Ron Stringer

What Ratner brings to the proceedings is an awareness that what worked for "Silence" -- namely screenwriter Ted Tally, production designer Kristi Zea and, of course, Anthony Hopkins as Lecter -- will work overtime here, to enhance the project at hand and provide a seamless connection back to Jonathan Demme's multiple-Oscar winner.

Performance after performance -- by Kim Stanley, Marlon Brando, Laurette Taylor . . . Never heard of her? That’s reason enough not to miss this movie.

Country singer and sometime actor Tim McGraw excels as the bitter, besotted ex-Panther who can't cut his kid enough slack to follow his own game plan.

An awesome introduction to the sport and the outspoken personalities -- riders, mechanics, engineers, lorry drivers, commentators, fans and girlfriends -- who support it.

It manages, in the course of a single tersely delineated story, to say more about the dark pathology of American racism than any five character arcs in "Crash." So go, by all means, but be prepared to take a beating.

You may as well watch the movie too, if only so that another of life's astonishing possibilities won't have entirely passed you by.

The fun here is not so much in the solid if stolid performances from Bale and co-stars Taye Diggs and Emily Watson (gussied up to resemble the Jefferson Airplane–era Grace Slick) or in Wimmer's overpolished plot devices as it is in the production values.

Tenderhearted Staten Island Christmas comedy.

The final revelation which, however anticipated, however contrived, stings just enough to make it feel like life.

An exquisite metaphor for the high cost and higher returns of an enduring marriage.

Not to mention the good-when-moody, best-when-raucous art-band soundtrack!