> I guess it's just that there seem to be an unusual number of arty dramas, of limited appeal by definition, this year. But maybe not even that is true.

I think this is true; at least your statement that it *seems* that way rings true to me. Part of the reason is that they were all piled up at the end of the year, I think, and it seemed worse than usual. Furthermore, the rest of the year kind of sucked. How many really good movies came out before the end of the year? "Minority Report." Probably "Road to Perdition" (though I haven't seen it). There were some solid, enjoyable movies before then ("My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and "Panic Room" spring to mind), but nothing that I was really excited about. This summer, in particular, seemed awfully dry, though I guess "Attack of the Clones" was pretty good.

Then I think we got a lot of directors doing unusual things. P.T. Anderson made a totally different sort of movie in "Punch Drunk Love" (which came out in the late fall but was brilliant, IMO). I'm not sure what Soderbergh was doing with "Full Frontal" or "Solaris." Scorcese went for a historical epic with "Gangs of New York."

The big blockbusters were sequels. "Harry Potter" was great (and generally accepted as being much improved on the original), but it suffered from a bit of "We already did this last year." "The Two Towers" suffered by being worse than "Fellowship" and also coming only a month or so after a superior version of FotR was released on DVD. "Attack of the Clones" suffered by being the fifth movie in a series that was tarnished (somewhat unfairly) by a lackluster fourth movie. "Spiderman" wasn't exactly a sequel, but it was definitely part of a huge franchise which people already knew. There was no big surprise like "The Matrix" or "The 6th Sense" to make a hojillion dollars and catch us off-guard. Well, there was "Greek Wedding" and while people liked it it wasn't really that fantastic.

The consequence is that the movies we end up being excited about at the end of the year are all artsy dramas. There is, I'd gather, an unusual number of them garnering attention, and an unusual number of them that are of particularly high quality.

Stephen