Beginning with the best movie of the month: the hands-down winner is Todd Haynes’s “Far from

Heaven,” a perfectly pitched homage to 1950s melodrama. Like the films of Douglas Sirk, director of “All That Heaven Allows,” “Magnificent Obsession,” and “Imitation of Life,” and other so-called women’s films, “Far” puts its heroine in a dilemma: how close a friendship can an upper-middle-class white woman have with her educated, sensitive African American gardener? And what if her alcoholic husband is struggling to come out of his closet? Will the NAACP ever let her volunteer? And will her children grow up to be Weatherpeople?

Set in 1958/9, “Far” sheathes its women in boned underwear and chokes its men in ties, and their speech and behavior are as tightly constrained as their bodies. Cathy (Julianne Moore) and Frank (Dennis Quaid) Whittaker seem to have a perfect life: a lovely house in suburban Hartford, Connecticut, two adorable children and a faithful black maid, Sybil (Viola Davis). But the more we see of them, the more cracks appear in this smooth surface. Frank drinks too much and Cathy, although surrounded by dressy, catty women friends in the best movie tradition, really has no one to talk to until she begins a friendship with Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert), her new gardener. The Whittakers ignore and suppress their children, who—also in movie stereotype—hardly notice and bounce back, eager for more neglect.

Some of the best scenes in this splendid picture show Frank’s ginger entrance into the clandestine world of gay sex, 1958-style. Later, when Cathy walks in on him smooching with another man, Frank begins counseling sessions. His creepy shrink (James Rebhorn) excludes her from the sessions, which she accepts with a smile. Unsurprisingly Frank’s sexuality resists change. Cathy

continues to confide in Raymond (who doesn’t wear a tie when he works in her garden, appearing in the shrubbery like some mythological Green Man) and one of her catty friends circulates rumors that they are lovers. The rumors spread through town; the children suffer; and the film ends on an ambiguously tragic note, all of its plot improbabilities excused by the immaculate casing of a quoted style.

We turned to one another at one point and said, “Did we used to act like that?” and answered immediately, “No, but movies did.” It’s all there: perfect wifey, circle skirts, tailfinned cars, lunchtime Daiquiris, and absolute social segregation. Our one critical observation is that the film begins in control of its object of affectionate derision (the Fifties) but is soon absorbed in submission to this bittersweet love that cannot be. Moore was born to play Cathy, in pointy bras and three-inch heels. Quaid

struggles unsuccessfully with Frank’s complexity but Haysbert surprised us with a strong, attractive performance in the cardboard role of the Dignified Negro. We recommend this movie highly, and we’re going to screen some old Douglas Sirk films, too.

We had to toss for next place and wifey won. So it’s “8 Mile,” the improbable, jumped-up but compelling movie in which foul-mouthed white rapper Eminem, playing a version of himself, beats the baddest hip-hop gangstas in inner-city Detroit at their own game, extempore rapping. Have we ever seen phone area codes as a symbol of

solidarity before? At one point all the people in a packed club chant “Three-one-three!” in defiance of the codes of middle-class folks who live beyond Eight Mile Road.

Like “Young Man with a Horn,” the film that made Kirk Douglas a star, “8 Mile” has a white hero excelling at a black art form. Jimmy Smith (Eminem), aka Rabbit, lives with his drunken mother (Kim Basinger) and little sister in a trailer. He’s even more deprived than the members of his mostly black crew, headed by Future (Mekhi Phifer), a smart, serious guy who wants to promote Rabbit into a pop star. The plot, involving some rumbles, a lot of scrambling for attention, and a little hot love with the astonishing Brittany Murphy, isn’t the point here, as it wasn’t in “Rocky” or “Saturday Night Fever.” The gorgeous, unblinking cinematography of Rodrigo Prieto, who also shot “Amores Perros,” transforms the rustbelt grunge of the city and the sweaty, enthralling musical numbers. We even get shots of Rabbit working in an auto factory, at his drill press. When was the last time we saw an industrial shop floor in a movie, and will there be a next time? “8 Mile” also offers a richer texture of male friendship than any film we can recall. Our only cavil remains the racism implicit in the premise: white boys do it better.

Tied for second place is “Frida,” the juicy, splashy biopic that Julie Taymor has made from a popular biography of artist Frida Kahlo. We’re grateful to Taymor for keeping the property out of Madonna’s clutches; for saturating the screen with deep blues and greens, yellows and vermilions; and for coaxing a performance out of the lovely Salma Hayek, who plays Kahlo. There’s no happy ending here: Frida was maimed in a trolley accident as a young woman but she went on to live, love, paint, and fight with her husband, the great left-wing muralist Diego Rivera. Then she died. But Taymor’s ebullient manipulation of images moved us far beyond the banal outlines of the story.

Alfred Molina, one of our favorite actors, made us believe in a larger-than-life Rivera, from whose greedy appetite no food or woman was safe. Ashley Judd, though miscast as the Italian photographer Tina Modotti, gave us a visual memory to treasure as her long, elegant back mysteriously supports a clingy dress while she dances a tango with Frida. Roger Rees shines as Frida’s father, a European Jew who came to Mexico and supported his family as a portrait photographer. Geoffrey Rush is a little tall for Trotsky but gives the small part an appealing warmth. Antonio Banderas does a quick turn as the Stalinist painter David Siqueiros, and Valeria Golino makes the role of Rivera’s ex-wife, Lupe Marin, a little jewel. The film is a visual feast not only in its rendering of the actual—the cataclysm of the trolley wreck is a glorious mix of poetry and horror—but in its surreal style, which negotiates fluidly between Frida’s life and her art and presents the historical Mexico as a mythic carnival.

