It talks about politics, growing up, religion, and even makes fun of ABBA

“Crowd pleaser” isn’t exactly the phrase that comes to mind when one hears a description of Persepolis: It’s a black-and-white animated film, largely in French, about an Iranian girl forced to live in exile when things in her native country get too tumultuous. Her leftist parents force her to live abroad not so much because the climate is ­dangerous—though it is—but because Marjane seems to lack a censor button when it comes to voicing her opinions and generally doing as she wishes. Little Marjane is too spunky for her own good.

An art-house cartoon about war and revolution as seen through the eyes of a potential Blossom, though, is more than just unique—it’s rich, eye-catching, educational, and, yes, crowd-pleasing, both in its engaging narrative and charming, ultimately relatable heroine.

Marjane (voiced by Gabrielle Lopes as a child and Chiara Mastroianni as a teen and adult) represents Marjane Satrapi, who wrote the graphic novels on which Persepolis is based, and who co-wrote and directed the film with Vincent Paronnaud. Satrapi was struggling as a children’s-book author when she decided to commit her life story to paper. The first volume of ­Persepolis—the title refers to an ancient capital of the Persian Empire, now in ruins—was published in 2000.

The film is bursting with politics, but at heart it’s a coming-of-age tale. It starts at the end: Marjane is sitting at a French airport, smoking a cigarette and hesitant to begin her second exile from Iran. A voice-over in which Marjane tells us that she remembers her early years as “peaceful and uneventful” takes us back to 1978 and a little girl with a bit of a God complex. She not only talks to the Big Guy—Satrapi animates the Almighty as a sort of friendly, anthropomorphic cloud—she tells everyone that she’s going to be a prophet.

She idolizes Bruce Lee (“The dragon’s revenge is a dish best served cold!” she rather adorably growls to guests at a cocktail party) and, for a brief period, the shah, because her teachers told her that he’d been chosen by God. Her parents (Catherine Deneuve and Simon Abkarian) are initially horrified, but Dad gently changes her mind by telling her the truth about their government’s history in uncomplicated yet unsanitized terms. The scene is exquisite: “Shhhh,” he says, his tone as soft as an old blanket while the background goes to ink and the shah’s origins play out in puppet-theater form.

While Persepolis is simply drawn—a few strokes define each character’s face and dress—several sequences are stunning, such as a battle in which combatants are silhouetted and surrounded by fog, their blood flowing black.

Most of the time, though, you forget about the animation; Marjane’s story is the centerpiece. The script follows her through her adolescence, spent mostly in Vienna, where she meets punk-loving nihilists (“Life is a void,” one says as he rolls a joint), suffers embarrassing growth spurts (one of the funniest sequences shows parts of Marjane’s body supersizing randomly), and learns about love (her first sexual experience couldn’t have gone more wrong).

Persepolis’ strength is its universality. Few of us will ever know what it’s like to live without freedom, witness violence on a daily basis, or be forced to leave home, but most viewers will have gone through identity crises, separation anxiety, the see-sawing exhilaration and dread of reaching your 20s and realizing you don’t know which way to turn.

At the same time, though, Satrapi manages not to sugarcoat or forget Iran’s upheaval; it’s as integral to who Marjane is as the bootlegged Iron Maiden tapes that kept her sane as a teen. The author’s brilliance is in humanizing the story’s politics, allowing its reality to sidle up to you instead of taking the frying-pan-to-the-head approach that’s wearying to current news consumers.

Don’t worry, you’ll just lose your lunch.

The J.J. Abrams–produced Cloverfield has finally revealed its secrets, the most important of which is that it’s a pretty good monster movie—albeit one that just may make you vomit. Under ideal circumstances, that “albeit” would be an “and,” were the gore relentless or the tension too much to bear.

But there’s a more mundane reason for the queasiness: Director Matt Reeves uses a hand-held camera the entire time, a gimmick that’s integral to the story about a group of Manhattan friends whose party is interrupted when, to paraphrase the movie’s tag line, something found them. A big something. Big enough to knock the Statue of Liberty’s block off.

