Critix Flix Pix for Oh-Six

A tremendous number of good films were released last year; unfortunately, American distributors have been ever increasingly saving their best titles - or, more accurately, what they perceive as their best titles - for December. The result is a glut of films: not only is it tough to see them all but it distorts one's sense of perspective. A movie that seemed like a standout in February might get lost in the shuffle after Thanksgiving.

But there was a lot of very good stuff from a very broad range of material. There was also, in general, too much stuff for such year's-end ratings to be meaningful.

According to my records, about 355 films were released in Los Angeles in 1985 (my first year as a critic); the exact same number (weirdly enough) in 1986. The 2005 stats showed roughly 485 titles; this past year's 530, give or take. In aesthetic terms, that's great; the more films being made, the likelier that great work will bubble up from the stew. In terms of proclaiming the "best" or a "top 10," it's clearly not so great. It gets harder and harder to be anything close to complete in one's viewing.

So, before attempting actual accounting, let me emphasize, even more than last year, a few disclaimers: I've seen a little under half of those 530, something around 250. While much of what I skipped were releases that nobody - including the filmmakers - would consider likely award/top 10 fodder, several are films that are showing up on other people's lists (for what that's worth); I'm not going to name them, so assume that your No. 1, if missing, was among those. Take no offense if it appears nowhere on my Top 10, Top 25, or even Top 250.

Disclaimer No. 2: As always, the list continues to be in constant flux. My final selection is only "final" in that it was the current version at the moment that my deadline froze this neverending exercise. Most years, I can manage to rank my 10 in some order: This is not one of those years, in large part because the 10 films below were, even more than usual, good in such hugely different ways. Most in my "bubbling under" list have appeared at least briefly at some point in the bottom half of the Top 10. All of these are films I either greatly enjoyed or admired - in most, but not all, cases, both.

For the sake of sneaking in more titles, I've segregated documentaries and animation into their own little ghettos at the end.

So, in alphabetical order ...

Army of Shadows. It's hard to know which is more depressing - that one of the best new releases of the year is nearly 40 years old, or that such a terrific film failed to get distributed in the U.S. back in 1969, when it was made. In either case, Jean-Pierre Melville's matter-of-fact tale of life in the French underground during World War II ranks with the best of the late director's better-known gangster/cop films. Put this in the category of "better late than never": Army of Shadows is profoundly suspenseful, profoundly disturbing, even profoundly profound. It addresses ethical issues that may be at their starkest in the horror of war but apply beyond that arena. As always, Melville is stylistically rigorous and controlled; within that, however, are surprising moments of visual beauty that provide a heightening contrast to the rest. He examines a patriotic commitment that is as strong as any religion, and manages to convey its personal cost without sentimentality or apology.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. There's always a spot on my list for whatever film made me laugh longest and loudest. This year, Borat holds that distinction by a safe margin. You all know whether you loved it, hated it, or were somewhere in between, so there's no need to say much more. But Sacha Baron Cohen's comic genius was already apparent in Da Ali G Show, Ali G Indahouse, Madagascar, and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby; this only confirms it.

Children of Men. Alfonso Cuarón's adaptation of P.D. James's novel - about a couple on the run in a near-future world where no children have been born in 20 years - is unremittingly kinetic and (thank goodness) only remittingly bleak. This is probably Clive Owen's best role since Croupier, and Cuarón's use of 10-plus-minute takes is incredibly effective, putting us in the scene more convincingly than would have been possible with more conventional editing.

The Departed. Remakes usually suck, and I'm still on the fence as to which I prefer: Martin Scorsese's new gangster flick or Infernal Affairs, the 2002 Hong Kong production on which it was based. Scorsese and screenwriter William Monahan follow the outline of the plot quite closely, adding a few characters and coincidences, some of which are improvements. They've also bloated the length from 100 minutes to two and a half hours, not such an improvement. If there is a central misstep, it's the way Leonardo DiCaprio turns Tony Leung Chiu-Wai's character from a stoic sufferer to a whiner. Still, it's a great thrill ride; Matt Damon is perfectly cast as an inexpressive sleazebag; and Jack Nicholson delightfully chews the scenery.

Inland Empire. I almost disqualified David Lynch's surreal three-hour, shot-on-video nightmare from list consideration, using the Kubrick Rule: i.e., there's no way to fully assess this guy's work until five or 10 years after release. But Laura Dern's descent into madness - or something like it - was clearly the most challenging and intriguing work of the year. It's conceivable that years from now I'll look back and see it as a massive con job, but I doubt it. f

Little Miss Sunshine. Directed by Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris from a script by Michael Arndt, this family comedy was the year's most pleasant surprise. At first, it provokes mild chuckles; but the laughs build as it progresses, as does our affection for the characters, so that, by the end, I was nearly in tears, partly from the emotional content, but mostly from the momentum of the humor. Toni Collette, Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Paul Dano, and Abigail Breslin all give finely tuned performances, but it's Alan Arkin who is the movie's emotional heart.

