Top Ten Movies of 2011
Bill Wine

Here is -- with votes offered and tallied by the firm of Me, Myself, and I -- the list of one grateful moviegoer's choices for the Top Ten Moviegoing Experiences of 2011

Holiday Movies Preview 2011
Bill Wine

With the 2011 calendar winding down and the Oscar races heating up, what are the end-of-the-year-and-in-some-cases-immediately-thereafter flicks that we'll be flocking to during the holiday season and beyond? Here's this year's lineup of end-of-the-year hopeful blockbusters, best-selling-book adaptations, built-in-audience sequels, and get-out-the-vote Oscar contenders that flaunt their pedigrees as we wait for them to open

The Descendants
Bill Wine

The Descendants

George Clooney stars as a real estate lawyer living in Hawaii with his wife and two daughters who is somewhat of a land baron these days, because he has been put in charge of managing his extended family's land trust on the island of Kauai that represents the last untouched inheritance of Hawaiian royalty

The Way

The Way
Bill Wine

'The Way' is an inspirational drama starring Martin Sheen as a bereaved father, who comes to France to collect the remains of his son, played in flashbacks and visions by Emilio Estevez who has been killed during a storm in the Pyrenees while walking on a Christian pilgrimage route in Spain

The Ides of March
Michael Phillips

In this political suspense film, Ryan Gosling stars as a spokesman for a governor (George Clooney) seeking the nomination for president. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the campaign's manager; Paul Giamatti plays his counterpart.

The Ides of March
Bill Wine

"The Ides of March" is an absorbing drama as well as an ends-and-means morality tale about integrity and loyalty, soul-selling and seduction, compromise and corruption, and betrayal. And that's just before lunch. Ryan Gosling stars as the strategist for the charismatic governor of Pennsylvania (George Clooney), who is vying to win the crucial presidential primary in Ohio

Circumstance
Michael Phillips

Set in Iran but shot in Lebanon, for obvious reasons, the coming-of-age drama 'Circumstance' stars two photogenic and expressive marvels, Nikohl Boosheri and Sarah Kazemy, as teenage friends and lovers living under the thumb of an oppressive regime

Apollo 18
Bill Wine

Apollo 18 is a fake-found-footage horror thriller. That is, it's purportedly a documentary about the final moon landing, conducted surreptitiously by NASA in 1974, offered as an explanation of why we as a nation have stopped going to the moon

The Debt
Michael Phillips

'The Debt' toggles between two time sequences. In 1997, three veterans of Mossad, Israel's secret service, are forced to revisit the truth behind their roughest assignment when the daughter of the agent played by Helen Mirren publishes a book about her mother and what happened in 1965-1966 in East Berlin

The Debt
Bill Wine

The Debt is a remake of an Israeli thriller about a legendary hunt for a notorious Nazi war criminal that examines that ever-elusive boundary between legend and truth. The espionage drama begins in 1997 as shocking news reaches retired Mossad agents Rachel (Helen Mirren) and Stefan (Tom Wilkinson) about former colleague David (Ciaran Hinds)

Higher Ground
Michael Phillips

Vera Farmiga directs and stars in this independent film about a woman who confronts the limitations of her life and then redefines her life completely. Farmiga's film doesn't state things directly, but we sense what is happening to her character, Corinne, and how some turn to fundamentalism for complex and interconnected reasons

A Good Old-Fashioned Orgy
Michael Phillips

There's funny and then there's funny, and 'A Good Old-Fashioned Orgy' is neither. Jason Sudeikis of 'Saturday Night Live' starts as Eric, who leads plans for a raucous Labor Day weekend at his dad's place on Long Island

A Good Old-Fashioned Orgy
Bill Wine

Plot? Who needs a plot? Not this R-rated comedy, which delivers just what its title promises and nothing more. Jason Sudeikis stars as Eric, the leader of a group of thirtysomethings who have long enjoyed gathering whenever possible for elaborate theme parties at his family's summer home in the Hamptons.

5 Days of War
John Anderson

Set during the brief, brutal 2008 flare-up between Russia and Georgia, '5 Days of War' has some exhilarating moments, but they're dampened by concessions to overly theatrical dialogue and inadvertently comic slo-mo

Seven Days in Utopia
Roger Moore

A young golfer has a meltdown in the middle of a tournament, followed by seven days of perspective-patching among mild-mannered, God-fearing folk in rural Texas. Faith and 'fore' walk hand in hand in this soft-centered, faith-based drama starring Lucas Black.

