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Stephen Hunter, Washington Post

1. Bottle Shock 2008 Whatta movie: booze, unhappy French people, Alan Rickman and really cool pickup trucks. full review
2. Beaufort 2007 The camera never leaves the beleaguered compound, and Beaufort itself becomes a character in the story, a surrealistic zone of tunnels, bunkers and sandbags, about as far from the possibility of heroism as possible. full review
3. Eagle vs. Shark 2007 You believe in it, because you believe in the small but decent lives of its characters, a rare experience for a hot weekend in June. full review
4. 10 Questions for the Dalai Lama 2006 A nicely crafted, economic (it's only 85 minutes) introduction to that most eminent of men, the spiritual leader and deposed head of state of Tibet. full review
5. Copying Beethoven, (Klang der Stille) 2006 The movie is completely beguiling, and it delivers joy, the beautiful spark of the gods. full review
6. Curious George 2006 It's pretty elementary. full review
7. Heading South 2006 In its way, the film is a piercing indictment, though it makes its point without much screaming, hectoring or preening. It's quietly terrific. full review
8. Keeping Up With The Steins 2006 [Zakarin] keeps things clearly flat and primary, and the characters never become more than stereotype. full review
9. Last Holiday 2006 Latifah proves once again the weird parallels between rap stardom and movie stardom. Both formats seem to be about a magical something called presence, and Latifah, even in a dialed-down, quiet role like this one, has it. full review
10. Severance 2006 Put it on a level with a mid-series Halloween. full review
11. The Wind That Shakes the Barley 2006 Director Ken Loach is full of astonishments. In this film, he stages raid and counter-raid, big gunfight and small, with stunning dynamism. full review
12. Bad News Bears 2005 The movie is fun, though not great, and Billy Bob rules. full review
13. Four Brothers 2005 Loud, stupid, unrealistic, overdone, without a thought in its ugly little head and kind of enjoyable. full review
14. Jarhead 2005 What's so good about the movie is Gyllenhaal's refusal to show off; he doesn't seem jealous of the camera's attention when it goes to others and is content, for long stretches, to serve simply as a prism though which other young men can be observed. full review
15. Land of the Dead 2005 The plot held no surprises and the acting no revelations. full review
16. Lonesome Jim 2005 The script is adroit: It doesn't force the humor, and it steadily keeps track of Jim's growing maturity. full review
17. The Lost City 2005 A tribute to pre-revolutionary Havana, an elegy on what was lost, a little payback for a regime that drove his family out and, best of all, a synthesis of the driving Afro-Cuban rhythms of the extraordinary music. full review
18. My Summer of Love 2005 A remarkable if brief entrance into real psychologies. full review
19. Old Joy 2005 It feels so real it hurts, and it's the perfect antidote to all those movies where all sorts of stuff blows up. full review
20. The Producers 2005 So how good is the movie of the musical of the movie? The answer is: It's pretty good. full review
21. Sahara 2005 A mediocrity wrapped inside a banality, toasted in a nice, fresh cliche. full review
22. The World's Fastest Indian 2005 As the movie's tag line has it, it's based on a hell of a story. Too bad they didn't just tell it. full review
23. After Innocence 2004 The moral purity of After Innocence is so overwhelming that it simply leaves you with nothing to say or do. It's kind of beyond criticism. full review
24. Big Fish 2004 Somewhat like Forrest Gump on a high colonic. full review
25. A Good Woman 2004 A clever rearranging of Oscar Wilde's first great play, Lady Windermere's Fan. full review
26. Little Black Book 2004 If you think it's worth it to sit there for 97 minutes for three or possibly four laughs, then you are beyond help. full review
27. Vanity Fair 2004 Witherspoon's simply terrific, and it's amazing how quickly and easily she sheds speculation that she was too modern for the role. full review
28. White Chicks 2004 It's not what the Wayans brothers do, it's how they do it. They do it funny. full review
29. 21 Grams 2003 Tough, smart, relentless, provocative and, above all, serious. full review
30. Bad Boys II 2003 Might be considered three action sequences and four comedy routines in search of a story. full review
31. Daddy Day Care 2003 If you attend the movie with your expectations lowered by Murphy's recent films, you'll be reasonably amused. full review
32. Mona Lisa Smile 2003 Anyone who's ever been moved by a teacher to dream a slightly bigger dream than his parents thought he or she was capable of achieving ought to love the film, for it gets at a truer model of teacher's inspiration.
