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Welcome back to Director's Spotlight everybody! Sorry for the extended absence. I planned on writing a very topical article last month when Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise teamed up for what looked to me – apparently I was a bit misguided – to be a mid-tier summer hit with Knight and Day. Anyway, better late than never, so what follows is a dissection of James Mangold's three latest offerings: Knight and Day, 3:10 to Yuma, and Walk the Line. Obviously Mangold's work runs the gamut in terms of genre (and, to a different degree, quality). Looking even further down his IMDb credentials., Mangold rocks a list that includes the rom-com Kate & Leopold, the melodramatic Girl, Interrupted, as well as the horror/thriller Identity. Clearly not afraid of a new challenge, Mangold rightly deserves the spotlight in today's column.

Walk the Line

Let me start this analysis by freely admitting that I am decidedly not a fan of the music-centered docudrama sub-genre. Ray is a mundane film with a single great performance and Dreamgirls is almost insufferable. Am I honestly the only one who feels a little bit like Johnny Cash's problems are exactly like those of Ray Charles, except that Cash is white and also happens to have the gift of sight? Forgive me for failing to see the drama in Cash's story. His music was not of my generation, and it isn't my fault he got caught up with groupies and drugs just like every other performer who reached that level of popularity. Just because he is a Country Music Hall of Famer doesn't mean his story deserves the A-list group of dramatizers that came together to make Walk the Line.

With its mid-November release date and rapturous reviews (seriously, outside of the two performances I really don't know why critics gush over this stuff), Walk the Line was an early awards seasons favorite. However, as the buzz cooled, more people seemed to side with the sentiment that this was a showcase for some decent music and acting, but no real achievement as a piece of dramatic cinema. With that, the film earned five Oscar noms in smaller categories like Editing, Costume Design, and, of course, Sound. Witherspoon walked away with a statue, and Phoenix, through no fault of his own, was largely considered the runner-up in a stacked year that included David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow, Heath Ledger in that famous cowboy role, and winner Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote.

Audiences, on the other hand, gave Walk the Line the ultimate stamp of approval, opening the pic to a sizable $22 and legging it out to a robust $119.5 million - a definite winner against an under $30 million budget. It is far and away the highest grossing music bio-pic, and stands as Mangold's biggest hit by a sizable margin.

3:10 to Yuma

Can the term "overlooked" be applied to a film that grossed a sturdy $53 million at the domestic box office? Somehow, with this mid-tier release from Lionsgate, it feels that way. 3:10, a remake to a well-received but generally forgotten western, felt like it would fall into the category of "Really? Why'd they remake that one?" The reaction to the remake is one more of surprise than bated anticipation. Even though it opened at #1 during a dreary box office weekend in September 2007, 3:10 To Yuma was unremarkable at the box office, earning $14 million during its opening weekend. With Russell Crowe playing a tight-lipped villain, Christian Bale as the brooding leading man, and Ben Foster as Crowe's wily right hand man, this high-concept but mostly low tech Western deserved a bigger audience.

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