Seven Days in Utopia
Bill Wine

This golf flick is not par for the course in that it's a faith-based golf drama. That's right: it's about playing golf, finding God, then playing golf better. Among other things. Lucas Black plays a talented young Texas golfer intent on making the pro tour

Our Idiot Brother
Michael Phillips

Ned (Paul Rudd) has a penchant for causing inadvertent chaos. His three sisters balance out Ned's antics: Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), a weaselly magazine writer; Natalie (Zooey Deschanel), a bisexual artist's model; and Liz (Emily Mortimer), a repressed wife married to a philandering filmmaker

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
Michael Phillips

Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes play a couple renovating a spooky mansion, one with nasty little neighbors in the sub-basement. Bailee Madison plays Pearce's daughter, an unhappy girl who hears the whispered invitations of the monsters when no one else can. She must endure the horrors, while convincing her elders that she's not losing her mind

Colombiana
Michael Phillips

Colombiana follows the sexy, vengeful contract killer Cataleya (Zoe Saldana) signing her victims with lipstick. After a well-handled prologue gives us Cataleya as a child (Amandla Stenberg) witnessing the assassination of her next of kin by crime boss Don Luis (Beto Benites), we catch up with the beautiful adult Cataleya, now a hit-woman working for her uncle

Brighton Rock
Michael Phillips

In mediocrity lies opportunity. The new film version of Graham Greene's 1938 novel 'Brighton Rock' isn't very good, but if you haven't yet seen the 1947 film version of Greene's book, do so! It's the right time.

One Day
Michael Phillips

We meet the whip-smart Emma (Anne Hathaway) when she's celebrating university graduation with Dexter (Jim Sturgess), an arrogant but sweet boy-man. Then we pop in and out of their lives across two decades as they go their separate ways, always wondering if they're meant to be

Conan the Barbarian
Michael Phillips

Our new Conan (Jason Momoa) is ripped out of his mother's womb on the battlefield. His father (Ron Perlman) trains him well. As a grown man, Conan must save the nations of Hyboria and protect the beautiful Tamara (Rachel Nichols) from the man who slew his father, the evil Khalar Zym.

Fright Night
Michael Phillips

This remake of the 1985 cult classic actually works. In suburban Las Vegas, Charley (Anton Yelchin) doesn't like the vampirish looks of his new neighbor, Jerry, played by Colin Farrell, who you can tell relishes every rascally, bloodthirsty come-on.

The Help
Michael Phillips

In 1960s Jackson, Miss., young Miss Skeeter (Emma Stone) undertakes a clandestine book project gathering stories from the African-American housekeepers and child-raisers. Skeeter elicits counsel and stories from Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) while standing off against the despicable queen bee of privilege and prejudice, Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard)

The Help
Bill Wine

Based on the book of the same name, 'The Help' is a racially charged but smartly understated portrait of the relationship between African-American maids and their white employers in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s. Emma Stone, Viola Davis, and Octavia Spenser play the three central characters, and this triumvirate of actresses on the rise are uniformly fine

30 Minutes or Less
Michael Phillips

'30 Minutes or Less' pivots on Nick (Jesse Eisenberg), a pizza delivery guy who gets pulled into a tangled web of bank robbery and murder by Dwayne (Danny McBride). For most of the film, Nick runs around with explosives strapped to his chest, breaking the law with his buddy Chet (Aziz Ansari). The movie is sharp enough, but uneven

30 Minutes or Less
Bill Wine

Bank heist flicks don't come much more convoluted and lowbrow than this one, a madcap action comedy set in Grand Rapids. Jesse Eisenberg stars as a pot-smoking slacker of a pizza delivery driver who is abducted by minor-league thugs Danny McBride and Nick Swardson. They need $100,000 so they abduct Nick and force him to rob a bank with a bomb vest strapped to him. The real-life incident that this plot parallels ended tragically, but here it's played for laughs

The Whistleblower
Mark Olsen

'The Whistleblower' tells the story of Kathy Bolkovac, a Nebraska police officer who signs on with a private contractor to act as a U.N. peacekeeper in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999. She goes for the money, really, needing it to aid in a custody battle for her kids, but she finds herself unable to remain a bystander when confronted by horrors she never expected

The Guard
Bill Wine

This darkly comic Irish thriller is set in rural Galway, on Ireland's west coast, where a small-town cop is rarely confronted with big-time crime. Brendan Gleeson stars as an unorthodox Irish policeman who is a maverick where rules are concerned. Don Cheadle is a by-the-book African-American FBI agent. They find themselves working together as monumentally mismatched partners who might need to turn themselves into a heroic odd couple of law enforcers

Rise of The Planet of The Apes
Michael Phillips

"Rise of The Planet of The Apes" follows a pharmaceutical researcher (James Franco) on a mission to develop a drug to cure Alzheimer's. He takes in an orphaned lab chimp, Caesar, who ends up responding extraordinarily well to the trial drug. The resulting 'rise' plays out

Rise of The Planet of The Apes
Bill Wine

Say hello once again to the apes of wrath. Yep, they're on the rise: here are the creatures we came to know in 1968 in the original Planet of the Apes and subsequently in four sequels, then encountered again a decade ago in the remake. Now comes a reboot of the basic concept in a prequel

