We begin with the decade’s best movies — and, if nothing else, our list is certainly genre-film-friendly: Somewhere in the middle, Let the Right One In, Hellboy, Hot Fuzz and Mulholland Drive sit proudly side by side. Because our crew of participants isn’t all that big (11 of Popdose’s writers contributed), a few personal favorites that one might not expect somehow earned enough votes to make the cut (hello, Dodgeball!); nonetheless, we were all pleasantly surprised to see that our compiled Top 100 offers such a nice balance of prestige films and high-quality popcorn fare. Of course, since this list is being posted before Thanksgiving, 2009’s holiday films (and likely Oscar bait) aren’t represented; over the coming months we’ll no doubt be kicking ourselves that we didn’t yet know the quality of films like Up in the Air, Invictus, The Lovely Bones, Nine … Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel… With that caveat in mind, away we go!

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (dir. Peter Jackson, 2003). I felt the stirrings of greatness watching The Fellowship of the Ring, my first truly elating experience at the movies following 9/11 that dismal year. The Two Towers confirmed that a special cinematic event was unfolding. I could sit back from 2002-03 confident that the payoff would be astounding — and it was. Another long-awaited fantasy trilogy that was also underway at that time was weak by comparison; unlearning his own lesson, George Lucas put his characters in the service of effects, rather than the other way around. Because of an iconic troupe of actors, smart scripting and taut direction over many hours, I believed completely in Middle Earth, and left it only reluctantly — but what a wrap-up, brimming with action and cascading with soul. Rarely have I been so overwhelmed. Thank you, Peter Jackson. I’m fully confident that, with your guidance, Guillermo Del Toro will put The Hobbit on my Top 100 list a decade from now. –Bob Cashill

2. Almost Famous (dir. Cameron Crowe, 2001). Crowe’s semi-autobigraphical film is a culmination of all the themes he had been working on throughout his career: first love, family, discovering who you are, and of course music. As William, Patrick Fugit is our eyes and ears into the insane world of 1970s rock and roll. Although his overprotective mother (a wonderful Frances McDormand) disapproves, William, a teenage prodigy who is about to graduate from high school early, heads off on the road with the band Stillwater. While this assignment for Rolling Stone should only last a week, William falls under the spell of the road; he falls in love with a groupie … er, I mean “band-aid” (a lovely Kate Hudson); and he breaks the cardinal rule of a rock reporter, a rule handed down to him by legendary critic Lester Bangs (Phillip Seymour Hoffman in a scene-stealing part) — he makes friends with the band. But he doesn’t just become their friend … he becomes part of their family. The relationship that develops between William and Stillwater’s charismatic guitarist, Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup in his best performance to date), is not just reporter to musician, but brother. It is odd to think that a film that lovingly uses Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour” over a drug-overdose stomach-pumping scene would end up as one of the best coming-of-age stories ever (I mean that), but Crowe’s ability to balance humor and pathos makes every scene feel like magic. This is a story about the heart, written from the heart, and no matter how many great films Crowe makes from this point forward, he can rest easy knowing he’s made his masterpiece. Oh, and there is kick-ass music throughout the film. –Scott Malchus

3. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (dir. Peter Jackson, 2001). Fellowship short-circuited my critical faculties like no other film, before or since. From its opening moments, my eyes were filled with tears, simply for how right it all was. For the full runtime, I alternately gawked and wept, and I could not form a coherent sentence for a good 45 minutes afterward. I’ve watched the film countless times since, and its flaws have become apparent even to me — but it remains, I think, the most beautiful, most faithful, and most emotionally resonant of the trilogy, thanks in no small part to Sean Bean; as Boromir, he may not get much screen time, but the tragedy of his fall haunts all the films. –Jack Feerick

4. Pan’s Labyrinth (dir. Guillermo del Toro, 2006). Mexican filmmaker del Toro’s Spanish-language parable was perhaps the most imaginative, visually arresting film of the decade. The director skillfully blends fact (the 1944 aftermath of the Spanish Civil War) with fantasy (a young girl’s retreat from the violent world of her Falangist stepfather). The film’s ending, seen by some as depressing, is actually full of hope. –Ken Shane

5. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (dir. Michel Gondry, 2004). What makes a film about forgetting so memorable? Though it dazzles with surreal effects and madcap hijinks, Eternal Sunshine is grounded in an essential human dilemma — the need to love and be loved, even after your loved one’s flaws have become distressingly apparent. This is by far the most emotionally resonant of the brilliant Charlie Kaufman’s films (he co-wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay with Gondry and performance artist Pierre Bismuth). In his second feature after making his name with commercials and music videos, Gondry creates a vivid world of memory and psychosis inside the head of protagonist Joel Barish (Jim Carrey, in one of his few great performances). Then, as Joel’s memories of girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) are erased by employees of Lacuna, Inc. who have their own problems, Gondry collapses Joel’s world, both metaphysically and tangibly, in a psychotraumatic freakout that manages to be at once whimsical and devastating. –Jon Cummings

6. Memento (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2000). The audience loves a good mindgame, and Nolan served up one of the best with this story of an amnesiac who has to retrace how he arrived in a horrible situation. With the help of tattoos, recordings and other clues, we retrace those steps with him, moving forward in the film but backward in time. Guy Pearce makes the character work in an angle, amnesia, that many an actor has failed with previously. Being only Nolan’s second film, and first to gain real notoriety, Memento was an auspicious introduction to an appreciative audience. –Dw. Dunphy

7. There Will Be Blood (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007). Writer/director Anderson’s much-anticipated first feature film in five years – after 2002’s Punch Drunk Love (see #86 below) – There Will Be Blood loosely adapts Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil! into one of the most powerful films of the decade. Daniel Day-Lewis turns in a brilliant performance as oil prospector Daniel Plainview, a man whose greed takes over his life and turns him into a ruthless shell of a human being. I was mesmerized by this film and its breathtaking cinematography, gorgeous soundtrack (provided by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood), and incredible performances by Day-Lewis and Paul Dano. It also contained one of my favorite lines of dialogue in any movie, ever: “I … drink … your … milkshake!” Indeed. –Kelly Stitzel

8. The Dark Knight (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2008). It is the bleakest superhero film ever, and Christian Bale turns on the “growly, scary” voice one too many times, but The Dark Knight finally did what no previous superhero flick could: turn the whole concept of intention on it’s head. In the Joker, we have a psychopath yearning for anarchic dystopia. There is no hidden agenda, even though, all through the film, he purports to have several. Never before has the term “criminally insane” been explored in popcorn pop culture in such an immediate way, exploding the myth that everyone has a reason for the things they do. Perhaps such a Nietzchean evil isn’t meant to be examined in a comic-book flick, but one less superhero or supervillain acting out his daddy issues is, in itself, a blessing. –Dw.D

9. Sideways (dir. Alexander Payne, 2004). A film as rich and intoxicating as the Pinot Noirs that inspire its protagonists to traipse through California’s Santa Ynez Valley, Sideways redefined the ensemble comedy on Payne’s idiosyncratic terms. He finds the heart in, and forces the audience to root for, an utterly unlikeable author/wine aficianado (the always wonderful Paul Giamatti) who’s stubborn, cynical, creatively stuck and hopeless with women. Of course, all it takes is a good, earthy woman to make him reconsider, if not completely change, his ways. (It helps that the woman is played with such exquisite understatement by Virginia Madsen, in a career-reviving performance.) Among its many other accomplishments, Sideways made a generation of filmgoers think differently about wine; all it took was one lingering shot of a vineyard picnic to send tourists streaming into Santa Ynez. Five years since its release, business is still booming at the Hitching Post restaurant in Buellton … and sales of fucking Merlot have never been the same. –JC

10. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (dir. Peter Jackson, 2002). The second chapter of the once-thought-unfilmable J.R.R. Tolkien epic, Jackson’s adaptation never falters and maintains its intensity from the first moment to the last. The potential for failure was great: Most trilogy second acts are pale imitations of the first, especially considering The Two Towers is the fantasy equivalent of a road picture, with Frodo and Samwise setting out to destroy the evil “One Ring.” It is the commitment to the fictional universe created by Jackson and WETA Workshop, and the near-transcendent performance of Andy Serkis as Gollum (in actuality a motion-captured feat of CG), that elevates the film into something entirely different from its genre-mates. –Dw.D

11. Finding Nemo (dirs. Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich, 2003). To my mind, this is the finest film Pixar has made since Toy Story. For their animated film about a father fish looking for his lost son, Stanton and Unkrich did not cast “big stars” but went with Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres (whose career was then on a downswing) and some of the world’s greatest character actors including Stephen Root, Allison Janney and Willem Dafoe. The underwater sequences are breathtaking, the turtles are hilarious, and the whole prison-break plot is well planned and executed — but what gets you every time is the love Marlin (Brooks) has for his son Nemo (Alexander Gould). It’s difficult enough to pull off an emotional resonant film between father and son without it becoming saccharine, and Pixar did it with animated characters! This being a Pixar film, you expect it to look beautiful and you expect it to be well written and performed. But the pumping heart underneath Finding Nemo seems to be bigger than most of their other films — as big as the ocean — making it my favorite animated movie and one of the best of the last 10 years. –SM

12. No Country for Old Men (dirs. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007). Man goes hunting. Man discovers the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong. Man finds bag of drug money clutched in the hands of a dead dealer. Man takes money. Man is hunted by a soulless, evil assassin. Soulless, evil assassin is hunted by small-town sheriff not sure he can keep up with the latest breed of criminals. All hell breaks loose. I couldn’t stop thinking about No Country for Old Men for months after I saw it in the theater. The aforementioned soulless villain, Anton Chigurh – chillingly portrayed by Javier Bardem, who deservedly won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award® for his performance – invaded my dreams many, many times. While there are some major differences between the book and the film, the Coen Brothers did a wonderful job with their adaptation, answering some questions the book asked and, in turn, asking new questions the viewer (and reader) may not have considered. This has become my favorite Coen Brothers movie, and is my pick for best movie of the decade. –Kelly S.

13. Shaun of the Dead (dir. Edgar Wright, 2004). No less an authority than my sainted wife calls this “the perfect date movie,” and that’s good enough for me. It would be easy, especially in a high-concept comedy like this, to resort to caricature and let the situations do the heavy lifting. But by casting honest-to-God actors rather than comedians, and giving them the space to create believable characters, director/co-writer Wright pulls off a horror romantic comedy that succeeds on all fronts — nail-bitingly tense, fall-down funny, shot through with anguish and tenderness. There’s no shortage of entrails on display in Shaun, but what shows most is its heart. –JF

14. O Brother Where Art Thou? (dirs. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2000). It’s rare when such a terrific movie boasts a soundtrack that becomes a phenomenon all on its own — but that’s the brilliance with which the Coen brothers (working with music director T Bone Burnett) used fresh recordings of “old-timey” music to propel their arch adventure-comedy. Loosely (and I mean loosely) based on Homer, O Brother sends its trio of chain-gang escapees (George Clooney, John Turturo, Tim Blake Nelson) on an odyssey of Gump-like encounters with Depression-era Southern archtypes, from a crossroads bluesman to a KKK rally, and from a getaway with Baby Face Nelson to an uneasy alliance with a good-old-boy governor. Along the way they stumble into a radio station to “sing into a can” and emerge as the Soggy Bottom Boys — and the irrepressible Clooney’s lip-syncing performances of “A Man of Constant Sorrow” were classic Coen moments. –JC

15. Slumdog Millionaire (dir. Danny Boyle, 2008). At its best, the cinema immerses us in richly textured worlds that are at once unfamiliar and yet relevant to our own experience. Slumdog Millionaire, based on the Indian novel Q&A, embodies its historical moment more than any film in recent years, introducing us to an exotic culture that is rapidly transforming itself into one more like our own — for better and for worse. It’s globalization incarnate, really, as we (along with the slumdogs themselves) watch the impoverished chaos of Bombay turn into the high-rises of Mumbai, and are introduced to the contemporary Indians who are filling our outsourced jobs even as they obsess over the same game show we do. All the while, Boyle keeps the emotions of the film’s central, at times Dickensian coming-of-age romance at the forefront — achieving a one-world universality that perfectly suits our increasingly multicultural existence. –JC

16. The Wrestler (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2008). When my friends and I had a discussion about our favorite movies of 2008 right around Oscar time this year, and I told them my choice was The Wrestler, their immediate response was, “Really?” I can understand why they would have that reaction – it actually surprised me how much I loved it. I mean, a film about a washed-up professional wrestler trying to make a career comeback doesn’t seem like the kind of movie I would be enamored of, but it was. Between Mickey Rourke’s heartbreaking portrayal of Randy “The Ram” Robinson, whose life seems to parallel Rourke’s own in many ways; Aronofsky’s fantastic direction; Robert Siegel’s beautiful script; and Marisa Tomei’s great performance as Randy’s stripper love interest, Cassidy – a role that she said she prepared for, in part, by watching episodes of the VH1/Bret Michaels reality series, Rock of Love – there’s quite a bit to love. –Kelly S.

