Could 'Happy-Go-Lucky' be one that surprises everyone?
Best Film
1. WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, U.S.) 237 points/35 mentions
Determined little whatsit saves Earth and rocks the vote. Shouldn't it be the other way around?
2. The Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-hsien, France) 163 points/26 mentions
Great Chinese filmmaker remakes a 50-year-old French kiddie classic. Paris has never seemed more gloriously strange—nor has puppeteer Juliette Binoche.
3. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, UK) 159 points/26 mentions
Insanely cheerful little earful teaches kindergarten kids (and the rest of us) how to work and play with others in normally dour British filmmaker's greatest crowd-pleaser.
4. Still Life (Jia Zhangke, China) 147 points/23 mentions
Part archaeological dig, part science fiction, this is a documentary with actors—and Jia's latest report on China burying its past and entering the future.
5. A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, France) 146 points/24 mentions
Dysfunctional French family clusters around matriarch Catherine Deneuve. She's gravely ill and in need of a compatible transplant— the real infusion is the film's superabundance of cinematic brio.
6. Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman, Israel) 140 points/22 mentions
War is treated (and "treated") twice removed in Folman's animated documentary of the nightmares, memories, and fantasies suffered by Israeli soldiers a quarter century after invading Lebanon.
7. Milk (Gus Van Sant, U.S.) 123 points/21 mentions
Van Sant goes straight . . . for the heartstrings, that is, in this wildly affirmative biopic of the San Francisco activist Harvey Milk, played with a controlled enthusiasm by Sean Penn.
8. Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, U.S.) 122 points/25 mentions
Boxcars, hobos, no money for gas—the Great Depression happening today: Stranded somewhere in Oregon, Michelle Williams is so lonesome she cannot cry.
9. Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, Sweden) 113 points/20 mentions
Bullied 12-year-old boy falls in puppy love with the androgynous 200-year-old child vampire next door, in this gritty, wintry, bloody adaptation of Sweden's equivalent of the Twilight novels.
10. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, U.S.) 106 points/18 mentions
First-time director wrestles with the convoluted script he wrote for himself—it's self-reflexive to the max and beyond, with Philip Seymour Hoffman as Kaufman's alter ego.
Best Actor
Sean Penn, Milk (86 votes):
Reining in his mannerisms, Hollywood's moodiest male star triumphantly vanished into the role of community organizer–political martyr Harvey Milk—and could well emerge brandishing an Oscar.
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler (74 votes):
Gotta be the comeback performance of the decade—aging bad boy as an aging, almost lovable, broken-down professional wrestler.
Benicio Del Toro, Che (25 votes):
A sometime showboat demonstrates his own brand of revolutionary discipline, playing the icon of icons as a dedicated professional.
Best Actress
Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky (83 votes): Erupting out of the Mike Leigh ensemble, Hawkins riffs an indelible character into existence—a London kindergarten teacher, at once grating and irresistible in her boundless good nature.
Michelle Williams, Wendy and Lucy (60 votes):
Williams performs a virtual solo as a young woman who loses everything when she loses her dog. No one this year held a close-up better.
Juliette Binoche, The Flight of the Red Balloon (55 votes):
Encouraged by director Hou Hsiao-hsien to invent her own character, Binoche broke new ground playing a professional puppeteer as eccentric as the movie in which she found herself.
Supporting Actor
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight (75 points):
A no-brainer. Even had the release of Christopher Nolan's Batman sequel not been preceded by Ledger's untimely death, his turn as the anarchic Joker in Louise Brooks eyeshadow would have immortalized him among a generation of moviegoers and aspirant Method actors.
Eddie Marsan, Happy-Go-Lucky (43 points):
As the dyspeptic yang to Sally Hawkins's ebullient yin, this pug-faced Mike Leigh regular proved a formidable test case for the limits of positive thinking and gave a bad name to driving instructors everywhere.
Josh Brolin, Milk (30 points):
After playing Dubya for Oliver Stone, Brolin stepped down the political hierarchy to render an even more chilling impersonation of San Francisco supervisor and avid Twinkie consumer Dan White.
Supporting Actress
Penélope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (42 points):
Woody Allen's sun-drenched Spanish ménage à quatre is chugging along pleasantly enough, and then Cruz enters the frame as Javier Bardem's homicidal ex—and sets the whole thing ablaze like a raging comic fireball.
Viola Davis, Doubt (35 points):
As the pragmatic mother of an allegedly molested boy at a Catholic high school, Davis has just one major scene, but it is the kind that stops an audience dead in its tracks and colors the absolutist logic of John Patrick Shanley's modern morality play with much-needed splotches of gray.
Rosemary DeWitt, Rachel Getting Married (30 points):
Although Anne Hathaway has commanded the lion's share of press, it's DeWitt's less showboating performance as the titular betrothed that provides a welcome oasis of calm at the center of Jonathan Demme's big, fat U.N. wedding party.
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