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Some of Summer 2009's new faces get their first Hollywood marching orders: Sharlton Copley of District 9 will play "Howling Mad" Murdock in Joe Carnahan's totally unnecessary movie version of The A-Team. He joins Liam Neeson (Hannibal), Bradley Cooper (Face), Quinton "Rampage" Jackson (B.A.) and Jessica Biel. And Inglourious Basterds's Christoph Waltz replaces Nicholas Cage as the Big Bad in Michel Gondry's The Green Hornet, joining Seth Rogen (Hornet), Jay Chou (Kato), Cameron Diaz, Edward James Olmos, David Harbour, and Tom Wilkinson.

Neither flick sounds all that memorable, but, after The Science of Sleep, Dave Chappelle's Block Party, and particularly Eternal Sunshine, Gondry still has a lifetime pass in this corner.

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.)

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.

"Most of the time, I'm halfway content. Most of the time, I know exactly where it all went." Maybe it's the impending holidays. Maybe it's dissertoral stress. Or maybe it's the weather, or something like that. Still, it was one of those weekends...So, in light of that, Bob Dylan's "Most of the Time" meets Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I never would have chosen this sort of hermit life for myself. But, given this is the hand I'm currently playing, at least there're great movies and great music on my side.

As seen in front of The Mist this evening, Jack Black and Mos Def (are forced to) star in lo-fi remakes of your favorite films in the new trailer for Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind, also starring Danny Glover, Mia Farrow, and Melonie Diaz. This looks more than a little ridiculous, but, after Science of Sleep, Dave Chappelle's Block Party, and especially Eternal Sunshine, I'll check out whatever Gondry is up to. (And Mos Def is always watchable...but where are the Swanky Modes?)

EW lists the top 25 sci-fi offerings (in tv and film) of the past twenty-five years. Pretty arbitrary, really, but it includes Brazil (at #6), BSG (at #2 -- these two should have switched places), Children of Men (#14), Eternal Sunshine (#17 -- same problem), Aliens (#9), The Thing (#10), The X-Files (#4), Galaxy Quest (#24), and Blade Runner (#3), so it's by no means a bad list. (Both Lost and Heroes should be replaced, however.) Just from what's missing above, you can probably guess #1...can't you, Mr. Anderson?

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd. Life imitates art as researchers hone in on drugs that will potentially erase traumatic memories. "'This is all very preliminary,' said Dr. Roger Pitman, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist. 'We're just getting started. There is some promising preliminary data but no conclusions.'"

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...

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.

Since he's been on a roll with the exquisite, heartfelt Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which I thought was far and away the best film of 2004) and the sunny afternoon jaunt Dave Chappelle's Block Party, which came out earlier this year (I thought less of 2001's Human Nature), I've been very much looking forward to Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep. (In fact, I'd say it, The Prestige, The Fountain, Pan's Labyrinth, and Children of Men were/are probably my most anticipated movies for the remainder of 2006.) Unfortunately, Sleep, which I caught yesterday morning as the first half of a double-feature, was a film I ended up admiring more than truly enjoying. At its best moments, it (like the much better Eternal Sunshine) is a hallucinatory rumination on love, memory, and obsession that's at turns whimsical and melancholic. But, like scraps of dream exposed to the morning light, these moments are evanescent and fleeting and, without the narrative thrust of Sunshine driving this movie, Science can feel episodic, hit-or-miss, and at times uncomfortably close to twee.

Like Walter Mitty or Sam Lowry, the shy, imaginative Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal) lives mostly in his dreams, where he's the host, star, and in-house band for the psychedelic sitcom/talkshow/mindmeld Stephane TV. In the Paris of the real world, unfortunately, Stephane's innate inventiveness is rotting away: He wiles the hours at a painfully mundane typesetting job he got through his mother (Miou-Miou), while fending off the bizarre quirks of his coworkers, most notably the middle-aged prankster Guy (Alain Chabat). But, Stephane's life takes a momentous turn when a piano falls on him during his morning commute, and he meets his striking new neighbor, Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg, daughter of Serge and actress Jane Birkin). After some confusion over whether Stephane prefers Stephanie or her cute friend Zoe (Emma de Caunes), Stephane determines it's the former in spades, and sets out to win her heart, mainly by appealing to their shared creativity. But, is Stephane's fanciful dreaming a boon or a burden when it comes to wooing Stephanie? As his real and dream lives begin to fold, splinter, overlap, and convolute, it becomes increasingly harder to tell where he stands with her, or, in fact, where he stands at all.

An occasionally captivating, occasionally baffling exercise in the key of dream-minor, The Science of Sleep gets points for thinking outside the box -- note the one-second time machine -- and for its unique DIY visual marvels: Plush animals come to life, water taps spew forth cellophane, cardboard cars ride to and fro. (Think of Gondry's Bjork videos.) And I thought its primary conceit -- that the significant other in your head, molded from impressions and fragmentary evidence, desires and wishful thinking, resentments and regrets, is so much more often the one you're grappling with rather than the actual person -- is a shrewd and able one, even if that case was also central to Eternal Sunshine. Finally, the film takes several strange and unexpected turns in its final act, which I appreciated for their attempt to complicate the story here. By the end, both Stephanie and particularly Stephane seem significantly less sympathetic characters, but, even amid all the bizarre dreaming, also in many ways more realistic ones.