It’s at once a clever conceit and a nearly fatal flaw. After a message from the Department of Defense that tells us that the source of the footage we’re about to see is a camcorder found in “the area formerly known as Central Park,” it’s 80-plus minutes of home video documenting two days in the life of Rob (Michael Stahl-David), a 20-something who’s about to move to Japan for a dream job.

At first we see glimpses of a day in April, when Rob, crashing in someone’s swanky penthouse and pronouncing it “already a good day” at only 7 a.m., wakes up the gorgeous Beth (Odette Yustman) and decides he’s going to take her to Coney Island for the first time. After a few scenes with the happy couple, the story jumps forward to May. Rob’s brother, Jason (Mike Vogel), is now behind the camera, filming his girlfriend, Lily (Jessica Lucas), as she makes last-­minute preparations for Rob’s going-away bash. Lily insists Jason take responsibility for getting video testimonials from party guests, a duty he immediately reassigns to their kinda-dopey friend Hud (T.J. Miller).

The already-shaky camera only gets worse as Hud, apparently unaware of the pause function, sloppily tapes goodbyes and simultaneously hits on Marlena (Lizzy Caplan), a not-too-friendly cutie. Some Rob-and-Beth drama hits, and in the middle of drunken gossip and relationship advice, the real drama unfolds: explosions, roars, collapsed buildings, Lady Liberty’s head coasting down the street. Hud keeps filming, but, well, you can imagine how unwatchable the already-shaky view gets from there.

Viewers prone to motion sickness should bring Dramamine or take through-the-­fingers viewing breaks. Otherwise, Cloverfield is a blast. Admittedly, it’s derivative, from its Blair Witch framing to details borrowed from the War of the Worlds remake (much 9/11 imagery, with dust, frantic stairwell exits, and exoduses out of Manhattan) to I Am Legend (less-than-successful helicopter evacuations), to myriad monster flicks as Godzilla, The Host, and even The Mist. Abrams, the mystery-obsessed creator of the TV shows Lost and Alias, kept the monster itself a secret, and though it’s not jaw-droppingly original, it’s still best witnessed first-hand.

Reeves keeps things moving briskly as the characters are whittled down to a few desperately trying to outrun their doom; with anguish and moments of intense creepiness elegantly ramping the terror instead of gore. And while the cast is a bunch of no-names (the closest sense of star power coming from Zooey Deschanel look-alike Caplan), their anonymity and workmanlike capability is an asset—the story still allows you to care about the characters, but there are no famous faces to distract you from the good stuff. Being able to focus in the first place, however, is another matter.

And then his publicist said he wanted to marry me!

Maybe, just maybe, there are a few of you who’ve glimpsed the trailer for Callie Khouri’s latest film and thought, Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, and Katie Holmes, together at last! For everybody else, Mad Money is marked, bearing all the signs of a typical—read: terrible—January release.

It’s a buddy comedy, only the odd couple is now a trio. It’s a heist flick with implicit wackiness. It’s got Keaton, who’s yet to rid herself of the stench of her contribution to last year’s winter dreck, Because I Said So. And she plays…a janitor. Someone fire the casting director, please.

But though the sight of Annie Hall in custodian’s clothes never quite feels right—her hair is too flippy, her glasses too fashionable—Mad Money’s setup is slightly more believable. Bridget (Keaton) is living a comfortable upper-middle-class life when her husband, Don (Ted Danson), is downsized from the corporate job that’s kept her not only well-accessorized but occupationally sheltered.

They’re about to lose their house when Bridget, who apparently never even had to work at the DQ while studying for her English degree, takes a job cleaning toilets at the Federal Reserve. Her boss (Stephen Root) makes sure Bridget understands that each employee, constantly surrounded by cash, is watched every minute of the day, and that there’s never been a robbery in the branch’s history because it’s impossible.

Not for Bridget! During a fateful trip to Home Depot, she realizes that the megastore sells the same lock the feds use to secure the carts of worn-out bills they destroy daily. (Yeah, it’s a standard keyed padlock, bustable by any 4-year-old having a Tonka tantrum.)