17. The Lives of Others (dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006). The Cold War may be over, Germany may be reunited … but paranoia (and wiretapping) are forever. That realization helps bring a gripping immediacy to this portrait of East German totalitarianism during the mid-1980s. Our guide through East Berlin’s morass of spying, interrogation, hope and fear is Gerd Weisler (played by Ulrich Muhe), a captain in the Stasi secret police who comes to question the morality of state oppression when he becomes enveloped in the lives of a pro-Western playwright and his girlfriend, whose movements the agent is monitoring. High-stakes events unfold with increasing tension, leading to devastating consequences for all concerned. Directed with taut restraint by first-timer von Donnersmarck, The Lives of Others won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film — but easily deserved the trophy that went to The Departed later in the evening. –JC

18. Mystic River (dir. Clint Eastwood, 2003). Eastwood has become one of the world’s great directors, something that would have surprised people who knew him mainly as Dirty Harry, and a star of spaghetti westerns. He has made some of the most accomplished films of the last 20 years, and Mystic River is one of his greatest achievements. Working with a dream cast led by a brilliant Sean Penn, and featuring an underrated performance from Tim Robbins, Mystic River (based on a novel by Dennis Lehane) tells the story of three childhood friends in Boston, and the twin tragedies, 30 years apart, that lead them down different paths and eventually shatter their lives. –Ken S.

19. The Royal Tenenbaums (dir. Wes Anderson, 2001). Bigger in scope than Anderson’s 1998 breakthrough Rushmore, Tenenbaums paints a beautiful picture of adults stuck in such a state of arrested development that they still wear the same outfits as when they were young. At once funny, sad, creepy, and angry, The Royal Tenenbaums is a modern masterpiece of mood and tone. Gene Hackman is pitch-perfect as the caddish father looking to re-enter his estranged family after the money runs out, and the rest of the ensemble cast deliver some of their strongest performances to date. –Dave Lifton

20. Spirited Away (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2001). No filmmaker understands childhood better than Miyazaki. The character transformation at the center of Spirited Away — fearful girl discovers inner resources of strength and compassion — is familiar enough; but Miyazaki dares to make his heroine unlovely and exasperating from the start, and the whole thing plays out in a phantasmagoric animated landscape of tremendous detail and beauty. Everything is fluid — geography, identity, anatomy — and everything is up for grabs. In this world, even your name can be bought and sold; only kindness is beyond price. –JF

21. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (dir. Ang Lee, 2000). I hoped to love this movie. It had so many of the things I enjoyed about Hong Kong and Chinese cinema, including two of my very favorite stars, Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh. And on every level it surpassed my expectations. I swooned along with a typically hipper-than-thou and tough-to-please New York Film Festival crowd who had their senses shattered and hearts broken by Lee’s first great film of the decade. –BC

22. The Prestige (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2006). This entertaining film takes us into the world of stage magicians in London at the beginning of the 20th century. The rival magicians, played by Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman (with fine support from the reliable Michael Caine), engage in an ongoing quest to better one another, and will resort to anything to achieve their goals. Their competition inevitably leads to tragedy. The film also features a quirky performance from David Bowie as scientist Nikola Tesla. –Ken S.

23. Spider-Man 2 (dir. Sam Raimi, 2004). Like Tim Burton’s Batman (1989), the first Spider-Man had some successful elements mixed in with some dubious “commercial” ones–Macy Gray? But its popularity gave Sam Raimi more latitude the second time around, resulting in a perfectly judged comic book fantasy with deliriously exciting sequences — everything involving Alfred Molina’s Dr. Octopus is stunningly realized — and a sweetly satisfying human element (the train passengers’ defense of the fallen Spider-Man is truly touching.) We’ll pass over the overstuffed third in embarrassed silence and hope for a more satisfying fourth. –BC

24. Wall-E (dir. Andrew Stanton, 2008). People quibbled with the film’s eco-friendly third act, and it does lose a bit of the silent-movie magic established at the start of it, but Wall-E represented yet another of Pixar’s story-telling successes. It may have been marketed at the kids, but it really was a solid piece of entertainment. –Dw.D

25. The Incredibles (dir. Brad Bird, 2004). A perfect populist cinema confection, wrapping a bright pop-candy shell around a chewy political center. Playing with complex ideas about individualism and altruism one moment, satirizing genre tropes the next, The Incredibles is also — despite its fantastic elements — one of the most genuine portraits of an American family ever put to film. The more you look, the more there is to see. –JF

26. High Fidelity (dir. Stephen Frears, 2000). Based on the Nick Hornby novel of the same name, this is John Cusack’s last great movie before he started making some tragic career choices (I will never forgive him for America’s Sweethearts, Serendipity or Must Love Dogs, though I guess he gets a pass from me for Max and 1408). Music nerds, lovers of lists and hopeless romantics all can find something in common with unlucky-in-love Chicago record store owner Rob and his quest to find out why he can’t seem to stay in a relationship by recounting – and revisiting – his top five break-ups. –Kelly S.

27. Coraline (dir. Henry Selick, 2009). In an age in which computers have all but replaced traditional stop-motion animation, it’s hard for a movie like Coraline to break through. It was a crafty idea to release this as one of the first of the new (sort of rehashed) trend of 3D movies. Now practically every animated movie is shown with the option of 3D. What Coraline did that was special, however, was tell a beautiful nightmare. The film is a metaphor for the struggles children have with that “other family.” You know, the one that doesn’t say no. It’s one of the best movies of 2009. –Arend Anton

28. Children of Men (dir. Alfonso Cuaron, 2006). A lot of movies have post-apocalyptic settings. Children of Men, though, shows us the End of the World as it happens, in slow motion: the petty cruelties of a society with nothing more to aspire to, the selfishness of people marking time, waiting for the extinction they know is inevitable. Clive Owen’s performance is the movie in microcosm — a life structured on self-pity, mustering a weary decency and a well-ordered misery that is disrupted by that most violent of forces — hope. –JF

29. Donnie Darko (dir. Richard Kelly, 2001). A film that ends up being more than the sum of its parts (Jake Gyllenhaal, a heartbreaking ’80s New Wave soundtrack, and the late Patrick Swayze playing a pedophile). There are probably a lot of folks who take this movie really seriously, trying to keep all the space-time stuff straight, but it’s enough simply to bask in its sharp, nasty humor, encapsulated in scenes like the “Sparkle Motion” dance routine. That alone is worth two hours of your time. –Robin Monica Alexander

30. Iron Man (dir. Jon Favreau, 2008). One of the most important parts of a superhero’s story is his origin. A number of movies get this painfully wrong (Victor Von Doom riding the rocket with the Fantastic Four, Bruce Wayne’s parents being killed by the man that becomes the Joker, Peter Parker’s uncle killed by the guy who becomes the Sandman). Not in this case, though. Except for updating the time and location, Favreau’s version is wonderfully right. The shrapnel lodged dangerously close to Tony Stark’s heart; Yensin, the man who helps Stark build the suit; even that first butt-ugly suit itself are all straight from the comic book. There are even nods to the wonderfully cheesy theme song from the old cartoon (Rhodey’s ringtone for Tony). Plus, Robert Downey, Jr. seems to have been born to play the part of cocky millionaire industrialist Tony Stark. –Tony Redman

31. Michael Clayton (dir. Tony Gilroy, 2007). On the surface, writer/director Gilroy’s Michael Clayton is a legal thriller dealing with an environmental case. George Clooney, in one of his best film roles, plays Clayton, a “fixer” sent in to clean up messes his firm wants kept out of the papers. In essence, he gets rich clients out of embarrassing predicaments, and gets paid well to do it. But Clayton’s soul is being sucked dry by the same firm that pays him, and that’s where the film draws its power. Below the surface is the story of a man trying to redeem himself in the eyes of his mentor (a riveting Tom Wilkinson), his son, his family, and ultimately himself. Also featuring Tilda Swinton in an Academy Award-winning performance, Michael Clayton harkens back to the ’70s films of Sydney Pollack (who appears in the movie), in which films with style also had substance, and deserves to mentioned in the same league as All the President’s Men, Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View. –SM

32. Ghost World (dir. Terry Zwigoff, 2001). I never read the graphic novel on which this movie is based, but I probably should, since I love the celluloid version so much. As a cynical, smart-assed, dark-haired, glasses-wearing, music-loving woman, I relate to the main character, Enid (played by Thora Birch) more than I have to any character in a movie or book … well, probably ever. Also starring Scarlett Johansson (before she became a huge star) and the always wonderful Steve Buscemi, Ghost World is a wonderful coming-of-age story for those of us who think coming-of-age stories are mostly lame. –Kelly S.

33. Brokeback Mountain (dir. Ang Lee, 2005). The chameleonic Lee burrowed deep into E. Annie Proulx’s short story and came up with the decade-defining romantic tragedy, one involving two men. Beautifully restrained and quietly devastating, and a film for the ages (unlike the Best Picture-stealing Crash, a movie for a few minutes). It cuts so deep. And It hurts terribly to look at the brilliant Heath Ledger in it, knowing what was to come. –BC

34. Casino Royale (dir. Martin Campbell, 2006). After the popular but unmemorable run of Brosnan Bonds the franchise needed turbocharging, and who would have thought that Daniel Craig would be the actor to supply it? Seriously—seeing him onstage in A Steady Rain on Broadway, in a completely different part, I thought, “What did the producers see in him? What did he see in himself?” Whatever, his spark lit the fuse for one of the series’ best, and most romantic, adventures. It made me a fan all over again, no small feat. –BC

35. A Mighty Wind (dir. Christopher Guest, 2003). Though not as uproariously funny as Guest’s previous films, A Mighty Wind succeeds by adding tons of heart and a strong understanding of why folk music still resonates. The big selling point was the thrill of seeing Guest, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKean in a band again, but the movie was stolen by Catherine O’Hara, who deserved an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a former star unexpectedly re-living her youth. –DL

36. Shrek (dir. Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, 2001). A fat, green ogre and a donkey star in what goes down as one of the top animated movies ever made. To me, Shrek was the turning point in animated features that made it OK for a grown man to see one without a child present. The fairytale made the kiddies laugh, and the witty dialog kept the adults wanting more. It’s a win-win situation that was duplicated three years later in the sequel. –Dave Steed

37. Adaptation. (dir. Spike Jonze, 2002). The brilliant thing about the script for Adaptation. is that Charlie Kaufman’s creative solution for writer’s block fits the project so perfectly. There probably isn’t a writer in Hollywood who could get away with what Kaufman did here. Shall we count his crimes? Instead of strictly adapting a slightly intriguing book about rare orchids, he placed himself at the center of the story. He invented himself a brother, even crediting him as co-writer. The writer of the book he was entrusted to adapt engages in drug use and has an affair with her book’s subject, and Kaufman even defiles her in his own masturbatory fantasy. In short, the script is awesome. It also manages to say something very profound about the nature of creativity. –AA

38. Lost in Translation (dir. Sofia Coppola, 2003). With Lost in Translation, writer/director Coppola became the third woman – and the first American woman – to be nominated for a Best Director Academy Award®. Can you believe that? Only three women ever, to this day? Whatever, Hollywood. Of course, when you hear most people talk about this movie, what they are most interested in is the comeback of sorts it gave Bill Murray. Oh, and the shot of Scarlett Johansson’s ass in see-through panties that opens the film. Whatever, people. “Lip my stockings.” –Kelly S.

