Johnny Depp in Secret WindowSECRET WINDOW

Even though the movie isn't all that good, Secret Window is one of those thrillers that you want to watch again immediately after your first viewing. But unlike, say, The Sixth Sense or Fight Club, where you're curious to see exactly how The Twist was pulled off, your desire to return to this Stephen King adaptation is based solely on one thing: the performance of Johnny Depp.

Kurt Russell in MiracleMIRACLE

Although I'm generally a sucker for triumph-of-the-underdog sports flicks - 1986's Hoosiers remains my favorite - and was all set to have a good sniffle at Miracle, the movie is so cynically programmed to be a lump-in-the-throat audience-pleaser that I found it all too easy to resist.

Benicio del Toro and Tommy Lee Jones in The HuntedTHE HUNTED

Offhand, I can't think of an acting team more oddly matched, and strangely inspired, than Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro. Talk about your odd couples: Jones, with his clipped, no-bullshit gruffness that gives way to a kind of mellow humor, and Del Toro, with his loopy line readings and eloquent silences (you're always wondering what, exactly, is going on in his head). When both men are at the top of their game - Jones in Lonesome Dove or The Fugitive, Del Toro in Traffic or his brief, brilliant turns in The Pledge and Fearless - they're marvelously vibrant performers, so even if you're dreading yet another routine action picture, the chance to see this duo play opposite one another might be reason enough to sit through The Hunted. The movie, directed by thriller veteran William Friedkin, winds up being little more than a violent screen adaptation of "Where's Waldo?", but Jones and Del Toro, at least, give it some punch.

James Franco and Robert De Niro in City by the SeaCITY BY THE SEA

If Robert De Niro ever decides to quit acting, I hope he receives retirement benefits from the NYPD. In Michael Caton-Jones's police melodrama City by the Sea, De Niro plays Vincent LaMarca, who is, by rough estimate, the 7,000th cop character he has played onscreen in the past two decades.

George Clooney in Ocean's ElevenOCEAN'S ELEVEN

Danny Ocean has an idea. Just paroled from prison, this Las Vegas smoothie (played by George Clooney) decides to rip off three of the city's casinos, the profits from which are all stored in one underground safe. In order to successfully pull off the caper, Ocean assembles 10 of the smartest, shiftiest cons he knows to form a labyrinthine plot that'll net the crooks upwards of $160 million. The problem: The safe in question is more heavily guarded than Fort Knox, and getting in the vault is small potatoes compared to how difficult it will be to leave the area once they have.

Catherine Zeta-Jones in TrafficTRAFFIC

Sitting in the audience for Steven Soderbergh's drug drama Traffic, I heard a sound that had been sorely missing from 12-plus months of moviegoing: rapt, appreciative silence. It was the sort of silence that you only get when a director is in full control of his work, when the actors are working at peak form, and when the storyline is so gripping that you can't wait to see where it will lead you next. Based on a British mini-series, Traffic is something increasingly rare in modern films: a large-scale epic with a human pulse, in which every character and nuance is sharply defined, and in which your alliances and points of view change with each passing scene. The accolades and awards already bestowed on the film aren't simply a matter of it being the best of a bum year; it's one of the best movies released in many years.