After a few months studying the system and weeding out potential accomplices (i.e.: not the dude who wants to turn in a found $20), Bridget approaches Nina (Latifah), the devoted single mom who shreds the cash, and Jackie (Holmes), the spacey free spirit who transports the money, and persuades them to help her pull off the perfect crime. “It’s like recycling!” Bridget reasons.

It’s surprising that Mad Money, adapted by Glenn Gers from a British TV movie, isn’t quite the disastrous bumbling-broads caper it promises to become. Granted, Khouri (whose previous project for theatrical release was writing and directing 2002’s Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood) and Gers ask you to swallow a lot besides the idea that thousands of dollars is secured with a dollar-store lock.

The women, for instance, have a fondness for the bank’s handicapped stalls, gathering there to giggle loudly with fistfuls of cash or regroup when there’s a hitch in their plans. Everyone who becomes privy to their crime, including Don and a security guard (Roger Cross), puts up way-too-mild resistance before happily going along with it.

Most irritating, though, is Holmes’ character, who with her headphones and continuous grooving is supposed to seem an anything-goes type but instead is simply a brow-furrowing, eye-widening dipshit who responds to suggestions that they don’t do anything stupid with, “Oh, man, I hate being smart!”

Keaton and Latifah, however, lend enough intelligence, wit, and charm to Bridget and Nina that Mad Money more often feels like an ovarian Ocean’s Eleven. The execution of a well-crafted heist is always fun to watch, and the filmmakers wisely keep pratfalls and one-liners to a minimum. There’s even an attempt at a message beyond thou-shalt-not-steal, with barbs aimed at advertising and our consumer culture.

Or are they justifications? Admittedly, between the film’s ending and scenes such as Nina’s earnest explanation, accompanied by tinkly music, that “what happened is we found a way to get what we wanted,” Mad Money isn’t as concerned with ethics as it is with having a good time. And anything the boys can do—well, the girls haven’t exactly done it better, but they’ve at least risen above expectations.

27 Dresses; 27,000 movies exactly like it

Sometimes you watch a movie and feel as if you completely understand a character. Take 27 Dresses’ Kevin (James Marsden), a down-with-love journalist at a New York City newspaper who’s stuck in wedding-reporter hell. “If I have to write about baby’s breath one more time,” he says, “I’m going to shoot myself.”

He’s got his eyes on his first lifestyle feature: a poor soul named Jane (Katherine Heigl) who’s always the bridesmaid, etc. Kevin flirts with Jane, hoping she’ll be willing to tell him about the 27 times she’s been bridesided, but as he gets to know her, a juicier story comes along involving Jane’s little sister (Malin Akerman) and the man of Jane’s dreams.

Duplicities and hate-you-love-you shenanigans ensue—and if I have to write about insipid romantic comedies one more time, well, I know how Kevin feels. 27 Dresses is being presented as date-movie gold (albeit in January), starring two budding Cameron Diazes, Knocked Up’s freshly queened Heigl and The Heartbreak Kid’s less-proven but still blonde ’n’ klutzy Akerman, along with Marsden, who had a stellar 2007 with genuinely funny turns in Hairspray and Enchanted. It was written by Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada) , for cryin’ out loud. But the result is a closet full of tired, bursting with characters, dynamics, and perspectives that went out of fashion many films ago.

Jane, for starters, is perfect but single, always doing unto others whether it’s to accompany her friends down the aisle or fetch a breakfast burrito for her boss, George (Edward Burns). (You can tell she’s a saint, because Heigl’s hair is dyed a mousy auburn.) The following words apply to Jane: selfless, pushover, romantic.

After receiving flowers from an anonymous admirer, she steels herself to put the moves on George when her sister, Tess (Akerman), meeting Jane at a company party, gets to him first. The following words apply to Tess: shallow, deceitful, bratty. George and Tess fall in love, with her proclaiming that she’s as much a nature lover as he is. (“I like yachts…and tanning,” she tells a tsk-tsking Jane.) They’re going to get married. Will Jane plan the wedding?

