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...

Unlike my pal, the comedian Larry Noto (the foremost Muppetologist on the East Coast), I was never a big Muppets girl. I mean, in the show’s heyday (the late 70s), it was completely unavoidable, so I’m sure I watched a few episodes. And I probably absorbed a lot about the show through sheer osmosis.

I mention this at the top of my review because The Muppets— Jason Segal’s cinematic bouquet to all things Muppet—turned me into a puddle of goo. When the lights dimmed and a voice announced, “It’s Time to Meet the Muppets,” I got a chill. When the fabulous Miss Piggy and Kermit, with his wonderfully crumpled and expressive face, sang “The Rainbow Connection” I almost wept. Imagine if I’d actually loved the show: They would’ve had to scoop me out of the theater with a shovel.

The two-tiered premise is brilliant: Walter (the voice of Peter Linz) is a Muppet who has been raised as a boy. He is inseparable from his doting big brother Gary (Segal). (Segal’s giantness is used to great effect here: While Gary is outgrowing the door-sill growth chart, Walter is permanently stuck at 2 feet tall.) But one day, Walter sees The Muppet Show on TV and it changes his life—he’s...

It’s impossible to watch Like Crazy and not think about the nature of young love—or perhaps the nature of your own first love. It captures those very specific sensations—the thrill of your partner’s otherness, mingling with the thrill of finding you have so much in common. The giddiness, the possessiveness, the solipsistic charge of it all. And it captures the unique sensuality of young love—two bodies almost cocooning together, as if they could tuck away inside each other, protected from all the sorrows and troubles of the world.

More specifically, Like Crazy tells the story of college students Jacob (Anton Yelchin) and Anna (Felicity Jones). She wants to be a journalist and is prone to writing discursive notes and filling journals with photos and poems and observations. He wants to be a furniture maker and is sweet and indie-boy shy. She boldly leaves a note on the hood of his car (“p.s.-I’m not a nutcase!”) and they spend the night in her room discussing life and music and the perfection of Paul Simon’s Graceland.

These opening scenes are so intimate, you almost feel like a voyeur. When Anna scribbles a note to Jacob and he scribbles one back, we are not privy to what the notes...