50/50 (2011)

Cancer patient Joseph Gordon-Levitt leans on best friend Seth Rogen (producing his second cancer comedy), girlfriend Bryce Dallas Howard, therapist Anna Kendrick and mother Angelica Huston with varying results in a sweet, funny, winning comedy.

d: Jonathan Levine | imdb.com | trailer | The best odds | Haircut
Skeletor | Doogie | I’m moving in. | That’s your hook. | Blanket

Moneyball (2011)

Based on the book by Michael Lewis, the baseball film asserts that the Oakland A’s won 103 games with only their “Island of Misfit Toys,” not with the best player and best pitcher in the league. But Brad Pitt is believable as general manager Billy Beane.

d: Bennett Miller | imdb.com | trailer | Charlie Rose
Biggest fear | Player evaluations | He plays for Detroit now.

Drive (2011)

Ryan Gosling — stuntman, wheelman, real man — channels Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen, and Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn provides the highly stylized Los Angeles backdrop and brutal violence. Even better, Albert Brooks exacts some of it.

d: Nicolas Winding Refn | imdb.com | trailer | Get away
He’s a good guy. | My hands are dirty. | Put him behind the wheel.

Contagion (2011)

Steven Soderbergh directs an international thriller about a pandemic that kills millions of people in a few months, capturing all the ensuing paranoia, as if Hitchcock came back to make one of those zombie apocalypse movies. But Jude Law is just awful.

d: Steven Soderbergh | imdb.com | trailer | Charlie Rose
Don’t touch anything. | I think I’m sick. | It came from here.