39. Little Miss Sunshine (dir. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, 2006). This movie makes it look easy. Just gather a group of top-notch actors (from legend Alan Arkin down to breakout kid star Abigail Breslin), put them in a crappy yellow van and throw away all sense of decorum, and you’ve got a comedy that upholds the value of family while skewering so-called “family values.” It steals shamelessly from National Lampoon’s Vacation, but to more poignant effect. –RMA

40. Hero (dir. Zhang Yimou, 2002). There are several epics on this list. Though most of the attention goes to Peter Jackson’s greatly successful Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Chinese film Hero embodies the word “epic” just as well. It contains, quite simply, some of the most stunning visuals of the last decade. The color palette is something remarkable. The fights are incredibly stylized, more like dances really, but stand as something different from the fight scenes in American movies, thanks to the incredible wire-work. –AA

41. 25th Hour (dir. Spike Lee, 2002). Perhaps Lee’s most mature film to date, 25th Hour is the director’s stunning meditation on New York City in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Ostensibly the story of a drug dealer, beautifully played by Edward Norton, on his way to prison, the film allows Lee to take the pulse of his city following the tragedy. The film’s final scenes, which follow the Norton character as he’s being driven to prison, imagining what his life might have been, are among the most moving moments in recent cinema. –Ken S.

42. Let the Right One In (dir. Tomas Alfredson, 2008). The movies and TV are lousy with vampires these days. Who knew the cure for anemia would come from slumbering Sweden? But there be nightmares as a pint-sized bloodsucker, loosed in a crumbling community where family and societal ties are fraying, latches onto a new playmate. The reconstituted Hammer Films plans a remake, with Richard Jenkins ideally cast as the vampire’s adult “guardian”–but this drew first blood. –BC

43. Hellboy (dir. Guillermo del Toro, 2004). A special-effects blockbuster with heart — in fact, the greatest movie love story of the decade, no word of a lie. The twinned romantic triangles of a red-skinned demonspawn, a troubled pyrokinetic, and an insecure G-man on one side, and a crazed Nazi psychobitch, a megalomaniacal Russian mystic, and a host of Lovecraftian elder gods on the other — well, who can’t relate to that? –JF

44. Hot Fuzz (dir. Edgar Wright, 2007). Wright’s follow-up to Shaun of the Dead features Simon Pegg as a by-the-book cop who gets transferred to a seemingly quaint English village. He’s teamed with Nick Frost as a bumbling policeman who’s seen every action movie ever made. There’s also a great character turn from Timothy Dalton as a smarmy supermarket manager. One thing I really liked about this movie was that I thought it was going to end three or four different times, but they topped it every time. –TR

45. Mulholland Dr. (dir. David Lynch, 2001). In a high-wire act of adaptive filmmaking, Lynch took a rejected TV pilot and transmogrified it into a stand-alone mind-bender of a movie. It’s the story — or is it? — of a fresh-faced lass who arrives in Hollywood with dreams of becoming an actress, then plays Girl Detective to solve a mystery with a beautifully disheveled woman who has literally descended from the hills. Two-thirds of the way through, Lynch turns the whole enterprise on its head in a shift that leaves the viewer playing detective on his own, trying to piece together the film’s unforgettable snippets. The monster behind the diner, the director at the OK Corral, the sexually explosive audition that reveals the breathtaking acting skills of both our heroine and the neophyte who played her (Naomi Watts, in a career-making turn) … there are plenty more than “Sixteen Reasons” to take a return spin down Mulholland Dr.. –JC

46. Amelie (dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001). An Immediatist manifesto disguised as a date movie. Check out this call for “Poetic Terrorism” by the author Hakim Bey in his book Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism: “The audience reaction of aesthetic-shock produced by Poetic Terrorism ought to be at least as strong as the emotion of terror — powerful disgust, sexual arousal, superstitious awe, sudden intuitive breakthrough, [or] dada-esque angst … If it does not change someone’s life (aside from the artist) it fails. …. An exquisite seduction carried out not only in the cause of mutual satisfaction, but also as a conscious act in a deliberately beautiful life — may be the ultimate PT. The PTerrorist behaves like a confidence-trickster whose aim is not money but change.” Sound like anyone we know? –JF

47. Ratatouille (dir. Brad Bird, 2007). Five of Pixar’s seven releases this decade made our list, and if we extended it to 125 films I’m pretty sure Up would have made it, too. My personal favorite is the one that argues, convincingly, for the same standard of excellence that Pixar holds itself to, and defines what it is we do. In the words of Anton Ego, every critic’s hero: “In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends.” –BC

48. Mean Girls (dir. Mark Waters, 2004). Let me be honest here. I saw Mean Girls because Lindsey Lohan made me jizz in my pants. Way before she was drugged out and forgot to eat, Lindsey was smokin’ hot. But the weird part was that I (and ever other dude in the theater) left astounded that we had just seen an awesome movie. The perfect casting of Lizzy Caplan and Rachel McAdams, and the brilliant writing of Tina Fey, make this a must-see. –DS

49. Requiem for a Dream (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2000). Starring Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto and Jennifer Connelly, Aronofsky’s film adaptation of Hubert Selby, Jr.’s 1978 novel is a terrifying, mind-bending depiction of addiction and self-destruction. I have to admit – this movie kind of traumatized me the first time I saw it. And no, it wasn’t because I watched Jordan Catalano shoot up. –Kelly S.

50. AI: Artificial Intelligence (dir. Steven Spielberg, 2001). People really quibbled with this film’s last act, calling it a betrayal of the rust-edged world Spielberg had originally established — guided as he was by material from the project’s original shepherd, Stanley Kubrick. But if folks truly thought Spielberg would allow the robot boy, played by Haley Joel Osment, to drown at the bottom of the flooded New York amusement park while searching for his adopted mother, they were only fooling themselves. Taken as it is, it’s still a riveting film about love, loss and what it really means to be a living being. –Dw.D

51. The Hurt Locker (dir. Kathryn Bigelow, 2009). My best film of this past summer looks to carry me through fall and winter, too. The great Iraq War movie zeroes in on a bomb disposal expert as he fulfills his duty, again and again. Grace under pressure has never been so tightly concentratred. –BC

52. Zodiac (dir. David Fincher, 2007). After making two of the most divisive films in the past twenty years (Se7en and Fight Club), Fincher gave us a film that not only united critics in praise, but was also his most accomplished work to date thanks to restraint in technique and his focus on the story and characters. Fincher tackles the true-life events of the Zodiac killer, who terrorized San Francisco in the 1970’s. Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey, Jr., Anthony Edwards, Elias Koteas, Brian Cox and Chloe Sevigny all give exemplary performances in this mystery/thriller that follows a cartoonist, a reporter and a police detective as they become obsessed with solving the case. Zodiac will make you think, it will make you laugh, and it will scare the hell out of you. I’m thinking of the terrorizing scene in which a young couple enjoying a picnic become the latest victims of the Zodiac. It’s broad daylight, they are in the wide open, and yet the impending doom Fincher gives that scene makes it so scary, I’m getting creeped out right now! –SM

53. Man on Wire (dir. James Marsh, 2008). Chronicling French high-wire artist Philippe Petit’s daring 1974 high-wire walk between the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, Man on Wire is a breathtaking and moving documentary. It mixes rare footage of preparations for the walk with reenactments and present-day interviews with its organizers and participants, in a fascinating story of vision and perseverance – as well as a lovely homage to the magnificent buildings. It won the Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature in 2009. –Kelly S.

54. You Can Count on Me (dir. Kenneth Lonergan, 2000). For some reason Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo are not big stars. They should be. They are two of the finest actors we have today, and you need only to watch this film to see why. As orphaned brother and sister Terry and Sammy Prescott, they show the complicated nature of being siblings, especially when that sibling, a person you’re not sure you like all the time, is the only family you have left the world. First-timer Lonergan’s direction is effortless, and his script is funny, heartbreaking and full of reflective moments that will give you pause and make you appreciate life. Both Linney ad Ruffalo give subtle performances that will have you laughing and crying and wishing You Can Count On Me would not have to end. –SM

55. The 40-Year-Old Virgin (dir. Judd Apatow, 2005). The good old sex comedy may have been beaten into submission, but in the underappreciated no-sex comedy genre, The 40-Year-Old Virgin shines bright. First-time director Apatow puts the spotlight square on Steve Carrell, who pretty much takes on the joke and turns it into two hours of geeky hilariousness. Right after I saw this movie, I had to take the Asia dragon poster off my wall (sadly, I’m not kidding). –DS

56. Kung Fu Hustle (dir. Steven Chow, 2004). Director-star Chow, like Quentin Tarantino, is steeped in movies to his very bones. Kung Fu Hustle, like the Kill Bill movies, functions on one level as a mixtape, of sorts — the genre’s greatest hits, chopped, channeled, and recontextualized. But Chow kines the material for laughs as well as cheap thrills. Subtle it ain’t, but the sheer joy of filmmaking shines from every frame. –JF

57. Eastern Promises (dir. David Cronenberg, 2007). Cronenberg is still making horror movies, but here all his monsters are human. Viggo Mortensen gives a fearless performance — and turns in the decade’s strangest fight scene — in the darkest, twistiest thriller since Chinatown. –JF

58. Munich (dir. Steven Spielberg, 2005). For all his success, the knock on Spielberg has always been his need to explain every last detail. Rarely does he leave decisions up to the viewer. This made me incredibly apprehensive when first approaching Munich; my fear was that a political film from Spielberg would feel preachy and one-sided. Before I saw the movie, I did a little research. To my surprise, there seemed to be no consensus regarding the political stance of the film. Some thought it was pro-Israeli, while others thought it was too sympathetic to the Palestinians. My response was that he struck just the right balance. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict creates such polarizing opinions that it’s only plausible that people would project their own vastly differing opinions on a film like Munich. Spielberg managed to free himself from his instinctual need to explain at just the right moment. –AA

59. The Departed (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2006). There is no doubt that Martin Scorsese deserved an Academy Award. Rattle off his accomplishments and you have a list of some of the greatest movies in the modern era, yet he had never won the statue. It seemed that with Gangs of New York (2002) and The Aviator (2004), he he was trying too hard to prove he is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time and should win the Oscar. After The Aviator, Scorsese took on a remake of the Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs just to keep working. It is a taut, well-executed film that has visual flair, a dazzling script, expert editing by his longtime collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker, and gripping performances by one of the best fucking casts ever assembled. It’s intense and bloody, yes, but it’s also funny as hell and moves at such a fast clip your head is spinning. Without the pressure of trying to make a movie that would win him awards, Scorsese did what does make him one of the greatest directors of all time — he made an insanely well-made movie with the purpose to entertain, not to impress — and in doing so he finally won his Academy Award. –SM

60. The Queen (dir. Stephen Frears, 2006). The story of the royal family’s actions, or rather inactions, in the wake of the death of Princess Diana are the subject of this fascinating British film. The always great Helen Mirren stars as HM Queen Elizabeth II, a monarch struggling with her personal feelings about the late princess and her sense of duty as the head of the royal family. In the end, she is spurred to action by Prime Minister Tony Blair, well played by MIchael Sheen. A moving film about family, be they royal, or yours and mine. –Ken S.

61. Knocked Up (dir. Judd Apatow, 2007). Apatow remained unstoppable with this hilarious tale of beer goggles, slackerdom and even a little growing up. Seth Rogen’s stock had been growing over the years, but this is the vehicle that has made him the latest go-to comedian in Hollywood. And let’s not forget what might be Paul Rudd’s best performance to date as the bitter brother-in-law. –DS

62. Cast Away (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 2000). A pretty daring movie in the fact that most of the time it’s focused on just Chuck, the lonely soul stranded on a deserted island. You get to see pain, struggles, tragedy and triumph, and a volleyball becoming a man’s best friend. Watching Tom Hanks’ character slowly adapt to his surroundings and find a way to survive for years without human interaction was a unique experience for the viewer, and it’s doubtful it could have been pulled off so well by a lesser actor. –DS

63. The New World (dir. Terrence Malick, 2005). The visionary filmmaker Malick made two brilliant films in the ’70s, then disappeared from the scene for 20 years before returning with The Thin Red Line in 1998. The second film of Malick’s comeback, The New World is a highly stylized historical drama about the settlement of the Jamestown colony by Englishmen in the early 17th century. Colin Farrell stars as John Smith, and newcomer Q’Orianka Kilcher is Pocahontas. Once again Malick makes powerful use of interior monologues, and his films, including this one, are never less than visually stunning. –Ken S.

64. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (dir. Larry Charles, 2006). “Kazakhstan greatest country in the world / All other countries are run by little girls.” So sings Sacha Baron Cohen’s tact-free nitwit during a rodeo scene filmed just up the road from my Virginia hometown — a scene that, not for the first or last time during Borat, left audiences convulsing with uncomfortable yet undeniable laughter. Was it unfair to the rubes? Yeah, probably — but sometimes it requires having a pair of hairy testicles shoved in your face to show you who you really are. –JC

65. Batman Begins (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2005). The sequel flew into our Top Ten. I’m unconvinced, finding it full of standard superhero bloat. Fact is, my favorite Batman movie will always be Tim Burton’s sublimely twisted Batman Returns. But this reboot, a leaner, meaner take on the material, comes in second. That it contributed to taking the simple fun out of a genre that is now prostrate with self-importance in no way diminishes its own integrity and quality. –BC

66. Traffic (dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2000). I’ve come to lament the multi-story narrative that’s defined the decade, where everyone’s conveniently entwined with everyone else and the moral of the story is that it’s a small world after all, isn’t it? Fraudulent. But Traffic, derived from a BBC miniseries, works beautifully in capturing facets of the drug trade, and showing how the whole rotten thing, bound by addiction, avarice, and compromise, works. And Benicio Del Toro is a perfect center of gravity. –BC

67. Cache (dir. Michael Haneke, 2005). This is Haneke’s finest work, at least until we can judge this year’s Cannes darling The White Ribbon this winter. The tense, riveting Cache takes a theme familiar in French film — skewering the smug bourgeoisie — and overlays a message about the lingering perils of colonialism for both the conquered and the conqueror. Its story, of a forgotten childhood event that comes back to haunt a well-to-do TV host and his family, is shot through first with paranoia, then with tragedy. –JC

68. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (dir. Gore Verbinski, 2003). We were going to see The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but it was sold out. It was only out of a lack of options that we wound up watching a stupid Johnny Depp movie based on a Disneyland ride produced by Captain Crash himself, Jerry Bruckheimer … and wound up having a hell of a lot of fun. League Of Whazzits Now? –Dw.D

69. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (dir. Rawson Marshall Thurber, 2004). Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller in a movie about an inflatable red ball being thrown into genital areas unexpectedly. Sounds like a winning premise, right? C’mon, right? Somehow, though, Vaughn leading a group of misfits in a quest to save his gym by winning a dodgeball tournament against the way-too-serious “athletes” of the corporate Globo Gym (led by Stiller) turned out to be an hour and a half of crazy tomfoolery and hilarious sight-gags. –DS

70. Monsters Inc. (dir. Pete Docter, Lee Unkrich and David Silverman, 2001). The last few years have found the folks at Pixar exploring just how much artistic leeway their popularity has given them. While the results have generated some of the most beautiful and sincere moments in recent movie memory, the plots haven’t had the same consistency as a lighter effort like Monsters, Inc. It has more of a slapstick animation style, with John Goodman and Billy Crystal well cast as Sully and Mike, two monsters who are anything but frightening in the context of their own world. Rival studios are still trying to catch up to the Monsters, Inc. style, even as Pixar has mostly moved on. I like Wall-E and Up, but Monsters, Inc. remains my favorite Pixar movie because it is so enjoyable. –AA

71. Meet the Parents (dir. Jay Roach, 2000). When Meet the Parents came out, it had been two years since Ben Stiller had done something worth viewing (There’s Something About Mary), so this was a nice surprise. Stiller excels in well-written, intelligent laugh-fests when the director can reel in the idiocy – which Roach does well. The movie works because so many people can relate to crazy, obsessive parents, even if Stiller takes Greg Focker through more bumbling maneuvers than one person could possible endure. For a good year after this release you could still hear some variation of the most memorable quote in the film: “I’ve got nipples, Greg, could you milk me?” –DS

72. Best in Show (dir. Christopher Guest, 2000). Guest’s second movie unleashes (pun intended) his repertory cast of improv wizards on the world of the pure-breed dog show. Along the way, they skewer rubes, yuppies (gay and straight), and aging trophy wives seeking fame through their animals. And just when the drama of the dog show would naturally threaten the comedy in the final third, Fred Willard turns in a hysterical performance as a clueless commentator prone to spouting lines like, “These are such beautiful animals, and to think that in some countries these dogs are eaten.” –DL

73. Downfall (dir. Bernd Eichinger, 2004). It’s sad, in a way, that this remarkable film — Germany’s first real attempt to deal with its Nazi legacy using actors in all the major roles — is already best remembered as the source of a thousand YouTube parodies. Still, the ease — and relative lack of controversy — with which Bruno Ganz’ furious breakdown has been adapted for subject matter as disparate as Hillary Clinton’s primary loss and the inadequacy of the BCS is proof of Downfall’s unique success in finding Hitler’s human, if despicable, core. –JC

74. Zombieland (dir. Ruben Fleischer, 2009). The most recent film to make this list is the best zombie comedy since Shaun of the Dead. Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg play two guys running from a mass zombie infestation, aided (but mostly abetted) by fellow runners Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin. Includes rules on how to defend yourself against the living dead, and a special big-time guest star (playing himself) in whose mansion our heroes hide out. –TR

75. Wonder Boys (dir. Curtis Hanson, 2000). Michael Douglas gives one of the best performances of his career as a stoned, aging professor trying to finish his latest book while slogging through a weekend on campus. He’s in love with his boss’s wife (Frances McDormand), pregnant with his child; he’s being hounded by his agent (a hilarious Robert Downey, Jr.), in town to get pages from the book; and he is suddenly the guardian of his best pupil, played by Tobey Maguire. Hanson, working with a fine script by Steve Kloves adapted from Michael Chabon’s wonderful novel, shot the film on location in Pittsburgh and gave it the feel of one of those long weekends in the Midwest when your life can change in two days. Douglas gives one of the best performances of his career, and Hanson shows once again that he is one of the best filmmakers working today. Literary, funny and human, Wonder Boys is like a great novel — you keep wanting to go back to it again and again. –SM

76. About a Boy (dir. Chris and Paul Weitz, 2002). After all of the romantic comedies Hugh Grant has done, it seemed risky for him to take on the role of Nick Hornby’s shallow man-boy who hatches a plan to pick up women at support groups for single moms. However, after watching the Weitz brothers’ adaptation, it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing the smug, materialistic prick who discovers his soul thanks to his friendship with a lonely boy (scene stealer Nicholas Hoult) whose mom (Toni Collette) attempts suicide. Besides Grant’s superb performance and Hoult, a young actor who goes toe to toe with
Grant, you have Collette suffering from depression and having a meltdown in a wonderfully tragic role, and the radiant Rachel Weisz as the woman Grant’s character falls in love with, a first for him. Featuring an exemplary score by Badly Drawn Boy, About A Boy will remind you why you like going to the movies: They give you hope that people can change, and that the world can be a better place when people care about one another. –SM

77. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (dir. John Cameron Mitchell, 2001). A film about a transgendered European rock singer might strike some as the ultimate examination of artifice, but this movie musical is actually a celebration of true authenticity and an angry condemnation of a world that conspires to destroy it. Fortunately, it is also frequently hilarious, kick-ass and fabulous. –RMA

78. Juno (dir. Jason Reitman, 2007). The midpoint in Reitman’s rapid ascendance to the top echelon of Hollywood directors (following Thank You for Smoking and preceding this fall’s Up in the Air), Juno makes delectable lemonade from what traditionally has been a lemon of a film topic (teen pregnancy). He keeps the quirk meter consistently cranked up to 10, with considerable help from co-stars Ellen Page and Michael Cera — and Diablo Cody’s debut script made her a cultural phenomenon. I still think it was the best film of ‘97 (sorry, Coens). –JC

79. Moulin Rouge! (dir. Baz Luhrmann, 2001). An orgy of color, sexuality, visual mayhem and musical mash-ups, Moulin Rouge! was … well, it was a Baz Luhrmann film. The Baz Luhrmann film, really — the destination toward which Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet, its predecessors in what is now known as the “Red Curtain trilogy,” were headed. Its score, a menagerie of well-worn pop songs, grated some as much as it delighted others — but still helped earn the first Best Picture nomination for a musical in two decades. Luhrmann himself was robbed, however, foreshadowing the film’s loss to the vastly inferior A Beautiful Mind. –JC

80. X-Men (dir. Bryan Singer, 2000). X-Men is the rare 21st-century comic book movie that’s exempt from the critique offered by 1999’s Mystery Men — a droll skewering of the genre that would have had real bite if it hadn’t been released 10 years too early. Unlike so many of its parody-worthy counterparts, X-Men is a short, sharp delight that introduced a memorable batch of franchise-ready characters, had knockout setpieces, scored a few sociopolitical points, and was off in 104 minutes. Genius. –BC

81. 28 Days Later (dir. Danny Boyle, 2002). The movie that kicked off the current zombie craze, this insanely well-made, low-budget scare flick is actually two films in one. The first is a lean, mean update of your garden-variety undead story, where the corpses aren’t just hungry, they’re angry. The second is a wickedly funny-scary (and prescient) satire of how a society’s response to crisis can be more terrifying than the crisis itself. –RMA

82. Waitress (dir. Adrienne Shelly, 2007). They don’t make movies much sweeter than Shelly’s comedy about Jenna, a pie-making waitress with an abusive husband, an unwanted pregnancy, and an obstetrician who just might be Mr. Right. Keri Russell has never been better, Nathan Fillion proves he’d make a great rom-com hero, and even Andy Griffith settles gracefully into his role as the curmudgeonly diner owner who helps Jenna’s dreams come true. –JC

83. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (dir. Shane Black, 2005). After witnessing the incredible chemistry between Robert Downey, Jr. and Val Kilmer in this movie, one has to wonder why these two never worked together before, particularly during the 1980s when they were in their prime. OK, well, maybe Kilmer was in his prime; RDJ’s star has only gotten brighter since this movie, while Val’s has, well, given us the voice of K.I.T.T. in the Knight Rider reboot. The directorial debut from Lethal Weapon and Monster Squad screenwriter Black, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is full of witty dialogue (also written by Black) and some great action scenes. But it’s really Kilmer and Downey, Jr. that make this movie so special. –Kelly S.

