Peter the Great

I don't know why people -- journalists no less -- keep telling me what a "great" movie Shattered Glass is. I finally rented it this weekend, and while it's not terrible . . . All the President's Men it ain't. The best thing about it -- and it's a very best thing indeed -- is Peter Sarsgaard. I've never seen him give a bad performance -- from Kinsey (another one I didn't love as much as everyone else) to the intense and bizarre The Dying Gaul (in which he sports a very fetching beard). In Shattered Glass -- about disgraced journalistic fabricator Stephen Glass -- he's practically the only actor whose performance is completely free of Hollywood mannerisms. As Glass's New Republic boss, he goes from reluctant suspicion to barely contained rage without any grandstanding.

I was also impressed with an actress I didn't think I'd ever heard of, Melanie Lynskey. She has an almost-nothing role of an innocently insecure young colleague of the pathologically insecure Glass. I found her very natural and believable. And now I'm shocked to see on IMDb that she costarred with Kate Winslet in the fantastic 1994 film Heavenly Creatures. What the heck is she doing in a bit part in Shattered Glass? Apparently, she also is on the sitcom Two and a Half Men. Oh, dear. Well, I wish her bigger and better things.