The Change-Up
Michael Phillips

'The Change-Up' is a weak and uninteresting farce. Jason Bateman, playing a workaholic lawyer, and Ryan Reynolds, playing his bongaholic buddy, magically change places while peeing in a fountain one drunken evening

The Change-Up
Bill Wine

This is a persona-swapping fantasy comedy in which lifelong best buddies, living what seem diametrically opposed lifestyles, switch bodies and thus get to see how the other half lives. Jason Bateman is a married father and a sleep-deprived, buttoned-down lawyer. Ryan Reynolds plays his best friend, a bottom-swimming actor and hedonistic womanizer

The Guard
Betsy Sharkey

In 'The Guard,' Gleeson's Gerry Boyle teams up with a visiting American FBI agent, played by Don Cheadle, to chase down (in an ambling sort of way) a rumored half-billion dollars' worth of cocaine smuggled into Ireland by a trio of bad 'uns, notably the icy-eyed killer played by Mark Strong

The Devil's Double
Bill Wine

It is 1987 in betrayal- and corruption-choked Baghdad. Decorated army lieutenant Latif Yahia is summoned to Saddam Hussein's palace and ordered to become the body double for the decadent, sadistic, and megalomaniacal Uday Saddam Hussein

Cowboys and Aliens
Michael Phillips

A desperado (Daniel Craig) wakes up one day in the desert in 1875 with a metallic weapon locked to his forearm and no memory of a recent alien encounter. Uniting with the local townsfolk of Absolution and a Civil War veteran ranch baron played by Harrison Ford, Craig's cowboy conspires to send the aliens back to their alien land

Crazy, Stupid, Love
Michael Phillips

An LA wife and mother played by Julianne Moore announces that she wants a divorce from her husband (Steve Carell). Carell's character moves out, eventually coming under the tutelage of a ladykiller played by Ryan Gosling

Smurfs
Roger Moore

Clumsy Smurf accidentally reveals the hidden Smurf Village to the evil wizard Gargamel, played to the hilt by Hank Azaria. As the mushroom-house villagers scatter into the forest, a half-dozen of them are sucked into a 'blue moon' vortex,' finding themselves in Central Park

Another Earth
Bill Wine

This small movie with big ideas is a science fiction speculation, a star-crossed romance, a fantasy-drama about loss and guilt and redemption, and a meditation on second chances. And it takes on all those challenges with a minimum of fuss -- and financing

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Michael Phillips

The film version of 'Snow Flower and the Secret Fan' proceeds as if willed into being by a particularly misguided 'question for discussion,' the kind you'd find at the tail end of a best-seller's paperback edition

Captain America: The First Avenger
Michael Phillips

Everything good about 'Captain America: The First Avenger,' which certainly is the most stylish comics-derived entertainment of the year. Director Joe Johnston's film is paced and designed for people who won't shrivel up and die if two or three characters take 45 seconds between combat sequences to have a conversation about world domination

Friends With Benefits
Michael Phillips

'No relationship. No emotions. Just sex!' So says the hotshot website art director played by Justin Timberlake, recruited from his California gig for a New York City job as GQ magazine's design head. The woman he's pitching, an executive headhunter played by Mila Kunis, says she's up for it. The newbie and his savvy Manhattan sponsor fall into a fast friendship

Friends with Benefits
Bill Wine

To wit: a contemporary couple attempts to keep their relationship strictly physical, with no romantic involvement. Friends with Benefits features Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. Friends with Benefits benefits from some friendly genre tweaking

Project Nim
Bill Wine

In 1973, a wife brought a chimpanzee home to her husband and seven kids and proceeded to raise it in their Upper West Side brownstone in New York City along with, and as, one of her children. That's the springboard for this compelling documentary about a controversial scientific research experiment in the nature-versus-nurture vein

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Michael Phillips

In 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2', Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) is still hunting Horcruxes, which contain amounts of Voldemort's (played by Ralph Fiennes) soul. Smart yet not slavish direction, and the still-perfect casting from way back when, make this final chapter an entertaining and satisfying success

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Bill Wine

Ten years and seven movies later, the imaginative, energetic, and climactic final installment in the admirably realized and fantastically successful series of movie adaptations of J. K. Rowling's epic, seven-novel fantasy about a boy wizard, finally -- or is it too quickly? -- arrives

Winnie the Pooh
Michael Phillips

Pooh has a very important thing to do. Sad old Eeyore (voiced by Bud Luckey) has lost his tail, and the gang makes various plans to round up a replacement. Voice actor Jim Cummings does a great impersonation of Sterling Holloway, the original Pooh, and the direction makes for a gentle and warm introduction to the cineplex for all the little tykes out there

