Continued from here.

FLAWED BUT STILL LIKEABLE

57. Cropsey (Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio)- This documentary probes the validity of a New Jersey boogeyman myth, and there are times when its stranger-than-fiction steez is genuinely creepy. That being said, Zeman distracts by making himself a focal point, and the film veers off course in its final third.
56. Rabbit Hole (John Cameron Mitchell)- I’ve got love for the performances, especially Aaron Eckhart’s turn, which is more internalized and less showy than Kidman’s. He has moments—the open house scene in his dead son’s room jumps to mind—that are as good as any acting this year. But the film is often distractingly stagey, and the scenes unfold inorganically: because the characters need them to happen that way, not because they actually would happen that way.
55. Get Him to the Greek (Nicholas Stoller)- The Vegas set-piece is hilarious, and there are funny moments thoughout. But I still have no idea what Stoller was trying to accomplish with that compromised ending.
54. Mother and Child (Rodrigo Garcia)- In this weaving ensemble piece, some stories are much more engaging than others. I liked the one anchored by Kerry Washington a lot. As a whole, it’s heavy-handed and over-explains its connections.
53. The Book of Eli (The Hughes Brothers)- The book is The Bible. There. I just saved you thirty minutes of meandering self-seriousness. Still, the way the Hugheses shot the action was pretty awesome. This is a rare complaint for an action movie, but I actually thought it should have been about ten minutes longer.
52. Tron: Legacy (Joseph Kosinski)- This movie isn’t really about anything—as haughty as that criticism might sound—but I got swept up in how expensive and splashy it was. The all-CGI character of Clu isn’t quite there, but you have to applaud everyone involved for just throwing us into the deep end and forcing us to buy it. And Daft Punk’s score is not only stunning, it’s crucial to making the film itself work.
51. Date Night (Shawn Levy)- Interestingly enough, some of the peripheral characters are much more absorbing than the married couple at the center of this. The movie’s success can be attributed to Steve Carell and Tina Fey bending over backwards to make the material work, and I found it refreshing that their characters obviously love and depend on each other sweetly, rather than dancing through unnecessary rom-com hoops.
50. Death at a Funeral (Neil LaBute)- This had the potential to be a top-ten comedy, but it went just a bit too broad for my tastes. Also, smaller point: it wasn’t always clear how each character was related to each other? I don’t know why that was a big deal to me, but it was.
49. The American (Anton Corbijn)- While this is an absolutely beautiful film to look at—that can’t be overstated—I didn’t feel as if it even attempted to cover any new ground thematically. And count this as another Clooney non-performance.
48. Cyrus (Mark and Jay Duplass)- There’s a crossroads moment about an hour into this picture—the fistfight at the party—in which it could have gone down the rabbit hole into dark, creepy territory or it could have taken the light road into something more genial. I wouldn’t have preferred one route over another, but what’s baffling is that it chose neither option and ended up in some limbo of truncated expectations.
47. Brooklyn’s Finest (Antoine Fuqua)- A solid cop drama, if not quite the overwrought Shakespearean tragedy it takes itself for in its final moments. There are some ambitious ideas here, even if they don’t always land successfully.
46. Sweetgrass (Ilisa Barbash)- This is a narration-less, interview-less documentary about sheep-herding. At times it’s as boring as that sounds; at other times it’s hypnotic in ways I never would have expected.
45. Alamar (Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio)- This is a sweet father-son story with some effortlessly graceful visuals, but it’s fewer than ninety minutes and still feels long. Even at the end of what is a heartbreaking, transformative experience for the principal characters, I still don’t feel as if I know them well by the end.
44. Splice (Vincenzo Natali)- Despite a questionable development leading into the third act, I bought into this fun B-movie. There are some huge leaps in logic here, but I thought they were balanced out by some knowing gender commentary.
43. Youth in Revolt (Miguel Arteta)- Some of the supporting performances were weak here, and it feels too episodic; but I do like the unique world the film presents, along with the rhythm of the sharp dialogue. I can see this becoming a cult hit down the road.
42. Prodigal Sons (Kimberly Reed)- The director/star of this documentary is a transgendered woman who goes, as a woman, to the reunion of the high school where she starred as a brawny male quarterback. She also interacts with her bipolar brother, who finds out that he’s the long-lost grandson of Orson Welles. If it sounds as if I’m spoiling the whole movie, then you should know that all of that stuff happens in the first fifteen minutes. This movie doesn’t have a whole lot going for it, but a lot of shit happens. I promise you won’t be bored.
41. Love and Other Drugs (Ed Zwick)- In trying to balance being goofy and weepy, the movie fails at doing either one. It seems to couple a ’10s attitude toward love with a ’90s nostalgia. It’s a mess, but a sort of interesting one at least.
40. I Am Love (Luca Guadagnino)- I was surprised by the love showered onto this movie as it’s adequate but doesn’t do anything new with the material. The costumes are gorgeous, and Tilda Swinton learned Italian and Russian for the role; but I could still take or leave this one, even though the intensity of the last five minutes grabbed me.
39. The Art of the Steal (Don Argott) The premise of this documentary is intriguing, but things get embarrassingly repetitive in the last half-hour.
38. Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (Oliver Stone)- Perhaps it’s just because I love the first entry so much, perhaps it’s the Carey Mulligan thing again, but I thought this movie had a lot to offer. It spells out its themes too much, (“Look at the kids playing in the bubbles. Kind of makes you think of financial bubbles, doesn’t it? Maybe we should have characters talk about financial bubbles while the kids are doing that.”) but even from a visual standpoint, with updated cross-cutting and split-screens, this is an engaging comment on the original. Once Douglas goes into full-on Gekko mode in the second half, he’s a joy to watch.
37. The Other Guys (Adam McKay)- I would like to see this one again because I caught it at the end of a thirty-hour bender. I remember it as surprising and wry, even if it wasn’t quite as satirical as it thought it was. Wahlberg seemed to drag down Ferrell.
36. Restrepo (Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger)- The most harrowing moment of this you-are-there War in Afghanistan doc is the first firefight. While I did learn a lot about the camaraderie of a company and the soldiers’ own deep-seated suspicions about the war, I was a bit underwhelmed when nothing equaled that first sequence.
35. The Joneses (Derrick Borte)- This could have been a fascinating and trenchant commentary on consumer culture, but it only got about seventy-five percent there. David Duchovny, underused as a lead, is affable and sympathetic, even if the tone of the film sways wildly.
34. The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski)- I didn’t think all of the protagonist’s actions were realistic, and the end left me cold; but Polanski is still a master storyteller. The opening shot is better than a lot of movies in their entirety. Polanski’s veiled allegory about both Tony Blair and himself  is aided by Alexandre Desplat’s restless, evocative score.
33. Chloe (Atom Egoyan)- I’m completely aware of how silly this is, (What are erotic thrillers if not silly?) but everyone involved takes it as seriously as any other movie he or she has done, and the whole enterprise is lifted by their commitment. It’s a potboiler with glossy visuals and deeper layers than most people will take away from it.
32. Salt (Phillip Noyce)- I’m completely aware of how silly this is, but everyone involved takes it as seriously as any other movie he or she has done, and the whole enterprise is lifted by their commitment. The action is non-stop but, more importantly, Angelina Jolie is the only female star in the entire world who could have believably played this role. She should get a lot of credit for anyone buying into something so absurd. One of my favorite movie moments of the past year is explaining the machinations of Salt’s ridiculous last half-hour to someone who hadn’t seen it. My enjoyment of the movie might be ironic, but it’s enjoyment nonetheless.