84. Inglourious Basterds (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2009). Inglourious Basterds barely has anything to do with its namesake (an Italian war film from 1978). The Basterds in question mainly serve as a resolution. We never get to know many of them all that well, and several other characters play much more important emotional roles. The movie is Tarantino’s love note to cinema. There are so many little touches thrown in for the cinephile to notice. The true star of Tarantino’s work is usually what he’s referencing, rather than the actors who fill the screen. In the case of Inglourious Basterds, these stars are Leni Riefenstahl and Sergio Leone, and even The Wizard of Oz. It’s an exciting mix of intergenerational talent that only Tarantino’s bizarre mind could concoct. –AA

85. Gladiator (dir. Ridley Scott, 2000). Digital effects are often used — and overused — to take us into new worlds. Gladiator captivated audiences by taking us into an ancient one that hadn’t been envisioned in some time, and rarely on such scale. Its story takes off from one of the last, 1964’s Fall of the Roman Empire, whose sprawling built environment no one dared replicate again. It was thrilling to revisit Rome, in the company of a strong, stoic Russell Crowe. Sometimes they do make them like they used to. –BC

86. Punch-Drunk Love (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002). It’s actually a stroke of brilliance. Punch-Drunk Love is exactly like all of Adam Sandler’s previous films. It has a hapless loser crippled by a society that sees him as a target, who suddenly and awkwardly finds love. What Anderson does next is strip out the slapstick, the mugging, the goofy voices that announce “that was a joke,” and makes it all work in strange, elegant fashion. –Dw.D

87. Chicken Run (dir. Nick Park, 2000). A movie reminiscent of The Great Escape, using clay-animated poultry. You’d think it couldn’t be done, until you realize Park and his cronies from the Wallace and Gromit shorts are involved. A great vocal performance by Mel Gibson, back when he wasn’t embarrassing himself in the news. –TR

88. Big Fish(dir. Tim Burton, 2003). Based on the Daniel Wallace book of the same name, Big Fish tells the story of a son (Billy Crudup) trying to unravel the tall tales and stories his father (Albert Finney) has spun over the years. Burton brings the father’s extraordinary past to life, with the young Edward Bloom (Ewan McGregor, ditching his itchy Jedi robes) exploring familiar Burton territory – dark and spooky woods, the circus, and pastel-hued Americana – alongside witches, giants, and a lycanthropic Circus boss (Danny DeVito). As Crudup eventually learns the truth behind ths tales, he comes to a new understanding his father and the value of the storyteller role that all fathers must play. –Ben Wiser

89. Gosford Park (dir. Robert Altman, 2001). Nobody does ensemble films with intersecting storylines better than the late, great Altman. Gosford Park is a charming murder mystery set in 1932 England, starring a bevy of wonderful British and American actors including Clive Owen, Kristen Scott Thomas, Jeremy Northam, Bob Balaban, Ryan Phillipe, Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith (the latter two were both nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award® for their performances). From a story idea of Altman and Balaban’s, screenwriter Julian Fellowes wrote a fantastic script full of sharp, witty dialogue that won him the Academy Award® as well. –Kelly S.

90. The Bourne Identity (dir. Doug Liman, 2002). No one expected a hokey Robert Ludlum thriller (filmed earlier for TV with Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn Smith, for God’s sake) to yield one of the decade’s bulletproof franchises, and seal Matt Damon’s stardom. With their rapid-fire editing, the sequels had more influence on genre filmmaking, but this one sneaked up on me as stealthily as a covert assassin. –BC

91. Superbad (dir. Greg Mottola, 2007). Apparently, I seem to like Apatow. This time he’s just the producer and working with a script that Seth Rogen co-wrote, but it’s still the same gross-out yet intelligent humor of The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up. It was about time for Jonah Hill to get his chance to shine in a well-written lead role, and his rude and crude style is balanced out nicely by the big-screen breakthrough of Michael Cera and the nerdiness of McLovin. –DS

92. Zack and Miri Make a Porno (dir. Kevin Smith, 2008). My fellow writers and, well, the majority of the world don’t agree, but for me Zack and Miri Make a Porno is the best movie of the decade. A date movie that should never be shown on a date, this is Smith at his crudest and rudest. He shocked the world in 1994 with legendary filth in Clerks, but almost certainly surpasses that with Zack and Miri. Sure, you could say it’s just a mess of clichéd jokes about penises and vajayjay’s, but what do you expect out of Smith and Seth Rogen? –DS

93. Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (dir. Larry Blamire, 2004). This isn’t the first time I’ve championed this film (see the Love Post back in February). If you like oddball parodies in the Airplane mold, do yourself a favor: Put this one in your Netflix queue. Better yet, buy a copy. Not only is this a hilarious takeoff of exposition-heavy sci-fi movies of the fifties, but it’s even more fun to watch other people watching it. Trust me on this one, and you do like it, feel free to thank me. –TR

94. Night at the Museum (dir. Shawn Levy, 2006). Critics ragged on this CGI-filled romp through a history museum, but families came out in droves to see a light-hearted, action-packed, kid-approved flick. The kiddies learned that when people go to bed, statues come to life, and adults learned that when statues come to life, kids stay happy. It’s a win-win scenario with enough laughs to have you smiling at the end. –DS

95. Letters from Iwo Jima. (dir. Clint Eastwood, 2006). World War II movies always have an appeal to the general public because there are so many fascinating stories to be gleaned. In an ambiguous world, the Second World War stands as one of the only conflicts that can truly feel morally black and white. Yet Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima shows the side that hasn’t had a voice. It never talks down to the viewer or asks for sympathy. It merely reminds audiences that, yes, our enemy is human, loves its family, and suffers the same hardships of war. –AA

96. Yi Yi: A One and a Two (dir. Edward Yang, 2000). The Taiwanese filmmaker Yang won the best director prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his gem-like examination of a family in crisis, with a wedding, a funeral, and the ups and downs in between all lovingly, empathetically observed over the course of three hours. By all means rent the Criterion DVD. Yang’s direction of the children is especially keen. Sadly, it proved to be his last feature; he died in 2007, after a long bout with cancer. –BC

97. King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (dir. Seth Gordon, 2007). It began production as an innocent look at the world of old-school video game junkies. During filming they stumbled upon one of the all-time great underdog stories, as unemployed school teacher Steve Wiebe challenged video game golden boy Billy Mitchell for the world record at Donkey Kong. The underhanded political dealings that ensue would make Shakespeare blush, while Mitchell goes down as one of the greatest villains in movie history. –DM

98. Once (dir. John Carney, 2007). From ridiculously humble beginnings — no stars, a skeleton script and $160,000 — came the unrequited-love story of the decade and one of the sweetest moments in Oscar history. Writer-director Carney, a former bandmate of his male protagonist (Frames lead singer Glen Hansard), shot Once in friends’ houses and (without permits) on the Dublin streets, using a long lens and natural light. The result was captivating, an intimate portrait of a not-quite romance between a “Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy” and a Czech immigrant who, despite falling slowly in love, cannot forsake their prior commitments. Thank goodness for Jon Stewart, who brought Marketa Irglova back onstage so she could have her well-deserved moment in the sun. –JC

99. Napoleon Dynamite (dir. Jared Hess, 2004). A full-on celebration of randomness wrapped in a teen self-discovery movie, this screamingly funny comedy sold a million “Vote for Pedro” t-shirts and taught America that llamas eat ham. John Hughes’ midwestern “outcasts” have nothing on Napoleon, a kid who carries Tater Tots in a fanny pack. What makes this film more than just a laff riot is the surprisingly affecting dance sequence (to Jamiroquai’s “Canned Heat”) in which our hero’s vulnerability and innate human dignity are laid bare. –RMA

100. Dogville (dir. Lars von Trier, 2003). Part artist, part poseur, von Trier has a gift for winning over the pseudointellectual press. (Expect to see his god-awful “musical,” Dancer in the Dark, on many best-of-decade lists.) But sometimes he overcomes his most fraudulent impulses and connects–The Kingdom, Zentropa, and a movie that narrowly avoided the doghouse of being No. 101 are all worth investigating. A Brechtian takedown of the American dream, with the actors performing on chalk-outlined “sets” and pantomiming simple actions (like opening doors) to get from location to location, it’s three hours long and utterly captivating– even if he blows his cool with the closing credits. (Typical!) The sequel, Manderlay, was another head-scratching disaster that even the pseuds yawned at. But take a bow, Lars, for giving Nicole Kidman that rare role in an art-house production that does as much for her as she does for it–and for earning a place on our list. –BC

Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code was the pass-along book when I vacationed with my in-laws a few years back. It’s a good read for lazy summer days: its historical puzzles are intriguing (if farfetched), “Magdalene theory” makes for good conversation over glasses of white wine, and there are pictures. But I figured it would make for a terrible movie, and I was right. The novel is all exposition and supposition, with paper-thin characters sitting around rooms and chatting esoterically for chapters at a time. I can’t argue with its $758 million worldwide gross in the summer of 2006, except to say that I wasn’t the only one fidgeting in my seat; Angels & Demons mustered $485 million this summer, a sizable drop-off. It didn’t have a prayer of getting my $12.50.

In one of the DVD extras director Ron Howard says the “earnest” quality of Brown’s books attracted him. Giving credit where credit is due he and Da Vinci Code screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (an Oscar winner for Howard’s A Beautiful Mind, a Razzie nominee for another ampersand credit, Batman & Robin) decided to make things less earnest this time, bringing in blockbuster scribe David Koepp (Jurassic Park, etc.) to loosen up the “static” (Howard’s word) character of ace symbologist Robert Langdon and keep the storyline to a swifter-moving timetable.

By and large the fixes work. The plot is set in the here and now, minus draggy digressions to the Knights Templar. The characters go outdoors to stretch their legs in Rome (or, rather, a clever facsimile of the Eternal City, with location footage seamlessly matched to grand sets and CGI). The book Angels & Demons preceded The Da Vinci Code, but the movie is a followup, so sins can be erased—Tom Hanks, thanks be to God, has lost his mullet. And it’s a few minutes shorter, another blessing.

But the curse of implausibility is not so easily removed. The new film finds Langdon up his code-cracking eyeballs as a papal enclave convenes to replace a deceased “progressive” pope. Meanwhile—there are a lot of “meanwhiles” in scripts like this—a vial of antimatter has been stolen from the European Organization of Nuclear Research (CERN). The apparent culprits are the zealous Illuminati, a long-dormant secret society who have kidnapped the four “preferiti” (the most likely candidates for pope) and are making good on their plan to kill one an hour in the run-up to nuking St. Peter’s Square at a midnight deadline. Enter Langdon, who has to sort out the angels (like church official Ewan McGregor and CERN scientist Ayelet Zurer) from the demons (scowling Swiss Guardsman Stellan Skarsgard and officious cardinal Armin Mueller-Stahl among them) while piecing together clues from drawn from Galileo, Roman statuary and monuments, and the elements.

These Brown adaptations are like the National Treasure pictures for grown-ups, and assuming the world’s still here in 2012 I figure we’ll be getting a film of The Lost Symbol to round out a trilogy. I don’t mind that the plots don’t hold water (Brown is a better researcher than writer, though a very selective one) as long as a certain pace is maintained, which Angels & Demons does. In so doing, however, it tags every thriller cliché there is, then takes a crazy third act leap to catch us off guard. The big finish is solemnly hilarious…trouble is, it doesn’t much involve Hanks, who again takes a backseat to the ancient clues and conspiracy theories. Rather than take charge of the movie, he hosts it, as if his secret desire is to join the ranks of Mark Harmon and David Caruso in CBS mystery potboilers. It’s not the greatest use of A-list star power. (And once more he doesn’t even get to first base with the girl. Perhaps the neutered-seeming Langdon has a secret desire?)

This skeptic was satisfied with the single-disc theatrical edition DVD of Angels & Demons but true believers will want the Blu-ray, which includes an eight-minutes-longer (if by no means better) extended cut. Extras on my runt version are an hour’s worth of making-of featurettes that are as slickly produced as the film, including an interesting session about antimatter from CERN—which, unlike the Vatican, is happy for the plug.

“Gomorrah is frightening in the best sense: Moral,” I wrote. Garrone’s adaptation of a searing bestseller leaves the capos and capers behind to concentrate on how syndicate control pervades Italian society at every level, and reaches outward. It tells five stories of pitiless corruption, with the only exposition coming afterwards. I likened it to a “waking nightmare” for the middlemen, workers, and impressionable kids caught in the crossfire, and I left the theater uneasy.

The film comes to DVD in a standard two-disc package or as a Blu-ray. In standard format the first disc is dedicated to the movie, with a new HD digital transfer that squeezes every seamy drop of life from Marco Onorato’s widescreen framing, a theatrical trailer, and new subtitles. Complementing the feature is a thorough booklet essay by Chuck Stephens that explores the history of the Camorra system, the seismic impact of the book (whose author, Roberto Saviano, has been obliged to live under police protection since its publication), and how Garrone makes use of Neapolitan architecture and plays off the works of Federico Fellini, Francesco Rosi, and Michelangelo Antonioni.

Garrone and Saviano are spotlighted in separate interviews on the second disc, the director expanding upon his vision of the film (and the problems of location shooting) and the writer filling in the details about the syndicate—the impression of a vise tightening a little harder on Italy each year if unmistakable. Chances are though that the first supplement you’ll want to dip into once you’ve seen the film is the interview with actor Toni Servillo, who plays Franco, the mob’s toxic waste management specialist. Franco is a charming, insinuating bastard, and Servillo, star of the recent political expose Il Divo, makes the most of the breakthrough part. He, Gianfelice Imparato (who plays the middleman, Don Ciro), and Salvatore Cantalupo (heartbreaking as Pasquale, the tailor) are interviewed for an additional segment on actors.

