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Stephen Cole, Globe and Mail

1. Jesus Henry Christ 2012 Watching Jesus Henry Christ sometimes feels like being trapped in a building with a faulty fire alarm. full review
2. My Way 2012 Adolescent boys will savour My Way's bombast and solemnity. Cringing adult audiences will more likely beat a retreat before final call. full review
3. Tyler Perry's Good Deeds 2012 Good Deeds is more proof that Perry is a crude dramatist. full review
4. The Viral Factor 2012 Tediously overwrought and drably made, with scenes punctuated by synthesized drums out of eighties American TV drama. full review
5. Margin Call 2011 Spacey is mesmerizing as Sam, a weary, aging lion losing his appetite for antelope. And Irons plays the villain with magisterial ease. full review
6. Page One: Inside the New York Times 2011 In journalism parlance, we have a dozen or so sidebars crowding out a fabulous front-page feature. full review
7. Surviving Progress 2011 Though often fascinating and beautiful to look at, Surviving Progress falls into the adapting-a-book-into-a-movie trap. Trying to do too much too fast. full review
8. Warrior 2011 Warrior is a weirdly affecting hybrid, a 100-proof melodrama that's two-thirds Sylvester Stallone and one-third Eugene O'Neill. Think Rocky's Long Day's Journey into Night. full review
9. We Were Here 2011 The most gripping war movie you'll see this year, We Were Here tells first-hand the story of how AIDS attacked San Francisco, killing more than 15,000. Whole peer groups were happy, healthy, and then dead in months. full review
10. Cave of Forgotten Dreams 2010 It is our tour guide that makes Cave of Forgotten Dreams an often thrilling experience. full review
11. Countdown to Zero 2010 A bluntly effective media campaign as opposed to a well-articulated documentary. full review
12. Four Lions 2010 [Morris's] new comedy has a provocative, ticklish premise -- five North England Muslims become suicide bombers, but can't decide who or what to take with them. full review
13. Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work 2010 The new documentary on Joan Rivers is so in your face, so fraught with harrowing, oversized personal stuff, you might want to get a theatre seat a couple of rows behind where you normally sit, to safely take it all in. full review
14. Nostalgia for the Light 2010 Patricio Guzman's documentary, Nostalgia for the Light, pays equal attention to the astronomers and searchers, regarding their quest as the same -- a search for life. full review
15. Nowhere Boy 2010 This portrait of a Beatle as a young man also gives filmmaker Sam Taylor-Wood, working on a thoughtful script by Matt Greenhalgh, creative room to manoeuvre, introducing us to John just as he and rock 'n' roll discover one another. full review
16. Waste Land 2010 It's sheer pleasure watching Muniz work -- seeing him seized by mad impulses of delight. full review
17. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 2009 A bracing survey course on the mystery genre set in a Scandinavian landscape as cold as a killer's kiss. full review
18. The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle 2009 In the cookie-cutter world of movies, it's a pleasure to come across a story you've never encountered before. Or ever will again. A film for which there can be no sequel. full review
19. Survival of the Dead 2009 Even Romero's staunchest fans might conclude their hero is going through the motions here. Yes, almost like a zombie. full review
20. Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day 2009 Make no mistake, they're becoming Trailer Park Men, demonstrating sure signs of maturity full review
21. The Trotsky 2009 Fitfully charming and sitcom cute. full review
22. Hot Rod 2007 The film steals one of the best laughs of Jon Heder's surprise 2004 hit, the scene where Napoleon nosedives over a bicycle jump, and stretches the gag into an 86-minute movie. full review
23. The Hunting Party 2007 A sour, disenchanted war comedy that affects a breezy style, The Hunting Party was originally called Spring Break in Bosnia. full review
24. Into Great Silence 2005 Though there are dozens of images here that you might want as a computer-screen saver, Into Great Silence does not add up to a valuable or engrossing documentary. full review
25. Serenity 2005 Part of the kick to Serenity is watching the filmmaker expertly play with moods as he hyphenates the western and sci-fi genres. full review
26. S.W.A.T. 2003 A film full of phony swagger and dialogue so awful you hope for once-distracting conversations to break out in the theatre around you. full review