10. Dear Zachary: When director Kurt Kuenne set out to make a documentary about the murder of his friend by an ex-girlfriend, he never could have imagined the turn of events. Kuenne wisely arranges the unfolding of the real life narrative chronologically, revisiting visuals or quotes that take on an extra level of urgency. It’s an angry film but one with a beautiful heart.
9. Slumdog Millionaire: This year’s biggest surprise hit is so much more than its hype or its detractors would have you believe. Director Danny Boyle takes his uniquely energized visual flare and finds his perfect match in this fusion of Bollywood staging and Dickensian storytelling.
8. Frozen River: Courtney Hunt’s directorial debut and winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival last year, Frozen River is a smartly written thriller- cum-family drama that explores the effect of this country’s economic crisis on a beaten down single mother. Fearless actress Melissa Leo’s character gets involved in smuggling immigrants across the Canadian border into the U.S. in order to support her struggling family.
7. Stuck: B-movie auteur Stuart Gordon takes the morbid true case of a woman who hit a man with her car and left him to die lodged in her windshield overnight, filling the story with a darkly comedic touch. It all leads to a satisfyingly fiery show down that values justice over documentation of the facts.
6. Snow Angels: Director David Gordon Green once again peers into the psyche of small town, middle America and finds the human drama both festering and blooming within. A strong cast including a never better Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell, fill the film with equal parts sweetness, tragedy and human truth.
5. Ballast: Another Sundance success story last year, director Lance Hammer’s debut effort is a visually arresting, grungy look at the lives of three people thrown together by tragic circumstances. Rather than follow a straightforward narrative, the film settles into a gentle observation of how these people grow and begin to make a life for themselves. It takes skill to find beauty in the wreckage of a community, and Hammer certainly has the skill to do it.
4. In Bruges: Playwright Martin McDonagh steps behind the camera to direct this, his first feature film. The script, also written by McDonagh, is a richly textured and witty story of two hit men sent abroad after a job gone wrong. It is refreshingly dark and ambiguous for a film working within a genre usually taken in by smugness and extra doses of irony.
3. WALL-E: This film proves once and for all that, when it comes the world of animation, nobody does it better than Pixar. One-part silent slapstick comedy, one-part dystopian fable, WALL-E is the most purely entertaining film of the year. Director Andrew Stanton’s eye for visuals is a marvel to behold.
2. The Wrestler: Director Darren Aronofsky came out of hiding and crafted a tragic and gritty film about the heartbreak of faded hope, the comfort of dual identity and the fight for one last shot. Mickey Rourke fills the screen with humanity and heart as Randy, a wrestler whose glory days are far behind him, in a stripped down, honest performance that practically bleeds off the screen.
1. Reprise: Criminally under seen when it opened in the U.S., this Norwegian film is a mediation on the power of being young and in love and brimming with creative energy. Assembled with an exhilarating vibrancy and rock-and-roll aesthetic and featuring a remarkably confident cast of non-actors, this is a film to seek out.
