BY GENE TRIPLETT

You can dress up a turkey in IMAX, 3-D and ear-shattering Surround Sound and throw it up on the biggest screen in town, but if there’s no great story, direction or acting to go with the visual feast, it’s still just a big fat turkey that gobbles loudly. Here are 10 that weren’t turkeys in 2011.

1. “Drive” — Nicolas Winding Refn’s powerful film about a loner (Ryan Gosling) who works as a mechanic and part-time Hollywood stunt driver and moonlights as a wheelman for small-time heisters quickly reveals itself as a high-octane, 21st-century “Shane” in a souped-up Chevy, with all the action, suspense, heart, soul and heroism of that classic Western, as the driver comes to the aid of a threatened family. There’s a surprisingly tender love story in the midst of this bloody battle between good and evil, and Albert Brooks is unexpectedly chilling as the coldblooded boss of the bad guys. Unfortunately, Oscar will dismiss this one as just another ultraviolent popcorn seller.

2. “The Descendants” — George Clooney has never locked into the humanity of a character with more depth of sensitivity than

 he displays here as a Hawaiian landowner who’s just trying to do the right thing by his money-hungry relatives, two troubled daughters and a wife who’s been cheating on him — a fact he discovers only after an accident has rendered her permanently comatose. Director/co-writer Alexander Payne couldn’t have wished for a better lead in this superb trouble-in-paradise comedy-drama that delivers laughter and pathos in generous equal measures.

3. “Take Shelter” — The ever-intense Michael Shannon stirs an emotional tempest as a working-class family man tortured by visions both real and imagined that seem to portend an apocalyptic climatological disaster — or his impending loss of sanity. It’s through Shannon’s tour de force performance that writer-director Jeff Nichols fashions an extraordinarily effective allegory on a more widespread fear gripping the world at large, of nature and economics spinning irreversibly out of control. Shannon is memorably electric and moving as a man unsure of whether the real threat to his family is a brewing storm or his unraveling self.

4. “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” — Director Thomas Alfredson’s riveting screen version of John le Carre’s Cold War cloak-and-dagger classic is a classroom study in slow-burning

suspense, and Gary Oldman rewrites the book on perfectly-pitched stillness that speaks volumes as seasoned, bespectacled spymaster George Smiley, who’s pitted against deadly treachery and his own desperate loneliness as he plots to flush out a mole in the top echelon of British intelligence. No tricked-out Aston Martins or rocket packs here. Just gripping, gritty realism and a superb cast that also features John Hurt and Colin Firth in powerful turns.

5. “Martha Marcy May Marlene” — Elizabeth Olsen steps out of the shadows of her famous twin sisters with a mesmeric big-screen debut performance in the title role of a young woman who steals away from a cult “family” and attempts to re-enter the “normal” world. Writer-director Sean Durkin takes an auspicious first bow as well with this chilling psychological thriller, quietly and cunningly unfolding one disturbing secret after another, but the film’s lasting impression owes no small debt to John Hawkes’ dark presence as the deceptively warm, enormously sinister, predatory communal overlord adept at holding impressionable young people in his thrall.

6. “Another Earth” — The Earth has a newly discovered twin, looming larger than the moon overhead and promising all the mind-blowing

possibilities of a parallel reality that may exist there. That’s the speculative element of director Mike Cahill’s exceedingly imaginative and moving first feature, which he co-wrote and co-produced with his fledgling star Brit Marling, whose screen presence and physical and emotional beauty are as mesmerizing as the film’s sky-gazing visual effects. Shot on a startlingly low budget, Marling and Cahill’s story of tragedy, self-confrontation, desperately sought-after redemption and forgiveness is a provocative and heartfelt examination of human fragility and healing love effectively designed to be at once haunting and hopeful.

7. “The Help” — Writer-director Tate Taylor’s awards-worthy adaptation of Kathryn Stockett’s novel about black housemaids and the white

women who employed them in the early 1960s South is brought to vivid life by an ensemble cast that could very well clean up during awards season. Viola Davis, Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard and Jessica Chastain give uniformly unforgettable performances in a story rife with poignancy, hope and big-hearted humor. Just try to stay dry-eyed. Betcha can’t.

8. “Hanna” — Once upon a time, a man (Eric Bana) raised a little girl named Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) in the frozen woods of Finland to be a perfect killing machine. Then he turned her loose to fend for herself in an unfamiliar modern-day culture and a treacherous high-tech spy-world in this supercharged fairy tale from screenwriters Seth Lochhead and David Farr and director Joe Wright. Yet another cloak-and-dagger thriller, but the originality of this one is mind-blowing, as is Ronan’s hypnotic turn as a sweet-faced but lethal, unlikely action hero going up against the brilliant Cate Blanchett as the evil witch-agent of the West. Better watch out, my pretty.

9. “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” — Another great tough-girl tale, this one is based on the first novel in the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s blockbuster trilogy about Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), punked-out, street-savvy, street-savage survivor of childhood abuse who teams with blackballed journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) to solve the ugly mystery behind decades-old serial killings. Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist have earned raves in these roles in the Swedish film versions of the series, but fierce and brooding Mara and un-Bond-ishly seedy and world-weary Craig acquit themselves handily in a harsh, noire-ishly brooding atmosphere expertly crafted by director David Fincher.

10. “War Horse” — Director Steven Spielberg shamelessly plays audience heartstrings like a Playskool piano, and those of us who are suckers for

tear-tugging boy-and-his-horse tales (or boy-and-his-dog, as the case may be) happily dance to his predictable tune based on British author Michael Morpurgo’s children’s book about a British farm boy (Jeremy Irvine) who is separated from his beloved horse, Joey, when the animal is drafted into World War I combat duty and suffers the cruelties and tragedies of war. Add the vivid sweep and color of Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography and a rousing John Williams score, and this one comes in a good old-fashioned winner reminiscent of such family classics as “The Story of Seabiscuit,” “National Velvet” and “Lassie Come Home.”

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