Roman Polanski, creepy sexual indiscretions aside, is considered one of modern cinema’s great filmmakers. With the The Ghost Writer, we see the work of an assured, veteran director that is in complete control of every aspect in the film. It is a movie without glaring faults; everything is executed to perfection, from the settings, to the mood, the performances, and the pacing. However, despite an intriguing premise with the work of a director completely in control of his craft, the film lacks a certain something to make it memorable.

That is not to say that the Ghost Writer is a bad film, far from it. It is refreshing to see fully fleshed and complex characters, starting with the mostly likeable, but deceptive and mysterious nameless protagonist played by Ewan McGregor, one of the most reliable and consistent actors working today. He plays a ghostwriter charged with writing the memoirs of Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), a former British Prime Minister in the heat of an investigation into possible war crimes during his administration. As “the ghost” sinks deeper into the world of Lang and his inner circle, a dark conspiracy begins to reveal itself. The ensemble cast is excellent, especially Olivia Williams as Lang’s resentful wife, Kim Cattrall (Sex and the City!!!!), cast against type, as his most loyal aide, and Tom Wilkinson steals the show as a creepy neo-conish academic, with mysterious ties to the CIA as well as Lang.

The problem with the film is that the conspiracy just doesn’t ring true; it’s painfully far fetched. Without going into it, suffice to say that Polanski’s life experience probably had a lot to do with his attitude toward the subject matter. It detracts greatly from otherwise nearly flawless film in every other aspect. Unfortunately, it’s a crucial part and the difference between a very strong movie and a great one. Conspiracy theories are common in film, but it is very hard to make them work. The Ghost Writer draws several obvious parallels to contemporary controversies (an evil defense company named Haverthon?), yet the leap toward the unbelievable is too far and forced.

Nevertheless, the film does work on several levels. The atmosphere is captured to perfection. Polanski, currently in house arrest for getting frisky with a 13 year old girl over thirty years ago, probably knows a thing or two about feeling trapped, of being in over your head. That is exactly the mood that he captures as The Ghost is figuratively and literally trapped inside the collapsing world of Adam Lang. The rains, the dreary landscape, the peace loving protesters, all contribute to the growing sense of paranoia. Polanski builds the tension in a perfectly calibrated way, offering us hints that there is something amiss, and by the end of the film the tension is palpable.

The Ghost himself is an interesting choice for a hero because he is in many ways, incredibly unlikeable. He’s clearly a talented writer, but he’s an apparent underachiever, satisfied writing memoirs for magicians and rock stars. He has no meaningful relationship with anyone, except for maybe his literary agent. He doesn’t care about anything very much and has a fuzzy moral center. Nevertheless, McGregor imbues the character with a sort of cynical charm that’s endearing in many ways. It’s always a treat to see a hero that is relatable, common even, with very visible flaws and a real sense of being just as confused and contradictory as the rest of us.

Grade B+

On paper, Tim Burton’s wild visual imagination was the perfect match to direct a film based on the world and characters in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. However, the film is vastly disappointed, given the director’s body of work and the incredibly talented ensemble cast.

The film’s greatest flaw is that everything seems to happen too quickly. Inexplicably, Burton made a plot-driven action film, rather than a more steadily paced dialogue centered one. The best part about the “Alice” world are the wild characters, which are all unique, rich, and full of funny witticisms. In Burton’s “Alice”, it seems like the majority of these characters simply get introduced, and are in the way of the central plot, which moves along far too briskly.

Johnny Depp stars as the Mad Hatter. Depp is one of the most versatile and talented actors in the world, but while Burton is his favorite director (they’ve done 7 films together), their last three collaborations have left a lot to be desired. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd (which got Depp in an inexplicable Oscar nomination), and now Alice all represent some of the actor’s weakest work. He seems to be caught up in being quirky, which is fine if it doesn’t seem like it is forced or lacks dramatic depth.

The movie does score points because of its wondrous visual style, and it does look great on 3D. What the characters lack in charm (or screen time), they make up for with new and fresh interpretations of their look. Nevertheless, overall, the movie is a disappointment, with an autopilot version of Tim Burton re-hashing the same “outsider” themes from his early classics like Edward Scissorhands, Batman, Ed Wood, and The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Grade C

It’s strange, the Academy often makes egregious mistakes, but it still carries an undeniable prestige. An Oscar winning film carries a certain weight, certainly for me at least. That’s why I was a bit bothered when they decided to expand the nominees for best picture to ten. It simply dilutes the category, takes away the weight of the nomination. The fact that “The Blindside”, a sappy feel good film wrought with the sort of kind paternalistic white man helping out the hapless negro racism that is particularly insidious is nominated is a testament to that dilution.

