Camille, in which Greta Garbo plays a society woman on the prowl for a rich husband in 1847 Paris, features a parade of jewel-bedecked gowns, yet when director George Cukor cuts to a close-up of his star, everything else fades. In medium or long shot Garbo is your average actress – even, at certain angles,

This is a classic British spy yarn, equally rife with intrigue and tweed jackets. Dougray Scott stars as a World War II code-breaker whose brief, doomed affair with a sultry blond may have led to a massive security breach. When his former lover goes missing, he teams up with her neighbor (Kate Winslet) to discover

The battle lines are clearly drawn in this independent drama – brainy academics versus artistic free spirits – and writer-director Lisa Cholodenko has no intention of blurring them. Christian Bale plays a medical student who transfers with his fiancee (Kate Beckinsale) to Los Angeles, where their relationship is challenged by his bohemian mother (Frances McDormand).

Mercy certainly surrounds the title heroine of this eye-opening independent drama, which charts a Colombian girl’s odyssey from factory labor to drug smuggling to the streets of New York City. To survive what she does takes something from above. Oscar nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno plays Maria as a stubborn and willful firebrand, ultimately making the

Charming scene-stealer Paul Bettany (A Beautiful Mind) stars with Kirsten Dunst in this romance set during the title tennis tournament, and something is severely amiss in the pairing. It’s probably rooted in their age difference – though Dunst manages a semblance of adulthood in the Spider-Man films, most often she comes across as a giggling,

Set amid the Scottish shipping canals of the 1950s, Young Adam stars Ewan McGregor as a drifter floating from one heartless affair to the next. All actors who thrive on their likability seem destined to try at least one thoroughly unlikable role, and McGregor has found a fascinating one here.

Director Ron Howard’s exploration of genius – in this case that of Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash – is more bracing than you would expect, thanks to a nifty twist midway through the film that recalls themind-bending trickery of Fight Club. Russell Crowe turns in a solid performance as Nash – the girth of Gladiator

Million Dollar Baby screenwriter Paul Haggis made a supremely confident directorial debut with this intricately plotted ensemble drama – and Best Picture winner at the 2006 Oscars – tackling no less a topic than race relations in contemporary Los Angeles. The lives of a jumpy Middle Eastern shop owner, two carjacking young black men, a

Hysterical and melodramatic, the crooked-cop drama Dark Blue nevertheless strikes a nerve due to its incendiary backdrop: the 1992 trial of the police officers who were caught on tape beating Rodney King. A perfectly rumpled Kurt Russell stars as a corrupt Los Angeles detective who slowly uncovers his conscience. Like Sept. 11, 2001, did in