Honorable Mention:

• 16 Blocks - No one saw this, and it never got any awards buzz, but it was solid movie. It's always worth noting when an action movie manages not to make me wince during its running length.
• Apocalypto - Well-made spectacle, but ultimately lacking depth.
• Blood Diamond - Excellent, but predictable. The romance angle ruined this for me. What the hell was the point of that?
• Borat - A lot of it fell flat, a lot more of it would have fallen flat if people had known that it was scripted. But the extended naked fight sequence had me laughing so hard it hurt. That sort of physical comedy is rare these days, and it was perfectly done.
• Casino Royale - This one almost made the top fifteen. Very well made, and I loved the tone and style. Daniel Craig was great in it, and Eva Green might be the hottest actress that exists. See her in The Dreamers if you haven't.
• Clerks II - This one got no attention since Kevin Smith's last two films (Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back, and Jersey Girl) sucked so badly. But Clerks II was awesome. It was just like old Kevin Smith stuff, and I loved it.
• The Departed - This was good, but I got the impression that half of the movie had been edited out. I was left with a million unanswered questions, and they were questions that I thought needed answering. There were just too many holes for me. I am hoping that a Director's Cut will come out that spends an extra hour and a half assuring us that it did make sense, and didn't just rely on us not thinking about anything.
• Half Nelson - Ryan Gosling was great in this, and it was a good movie, but a bit small. It didn't try to do too much, but what it did it did very well.
• Inside Man - A lot of fun. I love me some Spike Lee.
• Lady In The Water - This movie got absolutely pooped on. It was about ten hundred times better than The Village and Signs. Its biggest problem was that it was obviously styled as a children's fairytale, but was intended for adults. It had a lot of really funny stuff, and came together very well in the end, though without any twists (yay, M. Night). I think it was very good, and I wish more people would've seen it.
• Lucky Number Slevin - Pure fun. Like Mr. And Mrs. Smith and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang were last year.
• Little Children - This was #16 on my top fifteen list. Great movie, good enough for my list, but it got pushed off. The different characters' stories varied a bit too much in tone.
• Notes On A Scandal - Really great. Would've been in my top twenty.
• The Painted Veil - This was very good, but suffered from needing to be long, but having a first half not dynamic enough for the length.
• Rocky Balboa - Great movie. The boxing stuff was meh, but all the dramatic character stuff in the first half was great. I don't even like most of the Rocky movies.
• Sherrybaby - Maggie Gyllenhaal's emaciated, saggy body is shown naked throughout. She looks much better with more meat. But the movie is very good.
• V For Vendetta - Awesome movie. I love the ending. I loved the actual comic book a lot more back when I read it, but this was a good adaptation. It would've been in my top twenty. In fact, if it hadn't been so long since I saw it, it might've made my top fifteen.
• Volver - Good film, but I'm always a bit turned off by the melodrama of Almodovar. It always seems a bit contrived, and does here, as well. But this is still great.
• Water - Very good, but a bit limited of a story for me.
• World Trade Center - No one saw this. I love Oliver Stone, and this movie was great. The soldier guy kinda added some hokeyness, but the movie was, on the whole, outstanding.

Top Movies Of 2006:

15. A Scanner Darkly

I love the hand-painted rotoscoping effect from this movie (the one they developed for Waking Life). This movie really would have been impossible in live action. It was really cool, really quirky stuff. It was the world's smallest sci-fi movie. It's definitely not for everyone, and I can't promise that you'll like it. But I did. Robert Downey, Jr. is awesome and weird in it, and the whole story is very interesting and wraps up well.

Richard Linklater is always interesting, even when it's boring as hell (Slacker). He's always trying new things and pushing boundaries, and I can't wait to see what else he does.

14. Babel

This was a great movie that I really loved, which surprised me. I saw Inarritu's previous two films (Amores Perros, 21 Grams) and didn't really like either of them at all. I always found his style irritating and incohesive. None of the connecting stories ever seemed to have thematic connections. It was always just a bunch of different stories. But Babel, for me, was perfectly cohesive. And none of the stories really suffered at the expense of the others. All of them were wonderful and dynamic, and could've had a whole movie just about them.

The story of the two Afghani kids was especially touching. It was such a simple, innocent mistake that lead to everything else in the film. The way things unfolded was great to watch. It's deserving of all its accolades.

