Never, in memory, has my list of favorite films for a year been so usurped by the critics’ choices. There was never a complete synchronicity, as each critic – and I’m talking here about The New York Times, Time Magazine, the Star Tribune, the Associated Press and (Minneapolis) City Pages – favored one or two films that I did not particularly like, namely There Will Be Blood, Ratatouille, Zodiac or even The Bourne Ultimatum. And of course every critic felt compelled to include one or two, usually Eastern European, films that didn’t open, at least not in Minneapolis or Santa Barbara, before January 31. But because my own list will seem so uncontroversial, so borrowed even, I have chosen to adopt the Oscar format and start with the lesser awards.

It has never been clear to me what qualifies a role as “supporting” rather than lead; therefore, I am not distinguishing. I will simply list my favorite performances by an actress and by an actor alphabetically, with the winner in boldface.

Best Actress

Cate Blanchett, I’m Not There

Kate Dickie, Red Road

Market Iglova, Once

Nicole Kidman, Margot at the Wedding

Keri Russell, Waitress

 

Best Actor

Casey Affleck, Gone Baby Gone

Josh Brolin, No Country for Old Men

Michael Cera, Juno/Superbad

Ethan Hawke, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson’s War

 

Best Documentary

No End in Sight

Sicko

 

Best Cinematography

No Country for Old Men

Atonement

 

Best Art Direction

Across the Universe

Sweeney Todd

There Will Be Blood

 

Best Original Screenplay

Juno

 

Best Picture

No Country for Old Men

The Lives of Others

Once

Juno

I’m Not There

Gone Baby Gone

Across the Universe

Superbad

Freedom Writers

2 Days in Paris

 

Honorable Mention: Diggers, Enchanted, Jindabyne, Paris Je T’Aime, Waitress

Biggest Disappointments: Assassination of Jesse James, Away from Her, Bourne Ultimatum, Darjeeling Limited, La Vie en Rose, There Will Be Blood

 

1. No Country for Old Men. For what it was, this was perfection, and what it was was quite something. Each scene was a stunning set piece, and built momentum to the next. Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin gave Oscar-worthy performances, and other minor characters – e.g., Woody Harrelson – were just as good. Tableau after tableau was worth framing. And, probably because it came from Cormac McCarthy, the story had a depth, plumbing beneath the Coen Brothers’ surface gloss. The movie started in the Old West, limitless spaces and sheriffs on horseback. It ended in Texan suburbia, cramped motorcourts and boys on bicycles. Who gets the money, the driving motif, became unimportant. What was important was left to each viewer to decipher.

 

2. The Lives of Others. A seriously engrossing film about East German Communism, but more about individual morality. Where do one’s personal responsibilities lie – to the state, a friend, your lover, to art, or to oneself? The set was so confined, this could have been performed on the stage, but the issues were so large they were inescapable, and unforgettable. One would like to hope that man’s humanity to man can trump state oppression and blind ambition, but here the movie does not quite convince.

 

3. Once. The year’s best romance and best musical. Once Market Iglova fixes you with her soulful Eastern European eyes it’s impossible to hope for anything but the long-term happiness of her and “the guy.” That this doesn’t happen only reinforces the feeling that you’re observing a slice of life, instead of just another movie. But what sets this apart from other guy-meets-girl stories is the music, so real and so integral to the story and, by the second time you hear the songs, so good.

 

4. I’m Not There. Taking a cue, perhaps, from Dylan’s autobiography, which is half made up, Todd Haynes invents a new biopic form, one that keeps you constantly on your toes – when they aren’t tapping along with some of the greatest music of our generation. There’s Joan Baez! There’s the Beatles! There’s the Jack of Hearts! Who?? Each Dylan avatar had a different sort of appeal, although Richard Gere left me rather cold. Charlotte Gainsbourg grounded the film in reality; Cate Blanchett, on the other hand, was surreal. When the credits rolled and we heard the man himself singing Like A Rolling Stone, I felt I had been present at an art happening, not just a movie. Thanks, Bob.

 

5. Juno. Best of the year’s “knocked-up” movies, and best of the “funny teen” movies, but both are insufficient praise for a pitch-perfect comedy in which every scene, and every song, was worth a laugh or a tug of the heart-strings. Juno MacDuff was probably not a totally realistic character, but neither was Huck Finn. Every supporting character added to the fabric, and the story built to a surprising and satisfying climax. For a little movie, it survived massive hype.

 

6. Gone Baby Gone. Like the great Mystic River in so many ways, mainly due to the common source of a Dennis Lehane novel and Ben Affleck’s affinity with his native Boston, Gone Baby Gone throws us into a world of real people then winds us around a plot too twisty to keep up with in one viewing. And like its predecessor, it abounds in moral ambiguity. At the end, you may think our hero made the right decision; or you may follow his girlfriend, Michelle Monaghan, who walks. This, not The Assassination of Jesse James, is Casey Affleck’s coming-out film, and Oscar-nominated Amy Ryan is so natural I didn’t even think of her as an actress.

 

7. Across the Universe. By placing the songs in a story you cared about, with the different characters supplying their own interpretations, Julie Taymor gave the music of the Beatles a depth and emotional context it never had, for me at least, on record. Moreover, the movie encapsulated the ceaselessly fascinating sociology of my favorite period, from Princeton in the early ‘60s through Greenwich Village in the early ‘70s. Jim Sturgess and Evan Rachel Wood were my favorite lovers (cf. Once), and if you didn’t love one song, wait a minute and another goodie was on the way.

 

8. Superbad. There are laugh-out-loud comedies, and then the rare laugh-on-the-floor ones, and this was the latter, fit to be shown in a festival with Animal House and Airplane. Every joke was high-school dirty, but the innocent, almost sweet, tone never varied. And we knew that all would work out in the end, which allowed us to totally relax and wait for the next smashing bit of puerile humor. I still smile at the vision of the cop solemnly addressing “McLovin,” a name now enshrined in our culture.

 

9. Freedom Writers. Maybe a drop-off here, to a film that garnered no awards or attention and was released in the dead of January, and had a story that’s been told many times on screen: a naïve, do-good young teacher thrown into an inner-city classroom of dead-enders who blossom into academic success. But I liked all the kids and their individual stories, and I loved Hilary Swank (more than her husband did, in a nicely realistic touch). I felt good coming out of this film, pun intended.

 

10. 2 Days in Paris. I’m a sucker for relationship films, and for cross-cultural studies, too, and that’s all this little film by, for and of Julie Delpy was. It’s fun to see the French mocked, and when it’s done by the French, it’s okay to laugh. Of course, Americans were treated the same; so I was chuckling, or at least twittering, the whole way through. Better than Ira & Abby, the other “Woody Allen” movie I saw this year, or Paris Je T’Aime, the other ode to Paris.