WINEHOUSE - A stint in rehab notwithstanding, she had a great year.

Downloads and Duds

Kanye West and Amy Winehouse highlighted an otherwise dull year

This might go down as the year the Grammys got it right. Rapper Kanye West and singer Amy Winehouse led the list of nominations for the 2007 awards, scheduled to be handed out next year. Think what you want about the controversial artists, but West's Graduation is an eclectic crossover success and Winehouse's retro-themed Back to Black stood out in a year in which not much stood out.

In another year of dwindling retail sales, musicians took unconventional approaches to create a stir. Radiohead's new studio album, In Rainbows, hits retail outlets the first of the new year, but the band made the album available on the Net earlier this year, and fans could even download it for free. They did so in droves, crashing the server on several occasions. The Eagles put out a double-disc studio album (it's a real snooze, by the way), but distributed it only to Wal-Mart. And that's not counting the numerous downloads - both official and unofficial - that threw any Billboard chart numbers into disarray.

Yes, it's getting to the point where the only way musicians can make any money is by touring. That was clear as the Police and Van Halen both came through town without new albums and managed to sell out Quicken Loans Arena. While the former phoned it in, the latter delivered one of the year's most satisfying live experiences. And yet I'd take the Stooges, who reunited to tour behind an underwhelming new studio disc, over the both of them as they blew away all the hip indie-rock acts at this year's Lollapalooza, held over the summer in Chicago. So without any more pontificating about the declining state of the music biz, here are some Top 10 picks courtesy of our contributing critics. - Jeff Niesel

By Emily Anderson

1. The Arcade Fire, Neon Bible (Merge). Likely to be in everyone else's top three, making it a seemingly boring choice. But never boring when you push play.

2. Andrew Bird, Armchair Apochrypha (Fat Possum). Because no other emaciated, whistle-happy, violin-playing type makes my boyfriend so jealous.

3. Feist, The Reminder (Cherry Tree). Her songs are everywhere, and for good reason. She totally sold me a new iPod Nano.

4. Patrick Wolf, The Magic Position (Fontana). If you're not familiar with this bizarre-o English dandy, I suggest you take a listen. Significantly less folk than his previous albums, but oh so wonderfully weird.

5. Peter, Bjorn and John, Writer's Block (Almost Gold). I know, I know, "Young Folks" is at least two years old, but technically this was released in the US in 2007!!!

6. Iron and Wine, The Shepherd's Dog (Sub Pop). Rarely does a singer's voice feel so much like a good head rub.

7. Marissa Nadler, Songs III: Bird in the Water. If you took three of my favorite songstresses (Joanna Newsom, Becky Stark of Lavender Diamond, and Josephine Foster) and shook them up in a blender, this is exactly what would come out.

8. Rilo Kiley, Under the Blacklight (Kemado). The best '70s disco-soul-rock album that was never made!

9. Besnard Lakes, The Besnard Lakes are the Darkhorse (Jagjaguwar). Simply for the first two tracks "Disaster" and "For Agent 13."

10. Afternoon Naps, Sunbeamed (self-released). Because I have now seen them live more than any other band. Ever.

By Brian Baker

1. The New Pornographers, Challengers (Matador). The New Porns are front-loaded with individual talent so it's little surprise their collective efforts are so amazing. But four albums in a row without a dud? That's some kind of record, if you'll pardon the pun. Great White North is exactly right.

2. The Shins, Wincing the Night Away (Sub Pop). Natalie Portman was spot-on in Garden State. The Shins will change your life, possessed as they are with the uncanny ability to reinvent their influences as moody yet muscular pop sounds as fresh as next week's catch.

3. Robert Plant/Alison Krauss, Raising Sand (Zoe/Rounder). Two of the great voices in their respective fields, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss pool their considerable resources to create a sound that's neither rock nor bluegrass but an uncanny and completely unique hybrid.

4. Bruce Springsteen, Magic (Columbia). As good as he's been throughout his career, I was beginning to think I was a Springsteen fan by force of habit. Then he drops the Jersey E Street hammer with this inspired set, his best complete album since Born to Run.

5. Wussy, Left for Dead (Shake It). Rolling Stone, MTV and Robert Christgau all agree: Cincinnati's Wussy kicked a whole boatload of mainstream ass with its sophomore album. Most bands couldn't manage an album this chaotically focused and brilliantly unnerving by their fifth or sixth try. It's the best kind of scary to think where they'll go next.

6. The National, Boxer (Beggar's Banquet). Albums this subtle and textured and nuanced often get overlooked because the band forgets to assert itself in all that subtly textured nuance. Not so with the National, Cincinnatians transplanted to Brooklyn. Boxer smolders with 'round- midnight passion and the kind of alt-pop intensity that the Cure and the Smiths perfected.

7. Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, 100 Days 100 Nights (Daptone). Former wedding singer and corrections officer Sharon Jones shakes, shimmies and shouts with enough visceral energy to make Tina Turner seem like a shrinking violet. The verve and vitality of Motown and Stax is what's generally lacking in today's soul music, and Sharon Jones is the cure for the genre's current anemia.

8. The Sharp Things, A Moveable Feast (Bar/None). I dreamt that Burt Bacharach and Jimmy Webb battled on a reality show for the right to arrange and produce a chamber-pop orchestra with expansive rock-band aspirations. When I woke up, the Sharp Things were playing. Coincidence? I think not.

9. Jose Gonzalez, In Our Nature (Astralwerks). Jose Gonzalez is like a one-man United Nations. His Argentinean parents raised him in Sweden, where he plays a Spanish guitar and sings in English. From there, it figures that he totally lives up to all the comparisons to Nick Drake.

10. John Doe, A Year in the Wilderness (Yep Roc). After turning American punk on its collective ear in the '70s with X, John Doe has mellowed into an impressive Americana artist, but this album finds Doe vibrating harmonically in the space between the two extremes. Raw, immediate and moving, this is the pinnacle of Doe's solo career.

By Dave Cantor

1. Vanishing Voice, Stone Tablet (Important Records). Stone Tablet is proof of this group's ability to find any minimalist pulse, work with it and produce improvisations that actually lead somewhere. The vinyl version sports a vaguely different track listing as well as a keen screen-printed cover.

2. DJ Mayonnaise, Still Alive (Anticon). It took DJ Mayo the better part of a decade to release his second disc, but there has not been any fall-off of quality. Straight hip-hop bangers. This isn't sad-bastard rap and it's not a Golden Age rip-off. Mayo has a voice that's remained separate from hip-hop in general and from his labelmates at Anticon specifically.

3. Joshua Jug Band 5, Joshua Jug Band 5/Damascus Doldrum (Gulcher Records). I guess these are songs, but probably they weren't before the four-track got turned on. Seven tracks of freak-outs that could have convincingly been portrayed as lost classics. The recording quality is below average, you can't whistle any of this and there aren't any vocals, save for a bit of moaning. But that's why it's successful; this is free garage music.

4. Jennifer Gentle, The Midnight Room (Sub Pop). Over the career of Jennifer Gentle, Marco Fasolo has had time to release a number of discs under this brand name that don't fit with the more pop-oriented fare that's been turned in here. This is not a noise album, and it's not experimental in the least. This disc runs through '60s rock, adding some b-movie feeling to the tripped-out rock of previous efforts. Were there to be a fourth Nuggets, Jennifer Gentle couldn't be left out.

5. Greg Ashley, Painted Garden (Birdman Records). Maybe this is Greg Ashley's O.A.R. If it's not, then wait to see what comes next. Painted Garden continues the massive flow of ideas from Ashley's mind to our speakers. More laid back than a Gris-Gris disc, but not as lame as the Shins, Ashley still approaches freak-out territory, but in a much more subtle and distinguished manner. If he's not too careful, people may begin to examine his musical canon.

6. Odd Nosdam, Level Live Wires (Anticon). Level Live Wires was meant to be the meeting of Anticon hip-hop and newer indie releases by the label. It's not, but including a wall of fuzz behind a number of non-thuggin' beats worked out well. While drastically different then his earlier releases, LLW maintains a dusty feel that too many producers aim for and miss.

7. Sharon Jones, 100 Days 100 Nights (Daptone Records). It's just raw. That's it. Two discs, one a label round-up disguised as mix tape, the other a new delivery from Ms. Jones and the soul machine she has been supported by in the past. Just songs about love, messing up and maybe recovering, but delivered with such conviction, it sounds like '71.

8. Chris Schlarb, Twilight and Ghost Stories (Asthmatic Kitty). The guitarist behind I Heart Lung and Create (!) has gone all weepy, but it worked. These aren't songs per se, but an amalgam of feelings that Schlarb and his vast array of contributors want to convey to the listener.

9. Caribou, Andorra (Merge). Caribou gets referred to as psych frequently, which could explain Dan Snaith's listening habits, but his music is more than that. It has an orchestral feel to it without having an orchestra. And if nothing else, his presence on any year-end list probably upsets Handsome Dick Manitoba.

FEIST - debut made several critics' lists.

