Cinema to savor

"Army of Shadows" -- Made in 1969 but never released in the States until this year, Jean-Pierre Melville's drama about a group of men and one woman fighting in the French Resistance isn't just one of the great films of the '60s; it's one of the great films, period.

"Days of Glory (Indigènes)" -- Rachid Bouchareb has made an astonishing film about Algerian soldiers fighting to defend France, the country they consider their motherland, from the Nazis. A beautiful, devastating picture about what it means to love your country when it doesn't love you back. (The Weinstein Co. has released this picture in New York and Los Angeles for a brief Oscar-qualification run; look for wider release in other cities early next year.)

"Casino Royale" -- James Bond movies, beloved, junky pop-culture pleasures, aren't supposed to make best-10 lists. But this imaginative, superbly acted adaptation of Ian Fleming's first 007 novel works on multiple levels: As a Bond movie, as a thriller and as a marvel of craftsmanship. It's even better on the second viewing.

"Pan's Labyrinth" -- Guillermo del Toro's dazzling adult fairy tale about the end of childhood, and the dangers of blind ideology, is one of the finest fantasy pictures ever made. Watching it is a glorious, harrowing experience.

"The Queen" and "Marie Antoinette" -- Fraternal-twin pictures that present maligned royals as human beings. Stephen Frears, knowing tragedy is only a flea bite away from comedy, uses our laughter, and even our derision, to lure us into a place where we can feel only sympathy for Elizabeth II (played, brilliantly, by Helen Mirren), a woman locked in a gilded cage of tradition and duty. Many critics sentenced Sofia Coppola to the cultural guillotine for a) having a famous father and b) not featuring enough peasants. Few seemed to have watched her movie, a fantasy portrait of a teenage queen that connects with universal adolescent feelings of belonging nowhere.

"Dave Chappelle's Block Party" and "Shut Up & Sing" -- Two beautifully made pop-music documentaries whose spirit of inclusiveness suggests, daringly, that the United States might be one country instead of a carved-up mess.

"Idlewild" -- Messy and extraordinary, Bryan Barber's Prohibition-era musical, starring OutKast's Andre 3000 and Big Boi, is a dream history of black pop culture, and a testament -- to paraphrase a line from Stanley Crouch -- to the ways that inventing, borrowing and refining can bring us closer to the lives we want to lead. One of the most beautiful-looking pictures of the year (the cinematography is by Pascal Rabaud), "Idlewild" slipped out of theaters before most people could see it on the big screen. It deserves an immediate rep-house revival.

"The Painted Veil" -- John Curran's adaptation of Somerset Maugham's novel about a spoiled Englishwoman (Naomi Watts) whose life is changed when she begins helping her doctor-husband (Edward Norton) fight cholera in the Far East avoids Merchant-Ivoryitis at every turn. A superb example of modern melodramatic filmmaking that respects, but doesn't fetishize, the past.

"The Notorious Bettie Page" -- Mary Harron's affectionate and intelligent portrait of the famous '50s pinup queen asks, and answers, the question of what the camera can tell us about a life. Gretchen Mol's performance is as fearless as it is lovely.

"A Prairie Home Companion" -- Robert Altman's final picture is a shaggy-dog story that turned out to be a swan song, and its spirit and sense of community are pure Altman: The picture gives the feel of life unfolding before our eyes. And, in true Altman fashion, it's filled with half-finished conversations that, even in their truncated state, manage to say it all. Altman's movies -- even the bad ones -- have always been the sort that foster vivid discussion and fierce arguments. There will be no more Altman movies. But we can honor him by keeping the conversation going.

Honorable mentions: John Cameron Mitchell's "Shortbus," Hou Hsiao-hsien's "Three Times," Ronny Yu's "Jet Li's Fearless," Alfonso Cuarón's "Children of Men," Olivier Assayas' "Clean," Fernando Eimbcke's "Duck Season," Gabriele Muccino's "The Pursuit of Happyness," Wim Wenders' "Don't Come Knocking," Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers," Bryan Singer's "Superman Returns," Richard Donner's "16 Blocks," Michael Winterbottom's "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story," David Lynch's "Inland Empire," Sanaa Hamri's "Something New," George Miller's "Happy Feet," Kelly Reichardt's "Old Joy," Michael Mann's "Miami Vice," Spike Lee's "Inside Man," Martin Scorsese's "The Departed" and Apichatpong Weerasethakul's "Syndromes and a Century" (unreleased).

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