Nevertheless the Academy got it right when it made “The Hurt Locker”, and its director Kathryn Bigelow, the big winners of the evening. I had it as the top film of the year (easily), and I was glad to see it properly rewarded. I appreciate films that take risks, films that tell an original tale and feature ambiguous, fully fleshed characters. While I thought “Avatar” was a magnificent film and I watched it twice in the theatres, but the narrative was so incredibly familiar and the dialogue so middling and weak that I would have found it getting awarded the best picture Oscar as a total disappointment.

“The Hurt Locker” is undoubtedly going to be remembered as a classic movie, and the Best Picture Oscar will help it carry on its legacy. The movie asks difficult questions about the nature of heroism, with Jeremy Renner’s Sgt. James at the epicenter of them all. The opening sequence, featuring Guy Pearce as the bomb squad’s commanding officer getting killed sets the stage, as he was clearly a dependable, by the book, likeable leader. His team seems to trust him fully and even like him. Yet he cannot defuse the bomb without getting killed. Sgt. James, on the other hand, is brash, unconcerned with rules and procedure, and doesn’t seem to need or want his team around while he defuses the bomb. This makes the team very uneasy, and they ardently voice their frustration toward their leader. However as the movie progresses, the benefits of Sgt. James’ extreme heroism become more evident, as he is supremely talented at defusing bombs. He even challenges some of his weaker men to overcome their fears in the face of combat. Nevertheless, it still remains unclear which form of heroism is better, or if it is even heroism. What is certain is that men like Sgt. James ultimately end up alone and isolated, unable to relate to their more pedestrian subordinates and acquaintances.

“The Hurt Locker” is a modern masterpiece that really adds something new to the war movie genre.

On another note, a special mention to the great Jeff Bridges. To the millions of readers out there, it is obvious that Jeff Bridges is a hero of the blog, especially his wonderful turn as The Dude in “The Big Lebowski”, one of the bigger Oscar snubs in history. It is nice to see an actor who uses true technique to get the most out of his roles, rather than wild attention grabbing theatrics. He is consistently able to get into the skin of his characters, making them truly believable and nuanced. His performance as Bad Blake in “Crazy Heart” was marvelous, but not surprising because he’s been doing it for years.

Also, congratulations to Christoph Waltz for winning the Oscar for best supporting actor for his role as Col. Hans Landa in “Inglorious Basterds” (a movie that I thought deserved more praise than it got). He swept every single award show, including the Cannes film festival, which doesn’t have a best supporting actor category. He had the best overall performance of the year, taking a role and making it menacing, funny, charming, sophisticated, elegant, and haunting at the same time without ever falling into exaggeration. Contrasted to Brad Pitt’s flat comic book portrayal of Aldo Raine, he really shone.

It was with a certain intrigue that I went to watch “Crazy Heart”. I had heard that Jeff Bridges gave a masterful performance as the film’s hero, and that he was the front-runner for the Oscar, which I thought was long overdue.

In the film he plays Bad Blake, a washed up country music legend, who drinks far too much, is broke, and is generally going nowhere fast. He tours the southwest, playing at small time bars and bowling alleys, living off of his past glory. He eventually meets Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a much younger single mother whose purity and love help him find a new path in life.

Thematically, the film is almost identical to Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler”. The main difference is that Bad Blake has completely let himself go, he’s accepted his situation as a has-been, and he is just trying to get by. On the other hand, “The Wrestler’s” Randy the Ram still has dreams of getting one more shot at the big time. Regardless, “Crazy Heart” doesn’t live up to “The Wrestler’s” lofty standards, as it is a tad formulaic and familiar.

Despite this, Jeff Bridges puts in a wonderful performance as Bad Blake. He easily captures the essence of a former great, the casual self-confidence on the stage, the annoyance at being reminded that he isn’t what he used to be, the self-centeredness of someone who was used to being adored by millions. His love interest, Maggie Gyllenhaal is also typically strong.

As an added treat, he performs all the music in the film himself. The main song, “The Weary Kind” is a highlight that deservedly won the Oscar for best original song.

Grade B

My family is originally from Spain, and having spent a lot of time there I was always perplexed by the godlike status that Woody Allen enjoys over there. When he was filming “Vicky Christina Barcelona” in Spain, there was a real sense of pride of having him there, even though he has largely become irrelevant here in the States. His more recent work has been relatively entertaining although very uneven and at times, even a little vapid.

