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Ty Burr, Boston Globe

1. 2 Days in New York 2012 Chatty, neurotic, maddeningly messy, often very funny, "New York" spins in a lunatic orbit of its own. full review
2. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry 2012 One of the most engagingly powerful movies of the year almost completely on the strength of Ai's rumpled charisma and the confusion it creates in the bureaucratic mindset of the Chinese Communist Party. full review
3. The Ambassador 2012 'The Ambassador" is a sociopolitical prankumentary in which the prank blows up in the filmmaker's face, exploding-cigar style. full review
4. Beauty Is Embarrassing 2012 An amiable if not especially urgent celebration of the life and work of Wayne White. full review
5. Bernie 2012 The movie's bright and endearing and surprisingly lacking in a point. I wish I liked it better, but it's a start. full review
6. Blue Like Jazz 2012 The outcome rarely seems out of God's hands, and the filmmaking is low-budget-earnest to the point of drabness - it's not a movie to make converts. full review
7. Butter 2012 A shrill, cartoonish mess - not a total disaster, but no one's idea of a good movie. full review
8. Casa de mi padre 2012 It's a solid short film stretched to Silly Putty thinness. full review
9. Deadfall 2012 An A-list cast fights a B-movie script and goes down hard in "Deadfall," a wintry suspense melodrama that's not quite awful enough to be any fun. full review
10. Elena 2012 "Elena" reveals a filmmaker in full command of his art and not much interested in catering to an audience. If you want this film, you have to meet it more than halfway. full review
11. Elles 2012 Both provocative and muddled, the film's a moody, passive-aggressive tract that's buoyed by superior performances and sunk by its own uncertainties. full review
12. For Ellen 2012 "For Ellen" tries one's patience, but what works, works for keeps. full review
13. The Forgiveness of Blood 2012 "The Forgiveness of Blood'' works as a subtle but insistent metaphor for a modern generation trapped by the shibboleths of their elders. full review
14. Girl Model 2012 A powerful documentary that, with a wider scope and a bit more shaping, could have been even more powerful, perhaps unbearably so. What's there is strong enough. full review
15. Headhunters 2012 It's crisp entertainment even as plot absurdities gum up the works - you can almost hear the pages turn as you watch. full review
16. High Ground 2012 A less than inspiring documentary about extremely inspiring individuals, "High Ground" is worth seeing for what it shows rather than how it shows it. full review
17. The Hunger Games 2012 Like the book, "The Hunger Games'' doesn't end so much as open the door to the next installment; it's frustrating, but you'll probably feel you've gotten your money's worth. full review
18. Jiro Dreams of Sushi 2012 Would you be willing to massage an octopus for 45 minutes, until its flesh possesses just the right amount of chewability? Jiro is. full review
19. Keyhole 2012 'Keyhole" is the first Guy Maddin movie that feels as if it got only halfway out of the director's head and onto the screen. full review
20. Kill List 2012 A scuzzy little cross between a crime movie and a horror freak-out that gets under your skin and stays there, even if you can't understand half of what the characters are saying. full review
21. Mirror Mirror 2012 "Mirror Mirror'' is just a limp, jokey family film that wants to have its fairy tale magic and its hip irony, too. full review
22. Monsieur Lazhar 2012 What could be didactic is rendered life-size and indelible, even with the cards that Falardeau has carefully stacked. full review
23. Nobody Else But You 2012 A playful French meta-mystery that's occasionally too proud of its own cleverness. full review
24. Nobody Walks 2012 Sensitively written, nicely shot, expertly acted, and intelligently ambiguous, "Nobody Walks" still manages to send you out with a shrug. full review
25. Oslo, August 31st 2012 A coolly observed yet boundlessly compassionate day in the life of a recovering drug addict, "Oslo, August 31st" breaks your heart many times over. full review
26. ParaNorman 2012 The movie has its moments of dark whimsy and cheeky wit, but most of what it has is body parts. full review
27. The Queen of Versailles 2012 There's more going on here than classist derision, and the filmmaker uses her footage to try to sort out her feelings. full review