Winnie the Pooh
Bill Wine

Pitched directly at preschoolers, it would, it just so happens, do nicely as a youngster's first theatrical movie. It's a playful, modest reboot of a franchise that has enthralled young children for decades about a rotund 'bear of very little brain' and his woodland friends, the amiably bumbling residents of the Hundred Acre Wood

Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels Of A Tribe Called Quest
Michael Phillips

Musical groups come together and they come apart, and even the ones that come apart occasionally get back together for gigs and another fan-tantalizing prospect of a new album. So it is with A Tribe Called Quest, the subject of debut feature filmmaker Michael Rapaport's bracing documentary

How to Live Forever
Bill Wine

What "How to Live Forever" does for its audience is get them to think about what ultimately gives life meaning. And this focus on the cognitive wrestling match that pits quantity of life versus quality of life is a fascinating and crucial consideration that, let's face it, proves to be of more interest and urgency the older you are

Horrible Bosses
Michael Phillips

In this comedy, three friends played by Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day dare themselves to murder their bosses. Advised by their 'murder consultant,' played by Jamie Foxx, the friends make awkward attempts to off people while hilarity ensues. Kevin Spacey turns in a great performance as Bateman's boss, and Jennifer Aniston does what she can

Horrible Bosses
Bill Wine

Call them what you will, bosses aren't always so boss. Thus the premise here, in which three friends commiserate with one another because each of them feels he works for the Boss from Hell. Bateman, Sudeikis and Day play three buddies who are tormented in various ways by their respective employers, played by Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell and Jennifer Aniston. So they plot to kill them

Zookeeper
Michael Phillips

In "Zookeeper", Griffin (Kevin James), a zookeeper, receives dating advice from the critters in his charge. While Griffin has eyes for the out-of-his-league beauty played by Leslie Bibb, he gets all the advice he can handle from Joe the Lion (voiced by Sly Stallone), Janet the Lioness (Cher), a monkey (Adam Sandler) and even Bernie the Bear (Nick Nolte)

Zookeeper
Bill Wine

Zookeeper is family film in which Kevin James talks to the animals. He's the protagonist of this talking-critter comedy, an indifferently made gimmickfest that wants to be childlike but is only childish. Some talking-animal movies charm while others soil the rug. Zookeeper fits squarely in the latter category

Page One: Inside the New York Times
Bill Wine

This print-journalism-as-endangered-species documentary chronicles the workings and worries, the adjustments and accommodations, the merits and missteps, and the trials and tribulations of the nation's paper of record. The film tries to take the digital-age temperature during the ongoing metamorphosis of serious news reporting, investigative journalism, and the daily newspaper

The Names of Love (Le Nom des Gens)
Michael Phillips

Director Michel Leclerc and his co-writer Baya Kasmi illuminate the ethnic, racial and religious issues that have beset France from World War II to the present -- through, surprisingly, the unfolding of a classic romantic comedy plot. 'Le Nom des Gens' ('The Names of Love') is so inspired and insightful that it is frequently hilarious yet does not shy away from tragedy

The Troll Hunter
Bill Wine

With elements of Jurassic Park, Ghostbusters, and The Blair Witch Project, The Troll Hunter is a merry monster mockumentary that explores the fantastical and embraces the bizarre in matter-of-fact fashion. The title character, a bearded woodsman named Hans, agrees to allow a three-student film crew to accompany him as he investigates a series of mysterious bear killings in the countryside

Monte Carlo
Michael Phillips

Monte Carlo follows Grace (Selena Gomez), a small-town Texas girl who travels to Paris with waitress pal Emma (Katie Cassidy) and third wheel Meg (Leighton Meester). The threesome gets separated from the group after an Eiffel Tower visit, and Grace is mistaken for a British socialite (also played by Gomez), for whom she is a dead ringer. Then it's off to Monte Carlo

Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon
Michael Phillips

In this third installment, we learn that the NASA space program was a cover-up that allowed the crew of Apollo 11 to explore the alien ruins on the dark side of the moon. Sam (Shia LaBeouf) returns with a new girlfriend (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley). And once again, the Autobots (our friends) take on the Decepticons (not our friends), with humanity in the middle

Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Bill Wine

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is once again. Once again, it's good robots versus bad robots. Once again, it's full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. And once again, unless you can think of nothing more entertaining than watchin' stuff blow up, it's a collective sleeping pill, with Shia LaBeouf saving the world yet again

Larry Crowne
Michael Phillips

This Tom Hanks directed (and co-produced and co-written) rom-com is the neediest movie of the year, and one of the phoniest. Julia Roberts plays a washed-up community college instructor. Tom Hanks plays a washed-up, laid-off divorcee who returns to school and winds up in guess who's class

