Taking the Bullock by the horns.

There is a moment in Two Weeks Notice when Hugh Grant, Sandra Bullock's soon-to-be-ex boss, lists what he'll miss about her. "She's funny...of course, not deliberately," he muses, hitting the Bullock's-eye on why she makes us laugh. She just goes about her character's business -- an FBI agent posing as a pageant contestant in Miss Congeniality, a public-interest lawyer in drag as a real-estate developer's counsel in Notice, a preoccupied mother pretending to be a free spirit in Forces of Nature -- and locates the humor of a square peg forcing itself into round hole.

I like Bullock, on screens this weekend in The Proposal, as a Canadian-born career woman who needs to get married to a U.S. citizen (her assistant, Ryan Reynolds), so she can keep her job. She's hilarious, he's hilarious, it's hilarious. And the funny thing about Bullock is that she's awfully good and undeliberate at the dramatic moments, too, so affecting as Harper Lee in Infamous and as the homicide detective in Murder by Numbers. Heck, I even enjoyed her in The Lake House, a preposterously involving time-warp romance between her and her Speed co-star, Keanu Reeves.

Bullock, 44,  has been a star for 15 years, which in actress years is like a half century. She's made some real dreck (Hope Floats, anyone? Practical Magic?), yet I wince when cinephiles like David Thomson write her off as "a household name who has yet to be in a vital movie." Apart from Diane Keaton and Drew Barrymore, is there a funnier female clown currently working?

Bill O'Reilly, making his point and exclaiming it, too.

In the debate over civil debate, Roger Ebert offers a critique of Bill O'Reilly  that refrains from name-calling and other polarizing language, eloquently and patiently modeling the the way he believes that political arguments should be conducted, "with sincere debate and friendly persuasion." A persuasive piece of persuasion. Your thoughts?

Farmer Hoggett (James Cromwell) and his porcine pal in "Babe."

Some movies are complex stews: They taste richer the second time around when all the flavors reveal themselves. I find this most true with comedy and mystery. In funny movies I'm laughing so hard I don't catch all the jokes the first time around. In mysteries, on repeat viewing I see how and where the filmmakers have seeded the story. It wasn't until the third time  I saw The Godfather that I could tell Tessio from Clemenza.

Recently Amy B asked for movies that fit the "Once is Not Enough" rule: Here is a provisional list, to which I'd add most screwball comedies and movies with fractured narratives and surprise endings. Just as certain music grows on you, so do these films.

All About My Mother; Angry Harvest; Babe; La Belle et La Bete; Blow Up; Bottle Rocket; Cache; Casablanca; Chinatown; Clueless; Contempt; The Conversation; The Crowd; The Departed; E.T.: The Extraterrestial; A Face In the Crowd; Femme Fatale; The Godfather (I & II); Groundhog Day; Howards End; I Know Where I’m Going!; It’s a Wonderful Life; Jerry Maguire; La Avventura; The Lady Eve; Laurence of Arabia; Lost in Translation; Malcolm X; Michael Clayton; Modern Times; The Man Who Would Be King; North By Northwest; Notorious; On the Waterfront; Ordet; Raging Bull; The Rules of the Game; The Searchers; Shadow of a Doubt; Sherlock, Jr.; Some Like it Hot; Something New; Spartacus; Spirited Away; Sweet Smell of Success; Swing Time; Syriana; Tokyo Story; Toy Story 2; 2001: A Space Odyssey; Singing in the Rain; The Sixth Sense; Training Day; Vagabond; Vertigo; The Wild Child The Wizard of Oz.

Your nominations?

Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills in the original "The Parent Trap."

Fun list from New York Magazine's Vulture: Best multiple-role performances. Agree about Alec Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets, Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove, Eddie Murphy in Bowfinger, Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers and Nic Cage in Adaptation. But the Vulture forgot the "Eve" movies: Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve and Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve. And failed to mention Olivia de Havilland  and Bette Davis in the ultimate "there's two of them!" twin films, A Stolen Life and The Dark Mirror. And neglected Hayley Mills and Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap movies.

