The four things great films do best

RICK GROEN

As I was watching Fugitive Pieces, tonight's kickoff to the Toronto International Film Festival, two thoughts came to mind. The first was obvious: This is a good movie. The second seemed, perhaps, too obvious: This is an even better example of what the movies do more easily, more powerfully and more indelibly than any other medium. Most or us are schooled from an early age in the grammar of film, and so never bother to parse what we intuitively understand. Consequently, we tend to take film's unique strengths - four in particular - blithely for granted. And that's ungenerous. If a festival is an annual chance to revel in the pictures and sidle up to the stars, maybe it's an opportunity to step back too - to get out from under our complacency and appreciate what's staring us in the face.