It’s a small, powerful scene in Crazy Heart: When Jeff Bridge’s Bad Blake, a whiskey-soaked itinerant troubadour, telephones his estranged son, a son he’s never known, to try to meet up and make amends. The voice on the other end is cold, unsympathetic. A reunion isn’t likely.

The Jason Bourne trilogy is one of the best franchises out there. The first, 2002’s The Bourne Identity, directed by Doug Liman, surprised the industry, and rocked the box office, with Matt Damon’s killer role as an amnesiac CIA assassin. Volumes 2 and 3, The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), both directed by Paul Greengrass, carried on the tradition, delivering jump-cut action and edgy spy-world storylines. Damon and Greengrass – who collaborated again on the non-Bourne Green Zone, coming in March – had hit their stride.

The ten best movies of the last ten years?

The New Year Parade, Tom Quinn’s heart-stirring independent feature set in the world of Mummery and detailing the impact of divorce on one South Philly family, is like the little engine that could. Debuting at the 2008 Slamdance Festival, where it won the Grand Jury narrative prize, The New Year Parade has hung in there, garnering plaudits at major festivals over the past year and enjoying strong notices during its theatrical runs in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and other markets.

And on Tuesday, Quinn’s labor of love was there next to Big Fan, Humpday, So Yong Kim’s Treeless Mountain and Tariq Tapa’s Zero Bridge as a nominee for the Independent Spirit Awards’ John Cassavetes prize -- given to the best feature made for under $500,000. (Quinn’s was made for way under that.)

By Odin's beard! May 20, 2011, is the date set for Thor, the big screen adaptation of the Stan Lee-Jack Kirby-created Marvel comic about the Norse god of thunder and his earthbound alter ego, Dr. Donald Blake. Chris Hemsworth, who played James Kirk’s dad in the prologue of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, stars as the hammer-wielding one, and Natalie Portman is onboard as Jane Foster, romantic interest. Colm Feore, Anthony Hopkins, Stellan Skarsgard, Stuart Townsend, Samuel L. Jackson (as Marvel cigar chomper Nick Fury), Jamie Alexander, Kat Dennings, Tom Hiddleston and Idris Elba (Stringer Bell from The Wire) have all signed on, for parts big and small, and Kenneth Branagh is directing.

Have seen Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox twice now, and am still in awe. The old-school stop-motion animation is dazzling, as are the puppets, the props, the production design…. But it’s Anderson’s and Noah Baumbach’s story, adapted from the Roald Dahl book about an unflappable fox exploring his true nature -- raiding the chicken coops and proving his love for wife (a landscape artist) and son (a slightly “different” sort of kid) against beagles, shotguns and cider floods – that really makes the film so charming, and, well, kind of profound. George Clooney, as the voice of “Foxie” (a newspaper man, by the way), brings the character to life doubly so. Fantastic Mr. Fox is beyond fantastic -- it's the best animated film of the year, and maybe the best cussin' film, period.

Lee Daniels is the West Philly filmmaker who got Halle Berry her Oscar (he produced Monster’s Ball), who talked Kevin Bacon into playing a Philadelphia pedophile (Daniels produced The Woodsman) and had Cuba Gooding Jr. and Helen Mirren entwined in each other’s nakedness on a grassy slope in Fairmount Park for the strange hitman romance, Shadowboxer (Daniels produced and directed).

And now, with Precious: Based on the Novel `Push’ by Sapphire, the fearless Daniels has brought the story of an obese, illiterate 16-year-old black girl who is pregnant by her father to the screen. And Oprah and Tyler, as well as audiences and critics, are talking Academy Award noms for the film and its stars. Whatever you think of the film's sometimes over-the-top depiction of abuse and domestic squalor, Precious, with the 350-lb Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe in the title role, represents another bold move for the 49-year-old filmmaker.