Ten years ago, Christian Bale was known mainly to fans of early 1990s cult classic Disney musicals -- or as "that guy who was the kid in Empire of the Sun" -- but after spending the early part of his career in movies that either targeted niche audiences (Laurel Canyon, Velvet Goldmine) or failed to connect with mainstream ones (Reign of Fire), Bale has undergone a remarkable leading-man makeover, to the point where he's now not only Batman, but an actor whose mere presence is enough to soothe pre-release fanboy griping about a movie as highly anticipated as this week's big debut, Terminator Salvation.

In celebration of Bale's recent ascendancy to matinee-idol status, we here at RT thought now would be the perfect time to take a look back at his filmography and find out which movies are the 10 best-reviewed of the bunch. Some of them won't be surprises (spoiler alert: The Dark Knight is on the list), but if there's one thing we know about Total Recall, it's that there's always some dissention when it comes to what made the cut and what didn't. (Second spoiler alert: Kenneth Branagh's Henry V, featuring Bale as "Boy," was passed over due to insufficient levels of Bale-itude.) But enough with our yapping -- let's start the countdown, shall we?

75%

Fresh

10. The Machinist

Critics almost always fawn over actors who alter their bodies for a role, to the point where it's even become sort of a joke for some film fans. There's nothing funny, however, about the lengths Christian Bale went to for 2004's The Machinist: wanting to adopt the physical appearance of a man who hadn't been able to sleep for a year, he subsisted on a diet of coffee, apples, and tuna fish for more than four months, eventually dropping over 60 pounds before being ordered to stop losing weight. The work of a dedicated artist, to be sure -- and it worked, making Bale something of a living special effect in Brad Anderson's dark psychological thriller. Sadly, it also had the unfortunate effect of overshadowing pretty much everything else in the film; most people haven't seen The Machinist, but a lot of people know it's "the one where Christian Bale lost all that weight." Fortunately, unlike its star, the movie has plenty of meat on its bones; in the words of the Arizona Republic's Bill Muller, "though Bale deserves all the credit that can be heaped at his feet... there is far more to this sinister psychological thriller than just exhibiting [his] emaciated form."

75%

Fresh

9. The Prestige

After Batman Begins hit big, Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale had their pick of projects to choose from -- and they opted to reunite for The Prestige, a film Nolan had been eyeing since his post-Memento days. In this adaptation of the Christopher Priest novel, Bale stars opposite Hugh Jackman in the tale of two early 20th century magicians driven to dangerous lengths in their personal and professional feud. (Furthering the Batman connection, Michael Caine co-stars as Jackman's stage engineer, a role not terribly dissimilar to Alfred Pennyworth.) With a plot hinging on a series of progressively more unpredictable twists and turns, The Prestige was bound to provoke a number of divergent responses -- and it did, splitting RT's top critics almost down the middle -- but with gross receipts over $100 million and a 75 percent Tomatometer, it packed enough of a suspenseful flourish to earn praise from scribes such as Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, who observed, "there are nifty tricks galore up the sumptuous sleeve of this offbeat and wildly entertaining thriller."

77%

Fresh

8. I'm Not There

Bob Dylan's music has inspired a great many things over the last five decades and change, but it seems a safe bet that very few of those things have been as deliberately unusual as Todd Haynes' I'm Not There, a sort of strange hybrid between Short Cuts-style vignette storytelling and musical biopic that loosely follows the framework of Dylan's life story using six actors -- including Bale, Cate Blanchett, and Heath Ledger -- to embody the different sides of its subject's personality. (Bale actually covers two "Dylans," appearing as both a young folksinger named Jack Rollins and an evangelist preacher named Pastor John.) Though some critics found I'm Not There's non-linear style more provoking than provocative -- Peter Howell of the Toronto Star called it "a rolling shambles" -- response was largely positive; thanks to writers like Roger Ebert, who argued that "what Haynes does is take away the reassuring segues that argue everything flows and makes sense, and to show what's really chaos under the skin of the film," it earned a spot on many year-end best-of lists.

80%

Fresh

7. Empire of the Sun

For a lot of actors, starting a career means taking a certain number of thankless roles in less, shall we say, prestigious productions -- think Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey in The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Christian Bale, however, got his first big break from none other than Steven Spielberg, who put him in the lead for 1987's Empire of the Sun after receiving a recommendation from Bale's former co-star (and Spielberg's then-wife), Amy Irving. Playing a thinly fictionalized version of author and former POW J.G. Ballard, the teenaged Bale had to take his character from the pampered (and frankly obnoxious) youth in the first act to the hollowed-out husk who staggers through the final scenes. It was a task that would have been beyond the grasp of many a more seasoned actor, but Bale came through with flying colors, earning a specially created award from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures to go with the many positive reviews from critics like Cole Smithey, who remarked, "Christian Bale's debut is a doozy."

85%

Fresh

6. Batman Begins

Bale's early films may not have been big hits, but they did cover a lot of bases, proving he could carry himself in everything from action epics and costume dramas to dark, low-budget thrillers -- which is precisely what convinced Christopher Nolan that Bale was the right man to capture all the many facets of Bruce Wayne when he agreed to direct the long-in-the-making Batman reboot. Bale's dedication to the role was immediately put to the test; after losing a dangerous amount of weight for The Machinist, he had to quickly reverse course -- and he did, hitting the gym to pack on over 100 pounds in just a few months. The end result was the first of the big-screen Batmen to not only act the part convincingly, but look it, too -- a good thing, since Nolan's vision for the character's origin story had plenty of dramatic depth to go with its fisticuffs. Though not all critics responded to Batman Begins' more realistic, less tongue-in-cheek approach (Rex Reed notably said it was "for morons"), most reviews were in line with the movie's remarkable $370 million worldwide gross; as Desson Thomson of the Washington Post put it, "here's how any great franchise should start: with care, precision and delicately wrought atmosphere."