Celebrating the close of 2011, here are my top ten movie choices of the year: 1. The Artist The year's most unlikely film is also its best – a black and white, silent film set in 1920s Hollywood. Michel Hazanavicius' film is just plain beautiful, both thematically and aesthetically, and sports standout performances from Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo. And the dog, Uggie, should win Best Supporting Actor. (In theaters now.) 2. Certified Copy This most international of films, shot in Italy with English and French leads by an Iranian director, is also the mind bender of the year. Directed by …

Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar goes wrong in just about every way that a biopic can go wrong. It's poorly written, directed and casted, it's as tedious as it is unimaginative and it's too long by at least a half hour. Just about all of its choices are poor ones, it has next to no insights about its subject or the historical events depicted and worst of all, it's boring. A movie about one of the towering and controversial figures of 20th century America shouldn't be boring. A look at the life of J. Edgar Hoover (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), the director of the FBI for five decades, the film slogs …

Tower Heist has three objectives as a movie, and only intermittently succeeds at any of the three of them. It's simultaneously an Ocean's Eleven-like heist film, a zany crime comedy and an elaborate Bernie Madoff revenge fantasy.  The film has an impressive cast and is shot reasonably well by the much-maligned blockbuster director Brett Ratner (of the Rush Hour series), but it's never particularly funny. The crime plot plays like a less witty copycat of Ocean's and the Madoff part is simultaneously too cartoonish and way too tidy. The plot consists of the staff of a luxury high-rise building …

The Mighty Macs is an underdog sports story set in the Philadelphia area in the 1970s, but don't confuse it with Rocky or Invincible. While the film tells an inspirational true-life story and the local angle may be of note, the film doesn't do a whole lot to distinguish itself from just about every sports movie ever made.  Set in 1971, the film tells the story of the womens' basketball team at Chester County's then-all-female Immaculata College, which came from nowhere to win the first-ever womens' national championship, despite a first-time coach, unheralded players and a miniscule budget.  …

50/50 has made a near-great movie out of the hardest-to-thread, most oxymoronic genre imaginable – "cancer comedy." The film is a triumph, because it succeeds at being both moving and hilarious. Originally bearing the much better (but less marketable) title I'm With Cancer, 50/50 is based on the real-life experience of screenwriter Will Reiser – a friend of co-star and producer Seth Rogen. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the Reiser role as a 27-year-old man suddenly diagnosed with a potentially deadly spinal cancer, while Rogen is his best friend. The film was shot in Seattle and directed by …

Moneyball I'll admit it—I was skeptical about the idea of a Moneyball film adaptation. When I first heard about the idea, I think I mockingly dubbed it On Base Percentage: The Movie. Sure, Michael Lewis' 2003 bestseller—about Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane and how he used proprietary statistical analysis to overcome a miniscule team payroll—is a great and important book that tells a fascinating story. Cinematic, however, is not a word that comes to mind. The Social Network proved that a movie about data-crunching and business strategy could be exciting, and Moneyball continues …

Drive is a rare gem, a Hollywood film that approaches a well-worn genre and brings a wholly new style and perspective to it. A thin plot is overcome by a masterful visual style, a dream cast and some truly great cinematic moments. Made by Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn from a script by Hossein Amini, Drive finds a whole new way to tell a familiar L.A. underworld tale. It's got elements of noir and '70s crime pictures, while the David Lynch influence is clear, as well. Throughout the movie, Los Angeles is photographed absolutely beautifully. Drive stars Ryan Gosling as an unnamed …

Imagine the swine flu epidemic of a few years ago, only five times more deadly and 20 times more contagious, and you have Contagion, a new Steven Soderbergh-directed medical thriller. The film, filmed all over the world at a $60 million budget, gets off to a very strong start, but eventually gets bogged down in questionable plotting and weak characterization. Featuring, among others, all three leads of The Talented Mr. Ripley—Contagion certainly isn't lacking for star power. Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow are a married couple in Minnesota, with Kate Winslet playing a Centers for Disease …

When I traveled to Israel in high school for a two-month education program, our instructor was a bearded, muscular Brooklyn-born badass who had served in the nation's wars and participated in numerous activities on behalf of the state of Israel in the years since. One of these, he used to say, was a stint in South America in the 1970s "hunting Nazis." He was never especially clear about whether that meant rounding up Nazis for trial or actually shooting them. The Debt, a new thriller about Israeli Mossad agents of similar era and vocation, turns on that very question. A remake of an Israeli …

Here, right at the end of August, comes the most disjointed, discombobulated movie of the summer. Our Idiot Brother wastes a cast of very talented comedic performers by giving them just about nothing funny to do and sticking them in a plot in which every character is a moron, a moral monster or both. A super-dark indie family drama disguised as a comedy, the film borrows the plot of the far superior Paul Thomas Anderson/Adam Sandler movie Punch Drunk Love. A stoner hippie layabout (Paul Rudd) is the black sheep of a family that includes his three sisters (Zooey Deschanel, Emily Mortimer and …

