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THE 3 BEST FILMS

Into the Wild

Directed by: Sean Penn

Genre: Drama; Adventure;

Starring: Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Jena Malone, Catherine Keener, Vince Vaughn, Kristen Stewart and Hal Holbrook

"Emile Hirsch plays him in a hypnotic performance, turning skeletal, his eyes sinking into his skull while they still burn with zeal. It is great acting, and more than acting. This is a reflective, regretful, serious film about a young man swept away by his uncompromising choices. Two of the more truthful statements in recent culture are that we need a little help from our friends, and that sometimes we must depend on the kindness of strangers. If you don't know those two things and accept them, you will end up eventually in a bus of one kind or another. Sean Penn himself fiercely idealistic, uncompromising, a little less angry now, must have read the book and reflected that there, but for the grace of God, went he. The movie is so good partly because it means so much, I think, to its writer-director. It is a testament like the words that Christopher carved into planks in the wilderness."

by Roger Ebert in Chicago Sun-Times

"Into the Wild delivers his journey to your senses. It's an intensely physical movie, yet it's never just physical. Every image (rivers, highways, icy mountains) tells its own story — of a terrain that must be met, and then conquered. The people Christopher meets, and touches, along the way are as much a part of the trip as his crash course in wilderness survival. Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker as hippie wanderers, Hal Holbrook (in a luminous performance) as an old man cocooned in his loneliness — these are quietly distressed hangers-on of the sort you rarely see in movies. You can feel Penn, along with his hero, struggling to locate a hidden America. Into the Wild is a little too long, yet Christopher's deliverance, in a rusty abandoned ''magic bus'' in Alaska, has a darkling purity that will haunt anyone willing to take the trip."

by Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly

Juno

Directed by: Jason Reitman

Genre: Comedy; Drama;

Starring: Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Allison Janney, J. K. Simmons and Olivia Thirlby

"Major credit goes to Page, the Halifax firecracker who is now getting the applause stateside that Canadians long ago gave her for her early film Marion Bridge and for her work in TV shows The Pit Pony and Trailer Park Boys. She's the picture of innocence in her red hoodie and blue jeans, chug-a-lugging a supersized blue Slushie, yet she snaps off zingers with stand-up timing. Those are courtesy of screenwriter Cody, making an auspicious debut with a genuinely funny script that avoids the clichés of teen comedies. Ditto for the soundtrack, which puts a comic twist on familiar folk tunes. Let's not forget director Jason Reitman, who follows Thank You for Smoking with another stellar laugher, and also supporting players who should be remembered when people are handing out awards for best ensemble cast. You may think you've seen films like Juno before, but you haven't, homeskillet. The best thing about this movie is that for all its wiseacre badinage, it's utterly believable about the most basic of human situations. To quote one of its characters: "It's for real, like for real for real.""

by Peter Howell in Toronto Star

"It is a smart reminder that the story any fiction relates is arbitrarily chosen and dependent for its effect on the ability of its tellers to enlist our interest — no special pleading, no emotional cheap shots permitted. In this effort Cody and Reitman are particularly blessed by Ellen Page's performance. She has a way of making her preternatural articulateness seem real rather than forced, a way of indicating her vulnerability without pressing us for sympathy. Hers is a lived-in character, perking along, tougher than she looks, naturally funnier in speech and outlook than she probably knows. Juno is not a great movie; it does not have aspirations in that direction. But it is, in its little way, a truthful, engaging and welcome entertainment."

by Richard Schickel in TIME Magazine

Atonement

Directed by: Joe Wright

Genre: Drama; Romance;

Starring: James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Saoirse Ronan, Romola Garai and Vanessa Redgrave

"The music produced by an old-fashioned manual typewriter in the hands of a productive author takes on the aural qualities of a ticking time bomb in the score to Atonement. And that very clever, ever-so-slightly overawed literal-mindedness pretty well sums up everything satisfying, as well as less so, about this luxe adaptation of Ian McEwan's stunning 2002 best-selling novel. Treacheries committed in the name of art and expiation sought are McEwan's themes at their grandest, but director Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice) and screenwriter Christopher Hampton (Dangerous Liaisons) are convinced that what a moviegoer wants from a literary adaptation is refinement and good breeding. Their movie is abundantly attractive, every scene serenely composed, and every character so fair in love and war that, when the lights come up, it's too easy to say, ''That was good and sad and romantic and classy, now what's for dinner?'' Turning the last page of McEwan's book, in contrast, you're more likely to be shaking from direct devastation and intensity of experience. Different mediums, different messages, I guess — except that the book-loving and movie-loving me holds fast to the conviction that the right artistic alchemy can indeed turn a great book into a different but equally great movie."

by Lisa Schwarzbaum in Entertainment Weekly

"Atonement is also a beautifully mounted film, from its typewriter-syncopated musical score (by Dario Marianelli) to Wright's marvelous suggestion of all that was World War II with the mere reflection of a bomber on a French canal, a harmonica playing "Keep the Home Fires Burning" and glimpses of a single German atrocity. Wright's tour de force moment is a long-take tour of that evacuation beach in Dunkirk — chaotic and less noble than the Brits have romanticized it — a swooping tracking shot that takes us into a waking nightmare of wounded, beaten soldiers, wrecked gear, organized destruction (Can't let the Germans have our horses, can we?) and Robbie's desperate efforts to get back to his love. Which is really all any great screen romance is about. This film of Ian McEwan's novel has a great hook, a crime, mistaken identity, a character wracked by youthful guilt. But for us to embrace it, it must pull us closer and closer, vulnerable to that moment when every hope, fear and longing of the beautifully paired romantic leads is expressed in four perfectly-played words."

by Roger Moore in Orlando Sentinel

BEST ACTING PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR

Daniel Day-Lewis for There Will Be Blood