Merci, French directors, for reminding audiences that sex, with its negotiations and lies, its beauty and messiness, its graphic, clumsy imagery, is a crucial part of the human drama. The best of a new bunch of dark, sometimes explicit French films about sex is Catherine Breillat's fable of two sisters, 12 and 15, who are rivals and comrades. Breillat juggles coming-of-age comedy with horror-tragedy in a film that lingers in the mind like the memory of a first, fatal affair.
Animated actors dominated the box office, Barry Bonds hit 73 and 'It' turned out to be a scooter. TIME picks the bests and the worsts of this year...