Still, for all the creativity on display, The Science of Sleep feels slack at times, particularly as the lower-caste demons of Stephane's office perennially return to haunt him. For better or worse, it is dream logic rather than narrative logic which dictates what's going on throughout Gondry's film, which can lead to more than a little meandering throughout. In sum, I found The Science of Sleep an intriguing cinematic exercise and even at times a haunting "love" story, but it had definite pacing problems. I definitely recommend seeing it -- it's miles above your traditional rom-com -- but it's less one for the ages (a la Eternal Sunshine) than it is one feverish, uneasy night amid the Dreaming.

Gael Garcia Bernal spends both his waking and dreaming hours trying to court next-door neighbor Charlotte Gainsbourg in this spiffy trailer for The Science of Sleep, the new film from Michel Gondry, director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Dave Chappelle's Block Party.

True, a day as nice as today should really be spent outside. That being said, it's hard to come up with a better "first-day-of-spring" movie than the wickedly funny, rousingly optimistic hip-hop concert flick Dave Chappelle's Block Party, directed by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind's Michel Gondry. Chronicling a September 2004 shindig thrown in Bedstuy and featuring performances by Kanye West, Common, Mos Def & Talib Kweli, Dead Prez, Cody Chestnutt, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, The Roots (w/ oldschoolers Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap), and the reunited Fugees, Block Party bounces with cool, infectious verve and power-to-the-people, DIY exhilaration. In short, this movie just brings a smile to your face. (Yeah, ok, it definitely helps to have an appreciation for hip-hop, but as this movie points out, you may have one and not even know it.)

For those of you anxiously awaiting Season 3 of Chappelle's Show, be heartened: This is Chappelle's show. Be he ambling through his Ohio hometown doling out "Golden Tickets" to unsuspecting passers-by, tooling around Brooklyn hyping the event ("Attention, Huxtables!"), or MC'ing the Bedstuy proceedings with a deft, light-hearted touch (and a James Brown rimshot), Chappelle's wry irreverence and broad, encompassing good humor are contagious. Often, it seems, he can't believe his luck at becoming the jester-king of Brooklyn for a day, and he grounds and permeates the film with his antic enthusiasm and sardonic, puckish charm.

And then there are the performances. From Kanye West amping up "Jesus Walks" with the aid of the Central State University band, to Def & Kweli jamming over "Umi Says", to Dead Prez getting PE/KRS-1-righteous with "Turn Off Your Radio," to sirens Erykah Badu and Jill Scott dueling over The Roots' "You Got Me," to Lauryn Hill's sultry, heartfelt "Killing Me Softly," Block Party definitely delivers the goods in terms of the hip-hop. All the performances are infused with enough energy and momentum to get the whole theater audience jumping. (Slightly off-topic, when I was ten years old, I was pretty sure the coolest guy in the world was Han Solo. Now that I'm an older and wiser 31, I have to concede that, that GMC Denali ad notwithstanding, it may just be Mos Def. And, speaking of Def, his "straight-man" (a la Ed McMahon) sounds a lot like Ford Prefect.)

In the end, after all the jokes, beats, and rhymes, two hip-hop truths emerge from Dave Chappelle's Block Party: "Life is a funny, unpredictable thing," as Chappelle puts it at one point. And, as many others -- both rap superstars and ordinary people like you and me -- come to point out throughout the film, this world is what you make it, so do something good and have some fun out there, y'all.

So, all-in-all, I did pretty well in the Web Goddess Oscar Pool...I ended up going 10-for-12 in the major categories, missing Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture. (And I actually thought I had Adapted right, but forgot to switch my pick after moving Supporting Actor from Giamatti to Clooney....Ah well.)

As for Crash...I finally saw it last night and thought it was a well-meaning but ultimately rather middling flick. On one hand, I liked the central message of the film, which is that people always tend to be more complicated than you'd expect them to be. But, otherwise, Crash was filled with some of the most ridiculous speechifyin' I've ever seen in a movie. As y'all know, I'm generally a fan of politically-tinged message films. But, throughout Crash, the characters never miss a chance to start monologuing about the state of American race relations, usually in barely believable fashion (To take just one of many examples, does anyone under the age of 55 actually use the term "Chinaman"?) Ok, this movie has its liberal-humanist heart in the right place, and mighta been the most daring movie of 1991. But, by this point, I thought it felt relentlessly out-of-date with its stilted verbiage and can't-we-all-just-get-along grandstanding at every available opportunity. Which is not to say that racism isn't a serious problem, but, to be honest, I've seen more believable disquisitions into L.A.-style racial strife on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The Academy didn't embarrass itself this time: Crash is definitely a better movie than Paul Haggis' entry last year, the egregious Million Dollar Baby. (And I still can't believe the best film of 2004, Eternal Sunshine, wasn't even nominated.) But, to my mind, every one of the other nominees, as well as The New World and Syriana, were better films than Crash, which basically amounted, to my mind, to a glorified After School Special.