1) There Will Be Blood A bona fide, newfangled, old-school, take-no-prisoners, 100% all-American epic that mesmerizes and horrifies until the very ... last ... drop.
2) No Country for Old Men Some scenes may be too intense for those not already dead. Pray that the Coen brothers never decide to film The Road.
3) Persepolis "Punk is not ded," and neither are hope, courage, Catherine Deneuve, nor glorious 2-D animation, insh'allah.
4) Black Snake Moan Craig Brewer, the ATL's gift to heartrending, sex-bombing, subversively sultry cinematic swagger, continues to get all up in your shit. Samuel L. Jackson remains Godlike.
5) Before the Devil Knows You're Dead Eighty-three-year-old Sidney Lumet officially eradicates all memories of The Wiz in one fell swoop. That's one angry man.
6) Juno So it turns out teen pregnancy is funny after all. Go figure.
7) No End in Sight The best and the brightest do the worst and the dumbest. Again.
8) Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten Joe Strummer, the only punk that still matters.
9) Control Not worth killing yourself over, but brilliant nonetheless. WWJDD?
10) Grindhouse ("Death Proof") Initially infuriating, QT's elliptical, chick-habit horror show ended up impossible to dislodge from my head, like, say, a tire iron.
NEAR MISSES: Things We Lost in the Fire, Tears of the Black Tiger, Superbad, Waitress, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
MOST OVERRATED: The Darjeeling Limited, Ratatouille, The Savages
MOST UNDERRATED: Grindhouse ("Death Proof"), Things We Lost in the Fire, Gone Baby Gone
ACTING KUDOS (MALE): Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood), Kurt Russell (Grindhouse, "Death Proof"), Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men)
ACTING KUDOS (FEMALE): Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose), Adrienne Shelly (Waitress), Samantha Morton (Control)
BEST DIRECTOR: Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood), Joel and Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men), Craig Brewer (Black Snake Moan)
BEST SCREENPLAY (ORIGINAL): Black Snake Moan (Craig Brewer), Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Kelly Masterson), Juno (Diablo Cody)
BEST SCREENPLAY (ADAPTED): Control (Matt Greenhalgh), This Is England (Shane Meadows), Persepolis (Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi)
BEST REVIVAL: Killer of Sheep
WILD CARD: Best Reason to Blow Every Goddamn Nickel You've Got on a Kickass Home Theatre (or a '70 GTO): Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop, from Criterion.
