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Anthony Lane, New Yorker

1. Detachment 2012 The movie works, and, though it cries out against so much, you sense that the one thing it does not cry is wolf. full review
2. Headhunters 2012 Clearly, there are streaks of farce in all this, as well as serious cracks in logic, and those who like their black comedy done to a crisp will happily feast on what Tyldum dishes up. full review
3. Take This Waltz 2012 Your best option, perhaps, is to zone out from the implausible kinks in the setup... This will leave you free to savor the compositions and the melted-candy color schemes. full review
4. Albert Nobbs 2011 What you feel, watching Close, is not that you are watching gender being bent into new, absorbing shapes but that you might as well have stayed home and leafed through a book on Magritte. full review
5. Coriolanus 2011 What remains, in distilled form, is the poetry of violence and contempt-the source of the play's unfailing reputation for political threat and mischief. full review
6. The Names of Love 2011 Leclerc pays such lavish homage, in the construction of his film, to golden-age Allen; the moments at which a bewildered Arthur consults his teen-age self could have come straight out of "Annie Hall." full review
7. This Must Be The Place 2011 This Must Be the Place is dazzling to behold. full review
8. Transformers: Dark of the Moon 2011 The third outing for a herd of toys that should have stayed in their boxes. full review
9. Biutiful 2010 The movie's mood might well have proved unendurable were it not for the proud and sympathetic presence of Bardem. full review
10. Cave of Forgotten Dreams 2010 Herzog's voiceover is, as always, more entertaining than most film soundtracks. The film has a touch of that gray fuzz which still afflicts 3-D, but the Chauvet cave is a perfect candidate for such technology, because it stashes its secrets in a recess. full review
11. Centurion 2010 The film has a resigned bitterness, hard to shake off, that feels right for the experience of tough guys, from whatever period of history, who find themselves at the tattered edge of what they take to be civilization. full review
12. Exit Through The Gift Shop 2010 Exit Through the Gift Shop feels dangerously close to the promotion of a cult -- almost, dare one say it, of a brand. full review
13. Four Lions 2010 Might this not have worked better, and conjured more startled outrage, as a mock documentary on TV? full review
14. I Am Love 2010 The best sex you will get all year, if that's what you crave in your moviegoing, is between Tilda Swinton and a prawn. full review
15. Nowhere Boy 2010 Taylor-Wood has specialized in video installations and off-kilter portraits, and it was tempting to hope that her take on Lennon would unsettle and provoke. Instead, she stays resolutely on-kilter, as if awed into numbness by her subject. full review
16. Rabbit Hole 2010 With performances like these, the result is not so much an issue movie as a study of human quiddity and stubbornness under siege. full review
17. Senna 2010 It's stripped of narration, talking heads, and anything else that might threaten to slow it down. full review
18. Bruno 2009 Wholly unsuitable for children, yet propelled by a nagging puerility that will appeal only to those in the vortex of puberty, or to adults who have failed to progress beyond it. full review
19. Creation 2009 As a journey through Darwin's discoveries, Creation fails, although, given the intricacy and the patience of his working methods, it is hard to imagine how such a film might succeed. full review
20. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 2009 Noomi Rapace throws herself into the title role, but something about the conception of her character, and about the far-reaching urgency of the sociopathic shocks behind the killing, smacks of a filmmaker pushing too hard. full review
21. Soul Kitchen 2009 Not to warm to this movie would be churlish, and foodies will drool on demand; I recommend the shoal of silvery fish, spitting in a wide pan and awaiting its rain of lemon. full review
22. The Time That Remains 2009 To keep a steady gaze, the film suggests, is not just a virtue but a form of orderly protest, when your world is breaking apart. full review
23. Deep Water 2006 Deep Water confirms all the mythical terrors that lurk in our dreams of the sea, and the best person to watch it with would be Melville. full review
24. Mission: Impossible III 2006 The grand finale? A fistfight, after which somebody gets run over. Listen, if I want to see that kind of action, I don't go to Shanghai. I don't even go to the movies. I go to the South Bronx and stand outside a bar.
25. The Treatment 2006 Who wants to behave well in bed? full review
26. Conversations With Other Women 2005 It may be dotted with fine observations, yet somehow the charm of its novelty grows stale, and the airless feeling of a closed set begins to fester.
27. Factotum 2005 The beautiful joke of Factotum is that Dillon is nobility itself.
28. Inside Deep Throat 2004 Deep Throat bore an X certificate. Inside Deep Throat is an NC-17. Neither is suitable for grownups.
29. Touching the Void 2003 The facts drop away, and it becomes impossible not to read the movie symbolically -- as a journey to the center of the earth, or farther still.
30. Braveheart 1995 The political argument that ensues is pretty dull, but the battle scenes are the loudest and most convincing in years: Gibson has learned from Kurosawa in lending a clarifying thrust to what is, essentially, chaos. full review