33. Something's Gotta Give 2003 The film Meyers has fashioned is generally quite amusing, with a brilliant cast.
34. Tears of the Sun 2003 The film is a strictly no-bull proposition.
35. Bloody Sunday 2002 As a terrifying example of what can happen when too many angry people are crowded into too small a space, it's a gripper. full review
36. Bukowski: Born into This 2002 It is wide-ranging, it is fair, it is thorough, and although it admires, it is also tough enough to condemn. full review
37. Equilibrium 2002 Equilibrium the movie, as opposed to the manifesto, is really, really stupid. full review
38. The Hours 2002 It would be all too precious to watch except for the brilliant performances, which make it too wonderful not to watch.
39. Igby Goes Down 2002 Although I hate Igby -- he's snotty, rich, emotionally brutal, cynical, treacherous, vindictive, manipulative -- I also love him. You can, truly, feel his pain. full review
40. Irreversible 2002 A genuine outlaw work of art. full review
41. Lost in La Mancha 2002 A fascinating chronicle of bad luck, bad faith and bad weather all striking on the same day. full review
42. The Pianist 2002 Really not a movie that can be missed.
43. Rollerball 2002 Jewison's rich and provocative 1975 original has been de-metaphorized, made narrow and pointless, while remaining just as loud and violent.
44. The Rules of Attraction 2002 Feels more like a walk across campus than a movie.
45. Star Trek - Nemesis 2002 An ordeal for all save the most ardent Treksters.
46. Treasure Planet 2002 It's all quite vividly imagined, down to the tiniest details.
47. We Were Soldiers 2002 The story it tells is both forgotten and relevant, a neat trick.
48. Windtalkers 2002 Feels slightly off-key, out of focus.
49. XX/XY 2002 Each moment feels real, but the movie wears you out in some way.
50. XXX 2002 Watching [Diesel] ... is a lot more fun than staying with the ever-feebler Pierce Brosnan in his decrepit adventures as MGM tries desperately to keep the creaking Bond franchise upright.
51. Black Hawk Down 2001 The next worst thing to being there. That's how real it feels. full review
52. Gosford Park 2001 All in all, Gosford Park has nothing nice to say about anybody, and I like that in a movie. full review
53. Manic 2001 Its modesty of aspiration and its naturalism of style are its two most salient values.
54. Scary Movie 2 2001 A pocket of infection on the skin of the American body cultural. full review
55. Sexy Beast 2001 I'm wondering what's so special about a film that has but one guilty pleasure and that's Ben Kingsley spraying saliva-lubricated variants of the F-word. full review
56. Lara Croft - Tomb Raider 2001 Loud, banal, empty, frenzied, plasticized, flavorless, drab, violent in a bloodless way and sexy in a sexless way. full review
57. Vanilla Sky 2001 A case of the vain leading the bland.
58. Wet Hot American Summer 2001 This is supposed to be funny? It was so depressing I almost started to cry.
59. Beautiful Creatures 2000 For all of us bad little boys and girls. full review
60. Blow Dry 2000 It's fun. full review
61. Bread and Tulips 2000 Sweet, delicately comic and a complete delight.
62. The Gift 2000 It's not wise to build a story around a psychic. If you don't believe in this stuff, the story simply will not work, ever, anyhow, any way, any time, any place. full review
63. Our Song 2000 It's an astonishing movie, with a real-life feel.
64. Quills 2000 It argues its case fairly, acknowledging the implicit dangers in its position, and dramatizing the price that inevitably will be paid for its cherished goal of untrammeled personal expression. full review
65. Titan A.E. 2000 It continually crashes and burns on its own banality. full review
66. In Too Deep 1999 LL Cool J with his natural charisma is the key to the movie's edge. full review
67. Godzilla 1998 full review
68. Psycho 1998 Van Sant has cranked up the realism about 20 points, but somehow what he achieves for the effort is a larger sense of banality!
69. What Dreams May Come 1998 It's not much, other than the vision thing.
70. Breakdown 1997 [Kurt Russell's] lack of energy afflicts the film as much as its director's lack of ideas. full review
71. Cop Land 1997 At its heart, the movie has a good story to tell: the lumbering oaf who's not nearly as stupid and not nearly as gutless as all the hot dogs from the big city think. full review
72. Gojira 1954 Its images of the destruction of the cities is far more powerful than in American films, where the cities are trashed for the pure pleasure of destruction, without any real sense of human loss. full review