I love seeing an actor compete against him or herself, don't you? In the twinfilms, it's fun to watch the actor playing the bad twin pretending to be the good twin. Which films have we missed?

Irrfan Khan, Father Ganguli in "The Namesake"

Father's Day is more than a week away, but readers have been asking for movie titles devoted to Dad. Given an arbitrary date of films after 1960, here are the next best fathers to my own.

Bend it Like Beckham  (2002):  On the wedding day of his elder daughter, Anupam Kher allows his soccer-mad younger daughter to participate in a match. He couldn't resist the prospect of having both daughters happy on the same day.

Boyz N the Hood (1991):  Laurence Fishburne instills values and discipline in his son, steering him away from the drugs and violence that permeate the neighborhood.

Catch Me if You Can  (2002): Christopher Walken as the con man who loves his son unconditionally.

Cinderella Man (2005) During the Depression when he can't get work prizefighter Jim Braddock (Russell Crowe) fights to keep his family together.

The Godfather (1972) Marlon Brando as Vito Corleone, who puts his family before his Family.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)/Guess Who (2005) Gruff-but-loving Spencer Tracy and Bernie Mac are the patriarchs surprised by their daughters' choice in husband material in the original and remake about interracial marriage.

Hanging Up (2000) Walter Matthau has dementia and his daughters Meg Ryan, Lisa Kudrow and Diane Keaton remember who he was while dealing with who he is.

Juno (2007) J.K. Simmons as the dad who supports his daughter through unplanned pregnancy and first love.

The Namesake (2007) Irrfan Khan (pictured) as the emigre who gives his firstborn with an unusual name and takes him to a place where they can go no further.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) Gregory Peck in his signature role as the Southern widower who teaches his children tolerance and love.

Tortilla Soup (2001)/Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) The American remake and original Chinese film of a master chef, father of three daughters, who loses his tastebuds and helps his daughters find men as good as him.

Your favorite movie Dads? Tell me why. 

Eddie Murphy, in the moment

Eddie Murphy's rollercoaster movie career has taken him from the giddy heights of Trading Places to the rock bottom of Norbit. Yet every time I write him off as one of those self-exploiting Saturday Night Live stars (see: Chevy Chase, Will Ferrell, Mike Myers) who has come to the point in his career where he just takes the money and runs, Murphy turns in a indelible performance like that of Jimmy "Thunder" Early in Dreamgirls, a Marvin Gaye-like soul-singer, or a quietly funny turn like that of Evan Danielson in Imagine That (opening tomorrow), a workaholic dad who discovers fatherhood is as fulfilling as finance.

Someone (Machiavelli? Castiglione?) once observed that revenge is a dish best served cold. Eddie Murphy is an actor best served raw. When he's in the moment, as he is in  48 Hours,  Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, Dreamgirls and the feel-nice Imagine That opposite the adorable seven-year-old Yara Shahidi, you can see his improvisatory joy. There wasn't time for him to overthink -- and overcook -- his performance. My favorite Eddie Murphy performances? Trading Places, Bowfinger and Dreamgirls.  And, of course, as Donkey in Shrek. Yours?

Ed Harris, star of the overlooked "The Third Miracle."

There are many indexes of a film's quality, most of them unreliable. Did it win Oscars? Dominate the box office? Garner critical kudos?

Scan the honor roll of Academy Awards and you see how arbitrary the Oscar is as a gauge of a movie's enduring value. Ordinary People, an excellent but not exceptional family drama, prevailed over the boxing classic Raging Bull. Gandhi, a pious biopic, beat out the superior fantasy E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial. Titanic, a supertanker of special-effects, took the prize over that atmospheric panorama of urban corruption L.A. Confidential.

Audit the list of box-office champs and you note that some are evergreens and others merely popular. Of the top-grossing films (adjusted for inflation) of all time, five are certified classics (Gone With the Wind, The Sound of Music, The Exorcist,  Star Wars and E.T.) enjoying both critical and box office success, while the other five are spectacles beloved in their day for the novelty or grandiosity of their effects and cinematography (The Ten Commandments, Titanic, Jaws,  Dr. Zhivago, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs).

