Callie Khouri‘s Mad Money (Overture, 1.18) is being sold as a Nine to Five-ish female empowerment larceny comedy. Aging divorcee Diane Keaton, struggling mom Queen Latifah and single whatever-girl Katie Holmes decide to grab some U.S. Treasury money that’s about to be burned. A typical start-the-year throwaway programmer…could be fun, might be bad, who knows?

I’d be cool with this as far as it goes (you have to be willing to laugh — you have to say to yourself “I will laugh if it’s funny…I won’t scowl or sneer but laugh…if it’s funny”), but I’ve just announced a lifetime decree/commitment to avoid all Queen Latifah movies unless…that’s the question. Unless she’s in a supporting role (i.e., the film isn’t built around her preening movie-star attitude) and subordinate to something other than her sassy African-American butch-boss personality.

“The filmmaking is so good and so well-polished that it crowds out the humanity….there’s no air…and the Vanessa Redgrave thing at the end is the writer-giving you a kind of [‘this is what it all meant’ wrap-up] thing that you feel you ought to have as a moviegoer. ..it’s kind of condescending, in a way, and I didn’t like that at all.” — Boston Globe critic Wesley Morris on Joe Wright‘s Atonement.

There’s no getting around the fact that a certain “hmmm” factor is clouding Atonement‘s Best Picture prospects. The British romantic period drama is one of my definite ’07 favorites and a very likely Best Picture nominee, but four times today I’ve read or listened to naysaying opinion — a pan from A.O. Scott‘s pan in today’s N.Y. Times, another one from New Yorker critic Anthony Lane, a mezzo-mezzo video report from the Boston Globe‘s Morris and Ty Burr, and a report from a friend who attended last night’s L.A. Atonement premiere and says some viewers felt it didn’t quite nail it or ring the bell that it should have.

“Really?” I replied when I heard the post-screening report this morning. “That was a fairly consistent view, you’d say?” Yeah, that’s what I was hearing from some people, my friend said.

This has brought me to the brink of concluding that Atonement (which looked like a Best Picture front-runner after Toronto but began to do a fade in early November and then came inching back a week or two ago) is starting to look like a limping thoroughbred. Maybe. It’s not Charlie Wilson’s War by a long shot, but at best it’s now even-steven with No Country for Old Men, and it may start to sink even further if at least one critics group doesn’t stand up and give it a Best Picture prize within the next three days.

Atonement getting dinged by this and that critic doesn’t mean that much, but No Country hasn’t gotten dinged at all — the respect is growing and growing among all interest and age groups — and I think that means something. There’s always a vague corollary between critics and Academy/industry opinion when it comes to high-pedigree year-end films. I don’t want be an alarmist, but if Atonement doesn’t get a Best Picture trophy from the L.A. or Boston critics on Sunday or from the New York Film Critics Circle the following day — and particularly if No Country sweeps these three — it’ll be in real trouble.

In other words, the Best Picture race may well be decided by Monday afternoon. Did I just write that? Yes, I did. It may be in that the dye will be cast on a certain level. (Note: I’ve always preferred the metaphor of a spoonful of dye being dropped into a well or a bucket of water than a pair of dice being flung across a craps table.) I’m not saying that the Atonement shortfall (if and when it happens on Sunday and Monday) will decide things absolutely — obviously it won’t — but it will nonetheless cast a certain light and define the situation in a way that will make the pro-Atonement argument a little harder to sell.

On his “Movie Nation” blog, Boston Globe critic Ty Burr responds to my 12.5 rant about the sub-standard sound and projection of Sweeney Todd at the AMC Leows’ Boston Common two days ago. He agrees for the most part and provides some historical perspective on the Boston exhibition scene. My only disagreement is that he felt that Tim Burton‘s “gloomy, diseased color scheme” couldn’t have been affected all that adversely by the weak projector lamp — “what’s the difference between perfect and imperfect murk?” Due respect but no — gloomy images need strong illumination more than any other kind.

Crispin Glover and David Brothers‘ It Is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE shows today (12.7), tomorrow (12.8) and Monday (12.10) at the American Cinematheque. It’s an intense, hallucinatory, soul-of-madness movie. The one-sheet pretty much says it all. A screaming, middle-aged, moustache-wearing nerd in a wheelchair (inspired by Francis Bacon‘s Pope paintings?), a shadow of guy holding a noose, a nearly naked Vargas girl on her knees. One look and you know that unbalanced people made this film.

