François Cluzet is on the run in Tell No One. © Music Box Films.

2) The Reader
Bernhard Schlink’s gripping novel about the tempestuous affair between a pubescent boy who is a voracious reader and an illiterate, yet street smart streetcar conductor in post-WWII Germany is faithfully brought to the screen by director Steven Daldry and stage writer David Hare. The part of the boy is rendered by a superb young actor David Kross as Michael Berg, who not versed in English, did most of his dialogue by rote. The brilliant Kate Winslet is Hanna Schmitz, whose inglorious past and abject naïveté , are shockingly unveiled in a war crimes trial, to which the now grown law student by coincidence attends with his classroom colleagues. Ralph Fiennes is a grown Michael who sustains Hanna’s thirst for reading the classics during her incarceration. Bruno Ganz as Michael’s law professor is a formidable screen presence.

Anne Hathaway Is Kym In Rachel Getting Married
© Sony Pictures Classics

3) Rachel Getting Married
Don’t be fooled by the title. It could well have been Kym One-ups Rachel Getting Married. Kym is sprung from a drug rehab center to attend her older sister’s nuptials at their father’s lush Connecticut house. As played by Anne Hathaway, she does a star turn that belies her Disney-like image as the Princess in the Diaries of the same name or as Meryl Streep’s doe-eyed secretary in TheDevil Wears Prada. Kym has been in drug facilities for the last few years trying to cope with the loss of her little brother who died as a passenger in her car while she was driving stoned. In lauding Hathaway’s Oscar-formidable performance I in no way wish to diminish the sterling acting of Rosemarie DeWitt as Rachel and her effervescent fiancé Tunde Adebimpe as Sidney. Add to that two off-Broadway stage pros, Anna Deavere Smith as Carol, Rachel and Kym’s stepmother, and Bill Irwin as their father. Also very welcome is a return to the screen of Debra Winger as their mother. The movie owes much of its spice and intellect to a screenplay by Jenny Lumet, daughter of director Sidney Lumet and journalist Gail Jones who in turn is the daughter of Lena Horne.

Michael Sheen as David Frost goes one-on-on with
Frank Langella as Richard M. Nixon. © Universal Pictures

4) Frost/Nixon
When I interviewed Frank Langella in the summer of 2007 I was surprised to learn that the movie version of the gripping Frost/Nixon stage play for which he won a Tony for Best Actor, was already in the can. Why it was kept on the shelf for more than a year, I can only conjecture; perhaps to take advantage of the presidential combatants in full debate mode and/or to be in better position for the Golden Globes and Academy Awards. I’m pleased to report that director Ron Howard and the film’s producers had the good sense to enlist both Langella as the retired president after his fall from grace and Michael Sheen as TV interviewer David Frost, to reprise their combative stage performances. Despite Warren Beatty and Kevin Spacey being chatted up for Nixon, Langella prevailed. Whether or not you saw it on Broadway (which I did) or in London’s West End you’re in for an unforgettable treat by Langella and Sheen. The May, 1977 interviews were seen as an enormous risk for the financially strapped Brit, who few believed had the gravitas to conduct a probing interview with a high profile politico and the pardoned (I am not a crook) Nixon, who was seeking forgiveness along with a guaranteed $600,000 and 10 percent of the profits.

Actor/Director/Composer Clint Eastwood is the
driving force in Gran Torino. © Warner Bros

5) Gran Torino
Is it the fact that Clint Eastwood improves like Lafite-Rothschild with each passing year or that he is the only romantic leading man who is still older than I, having the latitude of doing ever new variations on Dirty Harry and Fistful of Dollars? Whatever the reasons, mark this one down as a must see by director/composer/actor Eastwood, for suspense, tension and laughs.

Sean Penn shines as activist Harvey Milk. © Focus Features

6) Milk
Until viewing this memorable political biopic, I was patently unmindful of how much the Gay Rights Movement in San Francisco, California and beyond owed to his persuasiveness, activism and heroics. Yes, like you, I remember the particulars of the 1977 assassination by a crazed former supervisor, Dan White (Josh Brolin) of the city’s mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, who was a member of the SF Board of Supervisors. Irrespective of the minor station of his office and the tragic snuffing out of his young life, Milk had a profound impact on national politics. His cultural legacy has reaffirmed his impact as a pioneer for the repressed and under-represented. He is portrayed magnificently by Sean Penn.

Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem ignite Woody Allen’s
most stylish comedy in years. © The Weinstein Company

7) Vicky Cristina Barcelona
This is Woody Allen’s most winning flick in years, finer than his 2005 Match Point which signaled he was back in stride. Working in Catalan country, rather than his familiar haunts in London and New York, he brings an Almodóvaran quality to the comedy, thanks in large part to the incendiary performances of Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem. Add to that the elegant English actress Rebecca Hall (daughter of stage director Peter) in the title role and to a lesser extent, a Woody favorite, Scarlett Johansson, and you have 97 minutes of civilized, liberating mirth. To the writer/director’s credit, he resists doing the voice-over, employing Christopher Evan Welch for the narrative role.

Kristin Scott Thomas is Juliette in I’ve Loved You So Long.
© Sony Pictures Classics

8) I’ve Loved You So Long
This gripping French film written and directed by Philippe Claudel, is consumed by the murder of a six year old boy, ostensibly by the child’s mother, Juliette played with stultifying composure by, yes, Kristin Scott Thomas. Released after serving 15 years, an ashen-faced Juliette moves into the household of her caring younger sister Léa (Elsa Zylberstein), a college literature instructor who has spent little of her adult life with her - and her loving husband Luc (Serge Hazanavicius) who understandably, is not inclined to leave Juliette in the company of his and Léa’s two young adopted daughters. What Juliette purportedly did is veiled from her nieces and Luc’s and Léa’s friends. There are the inevitable flashbacks of mother and child, punctuating the audience’s dilemma as to whether Juliette is penitent, innocent, or a calculating fiend. The movie is justifiably rated PG-13. Subtitles.

Mathieu Amalric as Henri is the reel thing in
Arnaud Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale.
© IFC Films

9) A Christmas Tale
Not since last year’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, have I been so transfixed by a movie of such patent ingenuity, humor, and intelligence. It is no accident that the prime character – the most irresistibly iconoclastic member of a family immersed in dysfunctionalism –Henri -played by Mathieu Amalric, also portrayed the irrepressibly sanguine stroke victim in Diving Bell. As the family black sheep, Henri is “banished” by an unforgiving sister, Élizabeth ( Anne Consgny) in exchange for her paying off his debts. As Henri’s and Élizabeth’s mother, Junon Vuillard, Catherine Deneuve, still gorgeous after all these years, has never been in better form. Her partner in marriage, and subordinate in decision-making, the amiable Jean-Paul Roussillon as Abel Vuillard are a formidable vintage pair. She accepts with stoic detachment the news that she is afflicted with the same incipient cancer that killed her's and Abel’s young son. Her remote hope for survival is a bone marrow transplant, as one by one, her children and grandchildren are found to be unsuitable donors Space prevents me from mentioning all of the superb ensemble players, save for Chiara Mastroianni as Sylvia, a Vuillard daughter-in-law – hauntingly one-face to her father Marcello, which ain’t so bad, were it not for her also being the offspring of mother Catherine Deneuve. The neat narrative penned by Arnaud Desplechin reels and lurches between absurdist comedy and crises, culminating in a Christmas gathering, redolent of Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander. Running time is 2 ½ hours and could do with about 20 minutes of judicious pruning. English subtitles.

10) A Secret
Growing up in Paris in the ‘50s, François is the sickly son of two athletically gifted parents. To compensate for his feelings of inadequacy, he dreams up an older brother, Simon, who is talented both physically and socially. The “discovery” of this real or imagined sibling reveals deep-rooted ambiguities surrounding his mother and father Tania (Cécile de France) and Maxime (Patrick Bruel) A friend and neighbor Louise, brilliantly portrayed by Julie Depardieu – (daughter of the great French actor Gérard) - while giving François massages and vitamin treatments, informs how Maxime and Tania – as Jews - met, married and were victimized during the Nazi occupation. François is played as a 7 year old by Valentin Vigourt , a 14-year old a by Quentin Dubuis, and as a grown man in the 1980s, by Mathieu Amalric. Subtitles.

BEST ACTOR – Sean Penn, Milk.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR - Mathieu Amalric, A Christmas Tale.

BEST ACTRESS – Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS – Penelope Cruz , Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

BEST DIRECTOR – Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino.