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With Snooki set, and the earth embarking on another tour around the sun, it must be time for the 2010 movie round-up. As always, there are a few contender films I haven't yet seen -- Blue Valentine opens here next weekend, for example. But, as it happens, I did see quite a few more movies than usual this year -- an added bonus to having a full-time, non-gradual school income again. In any case, without further ado, the...

Top 20 Films of 2010

[2000/2001/2002/2003/2004/2005/2006/2007/2008/2009/The Oughts]

1. Toy Story 3: I kept expecting some other movie to come along in the second half of 2010 and knock this lachrymose Pixar masterpiece out of the top spot. But, in a not particularly great year for movies, Lee Unkrich's surprisingly sad and soulful Toy Story 3 held onto the crown. (As it turns out, the highest grossing film of the year was also the best.) Basically, this is the movie about fleeting youth and fading plastic that Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are wanted to be. And, while I'm still not sure if kids will vibe into the melancholy shenanigans here at all, it touched a chord in more than one aging man-child out there...just ask QT.

2. The Red Riding Trilogy: Amid the moors of the North, there is an evil that does not sleep. Originally a TV miniseries in Britain, the Red Riding trilogy -- 1974, 1980 and 1983 -- counted as full-fledged movies for those of us stateside. And, while perhaps too grim for some tastes, this three-part, nine-year inquiry into black deeds in Yorkshire was as immersive and transporting a movie experience as there was in 2010. (The problem was, you didn't necessarily want to be where it transported you.) True, the third film was weaker than the first two installments. But taken as a whole, this was one gritty and impressive crime saga, with a number of memorable turns by Paddy Considine, Andrew Garfield, Mark Addy, Rebecca Hall, Peter Mullan and others.

3. The Secret in Their Eyes: Alas, you will find no respite from the Yorkshire darkness in the Argentina of the Dirty War. Earlier in the year, I had A Prophet ranked above this movie, the Best Foreign Film winner of 2009. (It was released here in 2010.) But Juan Jose Campanella's haunting picture has grown in my memory in the months since. Like Red Riding, this is another wistful investigation into murder, missed opportunities, and the choices we make, one that sticks with you well after the theater lights come up.

4. True Grit: For the third time in four years, the Coens make the top five. (See also No Country for Old Men and A Serious Man.) And while I concede to being a bit of a Coen fanboy, I'm guessing this retelling of the John Wayne classic stands on its own merits. The occasional quirk aside, this is the brothers' Straight Story, and, as I said in the original review, it feels like an unearthed and quintessentially American coming-of-age tale. The travails of Ree Dolly may have been the cat's meow to many critics this year, but, when it comes to teenage girls facing a heap of adversity, I myself cottoned to the western adventures of Matty Ross.

5. The Social Network: With top-notch work from David Fincher, Trent Reznor, and the entire cast, The Social Network has a crisp, sleek, and entertaining interface to be sure. On an intellectual level, it's definitely one of the most purely enjoyable movies of the year. But I still find this film somewhat dubious in terms of content. It works better as a Shakespearean tale of ambition and betrayal -- Richard III by way of Revenge of the Nerds -- than it does a legitimate recreation of the origins of Facebook. Still, given that much of the action takes place at a university whose motto is Veritas ("Truth") and yet whose most prominent landmark is the "Statue of the Three Lies," I guess I should probably forgive TSN its many factual screw-ups. Print the legend and all that.

6. A Prophet: Call it the Antisocial Network: Another 2009 foreign film that made it here in 2010, Jacques Audiard's novelistic, keenly observed A Prophet -- about a young prisoner learning to survive and thrive in the interstices of a cross-cultural jailyard -- was another of the best films of the year. A Prophet can feel slow at times, and it's not an experience I'm likely to revisit anytime soon. But it's this film's continual attention to the devastating detail that makes it a prison movie to remember.

7. Inception: Just as he did with The Prestige after Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan took a mental health break from Gotham City after The Dark Knight by crafting this mindbending sorbet, the best "summer movie thrillride" experience of 2010. (The only other ones that come close are #9 below and the first-half of Tron: Legacy.) I still wish Inception was a bit more ragged in its dreaming, and, like a dream, it makes more sense when you're watching it than when you think back on it later. Nonetheless, Inception was great fun throughout, and if nothing else, it spawned one of my favorite new Internet memes.

8. The Fighter: I just saw this one over the weekend, so it has no review up yet. Suffice to say, I was pleasantly surprised by David O'Russell's chronicle of the comeback of welterweight "Irish" Micky Ward, the pride of Lowell, Massachusetts. In fact, I had the opposite experience here that I had with The King's Speech. There was a potentially interesting story told extremely conventionally, while this is a tried and tested sports movie formula -- a boxer with one last shot at a title -- that still felt fresh and invigorating. True, the seven Ward sisters were a bit much -- They were the only time this boxing movie veered toward the egregious cartoon rednecks of Million Dollar Baby. But otherwise, solid performances by Mark Wahlberg, Melissa Leo, Amy Adams and especially Christian Bale give this could've-been-by-the-numbers film a much-needed heart.

9. Kick-Ass: Capitalizing on the promise he showed in Layer Cake, director Matthew Vaughn brought to life the most engaging comic book reverie of 2010 with Kick-Ass, his warmer, more colorful take on the Mark Millar comic. This film saw Nicolas Cage continue his Bad Lieutenant mini-revival, Mark Strong continue to hone his talent for instant Big-Bad gravitas (see also: Sherlock Holmes, 2011's Green Lantern), and, like a bat out of Hell (or New Mexico, for that matter), 13-year-old Chloe Moretz become an out-and-out, foul-mouthed, ass-kicking action star. Few films this year were as fun as this one.

10. Exit Through the Gift Shop: As this potentially faux-documentary explains: Before he exposed the sweatshops under Springfield, British provocateur Banksy set the world of street art careening over the shark by encouraging Thierry Guetta, a.k.a. Mr. Brainwash, to get in the graffiti game. It's still an open question whether Banksy's disastrous creation of MBW was inadvertent or just his latest well-crafted skewering of the powers-that-be. Either way, Exit Through the Gift Shop, about the rise and fall of street art, is a merry prank indeed.

11. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows: While the Harry Potter books grew distended and clumsy in the home stretch, the movie series continues to gain steam along that last low road to Hogwarts. In bringing to life the first half of Hallows, David Yates has made arguably the best Potter film yet, and not just because he has the good sense to riff on Brazil therein. The danger feels more palpable, the hopping around the countryside feels less episodic, and, after a decade of doing this, the Big Three wear their characters naturally now. Here's hoping Harry Potter and the Battalion of Thespians manage to close things out as smoothly this summer.

12. Inside Job: You think Banksy got away with a grift? Check this one out. Pinning its high-profile subject to the mat much more successfully than did Alex Gibney's Casino Jack documentary, Inside Job impressively lays out the causes and (lack of) consequences of the Great Wall Street meltdown of 2008. Those would be a swollen, rapacious, and unregulated financial services sector, and a government that, even after the Big Bust, still bends over backward to appease it. The only real problem with Inside Job is the feedback loop -- The only folks likely to see this film are the same ones who already know the story and are enraged by it. Still, I'm glad it's there, and at least it's encouraging economists to clean up their act.

13. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: Like I said back in August, Scott Pilgrim seems to have gone the way of the much-maligned Speed Racer. As visually inventive as it was, Pilgrim didn't make much of a splash at the box office. But even if its fanboy fan service tendencies still rankle, Edgar Wright's ode to geek crushes and the g4m3r life deserved more love than it got on the first play, so hopefully it enjoys several more lives on Blu Ray and beyond.

14. The Town: Admittedly, Boston is getting a bit peaked as Hollywood's go-to destination for white working-class crime stories of late (Mystic River, The Departed, Gone Baby Gone.) That being said, Ben Affleck's "Beantown Heat" was a strong, well-made, and entertaining ensemble film with a good sense of place and charisma to burn. Everyone from Jon Hamm and Rebecca Hall to Chris Cooper and the late Pete Postlethwaite bring their A-game here, with special kudos to Jeremy Renner as Affleck's crazy-like-a-fox pahtnuh-in-crime.

15. The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers: After watching Inside Job, you might wonder why our government is in such a furor over Julian Assange and Wikileaks when crimes like constructing an illegal torture regime and, oh, causing an worldwide global economic meltdown seem to go unpunished. And after watching Ellsberg, you might think we've seen this movie before anyway. (Just take it from the man himself.) Constructed like a conspiracy thriller, Ellsberg is a testament to the notion that sometimes whistle-blowing -- the only "misdeed" our current administration can seem to get angry about these days -- may in fact be a higher form of patriotism. However you feel about Ellsberg and Wikileaks, this is a compelling documentary about tough choices in contentious times.

16. Never Let Me Go: Like The Secret In Their Eyes, this quiet, elegiac sci-fi film has risen in my estimation in the months since I saw it. Keira Knightley is still a drag on the production, and all of the characters a bit too locked-in for my taste -- If they were so invested in one plan to avoid their fate, they should've been more willing to contemplate other avenues of escape as well. Still, also like The Secret In Their Eyes, this is a movie whose mood of reticent mourning lingers on.

17. Terribly Happy: How do you say "Blood Simple" in Danish? This weird Coenesque ditty about a sheriff with a troubled past investigating Something Rotten in Denmark was yet another late arrival to these shores -- It premiered in Europe in 2008. And yet, once again, it was among the best 2010 had to offer. Let's hope the pattern holds and right now, some of the best films of this year are already kicking around other continents, ready to be unleashed.

18. The King's Speech: I wrote about this one rather recently, so my views on it haven't changed much. This is a undeniably well-made, well-written, and well-performed film, but I found its sports-movie structure and Merchant-Ivory bromance all a bit pat. Still, Colin Firth in particular is excellent here -- With this and A Single Man, he's aging into a more interesting actor than he was before. Consider it his Baldwinning.

19. The Ghost Writer: As he pieces together the memoirs of England's ex-PM, boilerplate and boredom are the least of Ewan MacGregor's worries -- He also has surveillance men and femmes fatale to contend with. Ghost, welcome to the Machine! This conspiratorial yarn isn't a particularly deep film -- more just a cheeky throwback to 70's paranoia thrillers and an extended screw-you to the departed Tony Blair. Still, whatever his other sins, Roman Polanski fashioned a brisk and entertaining cloak-and-dagger flick here.

20. The Kids Are All Right: I thought about Get Him to the Greek, Greenberg, and Shutter Island for this last spot. But, in the end, I gave the nod to this, Lisa Cholodenko's well-observed slice of family life in 21st century California. This is a small and unassuming film, but one that does what it does quite well -- It takes a number of well-drawn characters and lets them breathe and bounce off each other.

Most Disappointing: Alice in Wonderland: An embarrassment to the Carroll book: Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have never seemed so uninspired together.

Worth Netflixing: 44-Inch Chest, The American, A Single Man (2009), Crazy Heart (2009), Daybreakers, The Eclipse, Get Him to the Greek, Greenberg, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009), Knight and Day, Let Me In, Life During Wartime, The Lovely Bones (2009), Shutter Island, Splice, The Square, Tron: Legacy, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Winter's Bone, Youth in Revolt

Don't Bother: The Art of the Steal, Black Swan, The Book of Eli, Brooklyn's Finest, Casino Jack and the USM, Catfish, Clash of the Titans, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Green Zone, Hot Tub Time Machine, Invictus (2009), Iron Man 2, Jonah Hex, Legion, The Losers, Machete, Red, Robin Hood, Salt, Sweetgrass, The Tourist, The Werewolf, The White Ribbon

Best Actor: Ricardo Darín, The Secret In Their Eyes, Tahar Rahim, A Prophet; Colin Firth, The King's Speech
Best Actress: Natalie Portman, Black Swan; Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone, Haylee Steinfeld, True Grit
Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, The Fighter; Jeremy Renner, The Town; Andrew Garfield, The Social Network/Never Let Me Go
Best Supporting Actress: Chloe Moretz, Kick-Ass, Amy Adams, The Fighter; Charlotte Rampling, Life During Wartime

Unseen: 127 Hours, The A-Team, All Good Things, Animal Kingdom, Another Year, Blue Valentine, Buried, Burlesque, Carlos, Casino Jack, Centurion, Chloe, The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky, Conviction, Cop Out, Country Strong, The Crazies, Creation, Date Night, Despicable Me, Devil, Dinner for Schmucks, Easy A, Eat, Pray, Love, Edge of Darkness, The Expendables, Extraordinary Measures, Fair Game, Fish Tank, Four Lions, From Paris with Love, Get Low, The Good, The Bad, and the Weird, Gulliver's Travels, Harry Brown, Hereafter, How Do You Know?, Howl, I am Love, The Illusionist, I Love You, Phillip Morris, I'm Still Here, Jackass 3D, Jack Goes Boating, The Karate Kid, The Killer Inside Me, The Last Exorcism, The Last Station, Leap Year, Little Fockers, MacGruber, Made in Dagenham, Micmacs, Monsters, Mother, The Next Three Days, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Other Guys, Paranormal Activity 2, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, Please Give, Predators, The Prince of Persia, Rabbit Hole, Rare Exports, Repo Men, Secretariat, Shrek Forever After, Skyline, Somewhere, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Step Up 3D, Survival of the Dead, Takers, Tangled, The Tempest, Tiny Furniture, Twilight: Eclipse, Unstoppable, Valentine's Day, Vincere, When In Rome, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

A Good Year For:
• Abduction as Seduction (Knight & Day, Red, The Tourist)
  
• Andrew Garfield (Red Riding, The Social Network, Never Let Me Go)
  
• Aussie Noir (The Square, Animal Kingdom)
  
• Charlotte Rampling (Life During Wartime, Never Let Me Go)
  
• Chloe Moretz (Kick-Ass, Let Me In)
  
• Ghostly Ex's (Life During Wartime, The Eclipse)
  
• The Dude's Paternal Side (Tron: Legacy, True Grit)
  
• Working-class Bay Staters (The Town, The Fighter)

A Bad Year For:
• Angelina Jolie (Salt, The Tourist)
  
• Art Museums (Exit Through the Gift Shop, Art of the Steal)
  
• B-level DC Heroes (Jonah Hex, The Losers)
  
• Eighties Remakes (Karate Kid, Nightmare on Elm Street)
  
• Johnny Depp (Alice in Wonderland, The Tourist)
  
• Leo's Sanity (Inception, Shutter Island)
  
• The Street (Inside Job, Wall Street 2)

2011: 5 Days in August, 30 Minutes or Less, The Adjustment Bureau, Albert Nobbs, Amigo, Anonymous, Arthur, Arthur Christmas, Bad Teacher, Barney's Version, Battle: Los Angeles, The Beaver, Beginners, Bernie, The Big Year, Black Gold, Brighton Rock, Caesar: Rise of the Apes, Captain America: The First Avenger, Cars 2, Cedar Rapids, Colombiana, Conan the Barbarian, The Conspirator, Contagion, Coriolanus, Cowboys and Aliens, Damsels in Distress, A Dangerous Method, The Darkest Hour, The Debt, The Deep Blue Sea, The Descendants, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, Drive Angry, The Eagle, The Factory, The Fields, Friends with Benefits, Fright Night, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Green Hornet, Green Lantern, The Guard, The Hangover Part 2, Hanna, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Haywire, I am Number Four, Jane Eyre, Larry Crowne, Limitless, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Moneyball, The Muppets, Paul, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Priest, Rango, Sanctum, Scream 4, Season of the Witch, Sherlock Holmes 2, Source Code, Straw Dogs, Sucker Punch, Super 8, The Thing, Thor, The Tree of Life, The Way Back, X-Men: First Class, Your Highness, and...

Thundering Son of a Sea-Gherkin! It's Tintin!

Well, I was rooting for Darren Aronofosky's Black Swan. I generally think well of Aronofsky even if The Wrestler notwithstanding, he has a penchant for operatic self-indulgence. (In the Best of the Decade list I put together a year ago, The Fountain, The Wrestler, and Requiem for a Dream clocked in at #77, #35, and #30 respectively.)

And, at least in general terms, the subject matter of Black Swan hits close to home, given that my sis is a professional ballerina who's well-versed in the Odette/Odile role(s). (Although, as far as I tell, she hasn't gone off-the-wall, certifiably bugnuts crazy...yet. Gill's thoughts on Black Swan are here.) All that being said, Aronofsky's attempted Cronenberg variation on Tchaikovsky here doesn't really work. The movie is arousing a good bit of passion and controversy at the moment -- some critics love it, some hate it, there may even be an age divide -- but, for the most part I just found it overwrought and silly.

Black Swan begins auspiciously with the prologue of the ballet from which it's riffing: Young dancer Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) dreams she's on stage performing the opening "transformation sequence" of Swan Lake, when Odette first encounters the villainous sorcerer Von Rothbart. (Here and throughout, Portman doesn't really have the ballet chops to pull off the dancing, but, to my layperson's eye, the workarounds seemed decently convincing. And she's actually quite good otherwise.) But outside of the Dreaming, Nina is still just a lower-level dancer (presumably a soloist) in her Lincoln Center-based company, living with her (s)mother (Barbara Hershey) in a too-small New York apartment.

But opportunity knocks for Nina when the company director (Vincent Cassel, seemingly playing himself) tires of his veteran principal (Winona Ryder) and decides to recast Swan Lake from the ground up. (And for some reason, he only seems to be picking one cast.) Nina seems like a perfect fit to dance the willowy, innocent Odette, the White Swan. But can she handle the Black Swan half of the equation: the alluring temptress Odile? In fact, there's a carefree, sensuous new corps member -- with swan wing tattoos, no less (Mila Kunis) -- that seems born to play that role. So if Nina wants to live her dream and dance the lead in this new Swan Lake, she has to cut loose from her perfectionist moorings and embrace her dark side. Which, unfortunately for her, brings on the Madness...the Madness, splitting in half...

Thus ensues a series of increasingly nightmarish vignettes, in which Nina -- already fragile and anorexic on her best days -- succumbs to teh crazy: Mirrors start acting funny, a stress rash grows worse and worse, and soon she's ripping long strips of flesh off her fingers at the cuticle. (I wasn't kidding when I said this was a Cronenberg variation, although the "all-in-a-day's-work" body horrors of The Wrestler also come to mind.) Unfortunately, while Black Swan pretends to be a psychological horror movie, most of the scares here are really just of the jump-scare or gross-out variety. And, other then an ecstasy-fueled nightclub scene that recalls the druggy cinematic syntax of Requiem (and that eventually devolves into a ludicrous "sapphic succubus" tryst that seems like something out of Showgirls), Black Swan spends too much of its run dancing dangerously on the precipice of boring.

The thing is: If we know the lead character is going bonkers, and that's made pretty clear from jump street, these endless nightmare sequences have very little dramatic weight to them. Something bad happened, somebody got killed? Eh, she's probably just imagining it. What might've made Black Swan more interesting is to emphasize not how she's going mad, but why. But, in that department, Aronofsky mostly just burdens Nina with trite Freudian baggage -- an overbearing mother and a sexy crush on "father" (a.k.a. Cassel) -- that was hoary and cliched even in Tchiakovsky's day.

And so it's hard to sympathize with Nina because neither her character nor her plight is at all convincing. So she has to somehow play both an innocent AND a seductress? ZOMG how will she ever manage? Well, I dunno, how about...acting? Sure, there are cases where Method types will lose themselves too much in a part. (Heath Ledger's travails with the Joker come to mind.) But, perhaps due to familiarity with ballet folk, playing the white and black swans just doesn't seem like an insanity-inducing event to me. (Although, now that I think about it, I guess a psychotic break after portraying evil twins might explain the late career path of the Shat.)

In the Financial Times, dance critic Apollinaire Scherr makes a key and telling point: In emphasizing the psychological rigors of the Black Swan role, Aronofsky sorta missed the point of the ballet. "Sure, there is a good maiden and a sly vixen in Swan Lake, but, like the ballet's dopey prince, Aronofsky gets them mixed up. The virtuous woman has a self to lose; the schemer merely fakes it. Odile the Black Swan is easy to understand...what you see is what you get...Odette - part swan, whole queen, once simply a woman - is complex: wild but also majestic, animal yet gentle."

In other words, the White Swan is the character with actual depth, while the Black Swan is basically all sizzle and flash, the prince falling for a pretty face. In that, the movie Black Swan is much like its namesake. I suppose it works decently well as a cheesy midnight movie for goth girls and the like. But in terms of anything approaching tragic or psychological depth, Black Swan misses the mark wildly. Its pleasures and pains barely scratch the surface.

"'We'll use many of the same characters as we have all along, and we'll be introducing some new ones,' Nolan said cryptically." Lots of big doings on the fanboy front recently: First up, the next Batman movie has a (lousy) title: The Dark Knight Rises, and Chris Nolan has announced the Riddler will not be the villain. (He earlier wrote off Mr. Freeze.) So whomever Tom Hardy turns out to be, it's not Edward Nigma. (My current guess is he's Killer Croc, with a yet-to-be-cast Catwoman as the main villain.)

Riddles may not feature in Gotham, but they will soon be spun in deepest Wellington: In happy news, New Zealand will be returning as Middle Earth for the upcoming Hobbit films. "'Making the two movies here will not only safeguard work for thousands of New Zealanders, but will also allow us to follow the success of the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy in once again promoting New Zealand on the world stage,' [Prime Minister!] Key said."

Those are the two big upcoming guns. But, also on the docket, James Cameron officials signs up for two more Avatars for 2014 and 2015. Well...ok. I can think of other worlds I'd rather see him tackle than Pandora again.

And, with Black Swan opening very soon, Darren Aronofsky announces his next project (after, um, Wolverine 2), will be called Machine Man. "Machine Man, not to be confused with the Marvel Comics character, concerns a tech engineer who, tired of going through life average and unnoticed, replaces parts of his body with titanium upgrades of his own design. He then discovers that he isn't the only one with plans for his new body."

Ms. Kunis, Mr. Cassel, Ms. Hershey, Mr. Stans: To your places: Prima ballerina Natalie Portman looks to be going slightly mad in the first trailer for Darren Aronofsky's ballet noir Black Swan, premiering at the Venice Film Festival later this year. Well, we all go a little mad sometimes.

"It's December 1997, and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote village in Russia's Far East. The tiger isn't just killing people, it's annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot through the forest in the brutal cold. As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they discover that these attacks aren't random: the tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta. Injured, starving, and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again."

Risin' up and back on the street, Brad Pitt will apparently delve into the tiger woods for Darren Aronofsky and writer Guillermo Arriaga (Babel) in a film adaptation of John Vaillant's The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival. Well, ok then...but Aronofsky is getting notorious for signing aboard more projects than actually happen. Along with the ballet-thriller Black Swan, which may be in the can by now, he's also meant to be making a Robocop reboot, a Jackie Kennedy in November 1963 story with wife Rachel Weisz, and a movie about UFC fighter Lightning Lee Murray. Sounds like a full plate.

Darren Aronofsky of Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain and The Wrestler signs with TIME for a film based on the 2006 Securitas Depot robbery [wiki], which allegedly involved UFC fighter "Lightning" Lee Murray. (This will presumably follow Black Swan, Aronofsky's upcoming ballet project with Natalie Portman.) Sounds more like Guy Ritchie territory, to be honest.

With the involvement of Natalie Portman making the studios happy, it now appears Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan is back in play as the director's next project. "Swan centers on a veteran ballerina (Portman) who finds herself locked in a competitive situation with a rival dancer, with the stakes and twists increasing as the dancers approach a big performance. But it's unclear whether the rival is a supernatural apparition or if the protagonist is simply having delusions." (As I noted here, Aronofsky's been researching with all the right ballerinas for this one, imho.)

Well, now that we're in the second month of 2009, and since I'm *mostly* caught up on last year's prestige crop, it seems arguably the last, best time to write up the belated Best of 2008 Movie list. (I did see one more indy film of 2008 Sunday morning, but as it was after my arbitrarily-chosen 1/31 cutoff, it'll go in next year's list.) Compiling the reviews this year, it seems my October hunch was correct: For a combination of reasons, I went to the movies a lot less than usual in 2008. (The review count usually clocks in around 45. Last year, I only saw 30 films on the big screen.) And, looking over the release schedule, I see lots of movies I had every intention of viewing -- Appaloosa, Be Kind, Rewind, Blindness, Choke, Leatherheads -- and never got around to.

At any rate, given what I did see, here're the best of 'em. And here's hoping the 2009 list will be more comprehensive. As always, all of the reviews can be found here. (And if a movie title doesn't link to a full review, it means I caught it on DVD.)

Top 20 Films of 2008

[2000/2001/2002/2003/2004/2005/2006/2007]

1. The Dark Knight: Yes, it's the obvious fanboy pick. And, admittedly, TDK had pacing problems -- it was herky-jerky at times and the third act felt rushed. Still, in a not-particularly-good year for cinema, Christopher Nolan's operatic reimagining of the Caped Crusader and his arch-nemesis was far and away the most enjoyable experience i had at the movies in 2008. And if Candidate Obama was America's own white knight (metaphorically speaking) this past year, Heath Ledger's Joker was its mischievous, amoral, and misanthropic id. If and when the economic wheels continue to come off in 2009, will stoic selflessness or gleeful anarchy be the order of the day? The battle for Gotham continues, and everybody's nervously eyeing those detonators. Let's hope the clown doesn't get the last laugh.


2. Milk: What with a former community organizer turned "hopemonger" being elected president -- while evangelicals, conservatives and sundry Mormons inflicted Proposition 8 on the people of California -- Gus Van Sant's vibrant recounting of the tragedy of Harvey Milk was obviously the timeliest political movie of 2008. But, in a year that saw entirely too much inert Oscar-bait on-screen in its final months, Milk -- romantic, passionate, and full of conviction -- was also one of the most alive. While it extends some measure of compassion even to its erstwhile villain (Josh Brolin), Milk is a civil-rights saga that harbors no illusions about the forces of intolerance still amongst us, and how far we all still have to go.


3. The Wrestler: Have you ever seen a one-trick pony in the fields so happy and free? Me neither, to be honest, but Aronofsky's naturalistic slice-of-life about the twilight days of Randy "the Ram" Ramzinski was likely the next best thing. I don't know if Mickey Rourke will experience a career resurrection after this performance or not. But he won this match fair and square, and nobody can take it from him.


4. Let the Right One In: As if living in public housing in the dead of a Swedish winter wasn't depressing enough, now there's a nosferatu to contend with... My Bodyguard by way of Ingmar Bergman and Stephen King, this creepy and unsettling tale of a very unsparkly pre-teen vampyrer will leave bitemarks long after you step out into the light.


5. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, & 2 Days: A 2007 release that made it stateside in 2008, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, & 2 Days is a movie that I probably wouldn't ever want to watch again. Still, this grim, unrelenting journey through the seedy hotels and sordid back-alleys of Ceaucescu's Romania is another hard one to shake off. And, tho' I caught it early on, it remained one of the very best films of the year.


6. WALL-E: If you saw one movie last year about a boy(bot) from the slums meeting -- and then improbably wooing -- the girl(bot) of his dreams, I really hope it was WALL-E. Hearkening back to quality seventies sci-fi like Silent Running, Andrew Stanton's robot love story and timely eco-parable is a definite winner, and certainly another jewel in the gem-studded Pixar crown. I just wish it'd stayed in the melancholy, bittersweet key of its first hour, rather than venturing off to the hijinx-filled, interstellar fat farm. Ah well, bring on Up.


7. Iron Man: Much better than I ever anticipated, Jon Favreau's (and Robert Downey Jr.'s) Iron Man kicked a summer of superheroes off in grand fashion. In the end, I preferred the gloomy stylings of Gotham in 2008, but there's definitely something to be said for this rousing, upbeat entrant in the comic movie canon. It delivered on its own terms, and it was a much better tech-fetishizing, boys-and-their-toys type-film than, say, 2007's Transformers or (I suspect) 2009's GI Joe. Bonus points for the Dude going all Big Jeff Lebowski on us here...now quit being cheap about the sequel.


8. Man on Wire: 4:40pm: Two foreign nationals and their American abettors successfully navigate past the guard checkpoint of the World Trade Center's South Tower. Their fanatical mission: To use the WTC as a symbol to transform the world...through an act of illegal, death-defying performance art. Although it never explicitly mentions 9/11 (of course, it doesn't need to -- the towers themselves do most of the work, and reconstructing its story as a heist does the rest), the stirring documentary Man on Wire, about Phillipe Petit's 1974 tightrope-walk between the towers, gains most of its resonance from the events of that dark day in 2001.

After seventy minutes or so, just as it seems this unspoken analogy is starting to wear thin, Petit finally steps out onto that ridiculous wire, and Man on Wire takes your breath away. Nothing is permanent, the movie suggests. Not youth, not life, not love, not even those majestic, formidable towers. But some moments -- yes, the beautiful ones too -- can never be forgotten. (Note: Man on Wire is currently available as a direct download on Netflix.)


9. U2 3D: One of two 2008 films (along with #16) which seemed to suggest the future of the movie-going experience, U2 3D was both a decently rousing concert performance by Dublin's fab four, and -- more importantly -- an experimental film which played with an entirely new cinema syntax. Just as students look back on D.W. Griffith films of a century ago as the beginnings of 2D-movie expression, so too might future generations look at this lowly U2 concert and see, in its layering of unrelated images onto one field of vision, when the language of 3D really began to take off. At which point someone might also say, "Man, I wish they'd played 'So Cruel' instead of some of these tired old dogs."


10. The Visitor: I wrote about Tom McCarthy's The Visitor (which I saw on DVD) some in my Gran Torino review, and my criticism there stands: As with Torino, the central thrust of this story is too Bagger Vance-ish by half. Still, it's fun to see a likable character actor like Richard Jenkins get his due in a starring role, and he's really great here. And, if the "magical immigrant" portions of this tale defy reality to some extent, McCarthy and Jenkins' vision of a life desiccated by years of wallowing in academic purgatory -- the humdrum lectures, the recycled syllabi, the mind-numbingly banal conferences, all divorced from any real-world interaction with the issues at hand -- is frighteningly plausible.


11. Synecdoche, New York: Long on ambition and short on narrative coherence, Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut is the There Will Be Blood of last year's crop, in that it's a film that I think will inspire a phalanx of ardent defenders among movie buffs, who will argue its virtues passionately against all comers. For my own part, I admired this often-bewildering movie more than I actually enjoyed it, and ultimately found it much less engaging than Kaufman's real magnum opus, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Still, I'm glad I made the attempt, and it's definitely worth seeing.


12. Frost/Nixon: Two man enter, one man leave! More a sports movie than a political one, Ron Howard and Peter Morgan's Frost/Nixon is a decently entertaining depiction of two hungry down-and-outers locked in the debater's version of mortal kombat. That being said, I kinda wish the stakes had seemed higher, or that the substance of the issues at hand -- Vietnam, Cambodia, Watergate -- had been as foregrounded as the mano-a-mano mechanics of the interview. Plus, that scene where Tricky Dick sweeps the leg? That's not kosher.


13. Snow Angels: David Gordon Green's quiet, novelistic Snow Angels is an early-2008 film I caught on DVD only a few weeks ago, and it's been slowly sneaking up the list ever since. Based on a 1994 book by Stewart O'Nan, the movie depicts the intertwined lives of a small New England community, and recounts the tragic circumstances that lead to two gunshots being fired therein one winter afternoon. (If it sounds like Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter, it's very close in form, content, and melancholy impact.)

In a movie brimming over with quality performances -- including (an ever-so-slightly-implausible) Kate Beckinsale, Nicky Katt, Amy Sedaris, and the long-forgotten Griffin Dunne -- three actors stand out: Michael Angarano and Olivia Thirlby fall into one of the most honest, believable, and affectation-free high school romances I've seen in a movie in ages. And the always-watchable Sam Rockwell sneaks up on you as a perennial loser who tries to be a good guy and just keeps failing at life despite himself. At first not much more than an amiable buffoon as per his usual m.o., Rockwell's gradual surrender to his demons -- note his scenes with his daughter, or in the truck with his dog, or at the bar -- gives Snow Angels a haunting resonance that sticks with you.


14. Burn After Reading: As I said in the original review, it's not one of the all-time Coen classics or anything. But even medium-grade Coen tends to offer more delights than most films do in a given year, and the same holds true of their espionage-and-paranoia farce Burn After Reading in 2008. From John Malkovich's foul-mouthed, (barely-)functioning alcoholic to George Clooney as a (thoroughly goofy) lactose-intolerant bondage enthusiast to, of course, Brad Pitt's poor, dim-witted Chet, Burn introduced plenty of ridiculous new characters to the brothers' already-stacked rogues' gallery. This is one (unlike The Ladykillers) that I'm looking forward to seeing again.


15. Vicky Cristina Barcelona: Another catch-up DVD rental, this was Woody Allen's good movie last year (as opposed to the woeful Cassandra's Dream), and a smarter-than-average relationship film (as one might expect from the man behind Husbands and Wives and Annie Hall.) There're some definitive Allen tics here that take some getting used to in the new environment of Barcelona -- a very Woody-ish omniscient voiceover, some Allenesque quips emanating from Scarlett Johannson and the striking Rebecca Hall (late of Frost/Nixon and The Prestige), and, as per Match Point and Scoop, some rather outdated depictions of the class system. (Hall's fiance, played by Chris Messina of Six Feet Under, is basically a caricature of the boring, born-entitled Ivy League grad, circa 1965.)

Still, if you can get past all that, Vicky Cristina is quite worthwhile. (And, as far as the Oscar buzz goes, I'd say Javier Bardem makes more of an impression here than does Penelope Cruz.) Whether you're as old as Woody or as young as Vicky and Cristina, the story remains the same: love is a weird, untameable thing, and the heart wants what it wants.


16. Speed Racer: Easily the most unfairly maligned movie of 2008 (and I'm not a Wachowski apologist -- I thought Matrix: Revolutions was atrocious), Speed Racer is an amped-up, hypercolorful extravaganza of the senses, and, this side of the original Matrix, one of the more interesting attempts I've seen at bringing anime to life. Critics derided it pretty much across the board as loud, gaudy nonsense, but, then as now, I'm not sure what they went in expecting from the film adaptation of a lousy sixties cartoon involving race cars and silly monkeys. This is where some readers might ask: "Um, are you really saying Speed Racer is a better movie than Revolutionary Road?" And I'm saying, yes, it's much more successful at what it aimed to accomplish, and probably more entertaining to boot. Sure, Racer is a kid's movie, but so was WALL-E. And, given most of the drek put before the youths today, it's a darned innovative one. Plus, I've seen a lot of filmed laments about quiet-desperation-in-the-suburbs in my day, but for better or worse, in my 34 years of existence, I had never seen anything quite like this.


17. Gran Torino: Alas, Speed Racer, it seems, grew old, got ornery, and began fetishizing his car in the garage instead. Good thing there're some kindly Hmong next door to pry open that rusty heart with a crowbar! Like The Visitor, Torino suffers from an excess of sentiment when it comes to its depiction of 21st-century immigrants and their salutary impact on old white folks. But, as a cautionary coda to a lifelong career glorifying vigilantism, Eastwood's Gran Torino has that rusty heart in the right place, at least. And while Eastwood's Walt Kowalski may be a mean old cuss, Eastwood's performance here suggests that the old man's got some tricks in him yet.


