Best movie in several years

Rating: 9/10 (18 November 2006)

Stranger than fiction starts out like post-modern literary snob snot -- anyone good with numbers must be dull and obsessive -- and never entirely leaves the genre. However, the acting brings the script to life (when Maggie Gyllenhaal enters, it is like switching on the sound). And the nuance and wit elevate the movie above its plodding peers such as Endless Sunspot Mind and Malkovich Bees John. The transformation from sneering tragedy to feel-good comedy is self-aware, leaving the characters and audience satisfied but ambivalent. To what extent should we be willing to exchange humanity for art or vice-versa in this instance, a movie?
I'm left at the end with a sense of the triviality of the fiction and movie business. Just as the script exalts baking over academe, so it says that you shouldn't take your entertainment too seriously.