Billy Elliott is the name of a hard-ass eleven-year-old British kid who enrages his coal-miner dad by switching from boxing lessons to ballet. Go ahead, groan. I did, too — that is, until I saw stage director Stephen Daldry (An Inspector Calls, Via Dolorosa) transform a potential sapfest into a bracing triumph. Daldry scores a sensational film debut. Working from a sharply observant script by Lee Hall, who sets Billy's need to dance against the harsh background of a 1984 miner's strike, Daldry benefits from a superb cast, notably Julie Walters as Billy's teacher and Gary Lewis as his beleaguered dad. Above all, there is newcomer Jamie Bell, 14, as Billy. Watch your back, Haley Joel Osment: Bell explodes onscreen in a performance that cuts to the heart without sham tear-jerking. When Billy confronts his father not with words or fists but with a dance that gives form and grace to his anger, the result is one of the most powerful scenes of the movie year. Look for Billy to blast off.

“1999”

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.