City of Ember was the surprise closing-night film at Fantastic Fest, but I found out about the surprise a little early (which is always fun). I was able to see the film earlier in the week so I could interview director Gil Kenan, who showed up in Austin with surprise guest (to me, too!) Bill Murray for the closing-night festivities. Kenan has directed a pair of entertaining and visually stunning family-friendly features, the Oscar-nominated animated film Monster House and now the City of Ember adaptation, which opens in theaters on Friday. Not only that, but Kenan landed both of these projects right after he graduated from UCLA, where his short film The Lark won him a lot of attention. We talked about what he's done to make City of Ember as beautiful a film as it is, and how he found such compelling lead actors. He's currently linked to a new Robert Zemeckis production, Airman, and we took a minute to discuss that too. Check it out after the jump.

It's football season, which means it's also the season for at least one heartwarming and inspiring movie about the sport. This year the film comes from Universal -- The Express, a biopic of Ernie "The Elmira Express" Davis, the first African-American to win the Heisman trophy, back in 1963. However, the movie divides its time between Davis and his coach at Syracuse University, Ben Schwartzwalder, and shows the ways in which the two characters changed one another (for the better, natch).

The movie opens during the notorious Cotton Bowl game of 1960, when Davis (Rob Brown) was a running back on the Syracuse University team that played The University of Texas, which had not yet allowed black varsity team members. It's a rough game, but Davis is handling himself until all hell breaks loose ... and then we flash back to Davis's childhood in the 1940s and see how he learned to handle nasty racist situations even at an early age. He's stubborn and he's speedy, and eventually decides to use those assets to strive for his goal of playing professional football. His idol, Cleveland Browns running back Jim Brown, advises Davis to play for his alma mater Syracuse because Schwartzwalder (Dennis Quaid) is such an excellent head coach. But Davis encounters difficulties in the ways Schwartzwalder handles the black team members. The coach's primary goal is to avoid "trouble," so they're warned away from the white female students, and worse yet, at certain Southern games they're not allowed to score touchdowns. The real action culminates when the film returns to the Cotton Bowl game in Dallas.

One of the most gorgeous-looking films I've seen this year is City of Ember, the Fox/Walden adaptation of Jeanne Duprau's young-adult fantasy novel about a post-apocalyptic underground city. Although the story is aimed at younger audiences, it's still enjoyable for grown-ups. The movie should be viewed on as large a screen as you can find, giving you the sense that you're this close to the fascinating and decaying city where the story is set.

The movie's prologue lays out the premise clearly. In the future, something goes haywire that causes the end of the world, but fortunately top U.S. scientists have created an underground city to keep a portion of mankind safe. The inhabitants will not be told about the Earth's past, so they won't be traumatized and will assume that their underground city is the only civilization. A box with instructions for returning to the Earth's surface will open in 200 years, which should be time enough for the Earth to be inhabitable again. However, over the course of time the box becomes lost, and after more than two centuries have passed, the city is starting to run out of resources and is falling apart.

400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona (221 screens) has earned some good reviews, but not particularly great ones. I'm not sure many critics have really understood its significance. I think they just stayed on their usual pro- or anti-Woody Allen bandwagon and reviewed it according to how funny or not funny it was, or how Woody Allen-ish the dialogue sounded. Or worse, they brought Allen's private life into it and attacked it for its supposedly twisted sexuality. But Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a major step in the career of this tricky artist, more so than the critical darling Match Point three years ago.

One drawback to Allen's career is that he started out as a blatant comic filmmaker with films like Bananas, Sleeper and Love and Death. Then, movies like Annie Hall, Manhattan and Crimes and Misdemeanors cleverly melded comedy into dramatic situations, but the damage had been done: he was once and always "just" a comedian, forever lower on the scale than his contemporaries (Altman, Scorsese, Coppola, etc.). His other drawback is that he keeps making "Woody Allen" movies, in which the credits always look the same, the musical choices are always the same, the cinematography always looks great, and everyone talks the same. Often, but not always, the same actors appear. Who does this remind you of?

