Ticket Stub: Nat and I rounded out his week o' noir at the Brattle Theater with Collateral, Michael Mann's shiny, satisfying thriller of a hapless cabbie and sociopathic hitman rolling through a misty Los Angeles night. Mann's films are always delicious to look at, and here he makes digital video an art form instead of the usual pixellated lo-fi cop-out. Jamie Foxx is well-cast as the dreamy, timid Max; can't say the same for Mark Ruffalo, who looks like a kid in a Donnie Brasco Halloween costume, ugh. Tom Cruise is a bit of a cipher here: his usual clipped, focused, tightly-wound thing comes across more dangerous and menacing because his character is such a heartless psycho, who seductively charms and ruthlessly manipulates everyone around him by turns. On paper, this seems like a clone of his Vampire Lestat, but that character had an interior vulnerability, a needy streak -- here, Vincent is a soulless shark, unrepentant to the end. Of course, he does get a few chances to do the Patented Tom Cruise Run. The last 20 minutes start to drag like a bad TV movie, and there are a few moments of stale 80's machismo, but overall it's a thoughtfully gripping example of the genre. (A-)

In other pop culture news, I promise to post a full SXSW Stub this weekend -- I can't believe two weeks have blurred by since our awesome trip to Austin. Thank you, lingering winter viruses. And for those of you looking for a little good TV, I recommend the new adaptation of Little House on the Prairie -- don't laugh! OK, it's totally chicktastic, but it's nothing like the old Michael Landon show: it's all hand-held and gritty and Frontier House, without all the whining. You will want to avert your eyes from Michael Eisner's smarmy introductions, though -- it's part of The Wonderful World of Disney on ABC, unfortunately.