Of course, such a torch-carrying story requires that Mr. Perfect be right under the main character’s nose, and that’s where Kevin comes in. He and Jane fight and fight and fight until they don’t. Then they fight a little more—when it’s discovered the journalist has been acting less than ­ethically—but really, it’s all as dull as Heigl’s locks. So is Judy Greer, who’s thanklessly relegated to the slutty-best-friend role.

Heigl at least manages a few nice comic moments here—and, to be fair, a couple of McKenna’s lines may elicit a chuckle. But there’s no overcoming the movie’s broad strokes—particularly its central idea that being single (while your little sister gets hitched, gasp!) is some sort of handicap. Worse, Jane’s grand comeuppance is not the triumphant stand it should be but an act as ugly and ridiculous as all the taffeta in her wardrobe.

"And then I walked into my bedroom but it wasn’t really my bedroom, you know? And then…hello? You still there?"

It’s fitting that Youth Without Youth, Francis Ford Coppola’s first
directorial effort in a decade, is steeped in the idea of dreams.
That’s because it often feels like one—­specifically, someone else’s, a
nonlinear, illogical synapse explosion that’s always fascinating to the
person in whose head it detonated but not so much to those experiencing
it secondhand. The film speaks of time, death, knowledge, love,
duality, reincarnation, Nazis, nuclear war. It even ventures into
superhero territory, for God’s sake, though in this case, Coppola’s
Superman is more Nietzsche’s than DC Comics’.

The movie, which the director adapted from a novella by Romanian
writer Mircea Eliade, isn’t as spectacularly unsuccessful as another
recent toss-spaghetti-at-the-wall film, Southland Tales, though.
Whereas that Richard Kelly disaster was tonally schizophrenic and
generally ludicrous, Coppola’s epic is merely ponderous, two-plus hours
of high-minded, professorial musings as rambled by a jacked-up college
freshman. And to its credit, Youth Without Youth is never uninteresting.

The film’s fustiness announces itself right away, with a static,
anciently styled opening-credits sequence featuring a giant rose, a
European-flavored score, and gilded letters announcing the film’s
“star,” Alexandra Maria Lara. Never mind that the true lead is Tim
Roth—putting the man first wouldn’t be gentlemanly, after all, and
Coppola clearly wants you to feel as if you’re watching the latest
talkie. Then begins the inarguably engrossing story of Dominic (Roth),
a lonely, 70-year-old professor in 1938 Romania who’s mocked by his
bored students and so burdened by the torch he carries for the love he
lost in his 20s that he’s contemplating suicide. Fate, however, has a
funny way of intervening: Dominic is struck by lightning—a stunningly
violent, fiery scene—but even though it knocks him into a “larval
state,” it doesn’t kill him. In fact, though his teeth fall out, X-rays
show that new ones are growing in. And when the doctors finally remove
the bandages, Dominic looks not like a septuagenarian but a bachelor no
older than 40.

He’s also got quite the mind. He’s a linguistics professor, but
Dominic suddenly can now speak pretty much any known language and feels
as if he understands concepts other people don’t even know they don’t
know. What a relief, then, that he has a debate partner in his double,
a slightly sinister-looking Roth who appears in mirrors à la the Green
Goblin. Also, Dominic can read books, and later other people’s dreams,
just by passing his hand over them. And in a crunch, he discovers that
telekinesis is a welcome new skill as well. (Try not to laugh when
Dominic is asked, in all seriousness, if he’s going to “use his powers
for good or for evil.”) For all these reasons, Hitler and his doctors
are eager to cozy up to him, so Dominic assumes a new identity and
spends time in Switzerland while finishing his “life’s work.”

