Will you listen to New York Times critic Stephen Holden jizz all over Keira Knightley and her intoxicating aura in Pride and Prejudice (which is quite tedious, by the way)? Knightley “is, in a word, a knockout,” he enthuses. “When this 20-year-old star is on the screen, which is much of the time, you can barely take your eyes off her…her radiance so suffuses the film that it’s foolish to imagine [her character] would be anyone’s second choice.” This is dereliction of duty. There should be more to a captivating actress than looks and radiance. She needs to have it inside…deep down… and Knightley, as I wrote in early September, “doesn’t. I don’t mean sex appeal or vivaciousness or any of that natural-aura stuff. I mean she doesn’t have ‘it.’ People are delighted with Knightley…that young, beautiful, Audrey Hepburn-ish quality, and the way she seems to add fizz to any movie she’s in. But there’s nothing about her that sticks or sinks in. Whatever it is that Rachel McAdams possesses and dispenses, Knightley has not.”

The cathartic effect of war films and what they get into vs. don’t get into — particularly in the recent Jarhead, Gunner Palace and Syriana — will be the topic at the annual “Times Talks” on Saturday, 11.12. It’s happening inside theatre #10 at Hollywood’s Arclight cinema. Kicking things off at 11:30 will be critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis riffing on war films past and present, followed by a 2 pm panel discussion between Times editor Gerald Marzorati and directors Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight), Michael Tucker (Gunner Palace), Garrett Scott (Operation Dreamland) and Stephen Marshall (Battleground). The finale will be a discussion between Lynn Hirschberg and George Clooney, primarily talking about Syriana. For information and availability, visit www.AFI.com/afifest or call 866.234.3378.

All the big year-end films but three are either currently screening or will start to screen in a week or so. Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The White Countess, Casanova, The Producers (starting on or about 11.18), Syriana, Memoirs of a Geisha, Narnia, Match Point, et. al. The last to be considered will be Terrence Malick’s The New World (there’s an Academy screening set for 11.26), Peter Jackson’s King Kong and Steven Spielberg’s Munich (both in very early December). It’s flurry time, screening-conflict time, dog-and-pony-show time.

Exactly how weak is the Best Picture contender list? A lot of films so far have fallen by the wayside, and more will follow suit before long. The only dug-in finalists by my barometer are Capote and Brokeback Mountain. (Haven’t yet seen the apparently well-regarded Memoirs of a Geisha.) The highly-rated possibles are Walk The Line, The Constant Gardener, Syriana, The New World and Crash. Tea-leaf readings are telling me Munich will fall short, but that and $1.75 will get you a bus ticket. The reality that nobody seems to want to face up to is that Cinderella Man, easily one of the year’s best, ought to be a finalist. I’ve always felt that the quality of a film ought to be a factor…naive as that may sound.