18. A Christmas Tale: I wrote about this movie very recently, so my thoughts on it haven't changed all that much. A bit pretentious at times, Arnaud Desplechin's anti-sentimental holiday film has its virtues, most notably Chiara Mastroianni eerily (and probably inadvertently) channeling her father and the elfin Mathieu Almaric wreaking havoc on his long-suffering family whenever possible. It's a Not-So-Wonderful Life, I guess, but -- however aggravating your relatives 'round christmastime -- it's still probably better than the alternative.


19. Tropic Thunder: Its pleasures were fleeting -- I can't remember very many funny lines at this point -- and even somewhat scattershot. (Tom Cruise as Harvey Weinstein by way of a gigantic member was funny for the first ten minutes. Less so after half an hour.) Still, give Tropic Thunder credit. Unlike all too many comedies in recent years, it didn't try to make us better people -- it just went for the laugh, and power to it. And when the most controversial aspect of your movie turns out not to be the white guy in blackface (or, as we all euphemistically tend to put it now, "the dude disguised as another dude"), but the obvious Forrest Gump/Rain Man spoof, I guess you've done something right.


20. W: Nowhere near as potent as Stone's early political forays, JFK and Nixon, W still came close to accomplishing the impossible in 2008: making the out-going president seem a sympathetic figure. I suppose several other films could've sat with distinction in this 20-spot -- In Bruges or Benjamin Button, perhaps -- but none of them would've afforded me the opportunity to write these lovely words once more: So long, Dubya.

Honorable Mention: It wasn't a movie, of course. But 2008 was also the year we bid farewell to The Wire. Be sure to raise a glass, or tip a 40, in respect. (And let's pray that -- this year, despite all that's come before -- a "New Day" really is dawning.)

Most Disappointing: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Worth a Rental: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, In Bruges, Revolutionary Road, Valkyrie

Don't Bother: Cassandra's Dream, Cloverfield, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Doubt, Hellboy II: The Golden Age, The Incredible Hulk, Quantum of Solace, Slumdog Millionaire, Wanted

Best Actor: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler, Sean Penn, Milk, Richard Jenkins, The Visitor
Best Actress: Anamaria Marinca, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, Lina Leandersson, Let the Right One In, Rebecca Hall, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight, Josh Brolin, Milk, Jeff Bridges, Iron Man, Sam Rockwell, Snow Angels
Best Supporting Actress: Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler, Tilda Swinton, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Unseen: Appaloosa, Australia, The Bank Job, Be Kind, Rewind, Blindness, Body of Lies, Cadillac Records, Changeling, Choke, The Class, Defiance, Eagle Eye, The Fall, Funny Games, Hancock, Happy Go Lucky, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo, Leatherheads, I Loved You So Long, The Lucky Ones, Miracle at St. Anna, Pineapple Express, Rambo, The Reader, Redbelt, RockNRolla, The Spirit, Traitor, Waltz with Bashir

A Good Year For:
• Billionaire Do-Gooders (The Dark Knight, Iron Man)
  
• Lonely Old White Guys (Gran Torino, The Visitor, The Wrestler)
  
• Magical Immigrants (Gran Torino, The Visitor)
  
• Rebecca Hall (Vicky Christina Barcelona, Frost/Nixon)
  
• Richard Jenkins (The Visitor, Burn after Reading)
  
• Robert Downey, Jr. (Iron Man, Tropic Thunder)
  
• Romance at the Junkyard (WALL-E, Slumdog Millionaire)
  
• Sam Rockwell (Choke, Frost/Nixon, Snow Angels)
  
• Teenage Vampirism (Let the Right One In, Twilight)
  
• Tosca (Quantum of Solace, Milk)
  

A Bad Year For:
• GOP Ex-Presidents (Frost/Nixon, W)
  
• Political Do-Gooders (The Dark Knight, Milk)
  
• Pulp Heroes (The Spirit)
  
• Vigilantism without Remorse (Gran Torino, The Dark Knight)
  
• Would-Be Assassins (Valkyrie, Wanted)
  

2009: Avatar, The Box, Bruno, Coraline, Duplicity, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Knowing, The Lovely Bones, New York, I Love You, Observe and Report, Push, Sherlock Holmes, The Soloist, State of Play, Star Trek, The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3, Terminator: Salvation, Up, Where the Wild Things Are, The Wolfman, Wolverine and, of course,



Hrm.

"I'm an old broken-down piece of meat and i deserve to be all alone. I just don’t want you to hate me." If that's your man, then tag him in: The final and best film of last Friday's four, Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler is a downbeat, moving, and resonant character study of a man past his moment. If Frost/Nixon was the "feisty underdog takes on the champ" Rocky movie of the day, The Wrestler captured the other half of that famous story -- the aging athlete shuffling around his "real" life, looking for any place he can make sense of himself outside the ring. (Warning: At least in the violence of its fight scenes, this is more Raging Bull than Rocky.)

Now, I have little-to-no interest in professional wrestling. (Ok, Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, and Rowdy Roddy aside, I did use to be cognizant of some of the second-tier characters and plotlines back in the day -- the Four Horsemen, Nature Boy Ric Flair, etc. etc. And I did attend a WWF match in Atlanta back in the summer of '95. But like about half of the crowd that night, I was there ironically.) Still, The Wrestler is a movie that works, I think, regardless of the immediate milieu involved. It could be a tale about anyone -- wrestlers, writers, athletes, actors (not unlike Mickey Rourke) -- who find themselves closer to an early death, or at best years of anonymity, loneliness, and toil, than they are to their halcyon days.

Speaking of the glory days, The Wrestler begins with an audio montage of Randy "the Ram" Robinson at his peak. This was, of course, the Eighties, when excess was in fashion, hair bands ruled the radio, and the Ram pummeled his nemesis, the Ayatollah (Ernest Mlller), in front of capacity crowds at Madison Square Garden. (Don't worry, they get along fine outside the ring. In fact -- are you sitting down? -- this movie actually suggests that pro wrestling is, well, fake. Of if not "fake" per se -- there's quite a bit of real pain involved -- then "predetermined.")

Cut to 2008. Axl Rose has given way to Kurt Cobain, who gave way to Justin Timberlake. And, after twenty years of drugs and horribly violent beatings, Randy (nee Robin Ramzinski) has been reduced to plying his trade in high school gyms and VFW halls. His body is breaking down, his injuries -- and bad habits and creditors and appetite for (self-)destruction -- are catching up with him, and he's been forced to work day shifts at a local supermarket to help pay the rent on his mobile home. And, even though his community of fellow wrestlers is far and away the friendliest bunch of jacked-up juicers you'll ever meet -- backstage, group hugs rather than 'roid rage are the order of the day -- there's isn't really any Adrian to soothe the days for Randy. Nor, unlike Gran Torino and The Visitor, are there any magical immigrants around the corner, soon to warm Randy's aged heart and remind him of the bright side of life. (Ok, there is a stripper-with-a-heart-of-gold, Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), but she's dealing with her own demons and tries to keep Randy at "customer's" length, even tho' she and he are kindred spirits of sorts -- she writhes, and Randy bleeds, for our entertainment.)

Amid these long days at the supermarket, violent nights in the ring, and the occasional forlorn and empty convention appearance, two events occur to shake Randy out of this complacency. One is a proposed twenty-year anniversary rematch against the Ayatollah, who's now selling cars in New Mexico but would game for a nostalgia bout. The other, more dire occurrence is a heart attack, which Randy suffers after a particularly brutal match (and I mean brutal.) The doctors say another tussle in the ring might well kill him, and so Randy tries to go straight, as it were (and to reconnect with his little girl (Evan Rachel Wood), for whom he was clearly an absentee father.) But Randy the Ram was never particularly good at playing the part of Robin Ramzinski, and things just tend to be more complicated and disappointing outside the ropes. Chairs, headbutts, and clotheslines Randy can handle, but life? Life tends to be painful through and through. And (unlike rolling around on broken glass and barbwire, it seems), life will cut you right to the bone.

The Wrestler was penned by a former editor-in-chief of The Onion, Robert Siegel, and at times an impish, mordant sense of humor peeks out the edges of the film. (See, for example, Randy's boss at the deli (Todd Barry), or the scenes involving old-school Nintendo and fireman's boots.) But, most of the time, the movie just ambles along amiably like its star -- It feels honest, humble, low-key, naturalistic...and a million miles away from Aronofsky's other, flashier films (Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain.) I wouldn't cry foul if The Wrestler manages to pin down Oscars for Rourke and/or Tomei, and it's too bad Aronofsky got locked out of Best Director contention this year -- dabbling in the 'rassling form has clearly been good for him. (I haven't seen The Reader, but, frankly, the Stephen Daldry nod looks as suspect to me as your average WWE match. By even favorable accounts, that flick is literally and figuratively Holocaust porn.) In any case, The Wrestler is well-worth catching, and one hopes it lends itself to the type of career renaissance for Rourke et al that the Ram so desperately desired.