Movies like Nights in Rodanthe are beyond reviewing, because intellectually analyzing them cancels out their intended effect. This is a weepie, pure and simple. If you're the type that likes crying at the movies, you'll love it. If you loved Richard Gere and Diane Lane together in a thriller like Unfaithful (2002) but you don't like to cry, you probably won't like it. Me, I found a few things to like and much to loathe.

Diane Lane stars in Nights in Rodanthe as Adrienne Willis, a frazzled single mother with a young son and a teenage daughter; the latter has just begun talking back and expressing her universal disdain for everything her mother does. Adrienne's no-good husband (Christopher Meloni), who, we learn, has had an affair, arrives to pick up the kids so that Adrienne can go help her happy-go-lucky pal Jean (Viola Davis, playing a typical movie "best friend") look after a sexy, beach-side North Carolina hotel during its off-season. Unfortunately, the husband now wants to get back together.

Confused Adrienne arrives at the hotel, which is decorated head-to-foot in all kinds of colored, tinkly bric-a-brac and prepares for its one and only guest. Dr. Paul Flanner (Richard Gere) is a doctor struggling with a dark secret, and who has arrived for an equally mysterious errand. The attractive duo eventually warm up to one another and talk, but their dark secrets get in the way. Meanwhile, a huge storm threatens to blow away everything that isn't nailed down. I guess it's not too hard to guess what happens next. (Trivia hounds: this is Gere and Lane's third movie together. Besides Unfaithful, they were in Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club together way back in 1984.)

I have a special place in my heart for Fantastic Fest because it was the first film festival I attended and covered professionally, for Cinematical back in 2005, the year the fest started. The 2005 fest was a long weekend of genre films, attended by a small enough crowd that you felt you knew everyone there by the time it was over. Since then, Fantastic Fest has expanded to nine days, added all kinds of crazy parties and events, become notorious for "secret screenings" that premiered films such as Southland Tales and There Will Be Blood, and introduced filmgoers to any number of international science-fiction, horror, animated, and other "fantastic" films.

In its fourth year, Fantastic Fest has grown so large and popular that its opening-night festivities moved from the genre festival's traditional Austin venue, the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar, over to the Paramount, a hundred-year-old theater in the middle of downtown that seats about 1200 people. The theater was packed for the opening-night film, the U.S. premiere of Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and writer-director Kevin Smith was also on hand.

The venue may have been the Paramount, but the minute the lights went down and a vintage trailer for Thunder Cops appeared onscreen, it felt like Fantastic Fest. Festival co-founder Tim League appeared onstage in a bright kimono, with a giant gong next to him, and announced, "With a stroke of this gong, I am about to declare this festival ... awesome!" Kevin Smith then introduced his film with a long and bizarre story about how he recently broke a toilet, then confessed that this had nothing to do with the film, he just wanted to tell the story.

At one end of his career, Neil LaBute was an up-and-coming talent to be reckoned with. He earned a reputation as intelligent Mamet-like artist of uncompromising vision with movies like In the Company of Men and Your Friends & Neighbors, harsh, cynical films that looked under the rock of humanity and found icky, squirmy things. At the other end, there's The Wicker Man, a genuine, "what was he thinking?" movie, and the curious dud The Shape of Things, which couldn't quite reconcile LaBute's stage hat with his cinema hat. In the middle we have Nurse Betty and Possession, two exceptional Hollywood entertainments with gleaming surfaces and dark souls. As with David Gordon Green and his delightful, mainstream comedy Pineapple Express, this type of "compromise" may represent LaBute's real calling.

With his seventh feature Lakeview Terrace, LaBute has once again managed to take a surface thriller and use it to work through some of humanity's ugliest and most hateful issues. It begins with a picture of suburbia, USA. Single father Abel Turner (Samuel L. Jackson) struggles to get his kids up in the morning and off to school, but struggles even harder in relating to them. He knows how to boss them around, but doesn't understand them. (He makes his son change basketball jerseys to reflect "their" favorite team.) Later, he peers out the window and watches the new neighbors move in. He's clearly perturbed that it's a clean-cut white guy, Chris Mattson (Patrick Wilson), married to a beautiful black girl, Lisa (Kerry Washington). We eventually learn that he has his reasons, his own emotional wounds, to explain why and how his buttons have been pushed, but it launches an all-out battle of wills.