Larry Crowne
Bill Wine

Larry Crowne is a low-keyed recession-era comedy that examines the need for reinventing oneself during challenging times. Tom Hanks plays the upbeat and affable title character, who -- even though he has excelled at, and been acknowledged for, his fine work, but because he doesn't have a college degree -- loses his job at a big-box retailer

Bad Teacher
Michael Phillips

A public school teacher, Elizabeth (Cameron Diaz) blows most of her classroom time showing her students movies like 'Lean on Me' and 'Dangerous Minds' while she nurses a hangover or longs for her next bong hit. A darling substitute teacher (Justin Timberlake) gives Elizabeth a clear goal: raise 10 grand for a boob job to bag a new man

[Also, Check Out Bill Wine's Review of "Bad Teacher"]

Cars 2
Michael Phillips

Director John Lasseter's effort smooshes the old gang into a nefarious James Bond universe, heavy on the missiles and ray guns and electrocutions. It's peculiar. Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) competes in World Grand Prix races from Tokyo to Paris. Meanwhile, Tow Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) is mistaken for a secret agent

[Also, Check Out Bill Wine's Review of "Cars 2"]

Oscars Night Fit for The King's Speech

'The King's Speech' winds up the big winner at the 2011 Oscars, winning four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor

83rd Academy Awards: Best Picture Nominations

A look at the 83rd Academy Awards Best Picture Oscar Nominees including movie reviews and trailers

83rd Academy Awards: Best Lead Actor Nominees

The 83rd Academy Awards Best Lead Actor Nominees

83rd Academy Awards: Best Lead Actress Nominees

The 83rd Academy Awards Best Lead Actress Nominees

The Mechanic

The cruddy remake of the 1972 Charles Bronson vehicle 'The Mechanic' has been rejiggered for Jason Statham and 10 times the brutality. Let's not denigrate the term 'action film' by applying it to director Simon West's ('Con Air') effort. This is a violence film, not an action film. Statham plays the cultured, sophisticated assassin who's assigned to kill his boss

Biutiful

This week's too-muchness stars Javier Bardem in Biutiful as a desperate yet soulful Barcelona fixer scrambling through his last weeks on Earth. Bardem brings everything a fine, searching actor can bring to 'Biutiful.' For many, this central performance will be more than enough. For others, the film will simply be too much

The Way Back

Director Peter Weir's newest film fictionalizes the World War II memoir 'The Long Walk,' telling the story of an escape from a Siberian gulag prison camp. The movie is half prison film and half raw-survival saga. The group escapes but has to survive the wilderness. Weir has a way with challenging landscapes

The Company Men

The actors in this recessionary tale are all very good, from Ben Affleck to Rosemarie DeWitt to Kevin Costner to Tommy Lee Jones to Maria Bello. The craft throughout in 'The Company Men' is clean, organized and thorough. Writer-director John Wells brings us well-intentioned generica set among the survivors of a recently downsized transportation company

Barney's Version

The everyday politics of a marriage, according to Izzy Panofsky, the father of Mordecai Richler's protagonist in 'Barney's Version,' are messy. The film acknowledges the mess and moosh of it all, and Paul Giamatti is the right man to play Barney, explosive and regretful, wry and vicious by turns. Dustin Hoffman gets some choice scenes as Izzy. Rosamund Pike shines as the third Mrs. Panofsky

My Favorite (Not Necessarily Best) Top 10 Movies

While I don't believe in 10 Best lists, I like to keep track of those films each year that I admired (some were guilty pleasures) but that still ended up as distinct underachievers. Here's my candidates

The Dilemma

Vince Vaughn and co-star Kevin James play Ronny and Nick, best pals and business partners in Chicago. Ronny is dating a chef. Nick, insecure and ulcer-prone, is married to live wire Geneva whom Vaughn's character, Ronny, once slept with in college

The Green Hornet

Britt Reid (Seth Rogen) is the playboy son of a newspaper baron (Tom Wilkinson) who dies by bee sting, leaving Britt in charge. Because he has nothing better to do, he teams up with one of his father's employees (Jay Chou) to become the Green Hornet, aided by faithful Kato

Another Year

In 'Another Year,' the medium-functioning alcoholic played by Lesley Manville zigzags through life shooting resentful, paranoid glances in pitiless close-up, while everyone around her enjoys themselves and each other and the seasons passing

Country Strong

Grammy Award-winning country superstar Kelly Canter (Gwyneth Paltrow) goes out on a comeback tour after a dramatic flameout involving alcohol and pills and a miscarriage. Complete with her hard-driving husband/manager James (Tim McGraw), her lover and rehab sponsor Beau (Garrett Hedlund) and up-and-comer with secrets Chiles (Leighton Meester), this film delivers drama with a heavy hand

Blue Valentine

Set in Scranton, Pa., and Brooklyn, N.Y., 'Blue Valentine' depicts a working-class marriage hanging by threads of resentment, contempt and love, a very tricky braid to unravel. At its best, the drama captures little bits and pieces of a relationship, the telltale signs and clues to its undoing. At least, that's the way it's written; as performed, thankfully, it's more intriguing

Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels bashes its way through a series of adventures in scale, ego and moderate amusement, existing primarily for set pieces. The cast is enjoyable with Jack Black as Gulliver, Jason Segel as Gulliver's lil' pal Horatio, and Emily Blunt as the local princess

Casino Jack

Using documentary-style dialogue, 'Casino Jack' delivers relatively straightforward explanations that proves effective in filling in the complicated details of the wheeling and dealing Jack Abramoff did with Indian casinos. In the film, Jack (Kevin Spacey) is a powerhouse of influence trading, well known around the Beltway

Rabbit Hole

Screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire's 'Rabbit Hole' retains what made it work on stage, chiefly a disarming sense of humor amid the grimmest sort of personal crisis, and a pair of juicy leading roles. The film, directed by John Cameron Mitchell, is conventionally made but extremely well acted.

Colin Firth & Geoffrey Rush

The King's Speech

This juicy, witty historical docudrama stars Colin Firth as Bertie, the future King George VI, and Geoffrey Rush as his 'speech defects' consultant. The actors, predictably, are superb, and director Tom Hooper's slightly distorting fish-eye-lens work lends a gratifying immediacy

True Grit

This remake restores all the grit removed in the first version. In 1870s Arkansas, 14-year-old Mattie Ross guides an Old Testament eye-for-an-eye search for her father's killer. Jeff Bridges plays one-eyed Civil War veteran Rooster Cogburn well, and Hailee Steinfeld is a real find as Mattie

Little Fockers

Strangely enough, the actual little Fockers get marginalized in what passes for this third installment. Along with Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) and his father-in-law Jack (Robert De Niro), all of the old gang's back, dutifully.

Sofia Coppola's Somewhere

Writer-director Sofia Coppola's 'Somewhere,' a small but, in its way, daring picture set largely within the confines of the Chateau Marmont just above Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. This is a starry hotel with a wonderfully narcissistic web site.

Top 12 Must-see Movies in 2011

The Fighter

This movie is an off-center but exceptional boxing film that feels like it comes from real life as well as the movies. Set and shot mostly in Lowell, Mass., this is the true story of welterweight Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) and his trainer-brother Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale).

How Do You Know

In James L. Brooks' new movie "How Do You Know", a lifelong can-do athlete, Lisa (Reese Witherspoon), gets caught between relationships with a slippery businessman's son George (Paul Rudd) and an easygoing pro baseball player played by Owen Wilson

TRON: Legacy

This remake is a sullen affairs. The beginning establishes 27-year-old Sam Flynn's (Garrett Hedlund's) entry into his missing father's universe, the innards of a digital grid. Jeff Bridges reprises his role as the computer visionary father

I Love You Phillip Morris

When a romantic comedy opens with kids looking for shapes in the clouds and one young lad spots a 'wiener' -- and he's not talking hotdogs -- it's a pretty good bet that a conventional love story is not going to follow. That is most definitely the case in the audacious and wildly out-of-control farce

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The new 'Narnia' chronicle strikes an artful balance between allegorical religious concerns and escapist ones. It's 1943. With Peter off studying and Susan off in America, the story centers on Lucy (Georgie Henley) and Edmund (Skandar Keynes) who transport to magical Narnia through a painting of the sailing vessel The Dawn Treader. A search ensues across five cursed islands to restore peace

The Tourist

The Tourist is a peculiar sort of leisure thriller. Johnny Depp plays a Midwestern shmo picked up by Elise (Angelina Jolie) on a train from Paris to Venice. Elise, a Brit, is the paramour of a man who stole billions belonging to a London gangster (Steven Berkoff), and she's supposed to find a false boyfriend on the train in order to throw off Interpol

Night Catches Us

Surely the gentlest American film ever made about home-grown revolutionaries, writer-director Tanya Hamilton's 'Night Catches Us' is not long, but its rhythm forces audiences to pay attention to what its superb actors express non-verbally, and to measure the weight of the characters' past lives.

Black Swan

Mainlining Tchaikovsky's 'Swan Lake' ballet score like a drug addict, this film pushes Nina (Natalie Portman), a Manhattan ballerina devoted to her craft, to the brink of insanity and then a couple of subway stops beyond.

Burlesque

Most backstage musicals are ridiculous, but this film is beyond ridiculous. A plucky Iowa waitress named Ali (Christina Aguilera) travels to L.A. and stumbles head first into a swanky neo-burlesque joint on Sunset Boulevard

Tangled

Bright and engaging, this Disney film certainly is more like it. While no masterwork, 'Tangled' reworks the Brothers Grimm tale of Rapunzel clearly and well. It's rollicking without being pushy.   Continue ...