The powers-that-be announce the nominees for the 81st Academy Awards, with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button garnering 13 nominations (it helps when your Oscar Bait is FX-heavy), Slumdog Millionaire grabbing ten, and Milk and The Dark Knight notching eight apiece. (That being said, TDK was frozen out of the main awards, Ledger's inevitable Supporting Actor bid notwithtanding.)

Also in the running for major stuff: The Reader (picture, actress, director), The Wrestler (actor, supporting actress), Doubt (actor, screenplay, actress, supporting actress), Frost/Nixon (director, actor, screenplay), and WALL-E (screenplay, animated film). And the happy semi-surprises: Richard Jenkins for The Visitor and Robert Downey, Jr. for Tropic Thunder.

I'll make my picks with the GitM 2008 list, which should be coming up within the next week or two. (The movies I've been waiting for -- Frost/Nixon, Revolutionary Road, and The Wrestler -- all open here tomorrow.) And, don't worry, 2009 isn't being slighted all that much: I highly doubt Paul Blart: Mall Cop was going to make the cut anyway.

"We really weren't expecting to be here in America at all at one time so it's just amazing to be standing here." As you probably know, the HFPA doled out the Golden Globes last night, with Kate Winslet, 30 Rock, and Slumdog Millionaire the big winners of the evening. (Heath Ledger also picked up a much-deserved posthumous award for The Dark Knight.)

The highlights of the evening: Best Actor winner for The Wrestler and comeback kid Mickey Rourke giving credit where it's due: ""It's been a very long road back for me...Sometimes when you're alone, all you got is your dog and they meant the world to me." (Amen, brother.) The out-of-left-field Tracey Morgan riff referenced in the post title. ("I am the face of post-racial America. Deal with it, Cate Blanchett!") And Ricky Gervais, pint in hand, riffing on Holocaust films -- "See, Kate? I told you!" -- and deftly skewering the whole process. "I can't believe I'm not nominated. What a waste of a campaign. Today is the last time I have sex with 200 middle-age journalists. It was horrible. Really. A lot of them didn't even speak English. Europeans with wispy beards. The men were worse."

As far as the GitM 2008 write-up goes, it'll be a few weeks yet, as I'm still waiting for Frost/Nixon, The Wrestler, and Revolutionary Road to open here. But, sorry, y'all -- I'm taking a pass on Slumdog Millionaire. I'm sure it's as wonderful and uplifting as everyone says, but that game show, for reasons I'm not going to go into here, conjures up very specific memories of one of my more painful break-ups, and I know enough about the film to know that at the moment, much like Sideways or Punch-Drunk Love, I'm just going to end up tremendously irritated by it.

Besides, when it comes to works of fantasy, I tend to prefer stories of elves, superheroes, vampires, and the like to tales of ordinary people-like-you-and-me achieving stupendous, wildly unlikely victories against the odds. Because, at least in the former case, you won't usually leave the theater thinking elves and vampires might actually exist, while tales of improbable good fortune, imho, tend to encourage misguided notions about the world. In other words, see enough movies about ridiculously lucky people (however tempered, as I hear it is in this case, by Mumbai back-alley nightmares) and your expectations about life will get all kinds of screwed up. I'm just not in the mood for it.

The nominees for the 2008 Golden Globes are announced, with David Fincher's Benjamin Button, John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, and Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon leading the pack with five nods each. I've been feeling way behind on my moviegoing all year, so I'm glad to see that all of the best drama nominees (Button, Revolutionary Road, Slumdog Millionaire, Frost/Nixon, The Reader), as well as some of the closer also-rans (Milk, Doubt, The Wrestler) are films that aren't out yet here. So, since i can't as yet speak knowledgably about any of the contenders, i'll hold off on my picks until closer to the big night.

Going into the awards stretch, my favorite film of the year is probably still The Dark Knight (with WALL-E running at 2nd), so I was also glad to see Heath Ledger get his due today. Would that he were around to see it.

If that's your man, then tag him in: Darren Aronofsky of Pi, Requiem for a Dream, and The Fountain takes his stab at the 'rasslin form in the new trailer for The Wrestler, with Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, and Evan Rachel Wood. Looks interesting enough, if a bit Sunday-afternoon-on-IFC-ish.

The place to be right now, other than Berlin? San Diego, where the 2008 Comic-Con is now under way. There are lots of pictures of the floor here and here -- Note the full-scale version of NIte-Owl's ship (Archimedes) from Zack Snyder's Watchmen.

One of the first stories down the pike: Strangely enough, the recent rumors are true: Darren Aronofsky is signed for a Robocop sequel. I'd buy that for a dollar...But, don't get Murphy out of cold storage just yet: Not many of Aronofsky's projects ever seem to get off the ground. (See also: Batman: Year One, Ronin, Lone Wolf and Cub, Watchmen, Black Swan.)

Meanwhile, Disney brought down the house the first day with a surprise, fully-formed teaser for TR2N, featuring none other than the Dude, in both 1983 and 2008 incarnations. Best of all, as I recently wished in my Iron Man review, they seem to have stuck with the "Col. Kurtz up the datastream" idea. That should be great fun. Everyday, I think I'm going to wake up back on the grid...

Update: Also from Comic-Con Day 1, the trailer for Wolverine airs (ho-hum), Coming Soon has a sit-down with new Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat, and Torchwood's Captain Jack is up for Captain America? I don't see that at all.

Update 2: The TR2N trailer is up in really poor Kramervision...and it still looks grand. (A slightly cleaned up version is here.)

Mickey Rourke signs on to play The Wrestler for Darren Aronofsky, set to begin shooting this January. (He replaces Nicholas Cage in the role.) And, more casting on the Star Trek reboot front: Bruce Greenwood is Capt. Christopher Pike, Winona Ryder is Spock's mother, Amanda Grayson, and House's Jennifer Morrison and P2's Rachel Nichols are in too, possibly as Yeoman Rand and/or Nurse Chapel. Well, ok then. Update: Another Trek addition: Clifton Collins Jr. of Capote will play Big Bad Eric Bana's #2.

Well, there are still a number of flicks I haven't yet seen -- David Lynch's Inland Empire, for example, which I hope to hit up this weekend. But as the Oscar nods were announced today, and as the few remaining forlorn Christmas trees are finally being picked up off the sidewalk, now seems the last appropriate time to crank out my much belated end-of-2006 film list (originally put off to give me time to make up for my New Zealand sojourn.) To be honest, I might've written this list a few weeks earlier, had it not happened that I ended up seeing the best film of 2005 in mid-January of last year, thus rendering the 2005 list almost immediately obsolescent. But, we'll get to that -- As it stands, 2006 was a decent year in movies (in fact a better year in film than it was in life, the midterms notwithstanding), with a crop of memorable genre flicks and a few surprisingly worthy comebacks. And, for what it's worth, I thought the best film released in 2006 was...

Top 20 Films of 2006
[2000/2001/2002/2003/2004/2005]

1. United 93: A movie I originally had no interest in seeing, Paul Greengrass's harrowing docudrama of the fourth flight on September 11 captured the visceral shock of that dark day without once veering into exploitation or sentimentality (the latter the curse of Oliver Stone's much inferior World Trade Center.) While 9/11 films of the future might offer more perspective on the origins and politics of those horrible hours, it's hard to imagine a more gripping or humane film emerging anytime soon about the day's immediate events. A tragic triumph, United 93 is an unforgettable piece of filmmaking.

[1.] The New World (2005): A movie which seemed to divide audiences strongly, Terence Malick's The New World was, to my mind, a masterpiece. I found it transporting in ways films seldom are these days, and Jamestown a much richer canvas for Malick's unique gifts than, say, Guadalcanal. As the director's best reimagining yet of the fall of Eden, The New World marvelously captured the stark beauty and sublime strangeness of two worlds -- be they empires, enemies, or lovers -- colliding, before any middle ground can be established. For its languid images of Virginia woodlands as much as moments like Wes Studi awestruck by the rigid dominion over nature inherent in English gardens, The New World goes down as a much-overlooked cinematic marvel, and (sorry, Syriana) the best film of 2005.

2. Letters from Iwo Jima: Having thought less of Flags of our Fathers and the woeful Million Dollar Baby than most people, I was almost completely thrown by the dismal grandeur and relentless gloom of Eastwood's work here. To some extent the Unforgiven of war movies, Iwo Jima is a bleakly rendered siege film that trafficks in few of the usual tropes of the genre. (Don't worry -- I suspect we'll get those in spades in two months in 300.) Instead of glorious Alamo-style platitudes, we're left only with the sight of young men -- all avowed enemies of America, no less -- swallowed up and crushed in the maelstrom of modern combat. From Ken Watanabe's commanding performance as a captain going down with the ship to Eastwood's melancholy score, Letters works to reveal one fundamental, haunting truth: Tyrants may be toppled, nations may be liberated, and Pvt. Ryans may be saved, but even "good wars" are ultimately Hell on earth for those expected to do the fighting.