28. The Raven 2012 A grimly preposterous serial-killer thriller set in 19th-century Baltimore, this riff on the final days of the author of "The Tell-Tale Heart" and other masterpieces of the macabre might qualify as literary desecration if it weren't so silly. full review
29. A Royal Affair 2012 A crowned-heads soap opera that balances effectively between pomp and melodramatic circumstance. full review
30. Safety Not Guaranteed 2012 A pleasantly ramshackle affair balanced uniquely between the crass and the sweet. full review
31. Sleepless Night 2012 It's fast, lean, satisfying, and forgettable; nothing special, really, until you realize that the movies have largely lost the knack for brisk mayhem like this. full review
32. Tai Chi Zero 2012 For all its playfulness and cameo one-shots ("Lung Siu-lung, '70s kung fu superstar"!), Fung's film represents a thundering dead end. full review
33. Take This Waltz 2012 A color-drenched story of lust, love, and infidelity, it suffers from a vagueness that may be the point but that feels accidental. full review
34. Tales of the Night 2012 Has ... eye-bending backgrounds but a creatively monochromatic foreground that comes to feel like a limitation. full review
35. Unforgivable 2012 An elegantly rambling Franco-Italian affair about the ways we do each other wrong while trying to do each other right. full review
36. We Have a Pope 2012 Whenever it stays with Piccoli ... it's mysterious and moving, struck by the humility of a man who's not up to playing God. full review
37. What to Expect When You're Expecting 2012 The writing is sharp and the performances bright, and if you've been through the forced gestational march known as pregnancy, there are knowing laughs to be had. full review
38. The Adventures of Tintin 2011 Herge's was an art of subtraction - of doing more with less - but that seems to have eluded Spielberg and Jackson. full review
39. Albert Nobbs 2011 There's an ache of regret that sets "Albert Nobbs'' apart. Everyone here yearns for what they can't get. full review
40. The Artist 2011 "The Artist'' is a small, exquisitely-cut jewel in a style everyone assumes is 80 years out of date. full review
41. Bellflower 2011 Handmade and helpless, it's nevertheless the real deal, an artful blurt of sensitivity and rage. full review
42. Buck 2011 The man's mythology precedes him, and it's the movie's failing that we don't understand how or whether he uses that mythology because he knows it's good business. full review
43. Conan O'Brien Can't Stop 2011 There are solid laughs and meta-laughs to be had in "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop,'' but the movie is most worthwhile as a portrait of a celebrity in mid-hissy fit. A creative, self-aware hissy fit, but still. full review
44. Coriolanus 2011 When Caius Martius heads into battle against the invading Volscians, we get 20-odd minutes of brutal street-fighting with RPGs and crackling automatic weapons. The film was shot in Serbia; dial a few decades back and it could have been set there. full review
45. First Position 2011 Because its subjects are so driven and so talented, "First Position," which is about ballet, is more gripping than the norm. full review
46. Hobo With a Shotgun 2011 A merrily blood-soaked homage to the vigilante action movies of the 1970s and early 1980s, "Hobo'' is a good idea in theory that's brought down by the banality of its practice. full review
47. Into The Abyss 2011 The movie's an "In Cold Blood'' with a patient, persistent German interlocutor instead of Truman Capote turning cartwheels in prose. full review
48. Ironclad 2011 As history it's bunk; as inappropriate historical fiction, it's awfully close to comedy. full review
49. The Kid with a Bike 2011 "The Kid With A Bike'' is, remarkably, about hope - about the connections people forge when the ones they've been given desert them. full review
50. Like Crazy 2011 Attention must be paid, even if you occasionally want to throw pots at the screen. full review
51. Machine Gun Preacher 2011 "Machine Gun Preacher'' is crude and ham-handed from its ridiculous title on down, but it still gets to some interesting places. full review
52. The Names of Love 2011 Instead of asking "What's in a name?,'' this slyly delightful piece of Gallic fluff wonders at all the ways that names - the labels we give to one another - bring us into the world and keep us apart from it. full review
53. Page One: Inside the New York Times 2011 The pure process of teasing out a story and getting it into accurately reported shape is fascinating to watch and more collaborative than you would expect. full review
54. Paranormal Activity 3 2011 "Paranormal Activity 3'' has no interest in art. It just wants to give you the willies with a minimum of gore and a maximum of camcorder dread, and it succeeds. full review
