However, I have a grudging respect for "Cloverfield." Its only aspirations are to make money and, of course, to have some fun in doing so. It's all a home movie, a device lifted directly from "The Blair Witch Project." It is about a bunch of successful, attractive 20-somethings, who may as well be the cast of "Friends." Moreover, it has a monster attacking New York City, so it has "Godzilla" right smack in the middle of it. I can almost hear the laughter in the marketing meeting.

Not that it matters, but the monster seems to be somewhat humanoid, insect-like and reptilian all at the same time. It drops babies all over the city who are specifically insect-like and whose bite is toxic in a particularly bloody way. It isn't frightening the way "Alien" is when the monster comes out of John Hurt's chest, because it isn't surprising in any way. But, there is a cringing kind of panicky feeling that begins to overtake you as you watch. It may be the claustrophobia of seeing it all through the lens of a hand-held camcorder. That gimmicky device is handled very well.

Far better than in "Redacted." And there is comic relief running throughout because the man holding the camera is kind of a Seth Rogen-like doofus, smitten with a girl who is traveling with them through the demolished city.

The broken city is perhaps what is most compelling about it and most questionable. Throughout, but especially at the beginning, there is a Sept. 11 feeling. Something has attacked Manhattan. Buildings are collapsing. The authorities are trying, but failing, to maintain order. People are fleeing, evacuating the lower part of Manhattan. No one knows what is happening or how long it is going to last.

I had several friends who were there on that day and it feels much like they described it, only in comic book form. I don't think it does a disservice to the memory of that day. If you let it remind you of how deeply we all felt the panic from the bizarre attack that we all suffered and how terrifyingly unknown the future became at that moment, it may seep in that we are still in a kind a numbed state waiting for the other shoe to drop and that we may be more slave to our fears than we are willing to admit.

I think it succeeds at what it sets out to do and what it sets out to do is not reprehensible, so it meets my new criteria for whether it is good or not. It is what it is, knows it and takes a bit of joy from being that.

"CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR" (2007)

Mike Nichols, who directed "The Graduate" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff?" and a few other very good movies; Tom Hanks, who won two Oscars in a row for "Philadelphia" and "Forrest Gump"; Julia Roberts who was the "Pretty Woman" everyone fell in love with and "Erin Brockovich"; Philip Seymour Hoffman, who has done more great work than there is room to list here; a timely political story based on the truth and a war.

It sounds like a can't-miss kind of film.

But it does.

It fails because Nichols is a cold, dispassionate man making a film about a man who is obviously over the top in his indulgences and his passions. Hanks has become an actor who does all his work inside the frame of the film, nothing spills over, and nothing indicates that there is more to the life of the character he is playing than exactly what is asked for in the script.

Roberts may be old enough for the part chronologically, but she still has the innocence about her that allowed her to play a prostitute who seemed virginal and she can't pull off the sexual power or the passion that seems to drive this woman.

The script, while clever and occasionally witty, skips from highlight to highlight, from moment to moment the way a made-for-television film does, hurrying along to its climax without gathering any momentum or concern from the audience. Hoffman is the only one doing any kind of work that we take notice of or care about. It should have been his story. It was his war.