(2 of 2)
9 WITHOUT LIMITS A portrait of the artist as a long-distance runner. Steve Prefontaine (well played by Billy Crudup) is a knothead and a hothead, determined to shape his life and race to his own vision. This biography, from director and co-writer Robert Towne, is a sweet, sober meditation on winning, losing and the enigmas of American maleness.
10 LIVE FLESH It could be a 1940s Hollywood melodrama or an 1840s French farce, but Pedro Almodovar's gaudy thriller is as modern as Monica. His characters hurl themselves off fate's precipice to find love, lust, deliverance. A wise woman tells her beau that "making love involves two people." That's right: delirious director, dazzled viewer.
AND THE WORST Peepee Poopoo! Movies have been regressing for ages, but this year they went totally infantile. How many potty jokes can you stuff into a shrill "kids'" film like Doctor Dolittle or Rugrats? Enough to make toddlers giggle, parents groan and critics fret about the millennial devolution of cinema.