Given that, I did think Annie Hall was a tremendously rich and creative movie, so it was with a certain level of interest that I watched Manhattan, his other late 70’s classic. I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest.

There is something endearing about a storyteller that uses his native place in his narrative with great affection and reverence, and that is true of Allen in “Manhattan”. The film is openly an ode to New York City, as is established in the first lines of the film: “He adored New York City, he idolized it all out of proportion… no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white, and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin”. As a montage of black and white city shots rolls by to the tune of George Gershwin.

The film’s hero, Isaac, is the typical Woody Allen protagonist, stubborn, neurotic, cultured, witty, horny, and fearful of Nazis. As the film commences he is dating Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), a 17-year-old high school student (I have to admit, knowing what Allen would eventually become in his real life, this was somewhat creepy to me). He quickly falls into a complicated love triangle involving his best friend’s mistress Mary (Diane Keaton), who is everything that the sweet, innocent, and perceptive Tracy is not. She is insecure, desperate to show off her knowledge of culture and useless facts (at one point she asks Isaac if he knows the names of Saturn’s satellites), and has a penchant for falling for men that are ultimately bad for her.

All the acting is great, except for a weak exchange when Isaac confronts his best friend Yale (Michael Murphy). The real shining star, however, is the city of New York. The film is laced with imagery that captures the real allure and charm of Manhattan. It is almost like the characters in the film can only interact in the way they do in the context of the city they live in. More than a romantic comedy, the film is a look at romance in the context of New Yorkers, in New York City. It could not have existed anywhere else.

Grade A-

Everyone should read this detailed and nuanced profile by David Denby, the New Yorker’s resident film critic, of one of the great American treasures, Clint Eastwood.

I must admit, that not only do I think Clint Eastwood is the definitive American film Icon, but that I have a serious man-crush on him. And who wouldn’t? Denby describes his physical aura:

“It began with his appearance. He stood about six feet three, as tall as Wayne. He had gray-green eyes; a forehead like the rock face of Yosemite’s Half Dome; a perfect jawline. A fitness nut, he was broad-shouldered by nature and muscular from the hours spent in his workout room, but not overly muscled—not a media joke like Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger. A mass of light-brown hair piled up on his head in a pompadour and flowed back in waves; he had an animal grace, a big-cat tension as he moved.”

Denby signals out Eastwood’s 1992 masterpiece “Unforgiven” as the heigh of his artistic expression. I agree with him, it’s a sprawling, epic movie that tackles the difficult nature of violence in a very real and refreshing way. It was a revisionist look at the way violence has been glorified in movies (with many of Eastwood’s previous characters as the maximum expression of violence as a form of brutal justice). What’s remarkable about Unforgiven is that it is essentially deconstructing everything we have become accustomed to in films, but it is still a highly entertaining and satisfying work. Denby argues that the film’s end, in which Eastwood revives the whole “man with no name” mystique by gunning down an impossible amount of adversaries, is a strange return to the violence which he had previously deconstructed:

“Unforgiven” ends with him gunning down Little Bill and his friends and then riding away, in a return to the kind of familiar myth that the rest of the movie seems to reject. What, one wonders, was the use of that anti-violence business if it all comes to this? … “Unforgiven” is both an entertainment and a contradiction, a masterpiece at war with itself.

I disagree with this. I think that Eastwood is continuing his anti-violence narrative in a pretty clever way (using his own previously constructed mystique). The notion that a violent past haunts you no matter how hard you try to reform, that sins like murder don’t just go away. The title of the film is “Unforgiven”, after all (on a sidenote, David Cronenberg essentially told the exact same story in a contemporary setting in his own masterful examination of violence “A History of Violence”).

Another issue I had with the article is that Denby seemingly dismisses Sergio Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy as a sort of comedy western spoof. I think that this is a shame, especially with regard to “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”, which I think is a landmark film of tremendous depth. The film combines a brutal look at man’s raw primitiveness, with a touching anti-war message that develops as the plot unfolds.

Still, the article does a great job of looking at Eastwood’s maturation as a story teller, and how his career has been a deliberate and remarkable journey of self-examination. In the top ten post I mentioned a little bit about Eastwood’s moral path as a film maker, and how he has come full circle in his career-long examination of topics like violence, revenge, and vigilantism.

