1. There Will Be Blood, directed and written by Paul Thomas Anderson
A triumph of personal filmmaking, epic scale division, and an excellent argument that anyone who nominates anyone whose initials aren't D.D.-L. for the title of greatest living movie actor is a fool.
2. Killer of Sheep, directed and written by Charles Burnett
A triumph of personal filmmaking, garage-inventor division, and worth the thirty years' wait.
3. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, directed by Julian Schnabel, written by Ronald Harwood, from the book by Jean-Dominique Bauby
Set almost entirely behind the eyes of a paralyzed stroke victim, it is in just about every way the most adventurous movie in recent memory, Schnabel’s visual imagination, which is kinetic yet lyrical and charged with feeling, has somehow enabled him to make a movie that is a celebration of the pleasures (and a lament for the lost possibilities) of a life cut short that never feels bathetic.
4. The Host, directed by Bong Joon-ho, written by Baek Chul-hyun and Bong Joon-ho
Big rubber monsters and real blood. In his previous film, the police procedural Memories of Murder, Bong demonstrated a special talent for treating genre conventions with satirical irony in a way that only heightened the story’s emotional impact. With its rude shocks, horse laughs, family of unlikely heroes and absolute lack of faith in the official protectors of society, his twist on the rampaging-mutant horror movie may be more fun than anything else seen this year.
5. Once, directed and written by John Carney
This small love story — Before Sunrise as a Dublin-set pop musical — is also the suspense film of the year: the first time you watch it, a part of you is on the edge of your seat, waiting for the inevitable wrong step that never comes. As perfect and buoyant as a soap bubble glistening in the sunlight.
6. Away from Her, directed and written by Sarah Polley, from a story by Alice Munro
As an actress, Polley has had the hint of something wise-beyond-her-time going on behind those heavy lids since before she was ten. Her directoral debut, about a marriage of some forty years’ duration that’s finally torn asunder by the wife’s struggle with Alzheimer’s, is an uncommonly mature romantic drama, and in many ways an uncommonly hard, clear-eyed one. Julie Christie’s mere presence as the unreadable, coquettish old woman lends the movie some star power, but Gordon Pinsent and Olympia Dukakis give risk-taking performances that keep the film raw and alive.
7. Ratatouille, directed by Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava, written by Brad Bird.
An exhilarating triumph of sheer craft from the director of The Iron Giant and The Incredibles, and a major return to form for Pixar after the sugared gas tank of Cars.
8. Control, directed by Anton Corbijn, written by Matt Greenhalgh and Deborah Curtis
An uncommonly solid, beautiful-looking rock-star biopic, with relative newcomer Sam Riley giving a bracingly unsentimental yet thoroughly winning performance as Ian Curtis of Joy Division. (In one of his few previous movie roles, Riley turned up briefly in 24 Hour Party People, playing Mark E. Smith of the Fall.) With its black and white cinematography (by Martin Ruhe and John Watson), its confident grasp of the period and its milieu, and its surprising bursts of humor, this is one of the rare films that threaten to give music video directors-turned-moviemakers a good name.
9. Knocked Up, directed and written by Judd Apatow
There are nits you could pick, but here’s what makes them all seem ridiculous: more quotable, genuinely funny lines and inspired, perfectly shaped jokes per square inch than in any movie since the last time somebody produced a script by — hell, I don’t know, John Guare, maybe? Alan Bennett? Ben Hecht!?
10. Year of the Dog, directed and written by Mike White
This is the first time that White has directed one of his own screenplays, and the results are confident and exciting enough in their strangeness to make one suspect that some of the earlier movies he wrote seemed shifty and half-baked because the directors weren’t as eager to turn convention on its head as White meant for them to. Molly Shannon is amazing as the frustrated, lonely spinster-in-the-making whose attempt to change her life is dotted with missteps and false starts but ends in triumph — triumph for her, at least, whether her friends (or the audience) can see it that way or not.