To use critical acclaim as a measure of film excellence is futile as using a weather thermometer to take your kid's temperature. As a critic I admit this with great regret, while also noting that even a broken watch is right twice a day: In 1982 the National Society of Film Critics (of which I am a member) voted Tootsie as best picture and Steven Spielberg as best director for E.T.  (The New York Film Critics Circle -- of which I was then a member -- went for Gandhi.)

What happens to the quality film that flies beneath the radar? Take this tale of two Christmases: In 1947 Miracle on 34th Street"won multiple Oscars and scored with critics and coffers. The previous year It's a Wonderful Life was neglected by audiences, was dismissed by The New York Times as weak and tanked at the box-office. Today, no one watches Miracle (except maybe to see the young Natalie Wood) and It's a Wonderful Life is a perennial.

No movie is a failure that has friends, to paraphrase the line from Wonderful Life. It became an accidental classic when director Frank Capra neglected to renew the copyright, it fell into the public domain, got broadcast promiscuously on television and posterity smiled upon it. Similarly, the futuristic allegory Blade Runner failed to connect with audiences and critics in 1982 yet resonated with audiences a decade later when Ridley Scott's "director's cut" was released and it was championed as a prescient portrait of multiculti urbanism and machine dreams.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of movies like Wonderful Life and Blade Runner -- overlooked or underrated in their day that are ready for their close-ups. Some, like Agnieszka Holland's "The Third Miracle," about a priest on the brink of renouncing his faith, are independent films that didn't have stars or a studio marketing department to sell them. Others, like Norman Jewison's The Hurricane, starring Denzel Washington as the wrongly-imprisoned prizefighter Rubin Carter, were denounced for playing fast and loose with the facts. My colleague Roger Ebert hosts "Ebertfest," an overlooked film festival, to celebrate the films that flew beneath the radar. "The Third Miracle would be in my overlooked film festival. What's in yours?

Frank Sinatra and Debbie Reynolds in "The Tender Trap."

In the laugh du jour department, this arcane bit of movie scholarship:  men-about-town who settle down once they meet that special virgin. (Hat tip, John Timpane.) This list is good as far as it goes, but it is far from comprehensive.

This underexplored subgenre of the romantic comedy flourished in the 1950s, that decade of double whiskeys and double-standards. My personal favorite is The Tender Trap, with Frank Sinatra and Debbie Reynolds. (The Tender Trap is a good name for this type of film.) Les Girls (Gene Kelly, Mitzi Gaynor, Kay Kendall and Taina Elg) is pretty terrific, as is the Audrey Hepburn Virginathon Love in the Afternoon (with Gary Cooper), Funny Face (Fred Astaire) and Sabrina (William Holden and Humphrey Bogart). Oh, yes, and Flower Drum Song (James Shigeta and Miyoshi Umeki) and the original Where the Boys Are (George Hamilton and Dolores Hart), a surprisingly sharp group portrait of what were then called good girls and nice girls. In the modern era, I suppose Clueless could be included. Am I missing any playboy-taming virgins? Your favorite(s)?

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Maybe you knew David Carradine from his role as the title character, the stonefaced assassin in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. Or maybe you knew him as Woody Guthrie, the plainspoken folk singer and folk hero in Hal Ashby's Bound for Glory, for which he earned a deserved Golden Globe nomination (not an Oscar nom, as I incorrectly said before). Many knew him as Kwai Chan Caine in the cult TV show Kung Fu, a pupil of Shaolin monks hunted by the Chinese royal family, imparting the wisdom, "The wise man walks always with his head bowed, humble like the dust." In that legendary role Carradine was the bridge between Eastern mysticism and American action, an early proponent of East-Meets-Western.

The hardest-working actor in show business was found dead in his hotel room today in Bangkok where he was making a movie. The ageless Carradine, son of character actor John and half-brother of actors Keith and Bobby, was, incredibly, 72. From Caine to Cole Younger (in The Long Riders), he played many legendary figures. The quintessential Carradine? Felt him as Woody Guthrie.

Update: According to BBC News, Carradine's body was discovered by a hotel maid in a wardrobe with a rope around his neck.