13. Little Miss Sunshine

Everyone was awesome in this. Alan Arkin, the teenage brother, and Greg Kinnear, especially. The little girl, Abigail Breslin, got nominated for Supporting Actress, and that's cool. She was good. Any time a kid doesn't suck, it's a big event in Hollywood. But Alan Arkin, man, he was hilarious. The #2 Proust scholar thing was great.

But my favorite thing in this movie, which just killed me, was the horn getting stuck on. Just awesome. I laughed every time they turned the car on. The only part of the movie that I didn't like was the big finale when the whole family got up and sang the whole song. It was a bit hammy, and over the top. But the movie, on the whole, was great.

12. United 93

I thought I was going to hate this, but it was getting so much praise, that I decided to see it. Wow. It was so well done. The direction and editing on this movie are just spectacular. When it all comes to a climax for the passengers at the end, it is really stirring. Completely aside from one's feelings about the September 11 stuff, this movie is stirring and awesome. It managed not to play on the tragedy. I cannot stress enough how well-made this was. This was one of the toughest movies to make, ever, and it was just perfect.

11. Tideland

Raise your hand if you saw this movie? No one? That's what I thought. Terry Gilliam is amazing. He is, without a doubt, my favorite director. Many of my favorite films are his. Brazil, Twelve Monkeys, The Fisher King, Monty Python And The Holy Grail, The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. Unfortunately, his last movie was terrible. But he totally made up for The Brothers Grimm with this one.

Tideland is about a little girl whose mother overdoses. Her father takes her out to the prairie, where he overdoses as well. She's left alone, with her dolls, her fantasies, and the mentally handicapped guy who lives in the next farm over. It's all about how she copes and the ways her imagination makes up for her family's abandonment. It's also extremely weird and Gilliam-esque, which is always a good thing.

10. The Last King Of Scotland

Last King Of Scotland was quite an impressive movie. I went into it knowing nothing about the movie, nor about Idi Amin. From what I've read, it seems that most of the movie is fiction, but the depiction of the Amin regime is not. The story of this kid thrown into a gradually more and more insane situation works very well. The lead actors, the kid and Forest Whitaker, are both great in it. Gillian Anderson looked great, but was terribly underused. That said, her final moments in the film do really sort of seal everything up.

The whole thing is very exciting, and it really lulls you into thinking it's all just a fun romp. Before all the killing starts, anyway. And even then, the protagonist is so sheltered from it that his story is believable (if mostly made up).

9. Children Of Men

I went to see this with someone who hated it so much he walked out. Which is incomprehensible to me. This was awesome, action-packed, well-acted, well-scripted, dramatic stuff. It was cool, original, and everything in it just worked for me. Great ending, too. The scene in the building when the baby cries was great. And Michael Caine was awesome.

Unlike many of the things on this list, for which I cannot really expect most people to be as enthusiastic as me, this is one I can recommend to anyone. It's just a damn good movie. The person who walked out of it is not my friend.

8. A Prairie Home Companion

I'm extremely surprised at how little awards attention this has gotten. Not only is it a really great movie, with a huge and excellent cast (even Lohan is great in this), but it's also Robert Altman's last movie. I thought that his death this year would seal this movie's bids. Oh, well. It stands for me as a perfect ending to his career. He's had so many amazing films... M.A.S.H. (which, if you've never seen, is completely different from the television show, and much funnier), The Long Goodbye, Nashville, Short Cuts, The Player, McCabe & Mrs. Miller... He's one of the most outstanding directors of all time.

This movie was fun and touching, and laid back, and perfectly acted. Meryl Streep deserved a nomination for this. The Devil Wears Prada had nothing on this movie. The whole film noir guy thing that Kevin Kline did was awesome. Garrison Keillor, normally a voice actor, did a great job. John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson as the cowboys... this whole movie. Just plain great.

7. Perfume - The Story Of A Murderer

Another one no one saw. This movie wins my award for Art Direction, and is up there for Cinematography. This also has one of the most amazing endings I have ever seen. It's shocking but yet completely fitting. It's horrific and grotesque, and yet it's beautiful. The whole movie is like nothing I've ever seen before. There are few movies that seem totally new and like nothing one has ever seen. This is one of them. You've never seen anything like it. It's amazing.

