Pop quiz: what was one of the most critically lauded films of the year, yet barely got seen in the US? Syndromes and a Century received many admiring reviews off its play at various film festivals and finished #4 in the indieWIRE Critics' Poll; DVD might be a natural home for director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's latest meditative drama. The Strand Releasing DVD is bare-bones, with only a few trailers included, but kudos to them for making this more easily available.

The Ten features an all-star cast in a comic dissection of the Biblical Ten Commandments. In his review, Scott Weinberg acknowledged the "fairly sketchy" framework but said he "discovered a solid handful of worthwhile chuckles in the flick." James Rocchi summarized: "The Ten's a wacky, hit-and-miss, shotgun blast of a comedy that stands apart from the corporate commodity comedy's become in major-studio Hollywood." The DVD from ThinkFilm includes an audio commentary, more than 55 minutes of alternate takes and deleted scenes, an interview, a "making of" feature, ringtones (!) and wallpaper.

PBS is broadcasting Robert Stone's JFK doc Oswald's Ghost starting this week, but it's also available on DVD with extra features, including an interview with Stone, "The Zapruder film and beyond," and a visit fo Dealey Plaza. In my review, I called it "the rare film whose power increases with distance," though I wish that more of Stone's opinions had been expressed. Maybe the DVD's extra features will add the "degree of balance of perspective that is otherwise missing from a very well-made documentary."

Kim Voynar felt Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, a documentary about a project that brought together distinguished writers, soldiers and their families, at times seems "uncertain of just what kind of film it wants to be," lacking any new insights into the Iraq War. She thought it would lend itself more to the intimacy of television "much more than the big screen." The DVD includes a discussion guide.

Siblings dealing with their dying father trumped a man who can only move one eyelid in a box office battle between two award-worthy independent films. On the face of it, just because of their subject matter, neither would seem likely to draw big crowds, but excellent critical response and festival buzz appear to have paid off.

The Savages opened last Wednesday in four theaters in New York and Los Angeles and earned a very good $38,250 per screen, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman star as the siblings, with Philip Bosco as their father; Tamara Jenkins directed. Cinematical's Kim Voynar wrote: "There are no easy answers in dealing with aging and dying parents, and Jenkins doesn't try to give us one; she simply takes us into the story of her fascinating characters, and the integrity with which she handles it makes it ring true throughout."

The "one eyelid" movie, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, opened at three locations in New York and Los Angeles; weekend receipts reflect a strong per-screen average of $25,100. When he saw it at Cannes, our own James Rocchi said he found himself "on the edge of tears more than a few times ... [it's] a movie well worth seeing, with images and lessons that strike with power and don't let go."

Four other indies opened in one or two theaters in New York and/or Los Angeles, and Leonard Klady at Movie City News has their estimated per-screen earnings: Jessica Yu's doc Protagonist ($4,920; read Christopher Campbell's review); Miles Brandman's "darkly comic" Sex and Breakfast ($3,850), Robert Stone's doc Oswald's Ghost ($1,830; read my review), and Francesco Lucente's drama Badland ($1,220).

At least four other indies also opened, but financial results have not yet surfaced: ice hockey bio-pic The Rocket, prison escape thriller Chronicle of an Escape, foodie/lesbian romantic comedy Nina's Heavenly Delights and Christian Slater-starrer He Was a Quiet Man.

Oswald's Ghost is the rare film whose power increases with distance. As I sat in the historic Texas Theatre last week, where Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested on the day President Kennedy was assassinated, and watched a special screening of the documentary, the suggestive rhythm of the editing and the understated urgency of the musical accompaniment lulled me into a false sense of security. I was deceived into thinking that I knew what kind of film it was and so, based on that assumption, I allowed the shaped narrative to lead me down a certain path, only to discover at the end that I had arrived at a very different destination than I expected.

Filmmaker Robert Stone says that he was initially inspired by the furor that erupted after the release of Oliver Stone's JFK in 1991. Why were people so wrapped up emotionally in what had happened so many years before? How had that pivotal event changed the nation? Ten years later, he saw parallels in how the nation responded to 9/11 and started what he calls his own "journey" to discover why America has remained obsessed with the JFK assassination, to the point that he calls it a "theology."

That being said, Stone does not take the approach I had anticipated. After an opening fusillade of opinions issued by experts, he dives right into the events leading up to November 22, 1963, laying them out one by one in distinct, logical order as though he had an organized sheaf of papers he was slapping down on a table. The drama is inherently captivating; no matter how many times you've seen news footage and photographs from the days in question, it still feels like you're dragged against your will into a nightmare.

When I first stepped foot onto Dealey Plaza in Dallas years ago, I had an instant feeling of deja vu, similar to what most of us feel when we visit a place in person that we've previously seen only in photographs, on film or on television. It was a beautiful, sunny day; I walked around the plaza for a long, long time, picturing in my mind the motorcade that carried President John F. Kennedy on his fateful trip, checking out all the angles, tromping around the grassy knoll, staring up at the former Texas School Book Depository. That building has been converted into The Sixth Floor Museum, where you can gaze down through the window where Lee Harvey Oswald reportedly fired his assassin's rifle at 12:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963.

The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald escaped from the building, rode a city bus for two blocks, traveled several miles by taxi, stopped by the rooming house where he was staying, and then shot and killed a police officer about half a mile away. He slipped into the nearby Texas Theatre without paying, and briefly watched War is Hell (second billed to Van Heflin in Cry of Battle). He was apprehended by a flock of police officers at approximately 1:45 p.m.

I'd never thought of the Texas Theatre except as an anonymous footnote to a tragedy. I ended up attending the re-opening of the building last week as a result of my assignment to review Robert Stone's documentary Oswald's Ghost, which opens in New York on Friday, November 30, and discovered quite accidentally that the Texas Theatre has a fascinating history of its own.