MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III

Call it envy, call it sour grapes, call it schadenfreude, but I'll admit to hugely enjoying the public meltdown of Tom Cruise, mostly because it's finally making him interesting. Cruise has always been too bland to be true. He's moderately proficient, and in several of his films - most recently Collateral and Minority Report - he's even been impressive. But he has too few resources to draw upon as a performer. It would be hard to accuse Cruise of slouching on the job - he's determined and earnest, and you can sense him trying to suggest interior life. But his line readings have no surprise and his on-screen performances rarely build; whenever a new scene begins, Cruise appears to have forgotten everything his character experienced in his previous scenes. He can't seem to play more than one emotion, or one thought, at a time.

MUNICH

He may be revered - and often reviled - for his sense of childlike wonder, but no Hollywood director shoots scenes of violence with the no-frills grimness of Steven Spielberg. In the helmer's taut, ambitious Munich - which focuses on Israeli retribution for the murders of nine of their athletes at the 1972 Olympics - Spielberg, as he did in Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, doesn't distance himself from the carnage on the screen, and doesn't let us distance ourselves, either. There's nothing self-consciously "artistic" about the numerous killings we're shown here; bullets tear through flesh with terrifying force, bombs rip limbs apart, and most of these atrocities are portrayed with an almost shocking matter-of-factness - we recoil from the violence because Spielberg's presentation of it is so intentionally artless. (The murders in Munich come off as almost painfully realistic.) Yet although Munich is a brutal work, it isn't brutalizing; Spielberg is too much of a natural showman - and natural entertainer - for that. The film is a riveting and intelligent political thriller, and although the director can't fully rein in his expectedly sentimental impulses, Munich is probably Spielberg's strongest directorial accomplishment in more than a decade. It's a gripping and, for Spielberg especially, refreshingly tough-minded piece of work.

CHARLIE & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

For the life of me, I can't figure out what director Tim Burton was trying to accomplish with Charlie & the Chocolate Factory that wasn't previously accomplished by Roald Dahl's book or the beloved 1971 film.