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JOHN HARKNESSs Top 10 Movies

Rating: NNNNN

This was a surprisingly good year, perhaps short on great films but very strong on good ones. My short list ran to about 30 films, when I usually have trouble getting to 25.

1 RATATOUILLE Brad Bird

More pure movie fun than any other movie this year. Few directors have Birds ability to manage emotional narrative, visual dazzle and comedy this is on the same exalted level as his films The Iron Giant and The Incredibles.

2 INLAND EMPIRE David Lynch

Movie fun of a decidedly darker bent than Ratatouille. If Lynchs Mulholland Drive had spent the last six years living in a dumpster smoking crack, it would be Inland Empire. I cant explain why thats a compliment, but it is.

3 ZODIAC David Fincher

This serial-killer-movie-to-end-all-serial-killer-movies is the exhaustively detailed study of the lives of three men, all based on real people, who pursued San Franciscos Zodiac killer across three decades. Theres one interesting thesis to be written about the moral universe of Finchers films, and another about this films ravishing long-take style.

4 TERRORS ADVOCATE Barbet Schroeder

Sure, its a talking-heads documentary, but the principal head is the octogenarian French lawyer whose client list included AFLN and PLO terrorists, Carlos the Jackal and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. Its the fascinating story of a man who seems wired into the apparatus of modern terror yet never gets his hands dirty.

5 EASTERN PROMISES David Cronenberg

It starts conventionally, but for the last 40 minutes, as Cronenberg tightens the screws in this elegant, vicious thriller, youre occupying no more than 10 per cent of your seat. Viggo Mortensen gives the most enigmatically unreadable performance of his career.

6 BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOURE DEAD, Sidney Lumet

The octogenarian Lumet gives us Reservoir Dogs as family tragedy. Philip Seymour Hoffman could win an Oscar for any of his three films this year. Id give it to him for this one for his performance as a guy who thinks hes Machiavelli but is just another schmuck with daddy issues. And while were at it, give Marisa Tomei a nomination for her work as his wife.

7 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, AND 2 DAYS Cristian Mungiu

The Palme dOr winner at Cannes, this Romanian film is about ordinary people who make bad choices that lead to horrible choices, filmed under bad fluorescent lights. It makes you feel like youre actually living under Communism.

8 CHARLIE WILSONS WAR Mike Nichols

Nicholss film proves that what this years crop of Iraq movies needed was some character comedy. Aaron Sorkins script takes Tom Hanks through the Soviet war in Afghanistan as a fun-loving Congressman who helps the CIA funnel arms to the mujahedeen. Hanks and Julia Roberts as a rich, right-wing Texan give big movie-star performances, and Philip Seymour Hoffman does a brilliant, blowsy character turn as a CIA guy whos not above bugging his own boss.

9 NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN Joel and Ethan Coen

Already the winner of the New York Film Critics Circle and National Board of Review prizes as best film of the year, No Country is stunningly directed and acted, but I cant get around the too-literary device of putting the narrative climax offscreen. Theres such a thing as being too faithful to the book.

10 IM NOT THERE Todd Haynes

A dazzling puzzle picture about Bob Dylan, with six different Dylans, none of them named Bob Dylan. The anchor is the improbably androgynous Cate Blanchett as Subterranean Homesick Dylan, with props to Christian Bale as finger-pointing Dylan. Id rate it higher if Haynes had taken Harvey Weinsteins advice and cut the Richard Gere section way back.

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HONOURABLE MENTIONS

(in order)

Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy), Superbad (Greg Mottola), Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog), Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright), Control (Anton Corbijn), Oceans 13 (Steven Soderbergh), Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck), Days Of Glory (Rachid Bouchareb), The Bourne Ultimatum (Paul Greengrass)

MOST VALUABLE PLAYER

After 20 years of kicking around in television and forgettable pictures, Josh Brolin graduates from not being a household name in his own household (Dad is James Brolin, so Barbra Streisands his stepmother, and hes married to Diane Lane) to possible Oscar winner and star of a couple of the most highly regarded pictures of the year: No Country For Old Men a funny scary turn as the Doctor in the good part of Grindhouse Planet Terror a malignant and corrupt narc in American Gangster and the decent but overwhelmed sheriff in The Valley Of Elah.

BEST ACTORS, lead

George Clooney, Michael Clayton, Oceans 13

Laura Dern, Inland Empire

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Before The Devil Knows Youre Dead, The Savages, Charlie Wilsons War

Angelina Jolie, A Mighty Heart Anamaria Marinca, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days

Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises

BEST ACTORS, supporting

Casey Affleck, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Oceans 13, Gone Baby Gone

Javier Bardem, No Country For Old Men

Russell Crowe, 3:10 To Yuma, American GangsterCate Blanchett, Im Not There, Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone, Before The Devil Knows Youre Dead

Marisa Tomei, Before The Devil Knows Youre Dead

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