Note: Films on this list are restricted to those eligible for the 2011 Oscars.

1. X-Men: First Class – 1500 Rankings

In this exciting prequel to the X-Men series, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) — the future Professor X and Magneto — are best friends dedicated to harnessing their powers and promoting the education of fellow mutants during the turbulent 1960s. The duo works together to stop a powerful adversary that threatens mankind, but their ideological differences drive them apart and turn them into ferocious enemies.

2. Source Code – 1448 Rankings

An action thriller centered on a soldier who wakes up in the body of an unknown man and discovers he’s part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train.

3. Thor – 1302 Rankings

The powerful but arrogant warrior Thor is cast out of the fantastic realm of Asgard and sent to live amongst humans on Earth, where he soon becomes one of their finest defenders.

4. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 – 1217 Rankings

In the second installment of the two-part conclusion to the �berpopular Harry Potter series, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his best friends, Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson), continue their quest to vanquish the evil Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) once and for all. Just as things begin to look hopeless for the young wizards, Harry discovers a trio of magical objects that endow him with powers to rival Voldemort’s formidable skills.

5. Super 8 – 1203 Rankings

After witnessing a mysterious train crash, a group of friends in the summer of 1979 begin noticing strange happenings going around in their small town, and begin to investigate into the creepy phenomenon.

6. Drive – 1139 Rankings

A Hollywood stunt performer who moonlights as a wheelman discovers that a contract has been put on him after a heist gone wrong.

7. The Tree of Life – 1014 Rankings

The story centers around a family with three boys in the 1950s. The eldest son witnesses the loss of innocence.

8. Limitless – 1008 Rankings

A copywriter discovers a top-secret drug which bestows him with super human abilities.

9. Midnight in Paris – 986 Rankings

A romantic comedy about a family traveling to the French capital for business. The party includes a young engaged couple forced to confront the illusion that a life different from their own is better.

10. Rise of the Planet of the Apes – 976 Rankings

An origin story set in present day San Francisco, where man’s own experiments with genetic engineering lead to the development of intelligence in apes and the onset of a war for supremacy.

11. The Adjustment Bureau – 964 Rankings

12. Captain America: The First Avenger – 948 Rankings

13. The Hangover Part II – 910 Rankings

14. Rango – 879 Rankings

15. Paul – 856 Rankings

16. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides – 840 Rankings

17. Horrible Bosses – 839 Rankings

18. Bridesmaids – 827 Rankings

19. Sucker Punch – 805 Rankings

20. Hanna – 768 Rankings

The great news is that our new server is twice as fast as the old server, with a sparkling new processor and more memory. Even better — the new upgrade has allowed us to apply much stronger security measurements, so that (knock on wood) our days of being attacked are hopefully over.

By the way, if you ever end up talking to some guy at a bar, and he starts bragging about he loves to hack into random servers, and screw with websites, do me a favor and punch that douche bag in the damn face.

You might see some site issues related to the server upgrade today. We’ll be working through those, as we do some initial house-cleaning on our new box. And, once again, we have to send a huge thank you out to Criticker’s supporters — without your help, this upgrade wouldn’t be possible!

We’ve taken a look through our database for the best Leslie Nielsen films… Pop one in this weekend, and let his perfect comic timing and hilarious deadpan expressions remind you why he was so popular, for so long.

A starship crew goes to investigate the silence of a planet’s colony only to find two survivors and a deadly secret that one of them has.

Buy Ali – Fear Eats the Soul – Criterion Collection

Leslie Nielsen stars as Police Squad’s own granite-jawed, rock-brained cop Frank Drebin, who bumbles across a mind-control scheme to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. Priscilla Presley, O.J. Simpson, a stuffed beaver, two baseball teams and an odd assortment of others join the wacko goings-on and blow the laugh-o-meter to smithereens.

Buy Annie Hall

In this anthology, Nielsen stars in “Something to Tide You Over” — Richard Vickers (Leslie Nielsen), a coldblooded, wealthy husband, stages a terrible fate for his unfaithful wife, Becky (Gaylen Ross) and her lover, Harry Wentworth (Ted Danson) by burying them up to their necks on the beach, below the high tide line. He sets up closed-circuit TV cameras so the lovers can watch each other die. Richard is in for a surprise of his own when the people he murdered return as waterlogged, seaweed-covered zombies intent on getting revenge of their own.

Buy Manhattan

Lieutenant Drebin discovers that his ex-girlfriend’s new beau is involved in a plot to kidnap a scientist who advocates solar energy

Buy Minnie and Moskowitz

And if you’re looking for the worst… look no further than 2001: A Space Travesty

I don’t get it. The most costly aspect of a film is the actual making of it, no? How can shelving it be the most sound financial move? Sure, the heartland of America probably wouldn’t embrace a gay romance (shudder!), but the film played well in festivals and has two big-name stars in Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor. It’s going to make something in the theaters!

They made a movie with Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor as gay cell-mates, and now they’re not letting me watch it! Argh! Well, here’s the trailer; it’ll have to suffice until the eventual release onto DVD.