I have many vague and silly memories regarding the TV shows produced by The Krofft Brothers. Viewed through an adult's eyes, programs like Land of the Lost (43 episodes), H.R. Pufnstuf (17 episodes), and Far Out Space Nuts (16 episodes) might seem like the pinnacle of stupidity -- and that's because most adults are smart. (OK, Land of the Lost was pretty cool, fine, and I could see it turning into a half-decent adventure-comedy flick, but we won't know for sure until next summer.) But while Lost and Pufnstuf flicks are already in the works, we have a new Krofft Superstar who's about to make his silver screen debut.

Even as a kid I couldn't stomach Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (29 episodes). It was about a creature (who looked like a giant plate of fried matzo) who lived in the beach house of two moronic brothers. Each week Sigmund would be ALMOST discovered by someone, only to have the surfer bros save the day somehow. There was also a pair of nasty sea monster brothers, which begs the question: Why was the show called "Sigmund and the Sea Monsters," when ALL of 'em were sea monsters? Perhaps "Beach Dummies and the Sea Monsters" would have made more sense, but at this point I'm digressing for two whole paragraphs.

Anyway, Universal just wrote the Kroffts a check and hired Dana Gould to write the Sigmund screenplay. According to Variety, "The Kroffts said they hope to follow with the remaining properties originated on The Krofft Supershow, which include Electra Woman and Dyna Girl (8 episodes), Lidsville (17 episodes), The Bugaloos (17 episodes), Dr. Shrinker (16 episodes), Bigfoot and Wildboy (20 episodes) and Wonderbug (22 episodes)" -- to which I can only respond ... "please, don't."

I don't know about anyone else, but I thought that was a pretty exceptional summer, as far as good, entertaining movies went. I've seen summers in which almost every movie seemed mediocre and not one standout ever emerged (2000 and 2006, for example). But this year, there were at least five standouts and at least five more really good movies. Call me crazy, but I caught up with Speed Racer on DVD this week, and even that one didn't seem so bad. (Sure, it's no Iron Man. I think it probably plays better on the small screen, although I did have trouble with the length and with the annoying Spritle character.) And, of course, we saw a lot of stars at their best this summer: Robert Downey Jr., Heath Ledger, Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Ben Stiller, James Franco, Meryl Streep, Penelope Cruz, etc. Good times! It was all so exciting that I nearly forgot about some of my other favorite stars.

It's weird. You can get caught up in the ebb and flow of this business and it may not occur to you that, say, Neve Campbell hasn't been around lately. I miss her. I interviewed her in early 2004, just after Robert Altman's The Company came out. That was a masterful film, a great piece of work, on which Neve had writing and producing credits. It looked like she was really going places: from there, she was poised to play the great silent film star Louise Brooks in a biopic. I saw her again in James Toback's twisted When Will I Be Loved, which I liked more than just about anyone else.

As a kid I fell in love with movies mainly for the stories and characters, and every once in a while, maybe some special effects. As I got older, my love affair was renewed when I discovered the Cult of the Director. The Cult of the Director allows one to look at movies in a far more personal way. It's an ongoing game; one can discover long-forgotten works, or piece together old puzzles, but one can also look ahead and guess how a director's career arc will come together. Basically, there are roughly four kinds of directors. The most common is the kind with no personality, and perhaps very little skill, someone like Brian Robbins, the director of Meet Dave (58 screens). Many of these folks eventually disappear without ever making much of a mark. After that, we get the craftsman, someone with lots of skill and talent but still no personality. These guys are the most interesting to talk to; they're unpretentious and tell the best stories. Brad Anderson, the director of Transsiberian (81 screens), is a good example.

Then there's a weird category of directors who have somehow come to popular attention, despite a lack of skill and/or a lack of personality. These can range from moneymakers like Brett Ratner to Oscar winners like Ron Howard. But of course, since we're talking about live human beings here, there's a lot of wiggle room in these categories, and I could probably establish several sub-categories. Not to mention that any director's career can suddenly change course at any point. Yes, even Brett Ratner could suddenly make a good film. (I'm not saying he will, just that he could.) These people manage to stay on top through a lucky combination of subject matter and promotion. Even though films like Brick Lane (31 screens) and Mongol (16 screens) have no skill or personality, they seem like great films because of their stories and packaging.