We're going to be up to our noses in year-end lists soon, and you can either run and hide or go into training. By asking five critics to each name a high point, a low point, and a "surprise" from the past year, the Guardian has neatly offered what amounts to a quick, anticipatory cracking of the knuckles before everyone heads over to the main track. It's nice to see some love for the beautiful Ian Curtis biopic Control and, for some of us, reassuring to see some doubts surface about the greatness of The Lives of Others, the German film that may just have been the first wildly overrated big release of the year. Other opinions that, whether you or I agree with them or not, seem to be on the faster track to becoming conventional wisdom: No Country for Old Men is the movie of the Coens' career, if not of the year, Wes Anderson needs a new act, Quentin Tarantino needs to refuel, and if you need someone to play a pained figure of American integrity of a certain age, you ought to ask Tommy Lee Jones first. Lovably perverse contrarian opinion of the year: Mel Gibson isn't just an anti-Semitic fruitcake, he's also a hell of a director! (Uh, if you say so. Under the right circumstances, I'd still pay to see him act.) — Phil Nugent