The original 1982 Conan the Barbarian is perhaps best known for the line in which Arnold Schwarzenegger's Conan is asked, "What is the best in life?" He answers, "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of their women." The new 3-D remake, while not lacking for lamentations from women or anybody else, primarily concentrates on the "crush your enemies" part, with heads, eyes, noses, arms and hands being crushed or severed throughout its running time. The film ultimately fails because it can't make all of that gore in any way interesting. Billed as a more …

"The Help" Review Kathryn Stockett's popular 2009 novel "The Help" arrives this week with a faithful and very affecting big-screen adaptation. It's simplistic at times, and flirts with manipulation, but it's also a deeply touching and well-acted film. Set in early 1960s Mississippi, "The Help" tells the story of African-American maids who care for the children and homes of wealthy white families, encountering horrible cruelty and racism, even a century after the Civil War and a decade after Brown v. Board of Education. Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) are the two primary …

The Change Up is an utter mess of a movie, with just a hint of a mature, hilarious comedy trapped inside it. Strong performances by the two leads aren't enough to save a movie that's just plain poorly put together. A throwback to the 1987/88 period in which four different body-switching comedies were released within a few months of each other, The Change Up, directed by David Dobkin, updates the formula to the Age of Apatow. Lawyer and family man Dave (Jason Bateman) and womanizing layabout Mitch (Ryan Reynolds) are lifelong friends—despite Bateman being seven years older—who drunkenly admit …

Crazy, Stupid, Love is a delightful surprise. Here's a lively, well-acted, deeply honest look at love, family and romance. If you've seen a movie in the past six months, you've almost certainly seen the movie's trailer—I know I've seen it dozens of times. The movie is not only much better than the mediocre preview would indicate, but doesn't end nearly as predictably as you may have thought. Steve Carrell stars as a suburban dad whose wife (Julianne Moore) confesses in the film's first scene that she's had an affair (with co-worker Kevin Bacon) and wants to leave him. Fans of Robert Altman's …

Captain America: The First Avenger is a generally mediocre superhero film with a few flashes of greatness appearing throughout. It cements Chris Evans as a star, but don't expect to remember anything about it after you leave the theater. Based on a Marvel Comics series that goes all the way back to World War II and has survived in various comic and cartoon incarnations since, the movie goes through the general motions of the origin story leading into the hero's first adventure. The movie was directed by Spielberg/Lucas protege Joe Johnston, best known for The Rocketeer, October Sky and the …

After 10 years, eight films, 20 hours of screen time and global box office well into the billions, the Harry Potter franchise at last comes to a close with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2. The film is a worthy conclusion to the series, providing numerous worthwhile payoffs to J.K. Rowling's wizard saga. While most of the movies of the Potter series have comprised a longer period of time, the bulk of Deathly Hallows - Part 2 takes place over one long night. Set at Hogwarts, the film builds toward Harry Potter's (Daniel Radcliffe) final confrontation with Lord Voldemort (Ralph …

Horrible Bosses takes a thin premise and milks it for all its worth, riding a witty script and super-strong cast to comedic glory. Sure, just about every character in the movie is cartoonish, and the script is full of glaring logical lapses, but the performances and jokes are all uniformly solid. Other than Bridesmaids, it's the funniest movie of the year (so far). The plot is yet another itineration of Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train and its 1980s comedy remake Throw Momma From the Train—both mentioned by name, just as the latter namechecked the former—filtered through Great Recession …

Larry Crowne is one of the year's stranger movies—the first picture in years directed by one of Hollywood's most beloved people, yet far below the standard that he usually brings to his work. It's got some lively moments, but mostly just sits there on screen. The film is the first Tom Hanks has directed since That Thing You Do! 15 years ago, and the first time he's ever both directed and starred in a film. Larry Crowne sounds from its plot description like an Up in the Air-style meditation on economic anxiety and unemployment, but instead aims more at being a quirky character study and …

On Pixar's 12th film, on its 25th anniversary, the vaunted animation studio has finally released its first true disaster, Cars 2. Sure, the kids will love it, but the movie totally fails to understand what was good about the first film, or what's great about Pixar itself. The studio is coming off one of its best stretches—Up and Toy Story 3 have both been instant classics—while the studio's signature director, John Lasseter, is back for the first time in several years, as well. But Cars 2 has the feel of a desperate cash-in in a way that neither Toy Story sequel ever did. Cars 2 is the first …

While 2012 will bring new movies featuring the Big Three of American superheroes—Superman, Batman and Spider-Man—as well as the years-in-the-works Avengers film, we have to make do this summer with some of the second string, including Thor, Captain America, and now The Green Lantern. The movie's mythology is convoluted, it takes more than a full hour to get going, and (par for the course this summer) there was no reason for it to be in 3-D. But The Green Lantern redeems itself with a killer third act, taking advantage of a strong cast and a director who knows what he's doing. A DC Comics …