Haven't seen many movies lately, but haven't written about the few I've seen, so here's some catching up:

Movie: Lord of War. The opening sequence sums the movie up more economically than the rest does. It starts in a factory with the manufacture of a bullet -- stamped, assembled, inspected, packed, shipped, received, unpacked, loaded, fired into the skull of a teenaged boy, probably in Liberia or Sierra Leone. The subject here is the arms trade -- especially the arms from the defunct Soviet empire that flooded into Africa. Nicolas Cage plays a dealer from New York's Little Odessa with an uncle in the Ukraine Army -- as I understand it he's a composite of five real arms dealers. (Ethan Hawke plays a composite of even more Interpol agents, always on Cage's tail.) Told in flashbacks highlighting Cage's close scrapes over the years, the seduction of his wife and the destruction of his brother, whatever action occurs is anomalous -- an inadvertent breakdown of everyday business, which on rare occasions gives us a glimpse of the destruction such business facilitates. The dearth of feeling is both the film's power and weakness -- there is no human interest here, even of the victims. The visuals, on the other hand, can be interesting -- aerial shots of Africa, the remarkable disassembly of an airplane. B+

Movie: Broken Flowers. Also starts with an opening sequence, this time tracing the path of a letter through the USPS. Bill Murray plays a retired computer executive, who in response to the letter and prodding from nosy neighbor Jeffrey Wright is sent on a search for four old girlfriends who might have sent the letter -- anonymously, warning of an unknown son assumed to be seeking Murray out. The four women run the range of possible reactions, almost stereotypically. More satisfying for its nuances than storyline. B+

Movie: A History of Violence. One thing you got to give Hollywood is that they can make violence more attractive than it ever is in real life. Cafe owner Viggo Mortensen gets pushed too far three times, and responds with breathtaking accuracy and economy. Of course, he's got experience, but his son levels a bully with the same effectiveness. These are dream sequences, and it helps that they happen quicker than anyone can signal. This is classified as a "thriller," but unlike all the others it doesn't dwell on the omens -- it cuts to the chase. Maria Bello has a very tough role as Mortensen's wife. She handles it well, and thankfully doesn't have to kill anyone. Ed Harris and William Hurt get the easy roles as villains, and add something anyway. Peter MacNeill, as a smalltown sheriff, should be remembered for Supporting Actor come Oscar time, but won't. A

Movie: Good Night, and Good Luck. Shot in black and white, interweaved with newsreel footage of Sen. Joe McCarthy doing his thing. David Strathairn is note-perfect as Edward R. Murrow, but his role as McCarthy's nemesis is hard to judge. The self-importance of the backstage news production always threatens to overwhelm the story, so merely showing it runs the risk of exposing the hubris the networks are famous for. In fact, CBS has become such a kick toy for the right these days that it's hard not to see what's coming when you watch this. So parallels between then and now cut both ways. One thing I was struck by was how emphatically Murrow could defend his own anti-communism -- something that Don Hollenbeck, a newsman hounded to suicide, could not do. Given how discredited McCarthy is these days, I came away wondering when someone would come up with the guts to mount a sympathetic movie in defense of real communists. Like Ethel and, especially, Julius Rosenberg. A-

Movie: Capote. Despite growing up in Kansas at the time, I have no memories of the Clutter Family killing -- only the occasional references back to the crime, which became vastly more famous once Truman Capote published In Cold Blood. On the other hand, I remember Capote's appearances on the Tonight show rather well -- his voice, his hands, his haughty insistence that his sympathies were with the victims. Never read the book, but much later I saw the movie, which covers the killers enough. So, at least personally, this this movie, by concentrating on a writer far more enigmatic than his subjects, closes the circle. Philip Seymour Hoffman has a tough job doing Capote -- he gets the mannerisms close enough, but is so large compared to Capote that he comes off as an ungainly monster whereas Capote was more like a dilletantish dwarf, his mannerisms projected from his body rather than trapped inside. Moreover, Capote's crippling self-obsession as the execution looms doesn't quite jive with my remembrance of him after the book's publication, but perhaps there's something to it -- as the movie points out, Capote never wrote another book. Catherine Keener as Harper Lee helps out immensely. Yet despite the unease I felt at the time, this movie continues to gain stature in my memory. Saw the trailer for it again later, and it added to the depth of the movie. A-

Movie: Paradise Now. A film by Hany Abu-Assad, who previously did Rana's Wedding. He has a sharp eye for the everyday hardships of Palestinians under occupation, but he's not heavy-handed about it, and he's at least as interested in how life goes on despite the hardships. But this time the problem he tackles is how to fight back. On one side, there is a woman, the daughter of a local "martyr," who argues that violence surrenders the moral high ground. On the other, underground political operatives plot their response to a previous attack by setting up a suicide bomb attack in Tel Aviv. In between are two young Palestinian men, the designated bombers, who get a second chance to think it over when the original plans go awry. One, Khaled, is caught in the usual economic trap. The other, Said, is haunted by his father's history as a collaborator -- a "weakness," for which he was killed. Said gives a tightly argued speech on why he intends to go through with the plan -- the key point is to make them feel the pain we feel. The operatives may be more cynical, or more manipulative, but one senses they understand the difficulties of the choice all too well. In the end the screen fades to white -- the focus is on intentions, not on consequences. Similarly, the Israelis are mere faces without words -- this is a debate in and of the Palestinians. While those are fair artistic choices, they are blind politically, in large part because no possible choice works. Kind of like the trap Israel has set for the Palestinians. B+