10 Best Movies

Pixar's latest is among the computer-animation studio's best: the story of a full-of-itself race car (voiced by Owen Wilson) forced to set down roots in a run-down jalopy town full of rural eccentrics like the rube tow truck Mater (Larry the Cable Guy). Not to stomp on Happy Feet or anything, but director John Lasseter, who virtually invented CGI movie wit, smartly rev ups the fun in this, the most stylish car-toon ever.

9. DISTRICT B13

In the very near future, the French have cordoned off their housing projects, sites of immigrant crime and anger. They're even contemplating a nuclear final solution to their problem. That's the pretext director Pierre Morel uses to reinvent the action film with gracefully soaring chases and grittily imaginative confrontations--no CGI, very little wire work, just a subtle, clever use of off-speed cameras and canny editing. The result is a movie that makes all its American competitors look klutzy and flat-footed. Maybe it isn't exactly art, but it sure is kinesthetically dazzling.

10. CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER

The empress (Gong Li) is canoodling with her stepson, the Emperor (Chow Yun Fat) is trying to poison the Empress, and the whole royal house seems less later Tang dynasty than Aaron Spelling's Dynasty. This gorgeous surprise from China's Zhang Yimou (Hero) looks like a martial-arts movie but plays like delirious melodrama. The fearless, peerless turns from Chow and Gong Li demonstrate how the fiercest swordplay can come from two charismatic stars staring daggers at each other.