Like all great animated films, The Iron Giant is at least as enthralling to grownups as it is to their kids. This one is an instant classic. In a way, I’m sorry there are no “no one understands me” and “oh no this is our darkest hour” songs here, because listening to a soundtrack over and over would be a way to relive the movie — the way I do with the Disney greats — again and again. (I’ll have to settle for Pete Townsend’s The Iron Man CD, which is also based on the children’s book by Ted Hughes and sort of serves as a soundtrack to the film. Townsend, in fact, executive produced The Iron Giant.)

Jimmy Smallhorne’s 2 By 4 — he cowrote, directed, and stars — is triply frustrating for me, because it’s set in a world I know, peopled with people I know. I don’t mean ‘the kind of people I know.’ I mean: I know the man whose life inspired 2 By 4, and I still felt like an outsider by the end of the film.

A sense of place is vital in almost any film, but I think it’s especially important in an action movie, which by definition is moving around that place so much. Now, End of Days isn’t bad merely because it can’t get New York City right, and Die Hard with a Vengeance isn’t good merely because it does. But how these two movies use — and misuse — New York is illustrative of the films’ relative failure or success on a larger scale.

Based on the epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Song of Hiawatha (which debuted on the cable network Showtime on Thanksgiving Day and is also available on video) is a likable introduction to Native American history and legend. Some of its young, mostly Native American cast are a bit too modern in their demeanor and the delivery of their dialogue for this to be taken as a serious historical film, but Song is respectful — almost reverential — in its presentation of Native American religious beliefs and cultural attitudes, which isn’t something seen onscreen often enough.

This is not your father’s Civil War movie. It’s more like your father’s Vietnam movie. Morally complicated and frequently disquieting, Ride with the Devil is an intelligent and moving reexamination of the Civil War from the point of view of cultural Southerners living on the western frontier of the United States.