55. Pina 2011 What the filmmaker has created is an inspired simulacrum - a jewel-box that contains more of Bausch's kinetic soul than film has any right to. full review
56. Revenge of the Electric Car 2011 More hopeful but also more complex and lacking the focused urgency of the original. full review
57. This Must Be The Place 2011 This isn't a great movie, but it is a special one. full review
58. Trishna 2011 "Trishna" should move the soul and engage the tear-ducts, yet it passes by as distant as it is lovely. And the blame must fall on the movie's star, Freida Pinto. full review
59. Young Goethe In Love 2011 What was Sturm and Drang then veers close to camp and kitsch now. full review
60. All Good Things 2010 As excellent as Gosling is - and the actor conveys the stillness of the man as well as the voices screaming in his head - Dunst matches him stride for stride. full review
61. Casino Jack 2010 "Casino Jack" is glib, fast-paced entertainment that barely leaves a mark - which, given the subject, is just plain wrong. full review
62. Casino Jack And The United States Of Money 2010 Gibney is a busy boy, and he draws the lines between Abramoff and his friends -- and his friends' friends -- with the documentary equivalent of a highlighter. full review
63. Cold Weather 2010 This is a slacker detective story, emphasis on the slack, and if you can downshift into its loping rhythms, it's pretty wonderful. full review
64. Elena Undone 2010 full review
65. Exit Through The Gift Shop 2010 One of the best, most karmically satisfying comedies of the year, much to the chagrin of the people who are in it. full review
66. Freakonomics 2010 An attempt to turn the 2005 nonfiction bestseller into a high-energy docu-romp, "Freakonomics'' is a misconceived botch. full review
67. Henry's Crime 2010 If "Henry's Crime'' is occasionally too pleased with itself, it's also pleasantly unpredictable, and it has a trio of sweet hambone performances at its center. full review
68. Howl 2010 How do you make poetry cinematic? "Howl,'' a new film about beat writer Allen Ginsberg, asks that question without realizing the question is backward. It should be: How do you make cinema poetic? full review
69. I Am Love 2010 If you're not in the mood, the whole thing will probably seem pretty silly. But if you are -- oh, if you are -- I Am Love may be the richest, tastiest truffle you're likely to savor all summer. full review
70. I'm Still Here 2010 Parts of it are close to genius; most of it is actively torturous to watch. full review
71. Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work 2010 Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work is one of the smarter, more unexpectedly touching documentaries of the year, and I recommend it to you whether you love Rivers or loathe the very thought of her. How is this even possible? full review
72. The King's Speech 2010 Complacent middlebrow tosh engineered for maximum awards bling and catering to a nostalgia for the royalty we've never actually had to live with. full review
73. Marwencol 2010 full review
74. Monsters 2010 Monsters wants to be an allegory about American self-absorption or the panic over immigration or something; exactly what is never very clear. full review
75. Nowhere Boy 2010 As sympathetic and well-turned as it is, Nowhere Boy only gives us more mythology. full review
76. Rabbit Hole 2010 Eckhart works close to the top of his range here -- Howie is a guy's guy ill-equipped to fight something he can't see -- but Kidman simply goes above and beyond. full review
77. Rubber 2010 If "Rubber'' was half as smart as it is clever, we might be talking gonzo midnight four-star classic here. full review
78. The Tempest 2010 The best sequences in "Tempest'' are all quiet, not that there are many of them. full review
79. Tiny Furniture 2010 Many of us have been here - that first flush of post-college terror, remember? - and Dunham makes it funny and involving before entropy kicks in at the two-thirds mark. full review
80. White Irish Drinkers 2010 All the good intentions in the world can't save "White Irish Drinkers'' from playing like the baldest of retreads. full review
81. The Art Of The Steal 2009 The movie's never less than entertaining, but you often feel like arguing with the screen, and not in a good way. full review
82. The Boys Are Back 2009 All told, the movie's a solid entry in the Bad Dad Gets It Together genre and Owen is really quite touching, especially when he's not trying too hard, which is most of the time. full review
