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. . . I find the producer/writer/director/star attractive in a weird way, and I liked the sand-colored shirt/smock/jacket he wears in that looooog outdoors at early evening scene with the girl so fetching that I had it copied for myself. And I look great in it. So thanks for making the movie, Andrew.

'"Lazy Eye" is terse, polished, understated but deeply felt. "Gay" films usually ask viewers to cut them slack, to allow the makers expressive leeway we don't give other films. Lazy Eye stands up proudly and lays down its cards calmly. It compresses the emotional range of a novel as the very best short stories do: Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain does that; so do stories by De Maupassant, Fitzgerald, Katherine Anne Porter, Philip Roth. It's a small film with big things tightly rolled inside it.

Dark Horse Comics is the big exception of the graphic novel world. Instead of creating their books with exploitation in mind from the gitgo like Marvel and DC, each series is an auteur experience. I'm not crazy about their "Umbrella Academy"; I admire its style, but both art and narrative are too frenzied and self conscious for me. And now a live-action version of a comic I would have thought too artificial and zany even for Adult Swim animation turns out to be engaging, exciting, film drama.

It's still beyond zany in conception and narrative: a band of youthful superbeings trained by a sadistic scientist with a chimpanzee Igor to prevent (I can barely keep my eyes open here) a world-engulfing apocalypse devised by time-traveling bureaucrat hit-men. Stop! Wait! Despite this mulch of clichés, a remarkable cast and gorgeous production values bring the thing to life. A lot of reviews of this first 10-episode season say the pace is slack; but the same critics end up giving the show 9 and 10 stars. The leisured pace is what allow the ensemble to meld and charm us.

There will be no spoilers here: only an appeal to watch the first episode and discover that Ellen Page is one of the finest actresses alive, even playing an emotionally repressed mouse of a violin player. Her special effects come from inside her. When the blue-screen gang go to work on her, you want to scream "stop already! She's flying without your help!"