I wholeheartedly agree with my colleague David Zurawik about Barry Levinson's HBO movie, "You Don't Know Jack." It fearlessly goes right at the subject of Dr. Jack Kevorkian's crusade for a suffering person's right to die. The scenes in which Kevorkian interviews his prospective patients are as extraordinary as the death scenes:  they're triumphs of directorial sanity and sensitivity, bearing witness to the bravery of these pain-stricken people as well as to the zealotry of the sometimes crude and overbearing Kevorkian. (Pacino nails both the bumptiousness and the deep conviction of this complex protagonist.)

Yet there's so much more to this movie beyond the direct power of the subject matter. Levinson gets the Detroit atmosphere to grungy perfection. Brenda Vaccaro as Kevorkian's sister wrings all the poignancy, wisdom and humor out of her character's desire that assisted suicides could somehow be done "nicer." She and Pacino conjure one of the best brother and sister teams I’ve ever seen. The way they talk at each other or past each other is sad, hair-raising, and mordantly funny.

Should critics have been so surprised? Whether you saw it on ESPN or at a special Maryland Film Festival screening at the M&T Bank Stadium last fall, Levinson's documentary about the indomitable Baltimore Colts Marching Band, "The Band That Wouldn't Die," proved to be the kind of gem that retains the heat and pressure that formed it. His "What Just Happened" (2008) is one of the few crack adult comedies about the fractured way we live now, though it was largely misunderstood as an "inside-Hollywood satire." (De Niro was as sharp in that film as Pacino is in "Jack.") "Bandits" is a road movie with a humming romantic-comic motor to it, capturing Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchett at their most playful and charming. (That's Blanchett in "Bandits," above.) Too bad it had the misfortune to open right after 9/11. 

Yes, the critics are right about "Jack," but Levinson isn't "coming back": you could argue that he's on a roll. What are your top Levinson films from the 21st century?