CORALINE:

Coraline, based on the Hugo Award-winning book by Neil Gaiman, is the rare animated film that succeeds both as mainstream entertainment and art. Visually it’s a cross between Pee Wee’s Playhouse and the gonzo caricatures of Ralph Steadman. Coraline’s (the voice of Dakota Fanning) journey into a strange and scary new world begins when she discovers a mysterious door that leads to a mirror reality, an eccentric Alice Through the Looking Glass world, where her parents pay attention to her and life is interesting. It isn’t until things take a dark turn hat Coraline realizes she may never escape the eerie Other World and return home to her real parents.

STAR TREK:

With Star Trek J.J. Abrams made the first great popcorn movie of the year. Notice I didn’t say sci-fi movie. Star Trek is a lot of things but despite all the talk of warp speed, black holes and time travel, it can’t be classified as science fiction. This is a character based space serial more concerned with the burgeoning relationship between Spock and Kirk than with photon thrusters. That may bother the purists and the Roddenberries but shouldn’t trouble anyone simply looking for a good time at the movies.

THE HURT LOCKER:

Set in 2004 Baghdad, The Hurt Locker follows a series of missions with the Bravo Troop as they dismantle IEDs (improvised explosive devices) on the last 38 days of their rotation in Iraq. The Hurt Locker isn’t a typical Iraq War film and that’s probably a good thing. By focusing on the people fighting the war and the effect of soldiering Kathryn Bigelow has made the most effective and most harrowing movie about the consequences of the war since Coming Home.

JULIE & JULIA:

Julie & Julia isn’t a typical book adaptation, although it is based around two books. Bringing together the stories of Julie Powell, who made a name for herself on-line by blogging about her 2002 attempt to make all 536 recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking in just 365 days, and Julia Child’s coming of age in France in the 1950s seems like it shouldn’t work, but the mix and match of the two stories has resulted in an unexpectedly touching, uplifting story, unconventionally told, that will leave you feeling better when you leave the theater than you did when you went in.

UP IN THE AIR:

In “Up in the Air,” George Clooney is Ryan Bingham, a high flying “termination engineer” who fires people for a living. His carefully constructed life may come crashing down, however, when his boss (Jason Bateman) hires Nathalie (Anna Kendrick), a know-it-all IT expert who has an idea that may ground him permanently. It’s possible that George Clooney is the only actor working today who could make Ryan Bingham likeable. He uses every ounce of his considerable charm to make this man who treats commitment like a disease and fires people for a living bearable, much less likeable and it works. “Up in the Air” is the feel bad feel good movie of the year, so self assured, so strong in style and performance that it should get much notice at awards time.

INGLORIOUS BASTERDS:

Inglorious Basterds’s story of Jewish Nazi hunters trying to bring down the Third Reich won’t be for everyone, it’s too extreme for casual viewers, but director Quentin Tarantino has woven together the disparate storylines, and styles—everything from spaghetti westerns to 70’s exploitation and über violence—into one seamless package and topped it off with the performance of the Austrian-born Christoph Waltz. As SS colonel Hans Landa he is pure evil; a slimy villain for the ages. Love him or not, you can never accuse Tarantino of being boring. 

PRECIOUS:

There is nothing precious about the movie “Precious”. Nothing twee or frivolous. If the word “heartbreaking” hadn’t already existed in the English language it might have been invented to describe the story of Clareece “Precious” Jones an inner city NYC kid with big problems. “Precious” is about the power of the educational system to help lift a person up from adversity but it is much more than just an inspirational teacher movie. It’s a movie about victims—one who transcends and one who doesn’t. “To Sir with Love” this isn’t. “Precious” is filled with disturbing imagery—incest and abuse—although when the going gets tough, mercifully, the screen often fades to black, but not always, and that is one of the strengths of the film. It doesn’t back away from the real life horror of Precious’s life. It’s bleak yes, but compelling. 

FANTASTIC MR. FOX:

 “Fantastic Mr. Fox” involves Mr. Fox (George Clooney) a smooth talking chicken thief who, after get busted, tries to go straight, but after buying a tree house he can’t afford decides to return to a life of crime for one last big job. Its stylish looks, engaging story and over-all wonky feel made me very happy. There are few kid’s films as fantastic as “Mr. Fox.”

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE:
This adaptation of the classic Maurice Sendak 1963 children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are” isn’t a movie for kids as much as it is a movie about being a kid. The story of Max, a lonely kid who goes to where the wild things are, is a work of profound vision from director Spike Jonze. It is a magical film that will please the arthouse crowd but likely will leave less adventurous viewers a little perplexed. The dark, melancholy tone isn’t typical of children’s entertainment, but since this isn’t really a kid’s film that shouldn’t matter.

UP:

Up, the first animated film chosen to open the Cannes Film Festival, is a touching comedy adventure involving 78-year-old retired balloon salesman Carl Fredricksen (voice of Ed Asner) who ties 10,000 balloons to his house in an attempt to float to Paradise Falls, a place he’s only ever seen on a map. It’s a subtly complicated story that gently introduces adult themes into an art form generally aimed at kids. By mixing high tech state of the art computer generated images with the most old fashioned form of communication—superior storytelling—Pixar has created a film filled with that certain something generally missing from lesser animated efforts like Aliens vs. Monsters—a sense of wonder. The screen is filled with imagination, something that should appeal to all members of the family.

PUBLIC ENEMIES:

Public Enemies, the story of how John Dillinger became Public Enemy Number One, is a movie of contradictions. It’s a romantic gangster movie; an art film disguised as a summer blockbuster; a film about a thief who was seen as a hero. It’s a complicated character study that holds up to more than one viewing.

THE HANGOVER:

In The Hangover three groomsmen lose their about-to-be-wed friend in the aftermath of a wild Vegas bachelor party. It is a hilariously wild brain-dead movie about men behaving badly that breaks so many taboos it makes raunchy comedies like Knocked Up seem tame.

TYSON:

When Mike Tyson saw Tyson, the new documentary about his life, he said, “it's like a Greek tragedy, only I'm the subject.” The movie, directed by his good friend of twenty years James Toback, is an unvarnished look at the life and hard times of Iron Mike, told by Mr. Tyson himself. He calls himself an extremist, only able to live on the high and low ends of life. The middle has no interest for him, he says. Learning that is perhaps the thing that has enabled to him to understand himself, and in turn help us, through this film, understand him a little better.