All of them inspired to varying degrees by true stories.

Catch Me If You Can: I am trying not to use the word "romp" but it's so apt for this fun and fast-paced picture. It reminds me that Spielberg may be pompous and may try too hard, but when he sticks to simple stories he's a great director. Only one saccharine moment near the end really rang false. Everything else was right on: the 70s details; DiCaprio's boyish energetic charm and its flip side, his desperation for loving acceptance. It's a great story told well -- but my enjoyment and amazement absolutely depended on it being true.

Rabbit-Proof Fence: An extraordinary true story, both in the way Australian natives were treated by white colonists, and the refusal of three young girls to accept that treatment. From 1905 to 1970, the Australian government actively tried to breed out aboriginal traits from the population. Mr. A. O. Neville (aka Mr. Devil) was Protectorate of the Half Castes that resulted. As their legal guardian he forcibly relocated half-caste children from their Aboriginal villages and families to training centers where they were forbidden to speak any language but English and taught proper European manners. Sisters Molly and Daisy, and their cousin Gracie, escaped the village with little more than the clothes they wore and walked over 1200 miles home, following a rabbit-proof fence. The training camp's master tracker invariably caught runaways and returned them to camp, but 14-year-old Molly was a good tracker herself, and used her skills to outwit him. She was a natural leader for the younger girls, keeping up morale, finding food, etc. The original book on which the film is based, Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence, by Doris Pilkington and Nugi Garimara, is out of print but it's been reissued as just Rabbit Proof Fence.

Adaptation: Sure, I recognized the premise of this movie as self-indulgent, but I hoped the English major in me would appreciate the clever postmodern conceit (real life screenwriter Charlie Kaufman struggled to adapt Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief for film; he gave up and wrote a screenplay about a screenwriter struggling to write a film adaptation of The Orchid Thief). Unfortunately, the best thing I can say for the film is that it made me want to read The Orchid Thief. There were several highlights: “outtakes” from the set of the vastly superior Being John Malkovich (which Kaufman wrote); 30 cumulative seconds of Maggie Gyllenhal’s gorgeous smile and sexy-scratchy-girly voice—I tell you, reader, her smile can make one forget one’s name, let alone the misery of the preciously clever film one is enduring; 30 cumulative minutes of true story about John LaRoche (the orchid thief of Orlean’s book), Susan Orlean, and orchids. The balance of the film was split two ways. The first half wallows in pathetic, fat, balding (his own description) Charlie Kaufman’s worries about writing a screenplay. I spend plenty of time with my own worries, not least about writing more, and have little patience for fictional characters' problems. Unless they are somehow more extraordinary than mine, as they are in the two films above. In the second, throwaway half of the film, Kaufman saves his screenplay with the silly tricks employed by typical Hollywood blockbusters. I'm not sure which half was more tedious, and frankly I don't care to waste any more energy thinking about it.

I nearly forgot the final highlight: the walk home along the C&O Canal and quiet Georgetown streets, globs of fresh snow falling from the trees and dappling my coat.