Sometimes your opinion is in line with almost everyone else’s, and sometimes you’re on an island with maybe four or five others keeping you company. You have to chill down and get philosophical ’bout dat island, dawg. If you’re not in with a fairly small minority at least once or twice each year, you’re probably doing something wrong.

Cases in point: Elizabeth: The Golden Age and Things We Lost in the Fire.

My reaction to Elizabeth during the Toronto Film Festival (“Is it me or the movie, or should I just take the elevator up to the roof and jump off?”) may have seemed extreme to some at the time, but it has a rank 25% positive on Rotten Tomatoes on this, the day it opens nationwide.

I’ve heard from enough people since running my review last weekend of Things We Lost tin the Fire that while nearly everyone admires Benicio del Toro‘s perform- ance, people are generally mixed about or cool to the film itself. A publicist (and a friend) told me today I’m the only writer she knows of who really loves it. I saw it again last night and I know what I know. I’m not Zelig.

My favorite line from Manohla Dargis‘s N.Y. Times pan of Elizabeth: The Golden Age: “The queenly body quakes as history and fantasy explode.”