2007: Top 10 films

"1. I'm Not There" First there was the idea: Depict the life and career of Bob Dylan not through one actor but by a multitude, each one capturing a facet of the musician's chameleonic personae. But this ambitious exploration of Dylan's character, his music and his times wouldn't have worked without actors willing to join writer-director Todd Haynes out on that limb. Haynes got some great performances - notably Christian Bale as the earnest folkie, Heath Ledger as the jaded celebrity, Richard Gere as the activist in winter, and best of all Cate Blanchett as the non-sequitur-dropping post-electric hipster - to match his brilliantly kaleidoscopic mixture of biography, fantasy and history.

"2. No Country For Old Men" Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen - When even the uncrumpling of a candy wrapper can send shivers down your spine, you know you're dealing with masters of suspense. The Coen brothers, adapting Cormac McCarthy's novel of a cold-eyed killer (Javier Bardem) pursuing a man (Josh Brolin) with stolen drug money and a step ahead of a world-weary sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones), reached back to their glory days of "Blood Simple" and "Fargo" for an unforgettable look at implacable evil.

.3 "Once" Directed by John Carney - It's so simple: Boy meets girl, boy fixes girl's
vacuum cleaner, boy sings plaintive duet while girl plays piano, boy and girl go to a recording studio to lay down some tracks. But the songs Irish rocker Glen Hansard and Czech musician Marketa Irglova wrote for themselves to sing bear the emotional weight of this soulful romance.

4. "Juno" Directed by Jason Reitman - A teen girl gets pregnant, but what follows isn't an after-school special but a sharply funny story about making choices and making the best of a bad situation. This delightful teen movie highlights a stellar debut by screenwriter Diablo Cody, whose dialogue is as smart as Tarantino's but twice as sweet, and a star-making performance by Ellen Page as the punky preggo with whom you can't help falling in love.

5. "Michael Clayton" Directed by Tony Gilroy - George Clooney has played the redeemable cad before (three times as Danny Ocean), but never have the stakes been so high. As the title character, a law-firm "fixer" who has a sudden attack of conscious in the middle of a billion-dollar pollution case, Clooney makes his roguish charm and its underlying menace work for him beautifully. Writer and first-time director Tony Gilroy, channeling the riveting pace of his "Bourne" screenplays, also benefits from a strong supporting cast that includes Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson and Sydney Pollack, all at the top of their respective games.

6. "Offside" Directed by Jafar Panahi - All they wanted to do was root for their national soccer team. But they are women and this is Iran, where the sexes are segregated and women run the risk of arrest or worse if they try to enter the stadium. Director Jafar Panahi spins this scenario out into a gentle but pointed satire about the divisions of gender and class in Iran - and how sports can be the great leveler.

7. "Knocked Up" Directed by Judd Apatow - Another unexpected pregnancy, another unexpectedly moving comedy. This time the focus is on a jobless slacker (Seth Rogen) who has to grow up fast when his one-night-stand with a beautiful TV producer (Katherine Heigl) leads to her being pregnant - and them becoming an unlikely couple. Writer-director Judd Apatow borrows heavily from his own life as a clueless husband and father (that's Apatow's wife, the hilarious Leslie Mann, as Heigl's married-with-kids sister) for a profanely funny and emotionally authentic movie.

8. "The Host" Directed by Bong Joon-ho - When the giant monster emerges from the Han River, attacking the Seoul lunch crowd and dragging a schoolgirl to the murky depths, you gasp. When the girl's family bickers about how to save her, you laugh. When the girl's father sacrifices all to save her, you cry. All the emotions are in play in this superior monster movie from Korea.

9. "Jindabyne" Directed by Ray Lawrence - Stewart Kane (Gabriel Byrne) is a garage mechanic who goes fishing with his buddies, and they find the body of a naked Aboriginal floating in the water. What happens next in this heart-wrenching drama, movingly adapted from a Raymond Carver short story, is a fateful decision that brings out guilt in Stewart, disgust from his wife (Laura Linney) and recriminations from the community.

10. "Into the Wild" Directed by Sean Penn - Was Chris McCandless, who chucked his upper-class life to tramp around the country and ultimately die in the Alaskan wilderness, a Thoreau-fueled idealist or a dumb kid who got in over his head? The glory of Sean Penn's adaptation of Jon Krakauer's nonfiction book is that this question is left for us to decide. Along the way, we are treated to breathtaking scenery and Emile Hirsch's stunning performance as the adventure-seeking McCandless.

-Sean P. Means