Les témoins (The Witnesses), Andre Techine, 2007

There's nothing overtly wrong structurally with Techine's pre-epidemic AIDS saga. That said, the director doesn't lend the requisite grace or vigor to his weighty scenario, leaving the film to play flatly, as a rote teleplay of the narrative might.

In The Loop, Armando Iannucci, 2009

Iannucci's film is a classical farce, turning on its proverbial ear the over-the-top political intrigue of Bourne, Syriana, et al. What's more, it does so with many more genuine laughs than the Coen's similarly pitched Burn After Reading.

Synecdoche, New York, Charlie Kaufman, 2008

Kaufman's bloated, meta-as-meaning Beckettian exercise is a card trick, rorschach blot, infinite regression/refraction, mirror in a mirror in a television set heap of colossal, protean meaninglessness.

Public Enemies, Michael Mann, 2009

Mann's film is an epic hail of tommy gun fire. As with his similarly unappreciated Miami Vice, the director's relative inattention to the execution of cops-and-robbers conventions throws into relief that this is large scale filmmaking at its most composed, controlled, and masterful.

Man on Wire, James Marsh, 2008

Philippe Petit's high wire act atop the World Trade Center, executed with the cunning and precision of a world class bank heist, is undoubtedly a fascinating subject. Even this remarkable premise, however, seems somehow stretched thin over the course of Marsh's 90 minute documentary.

The Steel Helmet, Samuel Fuller, 1951

Put simply, no one does war better than Sam Fuller. The gritty realism, lucid detail, and abject cynicism of this Korean War yarn (newly available on DVD in Criterion's The First Films of Samuel Fuller box set) anticipate those elements' sharpening impact on the director's masterpiece, 1980's The Big Red One.

Surveillance, Jennifer Lynch, 2009

Its nearly impossible to evaluate Jennifer Lynch's film without reference to its executive producer, her famous and infinitely more accomplished father, David. The director has taken many surface cues from her father's brand of nerve-rattling suspense, but misses all of the nuance, instinct, and visceral emotion of David Lynch's best work. The result is a slasher flick of the most banal variety that throws into relief the true genius of Lynch the elder.