An excellent hour-long documentary captures, on the run, the filming of the five stories, with six deleted scenes offered as an additional extra. The exemplary presentation adds considerable value to the unsettling, unshakable Gomorrah—and I’d like to see Criterion take on the IFC-distributed In the Loop and Antichrist besides.

And here we have our third — and final — course of the Soundtrack Saturday Dysfunctional Family Thanksgiving. I decided to end our celebration of family, food, and fighting on a lighter note, so I give you one of my favorite movies of all time, Home for the Holidays (1995). I first saw it during my freshman year of college on the recommendation of a good friend who knew I had a thing for Robert Downey Jr. I absolutely loved it.

After acquiring it on videocassette, I started a tradition of watching it at least three times a week every holiday season starting on November 1, a tradition that has, for the most part, continued to this day (though I now watch it on DVD instead of cassette).

Watching a movie that much may seem excessive, but there was a period in my life when I was so stressed out during this time of the year — I was working in retail — that watching Home for the Holidays was like celluloid comfort food. I would watch it when I came home from work, before I went to bed, before I went to work — basically, whenever I needed calming down. I’d even say that watching this movie as much as I did during the most heinous time of the year for retail managers kept me from becoming an alcoholic.

The second film directed by Jodie Foster (1991’s Little Man Tate), Home for the Holidays introduces us to the eccentric Larson family and lets us peek into their dysfunctional lives during one hectic Thanksgiving.

First, we meet Claudia Larson (Holly Hunter). She’s just lost her job as an art restorer in a Chicago museum — and made out with her much older boss as he was firing her. Now she has to fly to Baltimore to spend Thanksgiving with her family, but without her teenage daughter (Claire Danes), who’s just told her mother that she and her boyfriend plan to have sex for the first time over the holiday weekend. To add insult to injury, Claudia is sick.

Upon her arrival at the Baltimore airport, we get our first glimpse of her parents, Henry (Charles Durning) and Adele (Anne Bancroft). We instantly feel Claudia’s pain as she endures her mother’s nagging, her father’s cluelessness — and both of her parents’ bickering — as soon as she gets off the plane.

Next, we meet Claudia’s hilarious — but at times annoyingly over-the-top — gay younger brother, Tommy (Robert Downey Jr.), and his friend/coworker, Leo Fish (Dylan McDermott), whom he’s brought with him to share in the craziness that is the Larson Family Thanksgiving. Of course, Claudia thinks Leo is “with” Tommy, which bothers her a great deal since she’s very taken with the man she thought Tommy was in a committed relationship with.

Then we meet Adele’s eccentric younger sister, Aunt Glady (Geraldine Chaplin), who has more than 200 plants in her house and a “really big boil,” wears a necklace made of Fruit Loops, makes key lime pie topped with M&Ms, and has been harboring a secret love for Henry for more than 40 years.

Finally, we’re introduced to the “wonderful Wedmans”: Claudia and Tommy’s sister, Joanne (Cynthia Stevenson); her husband, Walter (Steve Guttenberg); and their two children, Brittany (Emily Ann Lloyd) and Walter Jr. (Zack Duhame). Joanne is the only Larson sibling who’s stayed behind in Baltimore, and she’s very bitter about it. She’s the most conservative of the bunch and the one who’s the least accepting of her siblings’ life choices — and she has no problem saying so.

The entire day is filled with fighting, crying, laughing, secrets, and turkeys flying through the air. Just like your Thanksgiving, right? As ridiculous as the Larsons and their antics may seem, I think they are, in many ways, representative of the typical family. And the issues they’re dealing with are the same issues we all deal with — acceptance, living up to expectations, aging, letting go.

On the DVD commentary, Foster says that she thinks Home for the Holidays resonates most with people who are 25-35, because the themes and issues the film deals with are most relevant to that age group. As a woman smack in the middle of that demographic, I tend to agree with her. Every year I find myself relating more and more to Claudia — not her specific situation, mind you, but the general familial challenges she faces in the film.

I could seriously go on and on about this movie. It’s my favorite of all the dysfunctional family-themed movies I love so much. From the incredible performances to the wonderful dialogue to Foster’s fantastic direction — there’s just so much to love.

And that brings us to the Home for the Holidays soundtrack, which is — of course — out of print. From opening credits to closing credits, every song and its placement in the film is well thought out and works perfectly.

We open with Rusted Root’s cover of Santana’s “Evil Ways,” which Foster says is meant to represent Claudia’s feelings toward her family: “Hey, if you don’t change your ways, I’m not going to love you anymore.” And we end with Big Brother & the Holding Company’s “Piece of My Heart,” which is meant to signify Claudia changing her mind about her family, because no matter how much they put her through, she’ll always love them.

In between, we’ve got an assortment of tracks as eclectic as the Larsons themselves, but what really holds Home for the Holidays together is Mark Isham’s lovely score. It parallels the film’s tone so well: serious, but lighthearted and funny as well. Foster likens it to a “Dixieland dirge” — music you would hear as people march up the street in a Dixieland funeral procession. I can’t think of a better description than that.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the three courses of  Soundtrack Saturday: Dysfunctional Family Thanksgiving as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them. I’m taking next week off to celebrate my own family’s (somewhat) dysfunctional holiday, but I’ll be back December 5. I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving, or at least a drunken one. And if you don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, go get drunk anyway.

Rusted Root – Evil Ways
Frank Sinatra – That’s Life
Nat “King” Cole – Candy
Tom Jones – It’s Not Unusual
Isaac Hayes – Theme From Shaft
The Trashmen – Surfin’ Bird
Dinah Washington – Trouble in Mind
Beastie Boys – Pow
Nat “King” Cole – The Very Thought of You
Big Brother & the Holding Company – Piece of My Heart

Original score by Mark Isham:
Holiday Blues
Blue Nights
Birth of the Cool Whip
The Late Night Blues
Medley: The Very Thought of You/With Us, Alone
The Very Thought of You

This season’s champ is clearly the feel-good urban horror movie Precious. It leaves no stone unturned to flatten us. A partial checklist of miseries: Poverty. Illiteracy. Morbid obesity. Incest and rape with dad. Two-time teenage pregnancy, the first resulting in a Down’s syndrome child matter-of-factly named “Mongo.” Oh, and it’s 1987, as AIDS did its worst to decimate whole communities. The movie is based, as the subtitle tells us, on the novel Push by Sapphire, and it pushes hard, squashing our tearducts. I smell a musical.

But wait, it gets worse. Poor Precious (Gabourey Sidibe), the punching bag of the title, is stuck in a festering, shades-drawn-tight Harlem apartment with her monster mother, played, in a performance of epic degeneracy, by Mo’Nique. Director Lee Daniels has conceived the film as a kind of fairy tale, with the big-boned actress as an unstoppable seven-headed dragon. From her sweaty couch she smokes incessantly, drinks buckets of Sunkist orange soda, defrauds the welfare authorities, and treats her daughter as her personal slave, hurling everything including the TV at her and poor Mongo—and she uses Precious for sexual gratification, too. Come awards time Mo’Nique should be whisked from the red carpet and transferred to the Hague to stand trial for crimes against humanity.

With only a good right hook at her disposal Precious lumbers on, finding allies in a lesbian schoolteacher (Paula Patton), a no-nonsense welfare worker (Mariah Carey, completely scrubbed of glamour), a male nurse (Lenny Kravitz, ditto), and a gaggle of fellow special ed kids. Daniels films all of this from the perspective of Precious’ limited consciousness, with dream sequences that show her imaginary life as a plus-sized supermodel, or a skinny white girl. The movie is co-presented by Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, and bears their earmarks—abuse stories, echoes of The Color Purple, and the weird shifts in tone that make Perry’s hits so jarring. And it has some of the neon flamboyance of Daniels’ unclassifiable feature debut, Shadowboxer (2006), which cast Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding, Jr. as mother-and-stepson assassins and lovers. Social realism goes down the stairwell along with that TV as Precious ducks the usual uplift and empowerment treatment.

I’ll give it that, and add that a motley cast acts persuasively. Good intentions, however, are scrambled together with the overripe awfulness of Precious’ degradation; it’s not enough for her to be greasily raped, the act has to be intercut with shots of pigs’ feet boiling nauseatingly on the stove. Precious wounds. But it’s also shameless, and a shambles.

You leave The Road thinking it’s at least ten degrees colder outside the theater than it actually is. Javier Aguirresarobe’s desaturated brown-gray cinematography perfectly captures the feeling you get from Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winner, of a dying, sun-deprived planet where night and day are all but interchangeable, and the only season is a chilly late fall. I was shivering when it ended.

And also mighty sleepy—that aesthetic is hard on the eyes. Director John Hillcoat has made an apocalyptic prison picture, Ghosts…of the Civil Dead (1988), and an apocalyptic Western, The Proposition (2005). Here he takes on the whole enchilada, and he does it very conscientiously, following the story of a father and son trapped in this wasteland practically to the letter. That fidelity, though, is a problem. If you’ve read the book, you really have seen this movie. It doesn’t give you anything more than McCarthy’s scorched earth prose did.

If you haven’t, well, as usual when blockbuster books don’t come across on screen, you’re likely to be left scratching your head. Like last year’s Blindness, the movie is a surface in search of a soul. The novel communicates a great deal by saying very little. The father is tormented by dreams of the world before the catastrophe, one only barely remembered, while the son knows only the world after. The rest is sort of a zombie movie waiting to happen—marauding cannibal gangs roam the roads, looking for two-legged meals, and the few other survivors encountered are suspect. (Like George A. Romero’s living dead movies, most of the film was grimily shot in Pittsburgh, and the association with the end of the world must thrill the town fathers no end.)

McCarthy doesn’t often foreground the horror (save for one terrifying incident early on). The focus is on the transcendent bond, which given the spare use of dialogue, and despite a good but overcompensating score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, is tougher to communicate. Caked in mud and filth, a look he seems to prefer, Viggo Mortensen is bedraggled and determined—but The Man, as he’s called, is let down by The Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who gives a whiny, less dimensional performance. The movie perks up a bit when that sly fox, Robert Duvall, turns up as a philosophical Old Man, then it’s back to muttering, and collecting cans, and trying to stay warm. As a film, The Road leads nowhere.

The world ends not with a bang, but with an Adam Lambert power ballad. That’s the takeaway from 2012, the flip side of The Road. Most filmmakers want to stretch, to grow, but Roland Emmerich is happy to kill off multitudes. This is the third time he’s gone after our big blue marble, after Independence Day (1996) and The Day After Tomorrow (2004), and when big arks slosh around the terrestrial bathtub that the Himalayas have become following a rash of Mayan-foretold earthquakes, volcanoes, and “super tsunamis,” I think it’s 99% safe to say he’s finished the job. (Maybe 95%.)

But just because your graphics engine gives you the power to drop the U.S.S. John Kennedy on an ash-covered black president or ravage Los Angeles with Playstation-ish temblors for queasy laughs doesn’t mean you should. Cecil B. DeMille and Irwin Allen showed a modicum of restraint in their spectacles, and peopled them from the top ranks. Emmerich is of the money shot-is-everything school, lavishing $200 million on a B-list cast and a jerry-built C-script that gets an affable John Cusack and his estranged family from one hot spot to another over the eventful if fatiguing course of two-and-a-half hours. (Along for the ride is actor/director Tom McCarthy, of last year’s mortal-sized Oscar nominee The Visitor—I shudder to think what he learned from Emmerich.)

For all the world-splitting antics, however, the only really memorable image is of Rio’s Christ the Redeemer statue crumbling, which we glimpse on a hazy TV screen. Everything else has a been there-done that quality—Emmerich has trouble topping himself, with the spaceship attack on the White House in Independence Day and the tidal wave sluicing through the Manhattan canyons in Tomorrow (a truly arresting sequence in a truly awful movie) setting the bar high for this sort of thing. We’ve seen worlds destroyed plenty of times now. It’s more satisfying to see them built up.

At his best, Nicolas Cage is an A-list special effect, throwing off all kinds of sparks. But outside of the occasional Adaptation his post-Oscar career has pretty much been one big La-Z-Boy, as he goes from one high-salaried, low-impact gig to another. (The name of a recent dud says it all: Next.) There was reason, then, to hope that the no-budget Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, a collaboration with Werner Herzog, might shake him up—“snap out of it!” as Cher once advised him in Moonstruck. But the film is as clumsy as its title.

Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant (1992) was a geekshow, and a good excuse for Harvey Keitel to rip into his psyche and, figuratively and literally, expose himself. It’s a stunningly unkempt performance. This in-name-only followup (the sort of thing that usually goes straight to video) isn’t at all harrowing, partly because Cage doesn’t have much to share other than a bunch of tics and drug-addled shtick. His bad lieutenant, a pill-popper investigating the murder of Senegalese immigrants while ripping off dealers, users, and the police department evidence room for their stashes, has three moods: coke (frantic), heroin (slowed-down, hallucinating), and crack (over the top, somewhere near Pluto).

Cage’s performance might have made sense if Herzog had committed to it, and gave it the sort of context that allowed Klaus Kinski to rivet audiences. But the director’s recent documentaries have far outranked his recent features, and the two-hour movie just sort of sits there, inert, neither crime movie nor camp. (Ferrara had the good sense to end his bath of depravity at about 90 minutes.) Seemingly written in a fit of ADD, William M. Finkelstein’s screenplay introduces new characters in every scene, losing track of ones we might be interested in, like Val Kilmer as Cage’s hard-nosed partner or Michael Shannon as the guard unwisely entrusted with the department’s drug seizures. Herzog has never been strong on plot, and he’s clueless as to how to move this one along.

Disappointingly, Herzog’s weak on images, too: New Orleans post-Katrina would appear to be a natural fit for him, yet his typically excellent DP, Peter Zeitlinger, stuck indoors for most of the duration, has contributed shockingly shabby cinematography. The movie could have been set in Scranton or Des Moines for all it matters. (If you were hoping, at the very least, for hambone accents, forget it; no one has one, surely a deliberate, and peculiar, touch. Only Mark Isham’s score has a twang to it.)

From time to time the movie bumbles into something worthwhile—the frowsy comedienne Jennifer Coolidge is surprisingly touching as Cage’s beleaguered stepmother. It’s a mystifying flop, as if Herzog were under the influence of gonzo cop melodramas like Year of the Dragon (1985), 8 Million Ways to Die (1986), and Tough Guys Don’t Dance (1987). But those 80s failures had a ridiculous conviction to them. This one, entirely reliant on Cage’s mannerisms, reeks of contempt.

This little clip is a litmus test for much you might get out of the movie. Imagine 20 minutes more of this and perhaps instead of seeing the film just wait for the most outlandish of it (the hallucinatory iguanas, the “gator cam”) to wash up on YouTube as well:

Magnet Releasing did a good job handling horror fave Let the Right One In last year so I’m confident its two-and-a-half-hour distillation of John Woo’s two-part, five-hour epic Red Cliff is in good hands, and I’m glad to see it getting some sort of theatrical release. Not having seen the U.S. version yet I can’t really comment on it, but I have seen the full-strength epic (which is available on DVD from Asia-based vendors) and can recommend this cut based on what I know will be retained—namely, its titanic battle scenes. The money’s clearly on the screen, and not, as with 2012, in the workstation, with digital effects complementing but not defining the complicated clash of ancient warlords. You sense Woo’s guiding hand throughout.

Hollywood appropriated Woo’s run-and-gun action stylistics, then the filmmaker himself, for about a decade. By the end of the era, and the appropriately titled Paycheck (2003), both were exhausted. With Red Cliff, Woo has joined the trend among Hong Kong and mainland filmmakers (Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, etc.) to mount elaborate historical pageants and, given his chops in the field (The Killer, Hard-Boiled, and Face/Off, an astute use of Cage, are favorites), he blows the lid off the genre. That said, it’s impersonal—the whirling dervish gunfights and their noir-ish underpinnings have no place in the Han Dynasty, and the sociopolitical resonance of Yimou’s Hero is absent. But what Woo does with ships, and swords, and masses of armies is hugely impressive. And the excellent Tony Leung (from Hero and In the Mood for Love, among other contemporary Asian classics) holds all the intrigue together by quietly flexing star power. With China absorbing everything else in the U.S., I’m glad the country has imported the grand old traditions of Hollywood, just in time for the dreariest moviegoing Thanksgiving on record.

Interspersed between the songs are excerpts from interviews with Motown artists. These include Mike Douglas speaking with Smokey Robinson, Motown-founder Berry Gordy on a local Detroit show called Teen Town, and some thoroughly cringe-worthy shtick featuring Lloyd Thaxton with the Temptations. Bonus features include previously unseen footage from the Motown Picnic, circa 1970. Basically it’s the company’s home movies. There are a couple of poignant shots of a young Michael Jackson in this footage. The complete Gordy Teen Town interview is here, as is a 1959 featurette about what was going on in the world in the year that Motown was founded. A Maypo commercial and a trailer for a Brigitte Bardot film are fun, but that is no reason to buy this DVD. Sadly, the 1959 newsreel is the most interesting thing in this package. The accompanying booklet features a nice essay by Stu Hackel.

The music on Motown: The DVD is, of course, above reproach. That said, this disc is as close to non-essential as you can get. Compare it to a really well done documentary on a related subject, Standing In the Shadows of Motown, and it falls far short. While some of the vintage footage is interesting, the whole thing has the feeling of something that was thrown together to clean out some leftovers in Universal’s vault.

Outside of Butch Cassidy and The Sting, Redford has always been one of the most introspective stars—not for him the more declarative, chest-beating style of Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, or other actors of his remarkable generation. He’s inwards, not outwards. Cautious—and, in the eyes of some critics, vague, or timid. (Brad Pitt, the star of Redford’s A River Runs Through It and co-star in Spy Game, was once called “the new Robert Redford,” but it’s as difficult to imagine Redford appearing in True Romance, Twelve Monkeys, and Inglourious Basterds as it is thinking of Pitt for The Way We Were, The Great Gatsby, or Out of Africa.) But these qualities are all pluses for the character of skier David Chappellet, who takes his place on the U.S. Ski Team, but is far from a team player.

Truth is, the close-to-unlikable Chappellet is a bit of a prick, whose dedication to his ego rivals his commitment to his sport. As the team heads to Europe he’s thoughtless to his teammates, and the women who drift through his life (principally Camilla Sparv, who in real life was a former wife of Paramount Pictures chief Robert Evans, and in this film is a challenge to any athlete’s “self-denial”). The head coach, well-played as always by Gene Hackman, is irritated by his attitude, as he tries to keep the team together and rattles his tin cup looking for funding. Plot is minimal in a script written by novelist James Salter—the only hint we get at what drives, and also deforms, the restless, self-defensive Chappellet is a tense visit with his father (non-professional Walter Stroud), a flinty Coloradoan who grouses that he doesn’t get the point of winning without compensation.

Redford picked TV director Michael Ritchie to make his feature debut with Downhill Racer, a labor of love whose production struggles, he says in a supplementary interview, inspired him to found the Sundance Institute. Ritchie favored an off-the-cuff, almost documentary approach to the movie, which withholds the standard comforts of story and third-act redemption in favor of savory found moments—Redford improvises a memorable scene of relationship meltdown with Sparv, and I laughed out loud when a TV sports program alighted on a skier who looked like Redford and misidentified him as Chappellet, temporarily confusing Chappellet (and me). This freewheeling approach bugged the film’s European crew (who found the notion of an American downhill champ unbelievable, given Europe’s dominance in the Olympic event) but covers a lot of ground more briskly than a more orthodox movie could, and Ritchie and Redford refined it for their great collaboration on 1972’s The Candidate.

Buried in its original release, Downhill Racer doesn’t hold together as tightly as The Candidate (this is the first time I’ve watched the movie all the way through) but the new disc makes a strong case for it. The only thing better than DP Brian Probyn’s exciting filming of the races would be that same camerawork in Imax, and the anamorphic widescreen image captures it perfectly. (Between this and the underrated Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1969 was a great year for ski movies.)

Redford, a good storyteller, and Salter discuss how the film came together in the main featurette. Redford discusses the original director, Roman Polanski, how the movie’s uncertain ending contrasts with the happy one he insisted on for The Natural, a downbeat book, and putting the production together while auditioning for a Dino De Laurentiis remake of Roman Holiday—a musical remake, which surely would have changed the course of cinema had it been made. Editor Richard Harris, production manager Walter Coblenz, and former downhill skier Joe Jay Jalbert (who was paid $500 for each stunt fall) reminisce about the nuts and bolts of the film in separate video interviews. A fine booklet essay by Variety’s chief critic, Todd McCarthy, adds further context.

Ritchie went on to direct The Candidate; a terrific movie about competition, Smile (1975); and his biggest sports-themed hit, The Bad News Bears (1976). He died in 2001, but contributes via audio excerpts from a AFI panel taped in 1977. After that his career went, well, downhill, with 1985’s Fletch and the more characteristic HBO movie The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom (1993) the only real standouts. The new disc revisits several careers on the upswing.

On the Criterion website, hear Redford discuss Downhill Racer’s icy test screening in Santa Barbara.

For more movie reviews and essays, visit Between Productions.

To be certain, Miramax’s Kevin Smith 3-Movie Collection does feel like a pretty senseless cash grab on Disney’s part. For one thing, the studio has taken two of Smith’s finest films (Clerks and Chasing Amy) and bundled them along with one of his weakest (Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back); for another, of the three, only Chasing Amy contains an appreciable amount of new bonus content. But before you write it off completely, understand two things: One, these movies are all available separately, and two, the collection is available at a fairly steep discount. If you’re a Blu-ray owner and a Smith fan who somehow doesn’t own these movies yet, this box should be an instant purchase. If you do already own them, on the other hand, you’ve got some thinking to do.

As you’d expect, the visual element of this box is, across the board, not its selling point. Filmed on black & white stock for $30,000 at Smith’s real-life place of employment, Clerks is a seminal film for reasons that have nothing to do with the way it looks, and although work has definitely gone into upgrading it to 1080p — the bonus features include three featurettes explaining just how much — the movie on Blu-ray is just as silly as it was on DVD. Clerks is a film that doesn’t need anything more than a VCR and a single speaker to get its point across. Does it look better in hi-def? Absolutely. Does it matter? Absolutely not. (To his credit, Smith totally cops to this in a new introduction, saying the studio just wanted more money out of the movie and would have done it with or without his input.) The movie’s beauty lies in its reams of dialogue, which use a pair of disaffected twentysomethings (Dante and Randal, played by Brian O’Halloran and Jeff Anderson) as proxies for Smith’s hyper-literate musings on everything from sexual ethics to the morality of blowing up the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi. It was the movie that awakened a generation of moviegoers to independent film, because Smith spoke in a (mostly quite filthy) language they could understand.

Fifteen years later, Clerks doesn’t have quite the same impact, but that’s mostly because its good bits have been so thoroughly subsumed into cinematic culture that its flaws have a lot more room to stand out. It’s an ugly movie, one with a lot of awkward acting and stilted delivery of lines that often feel unrealistic, and its influence was so tremendous that if you watch it for the first time today, you might actually come away thinking it’s a lame ripoff of some other movie. If you loved it then, though, chances are you still love it now — and between the new, mostly irrelevant transfer and the stacks of bonus content (the vast majority ported over from the 10th anniversary DVD), it’s never looked or sounded better than it does here. If you love it, though, you probably own that 10th anniversary DVD, and given that the only really new content you get here is Smith’s mea culpa introduction and a documentary on the making of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, it might be hard to justify the purchase.

Also making its Blu-ray debut is Chasing Amy, the 1997 dramedy that helped Smith rebound from the stinging failure of his Clerks follow-up, Mallrats. In terms of bonus content, Amy is the crown jewel of the box — Smith, always a huge proponent of extra features, has included a ton of them here, including a new commentary from Smith and producing partner Scott Mosier, a feature-length, very entertaining documentary about the making of the film, a reunion Q&A with the cast, and a reunion conversation between Smith and the movie’s star (as well as his ex-girlfriend), Joey Lauren Adams, plus the traditional deleted scenes, outtakes, and trailer.