If only that were all there was to the story. But that’s just the
first half—we still have to get to Veronica (Lara), a woman who
regresses through centuries of lifetimes and languages after being
struck by lightning herself and just might be Dominic’s old flame. And
though this subplot, too, is rather riveting, its ideas never quite
connect to the film as a whole, despite an overall arc that suggests a
self-balancing universe. Lara is marvel here, creating stellar, often
terrifying moments out of past-life scenes that could have been
ridiculous. Roth is solid in a difficult role as well; his
friend-or-foe doppelgänger sequences may not quite work, but that seems
more the fault of the director than the actor.

Even if you tune out the philosophy, Youth Without Youth is too
beautifully photographed to completely lose your attention. Shot
digitally and transferred to 35 mm film, the movie alternates between
cold exteriors of muted colors against white and interiors warm with
flame-inspired reds and golds. Less successful is Coppola’s dalliance
with askew frames, turning scenes upside-down and sideways; they
visually layer the film’s reality-bending themes but are nonetheless
irritating. The director has claimed that this is a very personal movie
to him, and certainly one can understand how its ideas of regrets,
wasted time, and personal betterment at any age might appeal to a
filmmaker in the twilight of his career. It’s just too meandering and
starched to let viewers catch his enthusiasm.

Trust me, fellas, you don’t want to remember this

The Bucket List is a
bizarro brother to Coppola’s muddled but dignified meditation on aging
and death. The film’s trailers suggest the triteness you’re in for, and
Morgan Freeman’s opening ­narration—the same wise-old-black-man spiel
that ruined The Shawshank Redemption and once again bristles
here—seconds it. And the entire Rob Reiner–directed sick-buddy dramedy,
boasting the odd-couple pairing of Freeman and Jack Nicholson,
delivers. Even scripter Justin Zackham seems to know the drivel he’s
dishing out. When Nicholson’s cancer-ridden character learns of the
concept of the “bucket list”—a catalog of all the stuff you want to do
before you kick said bucket—his response is an apt description for the
movie. “Cutesy,” he says, dismissively.

That said, Reiner’s film isn’t terrible, just flat—though
lifelessness is a pretty damning characteristic in a story about living
it up before you die. Freeman’s Carter is a mechanic who dropped out of
college when his wife became pregnant. Forty-five years later, their
relationship is tepid, and it gets no warmer once he learns he has
cancer. Meanwhile, Nicholson’s Edward, a wealthy bachelor and
businessman with a special interest in buying hospitals, is still
kicking—until he squawks to a board of a new property that the facility
is to have “two beds to a room, no exceptions.” Almost immediately
after the words come out of his mouth, he coughs up blood. Later, he
wakes up next to Carter, naturally demanding that he be granted an
exception to the roommate policy. Plus, he likes superfancy coffee,
while Carter thinks Chock Full o’ Nuts is aces. Let the wackiness begin.

The film’s title comes into play when Carter begins composing his
to-do list; his choices are largely philosophical and selfless, and
Edward declares them “extremely weak.” (Zackham’s self-awareness
again?) Edward has the cash, so he adds sports cars, sky-diving, and
loads of travel to Carter’s to-dos, persuades him to spend his final
days with him instead of his wife, and off they go.

Like Youth Without Youth, The Bucket List has some sweet
cinematography going for it—pyramids, polar caps, and the Great Wall
are gorgeously depicted—but little else. Almost nothing feels genuine
here, from the men’s friendship (knowing chuckles can take even the
best actors only so far) to their whooping last hurrahs (an
already-dull drag race is accompanied by an excruciating cover of ZZ
Top’s “Tush”) to the by-the-numbers heartstring-tugging (a cute widdle
granddaughter! dramatic collapses!). Worse, Reiner likes to highlight,
underline, and add exclamation points to the story, such as having
Carter react to bad news first with a slack-jawed dropping of his
cigarette and later with a forceful crumpling of his list. Freeman at
least had the right idea with the latter—it’s what he and Nicholson
should have done when they first eyed the script.

By the time I’d begun composing this post, the shock and unspeakable sadness of Heath Ledger’s death had begun to wear into numbness for me. Then I found the above poster.

None of this is going to be as elegantly written as I’d like, so here are some random thoughts instead of poetry.

