Nice list R6dw6C!

I wrote something up about my Top 10 on the theatrical releases I've seen commercially in Singapore which discounts a lot of these Nov-Dec masterpieces we hear so much about in the US. So it might seem relatively antiquated but I'm going by what's shown in local screens this year. I have a separate list I made for my festival screenings this year which I have unfortunately not fleshed out as well as you have, and I'm sure wpqx's and arsaib's as well.

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1. Black Snake Moan

2. The Simpsons Movie

3. Eastern Promises

4. Lars and the Real Girl

5. Nanking

6. Zodiac

7. Paprika

8. 13 Tzameti

9. Volver

10. Waitress 
________

11. Bridge To Terabithia
12. Hairspray
13. The King
14. La Vie En Rose
15. Paris, je taime
________

A significant portion of last years Oscar roster wound up on my personal and heretofore unstated Worst of list (with the sinister Blood Diamond and the manufactured banality of Little Children being particular grievances) and I still fear that 2008s biggest Oscar-baiting prestige film in American Gangster will eventually sink its stained teeth into an undeserving berth. With that confession aside, it does come as no surprise that the films in this years Best of list might not find itself vying for Academy consideration. But then again to be fair, the frontrunners (as well as its dark horses) have not found their way onto our island as of yet or possibly at all. So it goes to say as far as 2007 goes, its not just the smaller indies that rule the roost and Im glad to say that in this years list Ive discovered more than a few gems in some of the years more commercially viable releases that will hopefully enrich you as it did me. The list of my years favourite films is close to my heart and mind, with some aiming to be intellectually stimulating and others continuing to expand the passion conspicuous not just in film but to all of the life that it reflects in some form or other. 

And nothing extols the latter more than Craig Brewers audaciously volatile Black Snake Moan, stamping his imprint on provocative filmmaking in the clear skies and sticky grime of his Americana and a genuine exaltation of lifes ability to hurt and destroy but most importantly to heal the deepest of psychic wounds. After his celebrated and equally maligned Hustle & Flow, Brewer proves hes not going softly into the night with an intensely charged piece of Southern Gothic. Matt Groening also proves his own point to detractors with the eagerly awaited The Simpsons Movie, even if Homer refuses to pay to watch the years best comedy, animated or otherwise. Containing the years funniest gag with Barts sly flash of full-frontal nudity and the most memorable use of a spider-pig, its politically aggressive humour is a relieving return to form and offers the sincerest and most heartrending scenes of familial discombobulation when Bart reacts to his perceived lack of paternal affection and Marge questions her marriage to Homer. 

David Cronenberg has no such quotidian preoccupations with the traditional family units (which was already evinced in his History of Violence) in his masterful Eastern Promises where he presents London as a teeming hive of ethnic and ethical tensions fueled by the cultural isolation of its displaced immigrants. His typically exquisite composition of light and gloom seeping into souls is represented by an utterly fascinating performance by Viggo Mortensen as he peers into the citys heart of darkness. With that we move swiftly on to a towns heart of goodness in Craig Gillespies Lars and the Real Girl, a modern fable that either takes to heart our rampant consumerism or expresses a lost idealism in an increasingly cynical world. Id like to think that this film understands deeply and with love and sadness, the fundamental fragilities that shape us. In a landscape of films that advocate conflict, it is unusual to witness this film, which actually wants its characters to get along and be happy. 

In a curious intimation of the previous two films mentioned, Bill Guttentag and Bill Sturmans documentary Nanking reminds us of humanitys capacity for both inexplicable evil and profound goodness. The shared human consciousness between the heroic foreigners and ravaged citizenry during the Rape of Nanking remains a small consolation in view of one of humanitys worst moments. The personification of evil is also considered in the microcosm of a serial killer and spate of obsessions that drive the men who hunt him in David Finchers Zodiac. Subtextual guilt-trips and a spectacularly reeling anticlimax get under skins and fester, both in clear and thoughtful engagement with his most intensive work to date since the fervour that surrounded and sustained Se7en. 

Satoshi Kons subliminally sublime Paprika also festers under our skins and psyches as it leads us down a rabbit hole where dreams are cinema, surfaces are liquid and the Internet plugs into you instead. Dynamic and brimming with metaphorical ideas and conceptual collisions predicated on cinemas own ability to shape and deconstruct our purview. The despairing nightmare apparent in Kons deepest residues is amplified in Gela Babluanis Kafkaesque menace, 13 Tzameti. Its tonally confident monochromatic canvas recalls an intensely grim, bleak nightmare that plasters over the hyper-realism of its brutality, a slow burn allegory for the fatalism infecting our existential crises and the criminality forced upon Frances migr populace for the enjoyment of an upper class. 

Rounding off the list are two films sensitively tuned to the best of feminine wavelengths that navigate the lives of women and the family they love when all is said and done. Pedro Almodvars gentle homecoming in Volver deals with a spate of deaths comically, reminds us of the tenuous ties that are ignored and the happiness discovered at its end all to the tune of Penelope Cruzs show stopping number that rightfully grabbed her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress this year. The other film dealt with death most tragically when Adrienne Shelley who wrote, directed and performed in the delightfully exuberant Waitress passed away shortly before the film was released. The wit and charm surging through Shelleys script is bolstered by chemistry of both Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion, and both are occupants of Shelleys searing emotional truths and wisdoms. Yes indeed, the sisters are doing it for themselves.