Love & Other Drugs

This mood-swinging romantic comedy offers some surface appeal simply because its characters, Maggie (Anne Hathaway) and Jamie (Jake Gyllenhaal), spend a heartening amount of time in bed, or near one, in various degrees of undress.   Continue ...

Faster

This is an overpacked suitcase disguised as a movie, which is appropriate since Dwayne Johnson is a bulging array of musculature disguised as an ordinary human. He's good screen company, though, make no mistake.   Continue ...

Made In Dagenham

'Made in Dagenham' is not assembly-line fare, but enlightenment of the quietest sort -- no real radicals around, and the ones who come close would meet you at the pub for a pint.   Continue ...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

We have reached the semifinals. In this seventh installment in Harry's saga, the saga doesn't care much about the needs of the newcomer. Director David Yates's film will not be for everyone. It takes its time. It has a heavy heart, and a sluggish middle passage. But the little things work extremely well here. And we've come this far

The Next Three Days

The billboards read: 'What if you had 72 hours to save everything you live for?' In the case of Russell Crowe and his acting career, he should save himself from this movie. Paul Haggis, the man behind the Oscar-winning 'Crash,' wrote and directed this mess. Yes, this film is really that bad

Skyline

In this film, which offers a few sights of enticing grossness but not much of a movie, space aliens drop in on Los Angeles, luring the residents with mesmerizing shafts of unholy blue light. There are the motherships, into which masses of hypnotized Angelenos are sucked. There are so-called hydras and drones, smaller, tentacled beasts

White Material

Claire Denis would likely be the first to acknowledge that her latest film, 'White Material,' is far thornier material. It's also not as good. Yet minor Denis is well worth seeing here for reasons that start, and end, with the stoic magnificence of her chief camera subject, Isabelle Huppert

Morning Glory

If this romantic comedy clicks with audiences, the Rachel McAdams factor will be the reason why. Here she plays Becky Fuller, a TV producer who gets a shot at reviving a low-rated Manhattan-based morning show.

Unstoppable

This runaway train thriller is one of director Tony Scott's better films. An unmanned freight train full of highly combustible chemicals is on the loose. Must be stopped. Train engineer Denzel Washington and newbie Chris Pine are on the job.

127 Hours

Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle proves it's possible to make a supercharged, kinetic movie about a man who can't move. Based on the memoir 'Between a Rock and a Hard Place,' this film follows Aron Ralston (James Franco) on his solo hike through eastern Utah.

Wild Target

'Wild Target,' starring Bill Nighy and Emily Blunt, is a droll British farce about a middle-aged hit man who falls for a beautiful young mark, and as its title suggests, everything -- including the movie -- seems destined to spin dangerously out of control

Fair Game

'Fair Game' is a fact-based tale of Valerie Plame, a non-official covert operative (NOC) in the employ of the Central Intelligence Agency, and her diplomat husband Joseph Wilson. One personality fed on secrecy, the other, bravado and public outrage

Megamind

This new DreamWorks animated feature is about a hapless blue villain, humanized. Will Ferrell is the voice of Megamind; Brad Pitt, less crucial to the story, voices Metro Man, defender of Metro City, slightly smug in his fabulousness. An immigrant from another galaxy, raised by hardened criminals, Megamind wages attempt after attempt to take over Metro City

Due Date

At the airport, a homeward-bound L.A. architect (Robert Downey Jr.) lands on a no-fly list along with a gormless would-be actor (Zach Galifianakis). They're forced to share a rental car on their drive west. They fight. The architect burns, while the actor fiddles.

For Colored Girls

While Tyler Perry may have loved Ntozake Shange's powerhouse of a play, he unfortunately becomes its undoing onscreen. Perry's adaptation plants a group of women in a Harlem apartment building. Connections are made, drama ensues, and Perry adds in several new characters to flesh out the ensemble and give it a 'Crash'-like vibe of colliding destinies

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest

Audiences like this sort of thing, the third film based on the late Stieg Larsson's best-selling books referred to as the Millenium trilogy. This wrap-up film is a rather wobbly blend of courtroom drama and loose ends tied, albeit rather leisurely. It is both formulaic and unformulaic enough

Paranormal Activity 2

Here we have a shrewd sequel a touch better than the original. Set two months prior to the San Diego County hauntings of the first film, the sequel follows Kristi, who returns home with newborn Hunter only to find some supernatural goings on at the house.

