Ty's picks for Friday, December 22

You know, you write these reviews and send 'em out there having no idea where you're going to fall on the bell curve. Sometimes you're squarely in the pack of conventional opinion, sometimes you're an outlier. I went into "Rocky Balboa" hoping for the best and came out disappointed but not angry, wrote a two-star review, and here I am getting flame-broiled by outraged Stallone fans in e-mails (one of the milder quotes: "You write very well. Most wimps do.") and it looks like I'm at the bottom of the Metacritic scale, too. Well, what do you know.

Does this change my opinion of "Rocky Balboa"? Not a whit: I still think the film's well-intended and sweet-spirited but delusional in ways that say more about its maker than he's perhaps aware (or maybe not). I still think the boxing sequences are poorly shot and edited. I still think the film has a load of heart and that, in this case, it's not enough to make it a great movie. But I will say that enough people feel differently to probably make it worth your while if you've got fond memories of the 1976 original.

I liked "The Good Shepherd" more than Wesley: DeNiro doesn't modulate the tone -- at all -- so at two and a half hours this tale of one CIA spook's life becomes a haul. But Matt Damon is fascinating in the least emotional role he's ever taken on. I swear, the less this guy does the better he is.

Catch "Curse of the Golden Flower" at the Kendall and the Common if you want eye-popping spectacle with surprisingly little dramatic weight. Yes, Gong Li, Chow Yun-fat, incredible brocades, but is this really what director Zhang Yimou has come to?

"Night at the Museum" is a very enjoyable kid's movie as these things go, but, again, I seem to be a lone graph point on the Metacritic grid. Oh well.

Renoir's "Rules of the Game" at the Brattle and Carne's "Children of Paradise" at the MFA. Not just two of the best French films ever made, two of the greatest films of all time, period.

Tiny, resonant indie film called "Off the Black" unspools at the Harvard Square and will probably be gone by next Wednesday. It stars Nick Nolte as a failed high school baseball umpire and I can't get it out of my head.