He is also one of the few directors that has been able to achieve a pretty consistent level of commercial success, while still taking artistic and intellectual risks. He has been rewarded for this by the Academy, especially since “Unforgiven”. Sadly, he hasn’t won an Oscar for best actor, despite two nominations. I could go on and on, but I think that reading Denby’s article would be a more worthwhile exercise than reading anything I have to say.

The Clint Eastwood: 35 years, 35 Films box set for just $180 that just got released is a bargain for such a national treasure.

In the Loop is one of the most refreshing, original, and witty films to come out in years. It is rare in the sense that the overall premise is absurd, but it is constructed in such a clever way that each piece building up to the final conclusion seems oddly plausible.

In my Top Ten post I mentioned how strange it was that arguably the defining issue of the past decade, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, had inspired such poor moviemaking on the whole. If the Hurt Locker provided a definitive account of the experience of an American G.I. fighting on the streets of Baghdad, In the Loop provides a definitive account of the backdoor negotiations, the manipulated backdoor memos, and closed-door committee meetings that precluded the decision to go to war. The films couldn’t be more different, but they are both incredibly accomplished in what they set out to be.

The basic plot unfolds when the unimportant and idiotic British Minister for International Development, played by Thomas Hollander, inadvertently backs the possible U.S. and British invasion in the Middle East by uttering, “war is unforeseeable”. This unleashes a power struggle on both sides of the Atlantic between the doves and the hawks, culminating in the vote at the U.N. Security Council.

The acting is strong throughout, in particular Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker, the Scottish director of British Communications. He is one of the most creatively foul-mouthed movie characters since Lee Ermey in “Full Metal Jacket”.

While it is timely and poignant satire, In the Loop is also consistently funny. The dialogue is filled with one-liners that capture the twisted Catch-22 logic that was rife in the Bush administration leading up to the war: “In the land of truth, the man with one fact is king”, as well as the cynical use of religious fundamentalist undertones: “This is a sacred place. Now, you may not believe that and I may not believe that, but, by God, it’s a useful hypocrisy”.

Ultimately, it’s a cynical movie with a depressing central message, that in today’s world of career politicians, countless aides and anonymous staffers, standing up for your political morals is career suicide. Luckily that message is wrapped in genuinely funny and witty writing.

Grade A

Featuring an all-star cast of some of today’s most popular actors, “Valentine’s Day” is nevertheless an unbearable calamity of cheap rom-com clichés, cheap jokes, and cheap sentimentality. Even the supposed twists and surprises are cheap. The film is a muddled mess, organized as a serious of sketches that follow the lives of several people during a Valentine’s Day in Los Angeles.

There is plenty of talent on the screen, but it is utterly wasted by the banal and shallow writing. The characters are completely underdeveloped and superficial. Watching “Valentine’s Day”, one can’t help but think that the vast majority of the actors are mailing in their performances, simply re-creating the personas they are most comfortable with. How many times has Queen Latifah played the self-confident, sassy woman in a male dominated environment? How many times has Topher Grace played the nervous, cute, shy guy? How many times has Ashton Kutcher played the goofy nice guy? Patrick Dempsey plays a sexy, dreamy doctor… it’s almost so facile it’s insulting.

The movie tries hard hard to follow the formula perfected by “Love Actually”, showing the many sides of love through loosely related vignettes featuring a diverse roster of characters. While “Love Actually” was a critical and commercial success that worked on almost every level, Valentine’s Day is a total failure, the latest in a long line of uninspired romantic comedies that have plagued Hollywood in the past years. The timing of the release, coupled with the incredibly star-studded cast guarantees commercial success, but many people will feel a little bit dirty after seeing it. Sadly, more still will actually find it amusing.

Grade: F

1. The Hurt Locker – Easily the best film of 2009. It’s importance transcends the screen as it is the first film that truly captures the experience of what is arguably the defining issue of the decade – the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Ironically, “The Hurt Locker” is not commentary on the war, or even on war itself. It is a definitive portrait of the men who fight wars, specifically the modern war in which the enemy is more often than not invisible. It is also worth noting that while many of the issues in this film are strictly male dominated (the nature of heroism on the battlefield, machismo, playfully aggressive male-bonding), Kathryn Bigelow, a woman, was at the helm. Jeremy Renner puts in a fantastic performance as the lead, in a nuanced and charismatic turn that carries most of the film. Technically, the film is impressive, as the action always feel authentic. “The Hurt Locker” is not only the best film of the year but one of the landmark films of the past decade.