Pan's Labyrinth. There have been lots of movies about children's imaginary worlds (or are they imaginary?), but few have achieved anything as disturbing and involving as the latest from writer-director Guillermo del Toro (Cronos, Hellboy). It's a startling, idiosyncratic combination of children's fantasy and brutal political realism that switches effortlessly from early Fascist-era Spain to the fairytale world of a young girl's imagination, eventually - magically - integrating the two into one.

The Queen. Director Stephen Frears is on a roll, batting four out of five since the turn of the millennium: High Fidelity, Dirty Pretty Things, Mrs. Henderson Presents, and now The Queen constitute an amazingly consistent record of high-level work. It's easy to think of this as nothing more than a setting for Helen Mirren's performance - which is, in a competitive year, at the top of the heap - but the whole works on nearly every level.

Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles. Is there any film artist currently working who has excelled at a greater variety of styles than mainland Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou? Taking a break from the martial-arts epics he has spent the last few years making, Zhang returns to something close to the mode of his middle period. Veteran Japanese actor Ken Takakura gives a beautifully emotionally evocative performance as a taciturn man in his 70s trying to make amends with his dying son. The most deeply moving film of the year.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. Michael Winterbottom isn't always my cup of tea, but this semi-adaptation of Laurence Sterne's classic novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman was wonderfully entertaining, while capturing the spirit, if not the letter, of the original. Steve Coogan plays Shandy some of the time, but more frequently he's playing an insecure actor named Steve Coogan. The interplay of the film-within-the-film and the film-about-its-making is so tricky that, during the closing, you're not sure whether it's Coogan and pal Rob Brydon you see commenting on the final product or their like-named characters.

.........

The antics of the Bush administration continued to provoke an extraordinary number of excellent documentaries - if this revitalization of the form lasts past the next election, it may prove Bush's sole positive accomplishment - but my two favorites had only the most indirect connections to national politics. Amy Berg's Deliver Us from Evil was a chilling look at a vile pedophile priest and the even more vile church bureaucrats - including Cardinal Mahony - who repeatedly covered for him. Kirby Dick's This Film Is Not Yet Rated was a scathing look at the workings of the MPAA's ratings board, uncovered with the help of a colorful private investigator.

I also admired Darwin's Nightmare, Unknown White Male, Our Brand Is Crisis, An Inconvenient Truth, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, and Stolen.

There were more animated features than ever in 2006, most of them tired retreads. The two exceptions were George Miller's strange and engaging tap-dancing-penguin musical, Happy Feet; and Flushed Away, which was something of a retread, but at least not tired.

Bubbling right underneath my top 10 were a wide range of films: Notes on a Scandal made me cackle with pleasure. I didn't entirely understand two French films - Claire Denis's The Intruder and Emmanuel Carrere's La Moustache - but they kept me rapt. In Inside Man, Spike Lee showed he can do a top-drawer commercial thriller. Paul Greengrass managed to avoid all the huge potential pitfalls that could have sunk a project as tricky as United 93. Lady Vengeance, the final entry in Park Chan-Wook's vengeance trilogy, was only a trifle less worthy than Oldboy. District B13 may have otherwise been by the numbers, but it had the most thrilling action scenes of the year. Robert Altman bid an affecting farewell in A Prairie Home Companion.

Of the two looks at magicians and their tricks, I preferred The Prestige, but The Illusionist was also excellent. Michael Mann's Miami Vice was a vast improvement on his TV version, much as Casino Royale rebooted an even more iconic action franchise. From anyone but Pedro Almodóvar, Volver would have been a revelation; from him, it was merely the expected brilliance. The Argentine thriller The Aura deserved much more attention, as did the Quay Brothers' Lynchean Piano Tuner of Earthquakes. Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima was a powerful look at the "other side" of World War II. And three films about adolescents - Brick, Hard Candy, and Akeelah and the Bee - took us into three very different worlds.

There was a lot of competition for Worst Film of the Year, but I'll simply second the choice of my colleague Wade Major below.

Wade Major

1. Babel

2. United 93

3. The Queen

4. Riding Alone for Thousands

of Miles

5. The Lives of Others

6. L'Enfant (The Child)

7. Water

8. Children of Men

9. Curse of the Golden Flower

10. Miss Potter

Easily could have made the top 10 if you asked me again tomorrow (in no particular order): Little Miss Sunshine, Perfume, The Secret Life of Words, Little Children, The Painted Veil, Breaking and Entering, Notes on a Scandal, Sophie Scholl: The Last Days, Mountain Patrol (Kekexili), Fateless, Evil, and Volver.

Animation: Cars

Documentary: Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos

Burn the Negative: Battle in Heaven

Mark Keizer

1. Children of Men

2. Little Miss Sunshine

3. The Queen

4. United 93

5. The Road to Guantanamo

6. The Last King of Scotland

7. Dreamgirls

8. The Lives of Others

9. The Good Shepherd

10. Notes on a Scandal

My top seven are immutable. Numbers 8-10 are subject to change; the other films considered for those slots are Water, The Painted Veil, Volver, Little Children, The Departed, The Proposition, Deliver Us from Evil, Days of Glory, Iraq in Fragments, and Jesus Camp.