Matt Damon

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – “True Grit” seems like the perfect project for Joel and Ethan Coen; something they had been working toward their entire career. Not only had they made what could be considered a modern Western already in “No Country Old Men” but they were to bring together The Dude (Jeff Bridges) and Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) under the magnificent lens of the great Roger Deakins. It nearly had to be a masterpiece.

Rating: 4.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter” is a dramatic examination of a subject rarely dealt with in American cinema with even an ounce of honest emotion: What happens after we die.

Rating: 5.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Director Charles Ferguson is an absolute genius at distilling incredibly-complex subjects down to their bare essentials without dumbing them down in the slightest. He produced the best documentary about the Iraq War in the amazing “No End in Sight” and he’s now delivered a nearly-equal masterful feature on how our economy got to where it is today with the excellent “Inside Job,” arguably the best documentary of a great year for the form.

Rating: 3.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Director Clint Eastwood has given up on subtlety, choosing instead to tell old-fashioned, direct stories with as much technical skill and dramatic competency as possible. There’s nothing particularly wrong with the legendary director’s “Invictus,” but it’s also not nearly as memorable or thrilling as it could have or, given the true story that it tells, should have been.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Behind every great fortune lies a great crime, as the saying goes. In director Steven Soderbergh’s “The Informant!,” he and Matt Damon carve out a satire where the “crime” becomes entangled with the larger issues of “justice.”

Rating: 4.5/5.0

CHICAGO – With curving, clinking and kissing bullets, “Wanted” indeed does Chicago proud. And Angelina Jolie sells it. And Morgan Freeman is ominous. And in his body of work, James McAvoy – the star of this orgasmic summer blockbuster – becomes a man.

CHICAGO – Matt Damon as Jason Bourne never thinks. He just does.

CHICAGO – “Lucky You” undoes what “Rounders” did right.