The least good film we saw is still better than most of what comes out: “Punch Drunk Love,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s (“Magnolia”) Adam Sandler movie. Sandler plays Barry Egan, the klutzy, tormented brother of seven sisters, who works telemarketing promotional merchandise out of a warehouse. He’s a shy guy with a little anger problem. After punching through glass patio doors at his birthday party, during which his sisters talk about him as though he weren’t present, Barry timidly calls a phone-sex number. Next day he finds himself targeted for extortion by a hairy-backed thug (Philip Seymour Hoffman) with a crew of thuggish brothers at his disposal. Barry spends his days on the phone, occasionally running from pursuers or being beaten up by them. Into this cramped, anxious life comes true love, in the form of Lena Leonard (Emily Watson), a lovely woman with a classy line in violent dirty talk.

Synopsis can’t hope to render the quirky flavor of “PDR,” and Martha liked it better than Marty, to the point of overlooking the film’s casual racism: Barry supervises a crew of feckless Latino warehousemen headed by Luis Guzman. This is totally Adam Sandler’s film, but Anderson has seen desperation in his geekiness and makes us see it and love it, too. Sandler lopes spastically through a shadowless Los Angeles, his stupid, almost-handsome face hanging above a dowdy blue suit, and the weird soundtrack seems meant to convey what goes on in his head: mostly percussive craziness with a few pop songs. Barry looks like bad trouble, but the film made at least one of us believe in the redeeming power of love.

U Film Society showed “Tosca” last month: a movie or an opera? Director Benoit Jacquot set his stellar cast, including Angela Georghiu (Tosca) and Roberto Alagna (Cavarodossi), against Roman backgrounds, letting his camera sweep through bronze and marble halls and churches, around the firelit study of the cruel villain Scarpia (Ruggiero Raimondi), and onto the battlements of the castel’Sant’Angelo. It’s a tale of love, jealousy, progressive politics, murder, and treachery from beyond the grave, and Jacquot pulls out all stops. The film begins in black and white, with singers and orchestra recording the score, so that during the color film of the “performance” we’re not distracted by singers’ grimaces. Georghiu makes a wonderful Tosca and Raimondi a finicking, scary Scarpia. Sensual, luscious, highly recommended.

We got to see live opera twice, Richard Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos,” at the university’s School of Music Opera Theater, and Franz Lehar’s “Merry Widow,” at Minnesota Opera. “Widow” is a slight piece but audiences must like it because opera companies keep bringing it back. For this disappointing production the soprano had a cold, so although she performed her part it was sung from backstage by the gifted Jane Thorngren, whose vocalizing suffered from her invisibility. The orchestra plodded through the familiar score, and even some amusing choreography couldn’t rescue the evening.

The Strauss, on the other hand, under the direction of the new Opera Theater head David Walsh, was brisk and delicious. Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s libretto pokes fun at the rich bourgeoisie of Vienna, who were, of course, his patrons. In “Ariadne,” a rich man commissions an after-dinner performance of an operatic tragedy, hires a commedia dell’arte troupe to wake up the guests who will be bored by the opera, and plans a fireworks display to end the evening. His butler announces that the two pieces, tragedy and comedy, must be performed simultaneously. Three fine sopranos, Alyssa Anderson (Composer), Kristin Root (Zerbinetta), and Anna Brandsoy (Ariadne) adorned the sprightly tale, the student orchestra sounded wonderful, and sets and costumes—including the ending fireworks—looked fine.

The best theater this month was Wendy Knox’s Frank Theatre production of “Taming of the Shrew” which played at Old Arizona Studios. Frank not only does the best local Shakespeare, their work comes close to the best we’ve seen anywhere. Virginia Burke’s sluttish Katherina, the Shrew, and Lee Adams’s hunky Petruchio, her would-be tamer, along with a splendid supporting cast of servants, relations, and assorted folks, filled the Old Arizona stage with ribald pranks and dazzling repartee. Steve Rohde’s flexible set fitted the space perfectly, and Michael Croswell and “Razz” Russell accompanied the action with terrific live music. We’re looking forward to Frank’s winter production, “The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” coming in February.

Over at the Guthrie Lab, Eugene Ionesco’s “The Chairs” was produced within an inch of its life. No; maybe the reverent thoroughness of the staging did choke out what life was left in this tragic farce, or farcical tragedy. Christopher McCann, Barbara Bryne, and Charles Schuminski went through their motions creditably, but for us this play has no meaning whatsoever. Perhaps many Absurdist works, so fresh and thrilling when they appeared in the Fifties, will seem thin and trivial today. At any rate, we hope the Lab will spend its considerable resources on better vehicles.

Please note: 10,000 Things Theater is presenting “King Lear” in its usual venues of jails, shelters, and adult day centers but will offer a limited public run at Intermedia Arts from Thursday, Dec. 12, through Sunday, Dec. 15, at 8 p.m. We’ll report next month.