3. Children of Men: In the weeks since I first saw this film, my irritation with the last fifteen minutes or so has diminished, and Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men has emerged for what it is -- one of the most resonant "near-future" dystopias to come down the pike in a very long while, perhaps since (the still significantly better) Brazil. Crammed with excellent performances by Clive Owen, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor and others, Children is perhaps a loosely-connected grab bag of contemporary anxieties and afflictions (terrorism, detainment camps, pharmaceutical ads, celebrity culture). But it's assuredly an effective one, with some of the most memorable and naturalistic combat footage seen in several years to boot. I just wished they'd called that ship something else...

4. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan: True, the frighteningly talented Sasha Baron Cohen spends a lot of time in this movie shooting fish in a barrel, and I wish he'd spent a little more time eviscerating subtler flaws in the American character than just knuckle-dragging racists and fratboy sexists. Still, the journeys of Borat Sagdiyev through the Bible Buckle and beyond made for far and away the funniest movie of the year. Verry nice.

5. The Prestige: I originally had this in Children of Men's spot, as there are few films I enjoyed as much this year as Christopher Nolan's sinister sleight-of hand. But, even after bouncing Children up for degree of difficulty, that should take nothing away from The Prestige, a seamlessly made genre film about the rivalries and perils of turn-of-the-century prestidigitation. (There seems to be a back-and-forth between fans of this film and The Illusionist, which I sorta saw on a plane in December. Without sound (which, obviously, is no way to see a movie), Illusionist seemed like an implausible love story set to a tempo of anguished Paul Giamatti reaction shots. In any case, I prefer my magic shows dark and with a twist.) Throw in extended cameos by David Bowie and Andy Serkis -- both of which help to mitigate the Johansson factor -- and The Prestige was the purest cinematic treat this year for the fanboy nation. Christian Bale in particular does top-notch work here, and I'm very much looking forward to he and Nolan's run-in with Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight.

6. The Fountain: Darren Aronofsky's elegiac ode to mortality and devotion was perhaps the most unfairly maligned movie of the year. (In a perfect world, roughly half of the extravagant praise going to Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth would have been lavished on this film.) Clearly a heartfelt and deeply personal labor of love, The Fountain -- admittedly clunky in his first half hour -- was a visually memorable tone poem that reminds us that all things -- perhaps especially the most beautiful -- are finite, so treasure them while you can.

7. The Queen: A movie I shied away from when it first came out, The Queen is a canny look at contemporary politics anchored by Helen Mirren's sterling performance as the fastidious, reserved, and ever-so-slightly downcast monarch in question. (Michael Sheen's Tony Blair is no slouch either.) In fact, The Queen is the type of movie I wish we saw more often: a small, tightly focused film about a very specific moment in recent history. Indeed, between this and United 93, 2006 proved to be a good year for smart and affecting depictions of the very recent past -- let's hope the trend continues through the rest of the oughts.

8. Inside Man: The needless Jodie Foster subplot notwithstanding, Spike Lee's Inside Man was a fun, expertly-made crime procedural, as good in its own way as the much more heavily-touted Departed. It was also, without wearing it on its sleeve, the film Crash should have been -- a savvy look at contemporary race relations that showed there are many more varied and interesting interactions between people of different ethnicities than simply "crashing" into each other. (But perhaps that's how y'all roll over in car-culture LA.) At any rate, Inside Man is a rousing New York-centric cops-and-robbers pic in the manner of Dog Day Afternoon or The Taking of the Pelham One Two Three, and it's definitely one of the more enjoyable movie experiences of the year.

9. Dave Chappelle's Block Party: Speaking of enjoyable New York-centric movie experiences, Dave Chappelle and Michel Gondry's block party last year felt like a breath of pure spring air after a long, cold, lonely winter -- time to kick off the sweaters and parkas and get to groovin' with your neighbors. With performances by some of the most innovative and inspired players in current hip-hop (Kanye, Mos Def, The Roots, The Fugees, Erykah Badu), and presided over by the impish, unsinkable Chappelle, Block Party was one of the best concert films in recent memory, and simply more fun than you can shake a stick at.

10. Casino Royale: Bond is back! Thanks to Daniel Craig's portrayal of 007 as a blunt, glitched-up human being rather than a Casanova Superspy, and a script that eschewed the UV laser pens and time-release exploding cufflinks of Bonds past for more hard-boiled and gritty fodder, Casino Royale felt straight from the pen of Ian Fleming, and newer and more exciting than any 007 movie in decades.

11. The Departed: A very good movie brimming over with quality acting (notably Damon and Di Caprio) and support work -- from Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin, Vera Farmiga, Ray Winstone, and others -- Scorsese's The Departed also felt a bit too derivative of its splendid source material, Infernal Affairs, to merit the top ten. And then there's the Jack problem: An egregiously over-the-top Nicholson chews so much scenery here that it's a wonder there's any of downtown Boston left standing. But, despite these flaws, The Departed is well worth seeing, and if it finally gets Scorsese his Best Director Oscar (despite Greengrass deserving it), it won't be too much of an outrage.

[11.] Toto The Hero (1991): Also sidelined out of this top twenty on account of its release date, Jaco Von Dormael's Toto the Hero -- Terry Gilliam's choice of screening for an IFC Movie Night early in October -- is definitely one for the Netflix queue, particularly if you're a fan of Gilliam's oeuvre. It's a bizarre coming-of-age/going-of-age tale that includes thoughts of envy, murder, incest, and despair, all the while remaining somehow whimsical and fantastical at its core. (And, trust me: As with Ary Borroso's "Brazil", you'll be left humming Charles Trenet's "Boum" to yourself long after the movie is over.)

12. Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story: I guess this is where I should be writing something brief and scintillating about Michael Winterbottom's metanarrative version of Laurence Sterne's famous novel, one which gives Steve Coogan -- and the less well-known Rob Brydon -- a superlative chance to work their unique brand of comedic mojo. But I'm growing distracted and Berk has that pleading "I-want-to-go-out, are-you-done-yet" look and Kevin's still only on Number 12 of a list that, for all intent and purposes, is three weeks late and will be read by all of eight people anyway. (But don't tell him that -- In fact, I shouldn't even talk about him behind his back.) So, perhaps we'll come back to this later...it's definitely a review worth writing (again), if I could just figure out how to start.

13. Miami Vice: Michael Mann's moody reimagining of the TV show that made him famous isn't necessarily his best work, but it was one of the more unique and absorbing movies of the summer, and one that lingers in the memory long after much of the year's fluffier and more traditional films have evaporated. Dr. Johnson (and Hunter Thompson) once wrote that "He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." I guess that's what Crockett and Tubbs are going for with the nightclubs and needle boats.

14. CSA: The Confederate States of America: I wish I were in the land of cotton...or have we been there all along? Kevin Wilmott's alternate history of a victorious Confederate America is a savvy and hilarious send-up of history documentaries and a sharp-witted, sharp-elbowed piece of satire with truths to tell about the shadow of slavery in our past. With any luck, CSA will rise again on the DVD circuit.

15. The Science of Sleep: Not as good or as universally applicable as his Eternal Sunshine (the best film of 2004), Michel Gondry's dreamlike, unabashedly romantic The Science of Sleep is still a worthy inquiry into matters of the (broken) heart. What is it about new love that is so intoxicating? And why do the significant others in our mind continue to haunt us so, even when they bear such little relation to the people they initially represented? Science doesn't answer these crucial questions (how can it?), but it does acutely diagnose the condition. When it comes to relationships, Sleep suggests, all we have to do -- sometimes all we can do, despite ourselves -- is dream.

16. Rocky Balboa: Rocky! Rocky! Rocky! I'm as surprised as anyone that Sly's sixth outing as Philadelphia's prized pugilist made the top twenty. But, as formulaic as it is, Rocky Balboa delivered the goods like a Ivan Drago right cross. Ultimately not quite as enjoyable as Bond's return to the service, Rocky Balboa still made for a commendable final round for the Italian Stallion. And, if nothing else, he went down fighting.

17. Pan's Labyrinth: A fantasy-horror flick occurring simultaneously within a Spanish Civil War film, Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth ultimately felt to me like less than the sum of its parts. But if the plaudits it's receiving help to mainstream other genre movies in critics' eyes in the future, I'm all for it. It's an ok movie, no doubt, but if you're looking for to see one quality supernatural-historical tale of twentieth-century Spain, rent del Toro's The Devil's Backbone instead.

18. Little Miss Sunshine: Another film which I think is being way overpraised, Little Miss Sunshine is still a moderately enjoyable evening at the movies. It felt overscripted and television-ish to me, and I wish it was as way over yonder in the minor key as it pretends to be, but Sunshine is nevertheless a cute little IFC-style family film, and one that does have a pretty funny payoff at the end.


19. The Last King of Scotland: I just wrote on this one yesterday, so my impressions haven't changed much. Still, Forrest Whitaker's jovial and fearsome Idi Amin, and an almost-equally-good performance by James McAvoy as the dissolute young Scot who unwittingly becomes his minion, makes The Last King of Scotland worth seeing, if you can bear its grisly third act.