83. Creation 2009 There are good performances and fleeting moments of exquisite moviemaking, but the experience as a whole is an evolutionary dead end. A dodo this is not, but rather a curiosity -- an aye-aye of a film, or a narwhal. full review
84. Crude 2009 At first Crude looks like one more environmental agit-doc intended to outrage and inspire. Director Joe Berlinger is no doctrinaire hack, though. full review
85. The Eclipse 2009 The town and surrounding landscapes make a gorgeous setting -- the Irish tourist board will be happy -- but at its heart The Eclipse is a small, contained ghost story about a haunted man learning to exorcise himself. full review
86. Fish Tank 2009 With a bare minimum of dialogue - none of which I can print - Arnold establishes Mia's barren environment and the hope and fury that war beneath the surface of the girl's skin. full review
87. The House of the Devil 2009 West, a rising young director of minor cult pleasures, comes clean here about his love for all things Bava (Mario) and Carpenter (John). full review
88. Hunger 2009 A visually ravishing tour of hell and a meditation on freedom that at best is wordlessly profound and at worst interestingly obscure. full review
89. Last Train Home 2009 What else do you want? The question echoes down every frame of this haunting film, and Fan doesn't pretend to have an answer. full review
90. The Limits of Control 2009 With The Limits of Control, [Jim Jarmusch] has come up with a dud. full review
91. Ondine 2009 Among the film's pleasures is a disarmingly tender performance from the new, improved Colin Farrell. full review
92. The Secret of Kells 2009 A visually overwhelming labor of love, a hand-drawn medieval adventure tale that seeks and finds cosmic connections. full review
93. Valhalla Rising 2009 If only the pieces added up to an experience that sticks and that didn't finally succumb to a shrug of entropy. full review
94. Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen 2009 A gorgeously filmed, surprisingly tough-minded portrait of the 12th-century Benedictine nun, scholar, mystic, and composer. full review
95. When You're Strange 2009 DiCillo approaches this nonfiction project with the glazed eyes of a true fan. He has the participation of surviving band members and a lot of rare, mesmerizing footage at his disposal ... What he doesn't have is critical distance or anything new to say. full review
96. Constantine's Sword 2008 Constantine's Sword speaks provocatively to history and our moment. full review
97. Defiance 2008 What the Bielski brothers did in the forests of Belorussia deserves to be remembered and celebrated, but this glossy studio production robs them of life. It's not just new Holocaust stories that we need, but new ways of telling them. full review
98. Disgrace 2008 Disgrace is an ugly movie, at times torturous to watch. It probably needs to be. full review
99. Happy-Go-Lucky 2008 Happy-Go-Lucky isn't one of Leigh's epic social canvases like Secrets & Lies or even Topsy-Turvy; rather, it's an edgy character study whose message only gradually emerges. full review
100. I Sell the Dead 2008 If it's not actually a good movie, on some level you have to admire the chutzpah of a film set in 1850s Ireland but shot on Staten Island. full review
101. Man on Wire 2008 A documentary about a towering act of daring proves a spine-tingling memorial to recklessness as art. full review
102. Management 2008 Sometimes a cute-stalker movie can win the audience's heart. Management only makes you ponder the line between true love and a restraining order. full review
103. Momma's Man 2008 On the surface, it's a straightforward low-budget tale about a grown man who visits his parents and refuses to leave. Yet deeper, darker currents move through Momma's Man, eddying around fears of letting go on both sides of the generational divide. full review
104. The Pleasure of Being Robbed 2008 The movie's refusal to judge is its most interesting attribute, if one many audiences won't be able to get around. full review
105. Unmistaken Child 2008 You could argue that the film would be stronger if it explained more fully and asked more questions, yet "Unmistaken Child'' stands as a window on a beautiful and mysterious world. The questions it leaves hanging are for us to untangle. full review
106. We Live in Public 2008 Midway through We Live in Public, one Quiet participant delivers the hard social lesson of cyberspace: "The more you get to know everyone, the more alone you become." full review