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2. Inglorious Basterds – Quentin Tarantino is certainly divisive, but only he can take an absurd and childish premise like an alternate history in which a troop of Jewish-American vengefully hunt Nazis and eventually destroy the inner brass of the National Socialist Party and turn it into a memorable and wildly entertaining film. At times poetic, at times exaggerated in its violence, “Inglorious Basterds” is Tarantino at his best. Despite its action packed premise, the strongest scenes are the long, drawn out conversations, in which the tension slowly rises amidst Tarantino’s trademark dialogues. The opening scene, which features a haunting and oddly humorous Christoph Waltz as Colonel Hans Landa (he should run away with the best supporting actor Oscar), as he hunts for a Jewish family hiding in France is the film’s strongest moment, and one of the best moments in Tarantino’s career.

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3. Up in the Air – Along with “The Hurt Locker”, “Up in the Air” is the year’s most socially relevant film. At times funny, at times sad, always poignant, Jason Reitman has managed to create a film that confirms his position as one of Hollywood’s most talented directors, one who is able to make comedies that are both intelligent and accessible, creative and always relevant. George Clooney gives one his best ever performances as a suave, charismatic but ultimately lonely and empty traveler. His two female counterparts also turn in strong roles, especially Vera Farmiga as Clooney’s nomadic lover. As a romantic comedy, “Up in the Air” does wonders for a tired and overly clichéd genre by pushing the limits of what is expected of a mainstream Hollywood film. The scenes involving real life workers that have been laid off are particularly powerful given the moment in which the film has been released.

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4. District 9 – As a sci-fi mockumentary about a ship of refugee aliens that lands above Johannesburg featuring no established stars and a rookie director, District 9 is easily the most surprising hit of 2009. Neill Blomkamp has managed to use sci-fiction to make a poignant commentary on Apartheid in South Africa, as well as man’s violent nature in general. As a satire, District 9 is surprisingly nuanced and authentic, despite it’s fantastical premise. It is a direct reference to District 6, a black neighborhood in Cape Town that was forcibly removed by the government in the 1970s. The most compelling satirical function is, strangely, the film’s hero Wikus Van der Merwe, played brilliantly by Sharlto Copley. Wikus embodies the hidden villain of all brutal and unjust regimes: the bumbling, idiotic bureacrat that blindly follows orders without questioning the wickedness of the system. As a pure action film, District 9 also delivers despite its relatively modest budget (only about $30 million). As a pure auteur, Neill Blomkamp has managed to outdo James Cameron, who helmed the year’s other instant sci-fi classic Avatar.

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5. Fantastic Mr. Fox – Thematically, Wes Anderson tends to examine the same issues over and over again, namely, dysfunctional families, especially ones with charismatic and hard to please parental figures. However, his ability to create witty, pithy dialogue with bizarre and over the top characters, coupled with dazzling visual imagination, always keeps his films feeling fresh and unique. With “Fantastic Mr. Fox”, Anderson goes back to the days of stop-motion animation (ironic in the age of Pixar’s technical wizardry). George Clooney and Meryl Streep are great as Mr. and Mrs. Fox, but Jason Schwartzman steals the show as their awkward misfit son Ash.

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6. The Road – As a novel, “The Road” is an arguably greater work than Cormac McCarthy’s other book “No Country for Old Men”, which was the basis for the Coen Brother’s film of the same name, an undoubted masterpiece that might be the best film of the decade. Its transition to film was always going to be more difficult because it lacked the action packed sequences of No Country, as well as the ensemble of interesting characters. Nevertheless, John Hillcoat has made a mature, gritty, no-nonsense adaptation that proves his skill as a director, coming off 2005’s highly impressive “The Proposition”. The Road is essentially a father and son tale as they try to survive in impossibly harsh conditions after an unnamed catastrophe destroyed most of the life on earth. The film, like the book, refuses to focus on the factors that caused man’s demise; instead it looks at the noble heroism of a father, as he struggles to keep his son alive at all costs while maintaining his basic decency. Viggo Mortensen, who is in almost every frame of the film, offers both a towering and subtle performance in the lead.

