My 10 Favorite Movies from 2007

The trickle of ten-best lists for the year will soon be a flood, so before the deluge here’s my lineup:

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1) “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” — Julian Schnabel, who’s Sean Penn’s favorite American director, is also one of mine. Schnabel’s movie of a fashion editor (played by Mathieu Amalric, pictured) who survives a stroke-like episode and “locked-in” syndrome shows that it’s possible to be visually daring and still tell a solid, affecting story.

2) “Atonement” — The mini-backlash has set in, but I liked this British love-and-war story even more on second viewing. Director Joe Wright shows that his work on “Pride and Prejudice” was no fluke.

3) “Eastern Promises” — David Cronenberg’s Russian mobster movie made London look like Bucharest, and effected a similarly startling transformation on leading man Viggo Mortensen, who shows that it’s possible to be edging 50 and still be beautiful.

4) “4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days” — Another shattering film from Romania, this one set as the Communist era is waning and 2 students are arranging an illegal abortion.

5) “Things We Lost in the Fire” — Halle Berry, as a woman who’s just lost her husband, and Benicio del Toro, as the dead man’s drug-addicted best friend, give the year’s most shattering performances. Quickly gone from theaters, this is a must-rent on DVD.

6) “Ratatouille” — Another must-rent DVD, especially if you passed this one up because your kids were away when it was released. A rat getting loose in the kitchen doesn’t sound appetizing in any event, but with a script this sharp it is.

7) “Charlie Wilson’s War” — Tom Hanks as a congressman, Julia Roberts as a big-haired vulgar rich bitch, and Philip Seymour Hoffman (especially Philip Seymour Hoffman!) make this big-screen Afghanistan-connected story highly watchable. With a cameo by greyhounds so beautiful you’ll want to rush out and rescue one.

8) “3:10 to Yuma” — Critics keep raving about the “Jesse James” movie, but this, for me, was the year’s great western.

9) “No Country for Old Men” — I’m not always a Coen Brothers’ fan, but this one was so tightly made, and so unflustered in its nastiness, that I couldn’t resist — even with that way-too-literary ending.

10) “Into the Wild” — After lots of earnest, too-personal attempts, Sean Penn finally makes a first-rate movie, with Emile Hirsch as a kid who sets out to find a dream made tangible and ends up tragically in Alaska

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