20. Thank You for Smoking: It showed flashes of promise, and it was all there on paper, in the form of Chris Buckley's book. But Smoking, alas, never really lives up to its potential. What Smoking needed was the misanthropic jolt and sense of purpose of 2005's Lord of War, a much more successful muckraking satire, to my mind. But Smoking, like its protagonist, just wants to be liked, and never truly commits to its agenda. Still, pleasant enough, if you don't consider the opportunity cost.

Most Disappointing: All the King's Men, X3: The Last Stand -- Both, unfortunately, terrible.

Worth a Rental: A Scanner Darkly, Brick, Cache, Cars, Curse of the Golden Flower, Glory Road, The History Boys, Marie Antoinette, Match Point (2005), V for Vendetta, Why We Fight

Don't Bother: Bobby, Crash (2005), The Da Vinci Code, Flags of our Fathers, The Good German, The Good Shepherd, Mission: Impossible: III, Night Watch (2004), Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Men's Chest, Poseidon, Scoop, Superman Returns, The Wicker Man, World Trade Center

Best Actor: Clive Owen, Children of Men; Forrest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland; Ken Watanabe, Letters from Iwo Jima

Best Actress: Helen Mirren, The Queen; Q'Orianka Kilcher, The New World

Best Supporting Actor: Mark Wahlberg, The Departed; Michael Caine, Children of Men/The Prestige

Best Supporting Actress: Pam Farris, Children of Men; Vera Farmiga, The Departed; Maribel Verdu, Pan's Labyrinth

Unseen: Apocalypto, Babel, Blood Diamond, Catch a Fire, Clerks II, The Descent, The Devil Wears Prada, Dreamgirls, Fast Food Nation, Hollywoodland, An Inconvenient Truth, Infamous, Inland Empire, Jackass Number Two, Jet Li's Fearless, Lassie, Little Children, Notes from a Scandal, The Notorious Betty Page, A Prairie Home Companion, The Pursuit of Happyness, Running With Scissors, Sherrybaby, Shortbus, Stranger than Fiction, Tideland, Venus, Volver, Wordplay

2007: The list isn't looking all that great, to be honest. But, perhaps we'll find some gems in here...: 300, 3:10 To Yuma, Beowulf, Black Snake Moan, The Bourne Ultimatum, FF2, The Golden Age: Elizabeth II, The Golden Compass, Grindhouse, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Hot Fuzz, I Am Legend, Live Free or Die Hard, Ocean's Thirteen, PotC3, The Simpsons Movie, Smokin' Aces, Spiderman 3, Stardust, The Transformers, Zodiac.

Two former Watchmen directors receive their next assignments: United 93 and The Bourne Supremacy helmer Paul Greengrass will venture into Iraq's Green Zone in Imperial Life in the Emerald City, based on the book by WP bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran. And Requiem for a Dream's Darren Aronofsky announces his next project will be Black Swan. "John McLaughlin has begun writing the film that looks at the manipulative relationship between a veteran dancer and a rival." (You can now probably guess who got me into that premiere of The Fountain a few months back.)

Admirably ambitious and running the emotional gamut from syrupy to sublime, Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain is a resolutely uncommercial big-think sci-fi piece that I expect will strongly divide audiences. (My guess is, you'll either love the film or turn on it in the first half-hour.) I found it a bit broad at times, particularly in the early going, and I definitely had to make a conscious decision to run with it. That being said, I thought The Fountain ultimately pays considerable dividends as a stylish, imaginative, and melancholy celebration of the inexorable cycle of life, from birth to death ad infinitum. In its reach, The Fountain at times suggests 2001, and even if that reach probably exceeds its grasp by the end, it should still be applauded for so fearlessly tackling such heady themes, box office be damned. And if nothing else, The Fountain will not only make you contemplate the meaning of it all, but contains several haunting images, like scraps of a fever dream, that will resonate long after the movie's over. All in all, not bad for ten bucks.

Like Requiem for a Dream and especially Pi, The Fountain is more about mood than plot, per se. Nevertheless, we begin in the sixteenth century, with a scruffy conquistador (Hugh Jackman, having a banner year) paying respects to what appears to be his beloved (Rachel Weisz) before embarking on a suicide mission against a Mayan temple. Before we're fully acclimated to what's going on, we've leapt to the twenty-sixth century (No, no Twiki), where that conquistador is now a bald, tattooed, Tai Chi practicing monk, traveling across the cosmos with an ailing tree and suffering visions from an age long hence. After a few bewildering minutes here, we find ourselves in our present, where neuroscientist Tom Creo (Jackman) is struggling against time to develop a cure for his wife Izzy (Weisz), before she succumbs to a brain tumor. As The Fountain progresses and we switch back and forth through these three timelines, a picture slowly coalesces of a man-out-of-time (no, not him either), determined beyond all bounds of hope or reason to defeat death and defend his one, true love from its thrall.

In all honesty, The Fountain suffers from some clunky moments in the early going, particularly when Weisz is forced to deliver exposition regarding Mayan beliefs about the Tree of Life, Xibalba (the Mayan underworld), and the Orion Nebula. And some, such as former Slate writer David Edelstein, couldn't seem to get past the Clint Mansell score, which -- as in Pi and Requiem -- is hypnotic-bordering-on-intrusive. But, once you get past the somewhat unwieldy set-up, I found the movie's themes considerably more sophisticated and less banal than most reviewers are giving it credit for. The romance here is pushed front-and-center, sure, but I found The Fountain moving less as a simple love-conquers-all tale than as an eloquent Zen meditation on mortality. (As one character puts it in the film, "Death is the road to awe.") If matter is neither created nor destroyed, then, in a way, we are all immortal -- the elements that make us up were around since the Big Bang and will continue to be around, reconstituted in other forms, long after we're dead ("in the stars above, in the tall grass, and the ones we love," to paraphrase a poet when he contemplated a similar plight to Jackman's.) Indeed, in this fashion, each of us -- made up of a combination of matter that, however briefly, has achieved sentience -- is the universe trying to express itself. That is no small thing.

Moreover, in The Fountain (and akin to Jacob's Ladder), Jackman's character ultimately isn't fighting to save his love as much as fighting his fear and despair over loss, not only of Weisz but of himself, his own ego: in short, his fear of death. As Weisz's character says several times over, "I'm not afraid anymore....Finish it." Jackman's Creo is afraid, so he won't or can't. "Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure," writes Shunryu Suzuki in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. "But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transiency, we suffer." To my mind, this suffering, and the overcoming of it, lies at the heart of Aronofsky's The Fountain. I thought the richness of both its vision and its ideas helps it elide over a lot of the pacing and exposition problems in the early going. So, in sum, go see The Fountain: I'm not sure you'll like it -- it's very possible you'll love it -- but I'm willing to bet, either way, that it'll stick with you.

[One addendum/caveat/boast: As it happens, I saw The Fountain Monday night at a very private screening/cocktail affair. (How'd I get in? Long story...basically, Aronofsky and I have a mutual friend.) I've admitted earlier to being an inveterate celebrity hound, and in terms of celeb-spotting this was manna from Heaven. Of maybe 40-50 attendees, 10-15 were instantly recognizable folk: Not only Aronofsky, Jackman, Weisz, and Ellen Burstyn (also in the film), but a gaggle of other high-profile celebs: Bowie(!), Lou Reed, Mike Myers, Iman, Helena Christiansen, Ben Chaplin, Elizabeth Berkeley, etc. So, I'm almost positive I'd have liked and recommended The Fountain regardless, but I'm forced to admit (re: would like to brag) that I saw it under more-than-ideal circumstances. (Yes, I played it cool despite being famestruck, but I'd be lying if every so often in the first half-hour of the film I found myself thinking "Am I really sharing an armrest with Famke Janssen right now? How bizarre." Not very Zen of me, I know, but sometimes I'm just a material guy.)]

"They say whomever drinks from its sap will live forever..." The new trailer for Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain is now online...and it's a bit more spoilerish than the last one, but definitely worth checking out.

AICN publishes this impressive poster for The Fountain, Darren Aronofsky's long-awaited big-think sci-fi piece with Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz, Sean Gullette, and Ellen Burstyn.

For those wishing to drink soon from The Fountain, another creepy, pulsating screensaver (somewhat akin to the first one) has been added to the official site. The Darren Aronofsky film stars Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, as well as Aronofsky alums Ellen Burstyn (Requiem for a Dream) and Sean Gullette (Requiem, Pi).

Have Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain and Mel Gibson's Apocalypto started a trend? Antonio Banderas signs on to Conquistador, a biopic of Hernando Cortes.

Directors Darren Aronofsky and Paul Greengrass failed their Rorschach tests -- Still, Alan Moore's Watchmen may soon have a new helmer in Zach Snyder, who's currently finishing up Frank Miller's 300.

Big doings for fans of heady sci-fi: We've only seen the very creepy screensaver so far, but finally the powers-that-be have released this brief, mind-bending teaser for Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, starring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz (formerly Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett...this Fountain's been a long time coming. It was supposed to be a 2002 release.)