The Bucket List

The Bucket List is a feel-good film about death, a sitcom about mortality, "Ikiru" for meatheads. It's also a picture about two cancer patients confronting reality, and deciding how they want to spend their presumed last days, that has not an ounce of reality about it. For all these reasons, along with the star power of Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, this refitting of the grumpy old men genre stands a good chance of becoming director Rob Reiner's first hit since the mid-'90s, even though its prevailing sensibility will eventually make it look more at home on small screens.

Atonement

An early contender for the 2008 Oscars, Joe Wright's take on Ian McEwan's novel of sex, guilt and repentance in WWII-era England is a highly engaging work. Reuniting with many of the key cast and crew behind his previous film, the equally fine take on Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice, Wright proves that was no one-off. Delivering an ambiguous, unsettling but masterful work with both assurance and panache, he even draws career-best performances from his leads, James McAvoy and Keira Knightley.