Lost Nation: The Ioway

LOST NATION: THE IOWAY

Last October, Moline-based filmmakers Kelly and Tammy Rundle debuted their documentary Lost Nation: The Ioway, a 53-minute exploration of the Native Americans for whom the state of Iowa was named. And if you were one of the lucky ones who saw this Fourth Wall Films production at its October 11 premiere in Des Moines, its October 21 engagement at the Putnam Museum & IMAX Theatre, or its subsequent screenings throughout the Midwest, you likely already know that it's something special - a fantastically informative, beautifully constructed, and (not for nothing) thoroughly enjoyable piece of work.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Freddie Highmore in August RushAUGUST RUSH

There's a scene in the tear-jerker August Rush in which the titular musical prodigy (Freddie Highmore) and a friendly Irish rocker (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) - unaware that they're father and son - engage in a happy bit of dueling guitars in Central Park, their matching grins widening as the improvised strumming reaches its climax. It's a great moment, and I mention it because it's the only one in the film that I didn't find excruciating.

Keanu Reeves in ConstantineCONSTANTINE

At one point in Bryan Singer's original X-Men film, Wolverine stares at the fetishistic black-leather duds he and his teammates are wearing and asks, incredulously, "You actually go outside in these things?" To which Cyclops, in-joking on the character's original Marvel-comic attire, replies, "What, would you prefer yellow Spandex?" God, yes.

Benicio del Toro and Tommy Lee Jones in The HuntedTHE HUNTED

Offhand, I can't think of an acting team more oddly matched, and strangely inspired, than Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro. Talk about your odd couples: Jones, with his clipped, no-bullshit gruffness that gives way to a kind of mellow humor, and Del Toro, with his loopy line readings and eloquent silences (you're always wondering what, exactly, is going on in his head). When both men are at the top of their game - Jones in Lonesome Dove or The Fugitive, Del Toro in Traffic or his brief, brilliant turns in The Pledge and Fearless - they're marvelously vibrant performers, so even if you're dreading yet another routine action picture, the chance to see this duo play opposite one another might be reason enough to sit through The Hunted. The movie, directed by thriller veteran William Friedkin, winds up being little more than a violent screen adaptation of "Where's Waldo?", but Jones and Del Toro, at least, give it some punch.

Ian Somerhalder in The Rules of AttractionTHE RULES OF ATTRACTION

Roger Avary's The Rules of Attraction, based on yet another Bret Easton Ellis (Less Than Zero, American Psycho) novel about soulless, loathsome yuppie scumbags of the '80s, is vile, venal, and sometimes shockingly distasteful. I loved it.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits WithinFINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN

I can't imagine who could make sense of the gobbledygook plotting of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, yet I can't imagine who will fail to be wowed by the movie's effects; it might be the most visually extraordinary, intellectually banal sci-fi work since 2001: A Space Odyssey. There isn't a moment in the film that isn't amazing to watch, and that includes the moments when the heroine (voiced by Ming-Na) simply walks alone with her hair blowing lightly past her cheeks; Final Fantasy stands as the current standard-bearer in computerized realism.

Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe in Proof of LifePROOF OF LIFE

Proof of Life, the kidnapping drama by director Taylor Hackford, stars David Morse as Peter Bowman, an American engineer living near the Andes who gets abducted by a group of Latin American revolutionaries convinced that Bowman's dam-building project is an insidious political maneuver.