Cue the ‘bears love honey’ jokes

Honey (Bal), by filmmaker Semih Kaplanoglu, is about a poetic account of young boy’s search for his missing father — a honey worker. It’s the third part of the director’s reverse-order “Yusuf” Trilogy, following Eggs and Milk. Check out the trailer — this is a film tailor-made to rack up awards:

- The world’s most annoying alarm clock

It’s official, casting news can cause migraines and a loss of faith in the simple goodness of man. Russell Brand has been cast to give life to the Easter Bunny in a new comedy mixing CGI and live action.

I lived for awhile in Ireland, during which Russell Brand was on the television every single time I turned it on. Every fucking time. That, and the rain, were our reasons for leaving the island. Now, he’s going to be starring alongside James Marsden as the Easter Bunny.

And I haven’t even mentioned the name of the movie “I Hop”. Seriously, it’s called “I Hop”. That’s so goddamn punny, I don’t even know where to start.

Somewhere, people are getting paid a lot money to create a movie called I Hop about the Easter Bunny, starring Russell Brand. I… I just… I don’t know.

- 33. America’s Cup

A consequence of this tragedy is an increased interest in the beleaguered island nation. If you’d like to bolster your knowledge of Haiti, a good place to start might be FilmHaiti.com, a website that offers a lot of videos about the country.

The Road has been one of the season’s most anticipated and critically acclaimed films. But not everyone is on board… especially a gentleman by the name of Fiore Mastracci, a critic recently featured by The Guardian in an article titled “Why I love the world’s worst film critic”.

And, indeed, Mastracci’s review truly is bad. He uses the most amateur similes imaginable (“excrement on celluloid”), makes fun of children (“McPhee is an irritating dirty faced boy”) and employs the most groaningly obvious, timeworn references (the Energizer bunny? Seriously?). It’s no help that his English is piss-poor.

But somehow, he’s “made it”, in at least some sense of the phrase. He has 204 god-awful reviews published on Rotten Tomatoes and is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association. It’s almost enough to make you weep… if you weren’t laughing so hard. Mastracci makes it a point to hate every movie which is critically lauded, and his reviews are laced with scatological references, racism and homophobia. The Guardian’s Stuart McGurk notes that “In a pièce de résistance, he gave Transamerica 0/10 solely for being about a transsexual.”

Still, scrolling through his reviews at least makes for a great way to waste some time… I especially love the outraged comments at the end of each. So keep at it, Mr. Mastracci! I get the sense that you feed on hate.

- Gift Guide 2009

But people are falling out of the woodworks to claim just that. Hollywood types like Whoopi Goldberg, who argues that drugging and sodomizing a child wasn’t exactly, like, “rape-rape”. Even the usually sober scholar Anne Applebaum calls Polanski’s arrest “outrageous“.

But the best defense of Polanski we’ve read is at the (humor) site HolyTaco.com. Money Quote:

Anyway, while they were taking pictures, he fed the girl champagne, quaaludes, and some kind of sedative, because that’s the kind of guy he is; he’s a gentleman. He’s gonna get you nice and numb before he rapes and sodomizes you against your will. Good move, Romie. The girl was apparently telling Roman things like “No” and “Stop” the whole time, but because she was so shitfaced from being force-fed drugs and alcohol, it probably came out more like “Numflkdggh” and “Stlmpfghh”, so it’s really not Roman’s fault for not picking up on the cues.

Hmm. True. That’s almost enough to make us reconsider!

- Ideas for Halloween 2009

We’ve compiled his top 5 films according to Criticker users, and the results are pretty interesting. Most occur in the later stages of his career, suggesting he was not losing his touch. And besides the undeniably entertaining Point Break, the apex of his popularity, the late 80s to early 90s, is ignored. It also begs mentioning that these tend to be films in which Mr. Swayze has supporting roles. Perhaps not his most iconic movies, but they’re quality and he shines in each.

A genre-busting fable that blasts the American suburban drama into a wildly imaginative realm of time travel, alternative universes and the manipulation of one’s fate.

11:14 tells the seemingly random yet vitally connected story of a set of incidents that all converge one evening at 11:14pm. It’s a sort of musical chairs with a corpse, with the structurally intriguing storytelling style of “Memento” and “Run Lola Run.”

When two poor greasers, Johnny, and Ponyboy are assaulted by a vicious gang, the socs, and Johnny kills one of the attackers, tension begins to mount between the two rival gangs, setting off a turbulent chain of events

Walter Goodfellow (Atkinson) is the well-meaning vicar of the parish of Little Wallop. So obsessed with writing the perfect sermon, he’s oblivious to his wife Gloria’s (Thomas) dalliance with her brash golf instructor Lance (Swayze), has trouble keeping track of his daughter Holly’s parade of new boyfriends, and neglects his young son Petey. Enter the charming and discreet new housekeeper Grace (Smith), the answer to the family’s prayers. Problems solved only lead to more problems created in this story of good intentions run amok.

An FBI agent goes undercover to catch a gang of bank robbers who may be surfers.

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