1. No Country for Old Men : This is, by far my favorite movie of the year without a question. Some people hate the ending. Those people are wrong. The ending is what separates this movie from the countless action movies with similar premises. I had nightmares about Javiar Bardem's character the night after I saw this. It's a brutal movie full of despair. It rules.
2. Once : Talk about a completely different movie from No Country. James Griffin would hate this movie. Technically it's a musical, but not in the way you're thinking. This is just a really sweet, little movie. Everything you've read about it is true. It's simple and charming and a great take on romantic movies and musicals.
3. Zodiac : I thought David Fincher ruled when I was in high school. Fight Club was my favorite movie. Now I'm 25 and that is not the case. Fight Club is a movie made for high school-age boys with too much testosterone and a simplistic view of consumerism. The fans who misunderstood this movie made me hate it.
Anyways, Zodiac is great. It's a detailed account of a group of men who become obsessed with cracking the case of the Zodiac Killer. It's not a horror movie, it's a procedural. It's slow, well thought out, and interesting film about obsessive personalities and unsolvable mysteries.
4. Control : The bio-pic of Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division. This is a classy little film. It's a beautifully shot, warts-and-all portrait of a confused, mentally-ill, young man (he was 23!) who got married too young and had a mistress. He also happened to be the singer of a great band.
5. Rescue Dawn : Werner Herzog's most accessible movie. Here he retells the story from his documentary "Little Dieter Needs to Fly" using actors and structuring it like a standard movie. Christian Bale, Steve Zahn, and Jeremy Davies do an amazing job.
6. Superbad : I was torn between this and "Knocked Up". Here's my rationale: "Knocked Up" is the more well-made movie but I liked "Superbad" better. It's uneven. The cops were a little too over the top, but this movie is hilarious, plain and simple.
7. The Savages : This movie couldn't have been made without the involvement of Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman. They do an incredible job as two mid-level playwright siblings dealing with their estranged father's losing battle with dementia and ultimately death. It's pretty funny too.
8. Juno : You know about this movie. I don't need to tell you about it. I hated the first 15 minutes of it. I thought it was Napoleon Dynamite rip off. I couldn't stand it's "hip" dialogue, but then something happened: the characters became 3-dimensional. Yes, the dialogue is a little too precious for it's own good, but all the actors do such a good job and the script always goes in directions you don't expect to go and deals with the issues realistically and satisfactorily.
9. Hot Fuzz : These dudes rule. This movie is hilarious. I don't know what else to say. I like cop movies, I like comedies, I like satires. There you go.
10. Chasing Ghosts : You probably haven't had the opportunity to see this documentary because it hasn't been picked up for distribution because it deals with the same group of people that "King of Kong" deals with. It's about a group of video-game nerds who dominated the arcades in the 80's, achieved astronomical high scores, became sorta celebrities and then disappeared into obscurity along with the demise of the arcade scene. I haven't seen "King of Kong" so I can't really compare the to, but like "Zodiac" this is really a movie about obsessive personalities. These guys are great characters who are obsessed with learning as much as possible about whatever subject happens to interest them. They struggle with finding girlfriends, real jobs, maintaining friendships, and they are all similar in their meticulousness. It's a great character study full of awesome video game stuff.
Other movies that I liked but didn't make the list because they were either uneven, a little too long, or just didn't fit are: I'm Not There, There Will Be Blood, 3:10 to Yuma, Eastern Promises.
Later gators.