107. Were the World Mine 2008 There are times when it is safe to say that a labor of love is love's labor lost, and, reader, this is one of them. full review
108. What Just Happened? 2008 Eventually it just stalls. full review
109. The Yellow Handkerchief 2008 Even Stewart, an untutored colt of an actress who can toggle between natural grace and utter haplessness, finds her groove here. full review
110. Broken English 2007 Broken English is a conventional New York-lonely hearts story made watchable by one element and one element only: Parker Posey. full review
111. Civic Duty 2007 Dig deep down into some bad movies and you occasionally find a good idea at the center. Civic Duty isn't one of those movies. full review
112. The Devil Came on Horseback 2007 Too often the movies view the problems of Africa through Western eyes, but Devil turns that weakness to a literal strength, because Steidle could do nothing in his position except take photographs. full review
113. Eagle vs. Shark 2007 Floats by on a mood of concerned and puckish good will. full review
114. Encounters at the End of the World 2007 full review
115. Flawless 2007 Flawless is a gimcrack, a genre exercise, yet it's a confidence game in the best sense of the phrase. [Director] Radford knows the rules - when to bend them, when to break them, and when to play by them. That's an increasingly rare skill. full review
116. Freedom Writers 2007 The kids' individual triumphs seem satisfyingly hard-won. full review
117. The Hunting Party 2007 When something seems too bizarre to be true, that's generally how it plays onscreen. full review
118. Mr. Bean's Holiday 2007 Somewhere, Jacques Tati is smiling. full review
119. Phoebe in Wonderland 2007 Phoebe in Wonderland gradually loses its grip on tone and believability, climaxing with a show-must-go-on moment that's just plain silly. Thankfully, Barnz knows exactly where to end his film: on the face of a girl, and an actress, at the crossroads. full review
120. Puccini for Beginners 2007 If Woody Allen were a young, attractive gay woman, he might make something like this, or so Maggenti hopes. But it would probably be funnier, and it would definitely cut deeper. full review
121. Save Me 2007 The first release from the gay-oriented Mythgarden production company, Save Me still bodes well for its evenhanded approach. full review
122. Trumbo 2007 A celebration of a large-hearted contrarian, and if it's over-worshipful, the film gets you in an indulgent frame of mind. full review
123. You Kill Me 2007 It's a predictable but acridly pleasant 12-step bonbon: self-help noir. full review
124. 10 Questions for the Dalai Lama 2006 One comes away from 10 Questions emboldened, energized, and sadder -- aware that peace remains so radical a concept that most of us aren't yet worthy of it. full review
125. Brooklyn Rules 2006 Too many cliches and not enough energy have come along for the ride. full review
126. Curious George 2006 Artful simplicity may be an impossible quality in a modern children's movie, so Curious George opts instead for mayhem under a blanket of sweetness. The little ones understand. full review
127. Dreamland 2006 As swoony and verbose and serious as an adolescent's journal entry. full review
128. Fay Grim 2006 Fay Grim falls victim to its own worried hyperactivity; it shuts you out with chattery paranoia. Hartley wants us to see the big picture, but he forgets we need artists like him to bring it into focus. full review
129. The Ground Truth 2006 The documentary any American with an opinion on our involvement in Iraq owes it to his or her conscience to see. full review
130. Heading South 2006 A nervy but muddleheaded work ... with sharply unpleasant things to say about the First World's moral strip-mining of the Third but an overly tactful way of saying them. full review
131. Keeping Up With The Steins 2006 Warm, witty, and sitcom-obvious -- a genuine audience pleaser that's built to wring laughs of pained recognition from anyone who has survived a bar mitzvah as either a participant or an observer. full review
132. Lady Chatterley 2006 Sensual in escalating degrees of heat, but the film's eroticism, which is substantial, is laid on with a caress. full review
133. Maxed Out 2006 Maxed Out focuses on how much we're in hock without ever really wondering why we need to buy. full review
134. Slither 2006 At last: the mutant alien redneck zombie movie the world has been waiting for. full review
135. This Is England 2006 There's a gutter pride taken in how aggressively Shaun confronts the world, but there's also a blunt, no-nonsense analysis of where the kid goes wrong. full review