Hereafter

'Hereafter' is a solemnly reassuring film. Director Clint Eastwood weaves together three story strands: French journalist Marie who survives a massive tsunami; young twin brothers grappling with the after effects of a terrorist bombing; and a San Francisco psychic

Tamara Drewe

'Tamara Drewe' comes from a Posy Simmonds graphic novel (originally serialized in The Guardian), in which a bewitching, adventurous gossip columnist returns to her family's cottage and turns a neighboring writers' colony upside down with her fabulousness

RED

For an hour or so, RED strikes an engagingly sadistic tone. Bruce Willis brings his uber-relaxed authority to a retired good-guy assassin. He gathers the old gang (Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich) for one last showdown against those trying to off them

Conviction

Hilary Swank stars as a high school dropout who works tirelessly to get her wrongly convicted brother's murder sentence overturned, earning an overdue high school diploma, struggling through law school, and working as both detective and lawyer on behalf of her sibling. Swank finds her way into the role of real-life hero Betty Anne Waters easily, without calculation

Nowhere Boy

There are so many ways in which 'Nowhere Boy,' an emotionally raw and yet raucous riff on John Lennon's turbulent teenage years, is such an entertaining piece of nostalgia. The film takes us back to a time when rock 'n' roll was still finding its way and its warriors

Inside Job

Writer-director Charles Ferguson's documentary 'Inside Job' reminds us, at a pretty rough time, that the ongoing $20-trillion-plus global economic crisis is not the capitalistic equivalent of an act of nature. Rather, it came from a few thousand individual acts of human, craven self-interest

Life as We Know It

After their best friends die in a car accident, Holly (Heigl) and Eric (Duhamel), the godparents who can barely tolerate each other, learn they've been named guardians of year-old Sophie. Uneasily they move in to their late friends' spacious Atlanta home and begin playing competing versions of 'house.'

Secretariat

There is no suspense in this movie about the 1973 Triple Crown-winning horse, but it's got heart. Diane Lane stars as the horse's owner, Penny Chenery Tweedy, a Denver wife and mother who won the future champ in a coin toss. John Malkovich lets his golf outfits do the talking in the role of the eccentric trainer Lucien Laurin

It's Kind Of A Funny Story

Some films are at once disappointing and successful, worth seeing despite the limitations of their source material. How so? Let 'It's Kind of a Funny Story' explain it all for you. This is the third feature from the writing-directing team of Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden.

Stone

A stern four-character chamber piece, 'Stone' begins with the line, 'You keep my soul in a dungeon,' and follows it up immediately with 'I'm leaving.' This is not a movie afraid of stating its business and hitting the nail on the head. Yet it is about people who do not leave, at least upfront; it is about being stuck, but nearing a boiling point

The Social Network

At once stealthy and breathlessly paced, The Social Network scoots at a fabulous clip. When a drunken hack job of Harvard's student directory turns into a social networking collaboration called thefacebook, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg takes the idea and his mad programming skills to California

Let Me In

This shrewd American remake of the Swedish original novel and film, 'Let the Right One In,' follows a young girl vampire, Abby, whose budding friendship with a severely bullied boy leads to a gory confrontation with his tormentors.

Howl

As cautious as the poem itself was not, 'Howl' began as a documentary but turned into something else in its making. It honors poet Allen Ginsberg, played here by a studious James Franco, and spends a good deal of its time recreating highlights of the 1957 obscenity trial

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Director Oliver Stone's sequel has its satisfactions, thanks mainly to a cast skillful enough to finesse what is effectively two films sharing the same screen. One concerns Gordon Gekko's (Michael Douglas') comeback, after doing time for securities fraud and related crimes

Buried

This gripping new thriller takes place in a coffin-like wooden box, imprisoning an American truck driver held hostage somewhere in Iraq and losing oxygen, fast. He is played by Ryan Reynolds. A cell phone is the other major character.

Never Let Me Go

This film, taken from Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 novel (which is, I think, very nearly flawless), works on its own terms. Carey Mulligan portrays Kathy H. Most of the film delves into flashbacks to Kathy's younger days at an English boarding school

You Again

Disney's effort to turn Kristen Bell into America's Sweetheart reaches its tipping point with this flat romantic comedy. Marni (Bell) was mercilessly bullied in high school by J.J. (Odette Yustman). But Marni has grown up to be successful. A visit back home brings back the ugly old days

The Virginity Hit

How effective is humiliation comedy anymore in our anything-for-YouTube world? 'The Virginity Hit,' the latest in the continuum of teenagers-in-heat romps, puts 'Porky's' into a social media scenario

The Town

Worth seeing for its actors, 'The Town' is violent but softhearted, and clearly digs the grungy allure of its Boston criminal world, where the bank robbers disguise themselves as ghoulish nuns. This is a one-last-job movie. Doug (Ben Affleck) angles to make one last score with the gang and go clean. Hotheaded Jem (Jeremy Renner) wants the heists to continue

Easy A

The story of a girl who gains a reputation as her high school's No. 1 skank after her white lie about a boring weekend, 'Easy A' is neither as smart nor as funny as it wants to be. Much of what passes for fresh in this 'Scarlet Letter' update doesn't bear closer inspection, yet the movie is not without its pleasures