"I try not to read any full-length reviews of movies I’m going to write about before I’ve done my own review.  But it’s impossible for my curious brain not to peek at Rotten Tomatoes.com and its gradually building critical consensus on the week’s new movies.  Obviously, RT has a bias clearly revealed in its’ name (a movie receiving 59% positive reviews is still stamped “Rotten”), but I’m still always hoping to see that little fresh tomato hover over the films I plan to see.  Not that a splat means I’m not going to have a good time:  even a casual perusal of this site will tell you that I can be a contrarian, and I’m notoriously easy to please within my favorite genres.  But one has to be concerned when critical condemnation is as universal as for the new Summit release Man on a Ledge, and the mostly scathing reviews sent me in with tempered expectations despite a strong trailer and a great cast.  Funny thing is, the Man on a Ledge I saw isn’t just better than advertised:  it’s a near-perfect popcorn creation filled with skillfully- sketched, wonderfully-played characters going through the paces of the first feature screenplay by veteran TV movie writer Pablo F. Fenjves (who had a previous, far less desirable brush with fame as a witness in the O.J. Simpson trial).  Man on a Ledge is filled with lucky breaks, split-second escapes and astonishing feats of courage, but to those who dismiss it as “preposterous”, I’d ask who makes a movie about the guys who just barely get HIT by a train?  I loved Man on a Ledge to pieces, and I strongly suggest you shrug off the naysayers and give it a try... Man on a Ledge’s stew is filled with reliable ingredients:   an innocent man wrongfully imprisoned, a good cop who needs to redeem herself for a past mistake, a diabolical billionaire, backstabbing traitors hidden in plain sight and a loyal family who’ll risk anything to help each other out.  And the great cast director Asger Leth has assembled makes these archetypes sing.  Worthington, who’s taken it hard in those inexplicable reviews I referenced earlier, is effectively desperate and holds the screen nicely in a lead role that mostly demands he stay in one place.  Banks’ Everywoman appeal is perfect for the cop who’s gone twelve rounds with life but still has the guts to make a judgment call and stick with it.  I don’t know that Bell’s frumpy Little Brother casualness has ever been put to better use.  Burns does a great job playing Dougherty as a professional who cares about getting the guy off the ledge more than Departmental politics.  And Anthony Mackie and Titus Welliver do a solid job of pitching their suspicious officers such that we can’t be sure whether they’re on Englander’s payroll or not... Leth knows how to stage an action sequence, and Nick’s spectacularly close call of an escape from the funeral is a real nail-biter, as are a couple of Joey and Angie’s misadventures at jewel thievery.  But the movie’s most exciting moment, likely to stand up as one of the most exciting of the year, comes near the end when one of our heroes is forced to go far, far above and beyond the call to try and stop Englander and I noted with admiration how Fenjves had planted not one but TWO setups in the dialog that made it equally possible that the movie was laying the groundwork for total success or heroic sacrifice.  So even those skilled at decoding a script as it unfolds can’t really know which of two glaring possibilities will play out until the scene finishes its business."

12/31/11:  I don't know what's going on out there in the world at large, where ticket sales sank to their lowest point in over a decade and everyone was generally down on the movies, because from where I was sitting, this was a great, great movie year, with a deep bench of movies that pinged my geeky love of childhood icons, my brainy geeky obsession with mind-bending genre metaphors, my love of character studies that speak to the human condition and even my hopes for the wiz-bang possibilities of 3D (granted, not so many of those, but there were SOME).  I laughed, I cried (even a couple times with the 3D glasses on), I was pretty damned happy when an invading alien force got what it had coming to it, and most of all, I totally geeked out on an instant sci-fi classic that joins Stranger than Fiction, The Mist, The Dark Knight, Coraline and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World as the Palace's 6th annual Best Movie of the Year.  Drumroll please, for my Top 10 Movies of 2011: