I’m not a movie critic and I read Atlas Shrugged decades ago when I was in the Army. So it wasn’t exactly fresh in my mind when I attended a special screening in Washington this week of the film version of the novel by Ayn Rand. I had low expectations. But it turns out to be a terrific movie.

Pauline Kael used to write about “good bad” movies. Atlas Shrugged may qualify as that. It’s not great drama, nor, as best I can tell, great filmmaking. But I’ve seen movies that were hailed as achievements in filmmaking and won awards. And I was bored.