I’d just seen the first one-sheets for The Dark Knight last week, and the creepiness of Ledger’s spin on the Joker got me hella excited for the movie. He seemed an odd choice, but from the photos, his spin looks brilliant. I don’t know at the moment if the film already wrapped, but right now I can’t imagine watching it. Even the stills are unbearable in light of  the news.

Better days and happier images:

Beautiful. They were the golden couple at the Oscars that year, even if neither one of them won for their career-changing turns in Brokeback Mountain.

The daughter and near-wife he left behind today. Doesn’t matter that she’s an ex, Michelle is still Heath’s family.

Early reports point to suicide, while TMZ is crowing that he had a drug problem. Either way, depression and desperation lay underneath.

Let me use this tragedy to make a plea to strangers and friends alike who may be feeling the same: I know the blackness, and have recently gotten through a dark period myself. I know how tempting that bottle of pills can be. Please, look at the world’s response to Heath’s death. Consider this advice from someone whose brain chemicals have been turning on her again and again since she can remember.

Don’t do it. Sleep all day and all night, don’t eat, don’t shower. Try to talk to someone, even if it’s not one of the many but mostly useless professionals who can often make the ordeal more frustrating. (How are you supposed to secure help for yourself, deal with insurance and appointments and rude secretaries, when you can’t even move?) Just keep living, and one day the bleakness will break a little, and then a little more. People care about you. You’ll find what you need to right yourself; most likely it’ll just be time. Fuck your responsibilities, you’re sick, and there will be forgiveness and understanding and new opportunities. I promise you that, but you gotta stay alive.

R.I.P., Heath. You were a stunning talent, and my heart tears to think of the circumstances that led you to this.

Enchanted, the live-action Disney fairy tale that gave a twist to the usual royals-in-love cliche, was a surprise hit with critics, myself included. But in my favorite films of 2007, men weren’t exactly princes. Most remarkable was all the violence theaters threw down: Blood, buckets of it, was shed, whether graphically or suggestively, with caps being busted in all manner of asses, the West especially proving wild whether it was the 1880s or 1980s. Police were corrupt. Gangsters were unabashed. And you didn’t even have to sell drugs to be one – turn on a man’s family and watch how fast that gentleman gets dirty.

The bad behavior wasn’t exclusive to testosterone-heavy movies, however. Some of the year’s most endearing heroines were knocked up, knocked around, or both. Affairs were had. Even Harry Potter copped a ‘tude.

Like Potter’s latest adventure, many of these stories came into the world as literature. A source that didn’t deliver as reliably was politics: A few exceptions, most notably the excellent, eye-widening documentary No End in Sight, war- and terrorism-themed projects such as Rendition, Redacted, A Mighty Heart, and The Kingdom tanked. Some of them weren’t very good, but mostly, audiences just didn’t seem to care.

In nearly all of my picks, though, a greater theme is moral ambiguity. White hats, black hats, they all were removed, often not-so-kindly, as characters shed one-note descriptions and trafficked in a lot of gray. It’s still not difficult to pinpoint the good guys of 2007, though. They’re the talent who made these 10 films, which I’ve listed in no particular order:

1) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: Based on a novel by Ron Hansen, this adaptation by writer-director Andrew Dominik was lyrical, mesmerizing, and boasts a stellar ensemble, with Casey Affleck in particular delivering an astonishing performance as the titular coward. All the kid wanted to do is hang with his idol, Jesse (whom Brad Pitt lends the requisite outlaw charm). But there was evil behind James’ grin, and a hint of condescension, too. And when his hero went truly unhinged, suddenly a life of crime didn’t seem so glamorous. Ford found out, though, that sometimes those Wanted Dead or Alive posters are merely decorative, and there’s a difference between taking down a thief and murdering a legend.