136. United 93 2006 ... you come out feeling that the filmmakers have done the right thing by this day. full review
137. Unknown 2006 You wish some of the plot holes had been spackled better. full review
138. World Trade Center 2006 Oliver Stone has made an honorable film, in other words, and almost the best thing I can say about it is that it doesn't feel like an Oliver Stone movie. full review
139. Bad News Bears 2005 Stranded between pushing the scatological envelope and caving in to the formulas the 1976 movie established, and until the well-nigh foolproof ending, it comes up gasping for air. full review
140. Brick 2005 Brick is almost fiendish in its insistence on finding modern-day parallels to classic pulp-fiction figures. full review
141. Brokeback Mountain 2005 The reason to see Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, and see it you should, isn't its hot-button topicality or its cultural cachet but simply that it's a very good movie, with a staggeringly fine performance by Heath Ledger. full review
142. Broken Flowers 2005 A minimalist miracle that transcends comedy and drama to wind up in a bigger and wiser place. full review
143. Color Me Kubrick 2005 The movie never convinces us there's anyone there to expose, though, and Malkovich flits from scene to scene without ever anchoring Conway in a lasting reality. full review
144. The Constant Gardener 2005 If it sends audiences home to log on to the Amnesty International website, terrific -- but that still doesn't make it a very good movie. full review
145. Conversations With Other Women 2005 The charm of Conversations With Other Women, a gimmicky but oddly moving two-character drama that flies in from who knows where, is its intelligent knowingness. full review
146. Factotum 2005 Hamer has created a tidy film about a fabulously messy man. full review
147. Into Great Silence 2005 Have I got a movie for you. Into Great Silence is a two-hour-and-40-minute documentary about monks, and it is one of the transporting film experiences of this or any other year. full review
148. Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man 2005 Whatever the approach, the songs are sturdy enough to support it while remaining resigned and elusive, their words practically glowing in the dark. full review
149. Lonesome Jim 2005 The problem is that a little of this minimalist kitchen-sink farce goes a very long way, and after a while Lonesome Jim starts to dry up. full review
150. My Summer of Love 2005 My Summer of Love remains stubbornly stalled between 'artistic' lesbian hubba-hubba and such tougher fare as Peter Jackson's superior Heavenly Creatures. full review
151. Neil Young: Heart of Gold 2005 Heart of Gold -- filmed in much the same manner [as Stop Making Sense], with pristine sound and a notable lack of audience shots -- is a deeper and infinitely more touching piece of work. full review
152. Nine Lives 2005 Not all of Nine Lives clicks, but at its best it finds an inarticulate sisterly solace that makes you want to see what this director could do with one life per film. full review
153. The Producers 2005 Not so much a film as an awkwardly framed souvenir of the Broadway hit musical, The Producers needs a live audience like a candle needs oxygen. full review
154. Psychopathia Sexualis 2005 Lugubrious to the extreme of unintended comedy, the movie suggests a regional dinner theater production of a late- ' 80s Peter Greenaway film. full review
155. A State of Mind 2005 It's a quietly wrenching eye-opener. full review
156. Stoned 2005 Even The Doors looked like a model of clarity next to this. full review
157. Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price 2005 Advocacy journalism at its most unsparing, and it demands to be seen, discussed, argued with, and acted upon. full review
158. After Innocence 2004 Sanders is more interested in specific human struggles than in larger political points, but she knows these men form a mosaic with a message that's unmistakable. full review
159. The Forgotten 2004 Maybe you'll kick yourself upon leaving the theater, but while the lights are down you're engaged and increasingly, pleasurably thunderstruck. full review
160. A Good Woman 2004 A Good Woman above all lacks the joyful, lucid anger that lights up Wilde's plays -- the sense that beneath the witticisms he's telling it like it is to people who aren't used to hearing it. full review
161. Hotel Rwanda 2004 The twofold agenda in Hotel Rwanda is to commemorate what Paul Rusesabagina did and to shame each and every Westerner who sees the movie. On both of those counts it is successful. full review
