Just saw Lars and the Real Girl this afternoon. It's one of the few movies I've seen this year that I've loved. I'm usually pretty cynical and acid-skinned when it comes to sentimentality, but I think the filmmakers pulled off a neat trick. (I am, however, glad I did not know before I saw the movie that Craig Gillespie also directed the awful-looking "Mr. Woodcock" this year.)

I give the writer, Nancy Oliver, a lot of credit. She sidestepped a whole lot of potholes with an inherently tricky story idea. She pulled it off, and for me, the movie played like a wonderful short story come to life: Not too much backstory, not too much psycholanalytical explanation, maybe a little fantasy, but mostly just the story at hand. And it's a good one.

Of course, Ryan Gosling is the Churchill of acting. (see: The Believer, The Notebook, Half Nelson, even Fracture earlier this year.)