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7. Invictus – In the hands of a lesser director, this real life story about how the Nelson Mandela teamed up with the captain of South Africa’s rugby team to help unite a nation coming off of the brutal Apartheid regime would immediately turn into a sappy, formulaic, sports genre movie. Unlike other superstar actors-turned-directors, Clint Eastwood style has always been characterized by an almost ego-less restraint, allowing the story to tell itself. Throughout his career as a filmmaker, Eastwood has been fascinated by the theme of revenge. In his early westerns, “High Plains Drifter” and “The Outlaw Josey Wales”, revenge was violent and ultimately rewarding. In his epic and iconic “Unforgiven”, Eastwood deconstructed his previous image as a bloodthirsty gunslinger and looked at the destructive effects of violence and revenge. This theme was continued in “Mystic River”, with even more tragic results as the victim of the revenge turned out to be innocent. “Invictus” sees Eastwood coming full circle, as he embraces the ultimate episode of reconciliation and forgiveness. The injustices suffered by Mandela and the entire black population of South Africa were unspeakable, but Mandela knew that to create a nation, he needed to preach forgiveness. He saw an opportunity through sport, which always pulls man’s most basic emotional strings. Instead of making a generic underdog tale about an unlikely victor against a seemingly invincible enemy, Eastwood focuses on Mandela, and has made a politically poignant and important film. Morgan Freeman clearly relished playing the role and immersed himself fully in the persona of Mandela, without overly imitating him. He captures the man’s quiet dignity, the deep sadness beneath the polite and charming exterior, the almost childish irreverence, as well as the magnetism that would inspire everyone around him. Matt Damon plays a wonderfully understated Francois Pienaar, the captain of the Springboks. Foregoing the sports movie cliché of grand, inspiring speeches that manages to lift a team to unexpected heights, Damon instead portrays a man that is clearly overwhelmed by the responsibility unexpectedly thrust on him by one of the world’s most famous leaders, but who manages to lead his team through quiet determination and hard work. Eastwood also intersperses images of the legacy of apartheid throughout the film, with downtrodden black slums next to clean white neighborhoods without ever seeming blunt. Ironically, his decision to make a more important film rather than a commercially viable one hurt him at the box-office, especially when compared with the lesser, but sappier, The Blind Side.

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8. Avatar – Easily the most eagerly anticipated film of the past several years, James Cameron delivers with an epic film that is truly groundbreaking and will change the way blockbusters are made. Avatar exhibits all of Cameron’s strengths and weaknesses as a writer and director. His imagination knows no limits, and his technical innovations truly transport you to another world, the stunningly beautiful planet of Pandora. However, as an auteur Cameron often too wooden, and in his attempts at social commentary are painfully blunt. The words “shock and awe”, “fight terror with terror”, and “pre-emptive strike” are obvious references to the Bush doctrine. Also, lazy narrative devices like having Giovanni Ribisi’s character explain the reason why “the company” is so interested in mining Pandora to Sigourney Weaver, whose character obviously knows them already leave much to be desired on that front. Despite the weakness of the script, Avatar’s overall cinematic experience will leave anyone spellbound, especially if seen in 3D.

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9. Public Enemies – While “Public Enemies” is undoubtedly an excellent film, it is still one of the bigger disappointments of 2009. Michael Mann is one of the most talented directors in films, as he is an expert at making intelligent action films that are both artistically and commercially strong. The source material (the rise and fall of notorious bank robber John Dillinger), coupled with two of the absolute best actors in Hollywood in Johnny Depp and Christian Bale pointed to “Public Enemies” being one of the best gangster films of all time. On an action level, “Public Enemies” is thrilling, with Michael Mann picking up where he left on in “Miami Vice” by pushing the limit on how to film a large-scale gunfight. The nighttime gun battle in the forest is worth the price of admission alone. Structurally, Public Enemies is almost identical to Mann’s seminal crime film “Heat”, essentially a cat and mouse between a lawman and a criminal. Heat’s greatness lies in the depth and charisma of the two leads, played by Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino. In Public Enemies, however, the only interesting character is Depp’s Dillinger, as Christian Bale delivers a flat uninteresting performance as Melvin Purvis, the FBI Agent charged with arresting Dillinger. In real life, Purvis supposedly reveled in the publicity that the Dillinger case gave him, only later to be demoted by a jealous J. Edgar Hoover (played nicely in the film by Billy Crudup). He eventually died of an apparent suicide. None of this, sadly, was seen in the movie as Bale’s Purvis is a mostly quiet, diligent, and ultimately boring lawman. It is unclear whether this is the director or actor’s fault, but it is the tragic flaw and what could have been an iconic film.

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10. The Hangover – “The Hangover” is one of those seminal comedies that permeates throughout pop-culture, and transcends demographics. Almost everyone who saw the film found it funny. A slew of Hanover-isms became commonplace among youth, always a sign that a comedy was successful. The photo montage at the end is one of the most shocking, and hilarious, bits in a mainstream comedy ever.

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Worst Film: It’s Complicated

Most Overrated: Up

Most Disappointing: Zombieland