162. Me and You and Everyone We Know 2004 Set in a down-at-the-heels suburb that might be called Anywhere, America, the movie looks for connection in the oddest places, and, with an emotional impact out of all proportion to its gossamer touch, finds it. full review
163. The Puffy Chair 2004 The sly ultra-low-budget film The Puffy Chair fits right in with recent news reports about college graduates refusing to grow up already. full review
164. Vera Drake 2004 Heartbreaking. full review
165. CSA: Confederate States of America 2003 Kevin Willmott's ersatz documentary CSA: The Confederate States of America is an act of provocation that's sheer genius in its conceptual simplicity. full review
166. Gigli 2003 An overlong, joyless, and inconsequential affair, full of dead air, and possessing only a few moments of jaw-dropping bad taste. full review
167. The Good Thief 2003 [Nolte] is magnificent -- ravaged, desperate, aware. full review
168. Hollywood Homicide 2003 Hollywood Homicide is one of the most lazily scripted, poorly structured, smugly stereotyped star vehicles in recent memory. full review
169. In the Cut 2003 It's been a while since a major filmmaker has made a movie this heavy with symbolism, this portentous, and this bad. full review
170. The Machinist 2003 A stylish but fatally shallow puzzler that suggests a Twilight Zone episode filmed on the leftover sets of Seven. full review
171. Primer 2003 What's impressive -- aside from the fact that Carruth got the thing made in the first place -- is that the movie's tone skates right between coherence and an appreciation for endless, even infinite possibilities. full review
172. Untold Scandal 2003 Of all the Liaisons adaptations, this may be the most sentimental. full review
173. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress 2002 It's a lovely little movie about very big things, and the smallness both illuminates it and keeps it from greatness. full review
174. Bukowski: Born into This 2002 You come out of the theater wanting to beeline to a bookstore, grab a copy of Post Office or Love Is a Dog From Hell, and adjust your opinion as necessary. full review
175. Equilibrium 2002 It's a long way from Orwell's dark, intelligent warning cry [1984] to the empty stud knockabout of Equilibrium, and what once was conviction is now affectation. full review
176. The Hours 2002 Far from a bad film, and at least two of its central trio of performances provide moments of disarming grace, but don't be surprised if a whiff of self-congratulation emanates from the screen. full review
177. Igby Goes Down 2002 Blisteringly rude, scarily funny, sorrowfully sympathetic to the damage it surveys, the film has in Kieran Culkin a pitch-perfect Holden. full review
178. Lost in La Mancha 2002 [Works best] as an entry in the genre of Hollywood schadenfreude pioneered by the 1991 Apocalypse Now documentary Hearts of Darkness. full review
179. Nicholas Nickleby 2002 The movie's a rambunctious joy. full review
180. Paid in Full 2002 In this bird's-eye-view of the drug trade circa 1986, there's something missing: the buyers. full review
181. The Pianist 2002 Polanski's achievement here is to avoid the Holocaust porn of post-Schindler's List cinema and show us the ghetto's daily grind. full review
182. Punch-Drunk Love 2002 [Sandler] plays Barry just as he would any of the comic dolts who've made him rich but this time all the panicky sadness is out where we can see it. It's a honey of a performance: controlled, achingly human, and funny in the deepest ways. full review
183. The Rules of Attraction 2002 For casual moviegoers who stumble into Rules expecting a slice of American Pie hijinks starring the kid from Dawson's Creek, they'll probably run out screaming. full review
184. Secret Things 2002 You couldn't nail a particular kind of modern French film better if you tried: explicit sex, bad behavior, and shrieking pretention all in one lumpy shock-the-bourgeoisie package. full review
185. Sex Is Comedy 2002 A rigorous and bracingly charming movie about moviemaking. full review
186. Stuart Little 2 2002 An overcalculated, up-to-the-minute kid flick that buries the book's mysteries under a pile of noise, misguided action sequences, and product placements for the PlayStation 2. full review
187. XX/XY 2002 If this were a cocktail party, you'd be back home with a good book already. full review
188. Love the Hard Way 2001 Heartfelt but fatally overwrought romantic melodrama. full review
189. Roman Holiday 1953 The film itself is a classic of romantic wish fulfillment, exactly the sort of beautiful lie that Hollywood specialized in. full review