigelow has already racked up an impressive career of male-bonding films of all genres. Most of them are underrated gems or cult films, and I like all of them, but this vampire film is my favorite (though, technically, the word "vampire" is never used in the film). It was one of the first films to remove the classic gothic setting and place the bloodsuckers in the modern-day American west, among the denim-clad rednecks, neon bars and pickup trucks. It's relentlessly violent and sometimes disturbing but at the same time it knows how to pause for moments of glorious beauty and even a touching love story.

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.

I didn't see a lot of movies in theaters as a child -- when you have younger brothers and a sister, family moviegoing is difficult and expensive. But by 1983, I was old enough to go to movies with friends -- proper PG movies, not that babyish Disney stuff, either. Still, there were many movies I had to miss. Although PG-13 was still a year away, my mom often checked the local Catholic weekly newspaper to make sure I wasn't seeing anything Morally Offensive. I don't know why I didn't just sneak into more movies, but I was a prissy little 14-year-old and suspect most of my friends were too. (Also, a terrible liar.)

Despite the restrictions, I remember 1983 as one of my favorite summers for movies because it marked the first time I stood in line on a movie's opening day to see something I was really, really excited about. I wasn't disappointed, either, although the summer did hold some letdowns. It also marks the first time I saw an R-rated movie in a theater, which my parents would never have let me do at that time, and which was also far from disappointing. I've bolded the titles of my favorite films from that summer.

Harold Ramis has worked in comedy a long time, and his career has taken many directions. With his work on the Ghostbusters (1984) script and his straight-man performance in the film, he managed to allow Bill Murray room to move and riff within the confines of a visual effects-heavy summer blockbuster. As for the meticulously crafted classic Groundhog Day (1993), I hesitate to call any movie "perfect," but it comes close. But then there were phoned-in hits like Analyze This (1999) and Analyze That (2002) that seemed too tightly wound and too slavishly dependent on plot to be very funny.

Ramis' new film Year One, on the other hand, comes closer to the spirit of his directorial debut Caddyshack (1980). I'm not saying it's quite as funny or as brilliant, but it's in the same spirit. It cares thankfully little about its plot or its character arcs, or historical accuracy; it's a bit flabby and careless, but it's also gleefully stupid, and it has the ability to knock you off guard and make you giggle helplessly.

Lately, we have seen documentaries with a huge range of subjects, from war to religion, from art to video games. Those subjects are interesting and newsworthy and perhaps even moving or entertaining, but there are only two subjects that directly affect the people of the world on a daily, hourly basis. The first is the climate crisis, for which folks need to learn how to adjust their lifestyle in order to prevent further damage and encourage healing. But even more urgent is the issue of food. Every living man, woman and child eats, or thinks about eating, every single day, several times a day. Yet, as the new Food, Inc. points out, most of us know very little about our food. A very deliberate veil has sprung up between us and what we eat. Fortunately, little by little, we're learning.

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?"