2) No Country for Old Men: Joel and Ethan Coen interpretation of Cormac McCarthy’s book about a generally decent hunter who decides to make off with a haul of drug-deal-gone-wrong cash is jaw-dropping in its powerful simplicity. Uncomfortably quiet, the tension is palpable as Javier Bardem’s Dutch Boy-bobbed villain, who maintains his own warped set of standards, hunts Josh Brolin’s Llewelyn Moss, who does what he has to do to protect the money and himself. The movie’s excellence is inarguable, though you’d have to find gripping your armrest and wishing for Rolaids fun to really label this entertainment.

3) Gone Baby Gone: Another novel, this one by Mystic River writer Dennis Lehane, brought to the screen – by Ben Affleck. Yes, it’s now apparent that the Oscar-winning co-screenwriter of Good Will Hunting wasn’t merely the contributer who typed. He directs his brother, Casey, to another solid performance as an investigator whose rigid ideas of right and wrong are challenged when a little girl is kidnapped. Taking place mainly in a seedy Boston underworld, the film is honest, shocking, and a hell of a conversation-starter.

4) Waitress: Let’s interrupt the heinousness with a little uplift…albeit one with a side of sadness. Waitress was written and directed by Adrienne Shelly, who was murdered before the film was released. A lovely thing, then, that her final project is a beauty. Keri Russell gives her first fully formed, grown-up performance as Jenna, a diner waitress who’s thinking about leaving her abusive husband when she finds out she’s pregnant. Touches of surrealism, a sweet flirtation, and lots of pie mark Waitress as a confection, but an undercurrent of melancholy and Jenna’s difficult choices keep it from floating away once the credits roll.

5) 3:10 to Yuma: Elmore Leonard is better known for his snappy crime novels, but he sketched this Western as a short story. Like No Country for Old Men, the plot’s a simple one: Trigger-happy outlaw (Russell Crowe) gets caught, and an upstanding fella (Christian Bale) helps escort him to a train outta Dodge for some much-needed cash. But the remake isn’t only similar to The Assassination of Jesse James because of its milieu, instead offering complex characters who can vacillate between righteousness and amorality even by the minute.

6) Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead: Sidney Lumet treads A Simple Plan territory in this story about a seemingly easy money-grab gone bad. This time, the transgression is within an actual family, notably brothers played by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke who plan to rob their parents’ jewelry store, reasoning that insurance will make this crime victimless. Albert Finney completes the trio of right-on portrayals of characters who do wrong.

7) La Vie en Rose: Marion Cotillard is the year’s best actress as Edith Piaf, the French singer who spent her childhood on the streets, was saved by her transporting voice, and died lonely, addicted, and cancer-ridden at 47. Piaf was quite the pillar, often listening only to her gut. Still, she was a victim to her love of a married man and carried a double burden when she lost him in a plane crash, even though she already knew he would never truly be hers.
American Gangster: Russell Crowe is on the other side of the law here, and as far as he can get – his Richie Roberts, a real-life cop who ends up specializing in drug enforcement, becomes as well-known for turning in nearly a million dollars’ of unmarked bills as he does for his methodical nab of also very real Harlem kingpin Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington). Based on a New York Magazine article by Mark Jacobson, Ridley Scott’s epic is a superior Scarface with unsurprisingly first-class performances by two of Hollywood’s aces.

9), 10), and 10a): In terms of comedy, it was the Year of Apatow. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story was co-written by King Judd and offers a note-perfect parody of the troubled-musician biopic that mashes together elements of Ray and Walk the Line. John C. Reilly was a brilliant choice to play Cox, but the script’s the thing, and this one’s full of half-ribald, all-goofy humor that’s unmistakenly Apatow. Superbad was only produced by Apatow but was perhaps 2007’s biggest gut-buster, unrelenting in its lightning delivery of gags so hilariously filthy you sometimes couldn’t catch your breath. An honorable mention goes to Knocked Up, the surprisingly balanced comedy penned solely by Apatow that took a simple premise – one-night stand between a schlub and a professional woman who knows better results in pregnancy – and turned it into something realistic and touching, The 40-Year-Old Virgin style. With the onslaught of Oscar-baiters now drowning screens and bringing down audiences, keep these three in mind to reignite your harshed buzz.