The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)

I've never wanted a movie to end more than "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," a distinctly original film about the Holocaust. By distinctly original, I mean it's the first film to reduce 6 million dead to mere cliches while targeting children as its core audience. What the fuck?

Written and directed by Mark Herman ("Little Voice"), "Boy" follows German grade schooler Bruno (Asa Butterfield) as he moves just outside the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland with his family. There, daddy (David Thewlis) happily runs the camp, while mom (Vera Farmiga) is kept in the dark. Soon Bruno sees a "farm" behind the new house, with odd-looking people in "stripped pajamas" living there. Are you laughing yet? Bruno soon befriends one of the odd "farm" boys (Jack Scanlon) who's so sad behind a mysterious electric fence. Before long they're playing checkers. Cute, eh?

I have no doubt that the intentions behind this film are honest, but did anyone bother to ask why any parent would want to show his or her child a film about the Holocaust? Or why that fence remains unguarded all day for months, or why it's so easy for a child with no arm muscles to dig his way under the barrier unnoticed in minutes? The film's most grievous sin, though, is to reduce an entire murdered population to two pitiful characters with little voice and no resolve. Even the Nazis are cut-and-paste, including a bully youth straight out of "The Sound of Music." Taking a simplistic ABC After School Special view of the most heinous crime of the 20th century, "Boy" is the anti-"Night and Fog." The finale is heartbreaking for sure, but by then I was looking for the exit. D-

The Duchess (2008)

Keira Knightley once again stars in a period piece with corsets, drawing rooms and the myriad of problems that beset rich English types in "The Duchess." Here, she plays Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, wife of the unimaginably wealthy Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes.)

For reasons never entirely explained, Georgiana is the toast of London and the single epicenter of the fashion world. At one point, an announcer bellows that whatever the Duchess is wearing today, all others will wear tomorrow. And I thought, "Why?" That Knightley's wigs look more Marge Simpson or "Bride of Frankenstein" only hampers the problem. (But maybe I'm just being aguy here.)

The film's main drama lies in Georgiana's crushing heartbreak under the Duke's cold indifference, lack of passion and constant affairs. When Georgiana falls for a young candidate for parliament (Dominic Cooper, fresh off the ungodly "Mamma Mia!"), the marriage falls further into misery.

Georgiana is presented as what may be the first feminist, a woman who questions her placement in society as a mere trophy or animal to be bargained over and as a woman who dares to act in the same manner as an entitled male and take a lover on the side. Knightley is good, but it's Fiennes who is the star. His Duke certainly is repugnant, but he's also strangely tragic. The man has no idea what love, joy or morality is, and knows that he doesn't have the mental capacity to ever understand those traits. Fiennes ("Schindler's List") always is good at finding such threads in his villains, and he doesn't disappoint here. Oh, cool fact: Georgiana was the great (times a lot) grandma of Princess Di. Irony, eh? B

Valkyrie (2008)

"Valkyrie" is as dramatically deep as your average brownie and contains a myriad of accents that are, for the most part, not even close to German. But this Tom Cruise-starring dramatization of the failed July 1944 assassination attempt on Adolph Hitler is in line with the great WWII thrillers from the 1950s and 1960s that starred Gregory Peck, William Holden or Richard Burton.

The miracle here is that director Bryan Singer and co-writers Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander make us want the would-be assassins to succeed despite a minimum of action and a known outcome. (If you're remotely shocked at this "spoiler," turn off the Internet and pick up a friggin' history book.)

Cruise stars as Claus von Stauffenberg, the severely wounded Nazi army colonel who sees his Fuhrer for what he is -- evil incarnate -- and decides to stop him. Through a casual comment here and a few chance encounters, Stauffenberg meets with like-minded German men and the murder-by-bomb plot is on. Cruise, one eye covered by a patch and without the use of his right hand or most of his left hand, is a great Hollywood hero. He never digs deeps into the role as he did in "Born on the Fourth of July" or even "Tropic Thunder," but he's nonetheless solid.

I wish the script presented us with a crisis of conscious or eureka moment for Stauffenberg, but the character is against Hitler as the opening credits roll. It's a big disappointment in an otherwise good film.

Where some people see the lack of German accents as a minus, I take it as a plus. No one tries on a voice they can't carry. Cruise sounds exactly like Cruise, the same with the supporting players Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Eddie Izzard and Kenneth Branagh. Why is that good? Think of Kevin Costner trying for Brit in "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" and try not to wince. Singer ("The Usual Suspects") made a wise choice. B+

The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)

"The Other Boleyn Girl" may make hash of recorded history, but it's good drama. Based on a novel, it follows the Boleyn sisters, Mary (Scarlett Johansson) and Anne (Natalie Portman), and their seriously warped relationship with King Henry VIII (Eric Bana).

Portman, who suffered through three terrible "Star Wars" films, is back in form as a schemer for the ultimate second chair in England. Alternating between a victim of the misogynist times and a shrew whose soul has been swallowed by ambition, she's ruthless, cunning and weirdly innocent.

Every actor and role is top notch, especially Kristin Scott Thomas as the Boleyns' suffering mother and Jim Sturgess as gay brother George. The drama hits many points, including the dangers of theocracy and the sheer hypocrisy of anyone who claims that God has given them power to rule. Thomas has one of the year's best lines: "God turned his back on this long ago."

English history is rife with jaw-dropping stories of immorality, death and schemes for power, and this story is one of the best. The film bears it well. B+