Made for $250,000, the Blu-ray version of Amy is essentially, in terms of visual quality, a color version of Clerks — even if you’re not the type of viewer who goes over a film’s picture with a magnifying glass, you’ll quickly notice that the 1080p upgrade hasn’t done the movie any real favors. Most of the picture detail has been obliterated by excessive digital noise reduction, and although tonal consistency is adequate, that softness is distracting, which is a shame, because Amy is arguably Smith’s smartest film as well as his most emotionally resonant. He took a huge budget hit to be able to cast Mallrats vets Adams, Jason Lee, and Ben Affleck, and film fans should thank him for it, because it’s impossible to imagine a different trio bringing life to this material so beautifully. As Holden and Banky, Affleck and Lee have to play a pair of characters whose insecurities are amplified by their obvious intelligence; they aren’t unlikable guys, but they’re not particularly easy to root for, either. Holden, in particular, is a guy whose problems stem from painfully obvious and mostly rather lame places, and watching the movie, it’s not hard to just wish he’d grow up and get over it.

It’s still a movie with meaningful things to say, though, particularly when it comes to the unexplored feelings that can lurk below the surface of close male friendships. Its surface storyline depicts a pair of friends thrown off their axis when one of them falls in love with a lesbian (Adams), and that naturally received most of the attention, but beneath all that, Chasing Amy is really — as is pointed out more than once in the bonus materials — a tender, very intelligent bromance. Smith has gone on to make more ambitious films (particularly Dogma), but I don’t think he’s ever written a better script or gotten better performances out of his actors.

After regaining his stride with Chasing Amy and Dogma, Smith earned a bit of a reprieve, which he took with 2001’s irredeemably silly Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. It goes without saying that it’s the best-looking of the three movies here — and also by far the dumbest. Jay and Silent Bob is nominally a satire of Hollywood and Web culture, but you get a fart joke before the movie is five minutes old, and unlike, say, South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, the subtext is mostly drowned under an avalanche of dumb gags and mugging. It’s a great example of what happens when Smith has a big budget to play with: He wanders off and forgets what makes his movies special. Smith has made some legitimately important films, so it’s hard to be mad at him for taking the opportunity to fool around with someone else’s $20 million — unless, that is, you bought a ticket when Jay and Silent Bob was in theaters.

Still, the movie has its fans, and it’s definitely the only movie in this box that actually looks and feels like a Blu-ray. It’s the same version of the movie that was released a few years ago, with the same minimal bonus features, so if you already own it, there’s literally no reason to buy it again. As a lighthearted tonic after a viewing of Chasing Amy, though, it sort of hits the spot, barn-broad humor and all. If it weren’t a studio-themed package, it’d be hard to understand why these particular movies were being lumped together, but as a decently priced gift for the Kevin Smith fan in your life, the 3-Movie Collection offers plenty of bang for your buck.

Hey, everyone! It’s time for the second course of Dysfunctional Family Thanksgiving! I hope you enjoyed the first course, The Myth of Fingerprints, though I’m guessing it might have been a little obscure for some people’s tastes. This week we have another film from 1997, albeit one that’s set in 1973: The Ice Storm. (I promise next week’s course isn’t another depressing movie produced by James Schamus.)

I saw The Ice Storm in the theater and remember being really affected by it. In fact I couldn’t get it out of my mind for days after, so I had to go see it again. Then I had to buy the book by Rick Moody, which I also loved.

Exquisitely directed by Ang Lee, The Ice Storm is about two neighboring, dysfunctional Connecticut families and their attempts to deal with the tumult and changes happening in their lives — and the world in general — through alcohol, drugs, and sex.

The film centers on the Hoods — Ben (Kevin Kline) and Elena (Joan Allen) and their teenage children, Paul (Tobey Maguire) and Wendy (Christina Ricci) — and their neighbors in suburban Connecticut, the Carvers — Jim (Jamey Sheridan) and Janey (Sigourney Weaver) and their teenage sons, Mikey (Elijah Wood) and Sandy (Adam Hann-Byrd).

Ben and Elena’s marriage is strained, and up until recently, they’ve been in couples therapy. He feels as though she’s too distant and doesn’t give him the attention he needs, while she’s bored and unsatisfied with her life as a housewife. Jim and Janey also have a troubled marriage but seem content just ignoring the problem. To top it all off, Janey and Ben are having an affair, of which their spouses are suspicious.

Then there are the kids. Wendy and Mikey have been secretly messing around, which makes his younger brother, Sandy, jealous, since he has a thing for Wendy. In addition to being fascinated by her, Sandy has a bit of an obsession with violence, particularly when it comes to blowing things up. Paul, who attends school away from home, is in his own world and fairly withdrawn from the goings-on between the rest of his family and the Carvers. He’s more interested in experimenting with drugs with his roommate, Francis (David Krumholtz), and trying to get his crush, Libbets Casey (Katie Holmes), to notice him.

All the troubles the Hoods and Carvers are having culminate the day after Thanksgiving. After he pisses Janey off during one of their midafternoon trysts at her house and she leaves, Ben catches Wendy and Mikey fooling around in the Carvers’ basement, which embarrasses Mikey and annoys Wendy. Paul decides to take the train into New York City for a date — or so he thinks — with Libbets (Katie Holmes), only to find that Francis has crashed the party.

For the adults, there’s the annual post-Thanksgiving party at the home of the Halfords (Allison Janney and Rob Westenberg). After spending much of the evening arguing, Ben and Elena arrive at the Halfords’ to find that this year’s bash is a “key party”: Everyone drops their car keys in a bowl at the beginning of the night, and at the end, the wives fish the keys out randomly. Whichever husband “belongs” to those keys gets to go home with that wife. The ’70s were a swingin’ time.

Ben and Elena are initially uncomfortable with the idea, but they eventually decide to stay and play along. The night goes badly, though, as Elena and Jim can’t help but notice the glances between their spouses, and Ben gets jealous when he spies Janey flirting with another, much younger man.

Meanwhile, the kids are finding their own trouble to get into. As a dangerous ice storm begins, Mikey decides to call Wendy and see if she wants to hang out. She makes her way over to the Carvers’, but finds that Mikey has left to wander around the neighborhood in the storm. Wendy decides to hang out with Sandy; the two start drinking vodka, which leads to them crawling into bed together naked.

Meanwhile, in the city, Paul discovers he’s the only one who’s still sober and awake after Libbets and Francis take some meds they found in her parents’ medicine cabinet. He’s disappointed in the turn the evening has taken, but he uses Libbets’s unconscious state as an excuse to confess his feelings for her.

Back at the key party, Ben has gotten really drunk. When it comes time for the ladies to choose keys to determine who they’ll pair up with for the night, he gets upset when Janey chooses someone else’s keys; he tries to protest but winds up tripping and hitting his head on a coffee table. Embarrassed, he retreats to the bathroom, where he stays for the rest of the party.

The guests continue to pair off, leaving only Jim and Elena. She takes his keys from the bowl and gives them back to him. They then decide to leave together, engaging in a clumsy sexual encounter in the front seat of his car. Regretting the line they’ve crossed, Jim agrees to drive Elena home.

Then there’s Mikey. While out gallivanting in the ice storm, things go terribly wrong. I’m not going to spoil that plot point for you, but what happens to him changes the lives of the Hoods and the Carvers forever, making them all realize what they have — and what they have to lose.

The Ice Storm wasn’t much of a commercial success in theaters, but it was a hit with critics and discerning filmgoers. Various members of its cast were nominated for awards, with Sigourney Weaver getting the most attention, including a Golden Globe nod for best supporting actress. The screenplay, written by James Schamus, was also nominated for several awards and won Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival, though the film was completely overlooked at the Academy Awards in ‘98.

Since I’m a big fan of the movie and the book, I just had to have The Ice Storm’s soundtrack album. It features two pieces from Mychael Danna’s brilliant, haunting score as well as most of the songs that appear in the film. While almost all the songs are from the period in which the story takes place, there’s the curious inclusion of the David Bowie track “I Can’t Read,” which plays over the end credits. (The song first appeared on Tin Machine’s debut in 1989, but Bowie recorded a new version for The Ice Storm.)

Of course, as is usually the case, there are quite a few songs that were in the movie that didn’t make it onto the soundtrack album. Naturally, I rounded them up just for you. Listen, then wash down this second course of Soundtrack Saturday: Dysfunctional Family Thanksgiving with a stiff glass of bourbon.

Frank Zappa – Dirty Love
Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd – Samba Triste
Wendy Carlos – Two-Part Invention in B-Flat Major
Malo – Suavecito
Wilson Pickett – Sugar Sugar
Jim Croce – I Got a Name
Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose – Too Late to Turn Back Now
Bobby Bloom – Montego Bay
Antônio Carlos Jobim – O Grande Amor
Harry Nilsson – Coconut
Traffic – Light Up or Leave Me Alone
Sammi Smith – Help Me Make It Through the Night
Free – Mr. Big
Les McCann and Eddie Harris – Compared to What
Elton John – Levon
Gerry Mulligan – Night Lights
David Bowie – I Can’t Read

Score by Mychael Danna:

Shoplift
Finale

Cohen proved himself a blazing pioneer of 21st century guerilla comedy with 2006’s Borat, in which he played a mustachioed, childlike misogynist who travels to America as a cultural ambassador from Kazakhstan, wandering the country with a camera crew as he insults women and Jews, stalks Pamela Anderson, and embarrasses unsuspecting bigots. It was a shocking, deeply offensive film — one that left you doubled over and gasping for air with laughter even as you intellectually recoiled from what was unfolding on the screen, and the kind of phenomenon that really can’t be repeated.

He had to try anyway, of course. It didn’t work, but you can’t fault him for the effort.

What you can blame Cohen for is Brüno, a pale shadow of Borat that feels, at times, like the kind of hackwork perpetrated by people trying to ride a popular film’s coattails by putting together something that looks and feels kind of like it, but misses the point almost entirely. Like Borat, Brüno asks you to take its central character as seriously as his unwitting victims did, and begins with a prelude that’s supposed to establish his backstory. There’s a crucial difference, though — while Borat held some pretty vile views, he was clearly an idiot and more or less a friendly guy; Brüno, on the other hand, is little more than a fame-hungry elitist. Both Borat and Brüno are basically awful people, but Borat had a childlike quality that made it possible to enjoy his company. Brüno is just an asshole.

And then there’s the matter of Brüno’s comedy, which is even more uneven than Borat’s, and dishwater weak in comparison. Part of Borat’s brutal impact lay in the fact that the butts of its jokes deserved what they got, and the way it highlighted casual racism in modern America was something like a public service. Brüno, on the other hand, is just kind of confused — in parts, it wants to lampoon celebrity culture; in others, it’s a savage expose of prejudice against homosexuals. But Brüno’s celebrity targets haven’t done anything to deserve their treatment — you just kind of feel bad for Paula Abdul and Ron Paul during what are otherwise fairly inspired segments — and Cohen goes so far out of his way to antagonize his audience in the latter scenes, eventually making out with another man in a cage in front of an audience duped into thinking they were attending an MMA bout, that they don’t really work the way they’re supposed to. You end up feeling like the movie is perpetually warming up for something better, but it never gets there; in fact, it wraps up suddenly with a moronic, out-of-the-blue all-star music video. The end.

That said, Brüno doesn’t make for a terrible rental, particularly with the extra content, some of which — such as the very entertaining behind-the-scenes commentary from Cohen and director Larry Charles — is actually more entertaining than the film. You also get over an hour of deleted and alternate scenes, including typically absurd interviews with La Toya Jackson and Pete Rose, and since even the worst of Cohen’s fake interviews are better than the storyline bits that pad out the movie, these add quite a bit to the overall experience. Brüno seems to have been Cohen’s farewell to this style of “real” in-character comedy, and that’s obviously for the best; in fact, it really would have been better if he’d quit after Borat. But if you keep your expectations low, Brüno (also available on DVD and Video on Demand) offers a passable diversion for fans of rude and borderline pornographic comedy.