Most Popular Movies - at Dec 2, 2008

1.High School Musical 3: Senior Year
(2008, Kenny Ortega, G)
How lovely the American high school experience might be if it offered even a smidgen of the euphoria in “High School Musical 3: Senior Year.”

2.Zack and Miri Make a Porno
(2008, Kevin Smith, R)
“Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” in spite of its lewdness, follows a gee-whiz romantic-comedy formula that would not be out of place on the Disney Channel.

3.Stages
(2007, Mijke DeJong, NR)
The phrase “divorced couple” sounds like an oxymoron, but there’s really no other way to describe the Dutch ex-spouses whose table talk dominates “Stages.”

4.Changeling
(2008, Clint Eastwood, R)
When it works best, “Changeling” is a feverish and bluntly effective parable of wronged innocence.

5.Synecdoche, New York
(2008, Charlie Kaufman, R)
To say that Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” is one of the best films of the year is such a pathetic response to its soaring ambition that I might as well pack it in right now.

6.The Haunting of Molly Hartley
(2008, Mickey Liddell, PG-13)
God and Satan duke it out for the soul of a young girl in “The Haunting of Molly Hartley,” an unexpectedly cynical addition to the teen-scream genre.

7.Saw V
(2008, David Hackl, R)
The latest and least of the “Saw” films is just plain boring and even a little tame — albeit by the standards of a genre that helped bring the phrase “torture porn” into the lexicon.

8.I've Loved You So Long
(2007, Philippe Claudel, PG-13)
In the drama “I’ve Loved You So Long,” Kristin Scott Thomas’s furious honesty rules out easy, unearned redemption.

9.Quantum of Solace
(2008, Marc Forster, PG-13)
10.Let the Right One In
(2008, Tomas Alfredson, R)
“Let the Right One In” takes the morbid unhappiness of its young characters seriously.