6. The Proposition

This is one the grittiest movies I've ever seen. It's set in post-colonial, pre-civilized Australia. Everyone in it looks dirty as hell. It's been almost a year since I saw this, but everything about it is still very vivid. This has to be the best Western to come out in years.

Ray Winstone is great as the sherriff-type guy in the town, trying to keep order in a crazy wilderness. And Emily Watson is great as his wife, from whom he tries to keep all of the violence and horror. He tries to shelter her from it, but of course it eventually gets through to her in a very real way.

5. The Science Of Sleep

With how much people loved his movie, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, I'm surprised more people didn't see Michel Gondry's The Science Of Sleep. It's a wonderful film, and doesn't really suffer at all from the lack of a Charlie Kaufman script. It is dreamy and imaginative, and creates its own world, while insulating its main character from the world outside. The movie is about dreams and thoughts and sleep and love and all of that stuff. It is very funny, a bit sad, a bit confusing, and a lot of interesting.

It gets you rooting so much for the love to work out between the two main characters. Gael Garcia Bernal is perfect as the childish main character, and Charlotte Gainsbourg is a great foil, making her indulgence of his fantasies believable.

4. The Prestige

Awesome. Just plain great. I loved every minute of it. I was riveted. The ending was amazing. Every bit of it was amazing. Movies that take us to a different world are always fun, and this one, with its period drama, did as good a job as any. But what really made it such a fresh world was its unapologetic embrace of fantastic science. There is, presented in this movie, silly scientific inventions by David Bowie's character. They are the Moby Dicks of history's scientists: perpetual motion, superconduction from common material, teleportation, time machines... that sort of thing. And the invention in this film will turn some people off. But if that happened to you, it's only because you didn't allow yourself to buy into the world of the film. If one accepts the film's world, this is one of the most rewarding, exciting, and surprising films one will see.

3. The Fountain

Oh, how I love weird movies. This one was all about its themes. It jumped between a conquistador from 1500 A.D., a doctor from 2000 A.D., and an... entity... from 2500 A.D. In each time period, Hugh Jackman sought something that would save his beloved Rachel Weisz. The fountain of youth, a cure for cancer, and some star system.

And at the end of the movie, I'm not even sure whether or not he found any of them. I don't know whether the resolution was in his head, or whether he reached a point too sublime for something as petty as resolution. The movie is more open to interpretation than perhaps anything else this year, and ranks up there with the great weird movies of all time. Also, this movie had hands-down the best cinematography of anything this year. Nothing else even came close.

If you see this movie, you'll come out of it with your own theories. We may agree on some points, we may disagree. The ending, for me, is optimistic. For others, it's an extremely pessimistic ending. But ultimately, the final scenes make clear that whatever the resolution of particular quests, particular loves, and particular lives, love will remain. Throughout time, love will keep coming back, and the struggle will begin anew. And that's beautiful.

2. Pan's Labyrinth

Awesome fantasy that would work for anyone of any age (if you don't mind showing your kid some pretty gory violence). This one looks straight into the eye of fantasy. It doesn't try to skirt the issue. It goes straight to the fantastic, with fairies, and a little Princess, monsters, scary quests, and the ultimate prize. Rounding out the three amazing films from Mexican directors this year (Babel, Children Of Men, and this), Pan's Labyrinth really just has a lot of heart.

1. Brick

It's a standard detective film. Noir, as dark as noir gets. Only it's set in a high school. The dialogue is highly stylized. The characters are stylized. There are the archetypal characters. The unwitting detective, Phillip Marlowe in glasses and a mop top. The femme fatale. The kingpin. The heavy. The murder.

Joseph Gordon-Leavitt sets out to investigate the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend. The way it plays itself out is unique and amazing. The audience discovers the secrets as the film's detective discovers the secrets. It unveils itself slowly and skillfully. It's just dark and funny and fun and twisty. And I think it's probably one of the top ten film noirs ever. It's just a great movie. And this bit, when it came, just killed me. It has nothing to do with anything going on. In the aftermath of a bloody battle, crazy shit has gone down, people have died, and the sun is rising. And then, out of nowhere, one of the characters says to someone who generally opposes him:

The Pin: You read Tolkien?
Brendan Frye: What?
The Pin: You know, the Hobbit books?
Brendan Frye: Yeah.
The Pin: His descriptions of things are really good. He makes you wanna be there.

The dialogue in Brick is so sharp and original. You've never seen anything, or heard anything like it.