Paper‘s Dennis Dermody wrote that “what Diane Arbus was to photography, Glover is swiftly achieving as a filmmaker. Training his sardonic eyes on the strange and afflicted he achieves a mad dark poetry on celluloid.” I’ll concede that. The portion of It Is Fine that I saw at the ’07 Sundance Film Festival is mad, dark and not in the service of naturalism. Due respect, but I threw up my hands. I’m running from film to film, story to story…I haven’t got time for this shit. Obviously others do and some are into this film, and that’s fine. Everyone’s entitled.

But there’s no excuse for the words “it is fine” in a film title. No one except David Mamet has ever said the words “it is fine” in a conversation. When I first read the title I knew that Glover and Brothers and the late Steven C. Stewart (the afflicted guy who wrote the original screenplay) were playing a precious game.

“Ready for ‘Harriet Potter and the Chronicles of the Lord of the Golden Compass’?” — from Jim Verniere‘s 12. 7 Boston Herald review. The Golden Compass = three snores.

“Not while I’m around…”

There are many industry folk who feel that John Carney‘s Once was easily one of the best films of 2007, but a greater number don’t feel this way because they haven’t been persuaded that they’ll reap any worthwhile political I.O.U.’s by voting for it. Nominated films are usually made by or acted in by high-powered artists who are “in the game” and might pass along reciprocal favors down the road, or who simply possess an aura of well-established power that Academy members feel comfortable bowing down in front of.

Marketa Irglkova, Glen Hansard at Park City’s Prospector theatre following ’07 Sundance Film Festival showing of Once

Anyway, it’s probably a settled issue that Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova‘s “Falling Slowly”, which was nominated today for a Grammy (i.e., Best Song written for a motion picture, TV or other visual media), will be nominated for a Best Song Oscar also. Their main competitor will probably be Eddie Vedder‘s “Guaranteed” (from Into The Wild), which was also Grammy-nommed.

Since Once‘s rep is that of a sweet little film that everyone loved (as opposed to Wild‘s rep of being a powerfully directed film about a brave but asshole-ish nature boy who died because he couldn’t be bothered to own a detailed map of the area he was camping in), it will probably win. I didn’t mean to take a swat at Into The Wild. It’s very strong and commendable with award-level performances, and Sean Penn‘s best directed film ever. But Chris McCandless did die in part because he couldn’t get back to civilization to get treatment for root poisoning, and if he’d had a decent map he could have found his way — but he didn’t.

The front-running Best Foreign Language contenders, I’m told, are Stefan Ruzowitzky‘s The Counterfeiters (Austria), Cao Hamburger‘s The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (Brazil), Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud‘s Persepolis (France…but what will the foreign branchers say to an animated entry?), Fatih Akin‘s The Edge of Heaven (Germany), Giuseppe Tornatore‘s The Unknown (Italy), Cristain Mungiu‘s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Romania) and Juan Antonio Bayona‘s The Orphanage (Spain).

The most-likely Best Feature Documentary contenders are No End in Sight, Autism: The Musical, Body of War, Lake of Fire, Sicko, War/Dance. and A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman.

I accept that I will probably never ever see Outpost in Malaya (a.k.a., The Planter’s Wife), a Jack Hawkins-Claudette Colbert adventure flick with elephants, a cobra and a mongoose. It’s not on DVD, was never issued on VHS and hasn’t even aired on TCM or TNT. But if I hadn’t wandered across this shot of 1952 Times Square, I never would have even heard of this Ken Annakin film. And to think that people lined up to see it, bought popcorn and everything.

The reason Universal has decided to open Charlie Wilson’s War against four other 12.21 releases — Sweeney Todd, Walk Hard, National Treasure: Book Of Secrets and PS I Love You — instead of the previously slated 12.25 is because they’re figuring they can beat Sweeney Todd, which is going for the same semi-educated, over-30 demo. Book of Secrets will have the family-action audience, and the under-30 comedy fans will go to Walk Hard.

And the Harvard Law School grads who patronize every Will Smith film no matter what will still be lining up I Am Legend, which will have opened a week before.

L.A. Times reporter John Horn thinks Charlie Wilson’s War is run into trouble because the date change. But the films that are really going to suck it are Book Of Secrets and P.S. I Love You.