THE DEAD GIRL (2006)
This is a wonderful movie with a great cast: Marsha Gay Harden, Mary Beth Hurt, Giovanni Ribisi, Toni Collette, a long way from "Little Miss Sunshine," Josh Brolin, who will probably be doing everything that Nick Nolte used to do for a while now, and Brittany Murphy, Kerry Washington -- a lot of really good actors, doing wonderful naturalistic work.

Karen Moncrieff wrote and directed the story of a dead girl's body is found in a field in Southern California, near Los Angeles. The story of the girl is told in six segments, each from the point of view of one of six people who had something to do with her life and her death. Some were involved as directly as her mother; some tangentially, as with Rose Byrne, who performs the post mortem on the "Dead Girl."

Oh yes, Rose Byrne, who is so good in "Friday Night Lights," also is in it, and great in it, and very different from what you see in "Friday Night Lights." It's not a film where you'll go away humming the tunes or retelling the jokes. For the people in this film, life is basically suffering and then you die. It is grim, but very moving, beautifully observed, and deeply compassionate.

I think this woman Karen Moncrieff is a writer/director to watch. She has another film called "The Blue Car" that I also saw. It is good, but not as fully realized as "The Dead Girl." Both deal with difficult subjects, but where "The Blue Car" strains credibility a little, "The Dead Girl" feels perfectly authentic, yet is always deliberate, and artistic.

AMERICAN GANGSTER (2007)
This movie is like the cartoon version of "The Godfather" influenced by a steroid enhanced version of "Serpico." It is straining so hard to be an American classic that it completely misses the point of classic literature. Great films, great books, great songs are struggling only to be themselves, to tell, clearly and articulately, the story of their own existence.

"The Godfather" redefined a classic American genre. It paid its respects to the original "Scarface" (released in 1932) and to "White Heat," but it went beyond those great films to become something of it's own. "American Gangster" just imitates great and good films like the "Serpico," "The French Connection," "The Godfather," even "King of New York," the great, underrated Chris Walken / Abel Ferrara collaboration.

Denzel Washington pursing his lips and never smiling except at his mother and casually blowing people's brains out does not make him a mobster and a drug kingpin any more than Leonardo DeCaprio putting on a suit and growing a mustache makes him Howard Hughes.

Even Russell Crowe, who I think is doing good work for him in this, seems like he is just putting on the clothes and wearing the mannerisms. It is the director's fault. This guy moves the camera around and cuts quickly, but there is no heart, there is no deep and real need to communicate this story of growing up bad and successful in America.