FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND: Hmmm, so I saw a lot of movies. But, uncharacteristically, I have little to say about them. In chronological order:

“The Wicker Man”: The Old Oligarch must see this movie. Evil child-killing pagans. I kept thinking about the student of O.O.’s who said that it was OK to kill grandma because her life energy would nourish the broccoli. You think I could make this stuff up? (O.O. on “Christians stole Easter from pagans!” stuff.) This movie creeped me out but did not scare me, maybe in part b/c I a) already knew a lot about freaky British Isles customs, and b) didn’t feel like my basic worldview was being challenged.

“Blood of a Poet”: You know, this was better than I expected. Too Robert Lowell-y, by which I mean that I expect the symbolism meant a lot more to Cocteau than it does to the viewer. But there were several interesting moments or tableaux showing art as/art vs. sensuality, art as voyeurism, art as wound, and art as revenge.

“Beauty and the Beast”: An unexpectedly straightforward retelling. Good acting, esp. from the peripheral male layabouts. But this kind of movie is always judged against the version of the fairy tale that plays out in your head–the thing you think of when you think “Beauty and the Beast,” the thing you’ve created for yourself out of scraps of every retelling you’ve seen. And the only moments in Cocteau’s version that really captured that internal, perfect version, for me, were the scenes in the woods. Cocteau films the exact woods that are in my head: artificial, thick, dreamlike, menacing, and very small.

“Daredevil”: Watched this again, and also listened to the director-and-producer commentary on the DVD. It’s… well, it has virtues I’d ignored. There are several excellent ideas (e.g. painkillers, the water in the Kingpin’s office). The pacing is much better than in “Spider-Man,” making its different moods (action, angst, comedy, romance) feel less Chinese-menu “one from column A, one from column B.” Jon Favreau is fantastic, Michael Clarke Duncan and Colin Farrell are very good, and Ben Affleck is (no, really!) quite good. The colors are terrific. The “Daredevil’s moral growth” arc is less skeletal than I’d remembered, and, I think, ultimately works well.

That said, my initial problems with the flick remain: Several plot moments make exactly no sense (in a really irritating way), the flashbackery is overdone, the music is superangsty (and so catchy! I want to gouge this stuff out of my head!), the different plot arcs never add up to an overarching point to the movie, and I really don’t care about all the people punching other people. But–yeah, I’m a lot happier about this movie than I was after the first viewing. Definitely an elegant mess. Emphasis on the mess, but still, elegant.

“The Sixth Sense”: Erm. I have very scattered impressions of this movie. Accurate, though blunt, criticism of psychiatry. The twist ending is very well done–perfect Agatha Christie: Shove the truth in your face and make you completely miss it. Very Lord Edgware Dies. But it didn’t scare me. It reminded me a lot of “The Shining,” another movie that didn’t scare me and that featured a child whose character was basically defined by his victimization. Also, too much of this movie takes place in tortured whispers.

I missed the IMAX movie about the sunken ship. Hope to see it next week.