There is nothing cuddly about Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn), the 9-year-old narrator of Stephen Daldry’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. He’s fretful, voluble, socially awkward—obviously brilliant, but not entirely pleasant company. He confounds his mother (Sandra Bullock) and doesn’t seem to have any peer friends. The only person he can really relate to is his father (Tom Hanks), who sends Oskar off on elaborate reconnaissance missions, all in a sly attempt to get the boy to interact with the world.

The movie is about one last mission his father sends Oskar on—how even in death, the father is still showing his son how to live.

Yes, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is that film—the 9/11 one—and it attempts to negotiate the massive scope of our national tragedy with the tiny world of a socially isolated little boy. A few critics have lambasted the film for being emotionally manipulative—and it certainly is heavy handed at times (this is the same Stephen Daldry who gave us the operatically depressing The Hours, after all).

But when an answering machine containing urgent messages from the World Trade Center left by Oskar’s father—delivered with escalating...

It may seem astonishing that a black-and-white silent film, made by a French director with a nearly unpronounceable last name (Michel Hazanavicius) and starring two French actors that no one in the U.S. has ever heard of (Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo) would be the frontrunner to win Best Picture at this year’s Oscars.

To which I say: See the film.

Because, truly, once you see The Artist, it will all be clear. It’s made with such visual élan, such an obvious love for the medium, such joie, such wit—it’s about as irresistible as cinema gets.

When we first meet George Valentin (Dujardin), he’s a Hollywood silent film star along the lines of a Douglas Fairbanks (with a little touch of Gene Kelly thrown in). He’s almost drunk on his own swashbuckling charm—but who can blame him? Barrel-chested, light on his feet, possessing a quick, roguish smile—audiences can’t get enough of George, or his devoted sidekick, a scrappy Jack Russell terrier. (In fact, the only person who can get enough of him, it seems, is his put-upon wife, played with a perfect mask of exasperation by Penelope Ann Miller.)

One day, after a premiere, he has an accidental run-in with a wide-eyed...

David Fincher directing The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is the moral equivalent of  Beethoven composing a jingle for a Bud Lite ad (a strictly hypothetical example, by the way—as far as I know, Beethoven never even had a Bud Lite.)

Of course, it’s not surprising that Fincher would be drawn to Stieg Larsson’s wildly popular series. It combines two of his favorite genres—the hyper violent serial killer pic and the insiderish procedural. It’s just that after the career heights of The Social Network, I expected to see a new sophistication from Fincher. Instead, it looks like he’s retreating to the grungy comfort zone of films like Se7en and Fight Club.

Now, I don’t want to turn this whole review into a referendum on Larsson’s book, but its success has always irked me. To me, it’s a comic book masquerading as serious grown-up entertainment. The villains are all deviant bureaucrats and Nazis and serial killers. There’s tons of sexual violence, followed by equally rococo revenge. (The book wants it both ways: to titillate with violence and then give us the moral balm of seeing the perpetrators come to vivid justice). Of course, I see the appeal of Lisbeth Salander—the...

It’s almost impossible to do this, but when I assemble a Top 10 list, I like to imagine myself a decade from now, reflecting back on the year that was. Which 2011 films will really stick out in my mind? Which are the ones that will rise to the status of all-times favorites, warrant repeated viewings, permanently lodge themselves in my cinematic soul? (To be honest, it’s an interesting—and humbling— exercise to look back at my Top 10 lists from years past. . .some of the films I was so passionate about at the time, I can barely remember.) So what follows is my best guess of the films that will stick with me forever.

At the very least, they stirred the hell out of me this year.

1. Moneyball – A buddy film, a baseball film, but mostly a story about the courage to spurn conventional wisdom and take personal and professional risks. Brad Pitt gives his best performance ever as Billy Beane, an alpha male and baseball lifer, whose armor of confidence has been ever-so-slightly dinged by disappointment and regret. Jonah Hill is the brainy sidekick who idolizes and ultimately saves him. Director Bennet Miller and co. get all the baseball details right. You can practically smell the chew and...