10. Lefties Soul Connection, Skimming the Skum (Melting Pot Music). This whole record isn't worthy of being a part of this or any other compendium for the year. But the funky high points are too authentic and dirty to be ignored, even if this is from Europe.

By Kurt Hernon

1. Ian Hunter, Shrunken Heads (Yep Roc). Dylan comes close, but I'm not so sure any aging rock 'n' roller has passed the years as gracefully as Mr. Hunter has. He's put out a string of excellent records over the past decade and a half. Now he's released a classic.

2. Kanye West, Graduation (Roc-A-Fella). On which the Paul McCartney of hip-hop becomes its David Bowie. Always brash, completely contradictory, and absolutely a pop genius of the highest order. Can anything stop him?

3. Babyshambles, Shoffers Nation (Astralwerks). The first four tracks here are the finest music of this year bar none. And "UnBiloTitled" is Pete Doherty's finest moment, revealing him to be - gulp - a human being with human emotions. The other eight tracks are only damn good.

4. Wussy, Left for Dead (Shake It). On which Chuck Cleaver and Lisa Walker stake their claim to being the new alt George Jones and Tammy Wynette. The songs are as sharp as can be, the vocal performances flawless and positively (David) Lynch-ian.

5. Josh Ritter, The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter (Sony/BMG). Pseudo folkie Josh Ritter emerges as a spot-on popster of the highest order on this, the most pleasantly surprising record of the year.

6. Matthew Shipp, Piano Vortex (Thirsty Ear). Sounding as assured and steady as he ever has, Shipp's energetic trio delivers jazz back to its golden era with this glorious collection of someday-ought-to-be standards.

7. Bob Coulter, CrazyBabe Movie Soundtrack (crazybabe). Everyone knows the old jokes about corny porn flick music. Bob Coulter's heard them all too. So when it came time to make his own movie based on his popular Web site (crazybabe.com) and erotic photography, the former musician/producer/engineer decided to do it himself. The result is an insane collage of weird music snippets culled together to create a strange but cool as shit Dukes of Hazzard on acid effect. If the kid from Deliverance had Pro Tools and a computer instead of a banjo this is what he'd have played.

8. The Ike Reilly Assassination, We Belong to the Staggering Evening (RockRidge). Perhaps the only true true believer and rock 'n' roll prophet out proselytizing these days. Here, he's as brilliant as he's ever been and better than he ever was.

9. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black (Universal Republic). Soulful, jazzy, bold, ballsy and apparently fucked-up nearly 24/7. Hate to say it but if she keeps making great trend-defying music like this I'll buy her the next round.

10. LCD Soundsystem, 45:33 (DFA Records). Supposedly a toss-off done for Nike for runners to run to or some such shit, 45:33 is, well, 45 minutes and 33 seconds of über-genius James Murphy outdoing his own "proper" record he'd released this past year. It's so cool and so weird I don't even know what to make of it.

By Aaron Mendelsohn

1. The Stars, In Our Bedroom After the War (Arts & Crafts). The romantic menagerie of Amy Millan and Torquil Campbell's haunting co-ed vocals has been a weekly listen for the past six months.

2. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (Merge). The next great American rock band? Britt Daniel has the voice and swagger, and Gax5 is the perfect, rapid paced album that used to be commonplace four decades ago.

3. Feist, The Reminder (Interscope). Don't you wish you could have been a part of the Broken Social Scene when all these artists were just beginning to perform together?

4. Au Revoir Simone, The Bird of Music (Our Secret). Perhaps the most underrated release of the year. There's something contagious about three pretty, charming Brooklyn girls harmonizing about life's trials.

5. Iron and Wine, The Shepherd's Dog (Sub Pop). Sam Beam should be celebrated as a treasure. My only regret with this album is not having it before the band's sold-out Beachland Ballroom concert this past fall.

6. Kings of Leon, Because of the Times (RCA). I can't stand "Charmer," but every other song on the Kings' third long player shows the growth and maturation that seems nonexistent anymore in the major label system.

7. Daft Punk, Alive 2007 (Virgin). For anyone who witnessed one of the pyramid shows this past year, this is a must-have memento. Mixed and mashed in Paris, the beats explode from the speakers just as they did in person.

8. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible (Merge). The second album from the band that made Canada a music Mecca might not be as perfect as the first, but it's still better and more original than most of the schlock being slung at us.

9. M.I.A., Kala (Interscope). With boisterous, animated beats, and an exotic, sexy voice, Maya Arulpragasam is an electro-punk wonderwoman.

10. Modest Mouse, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank (Epic). Adding Johnny Marr to an already eclectic mix equated to MM's finest work. Experimental yet accessible, MM has finally achieved the widespread recognition it deserves.

By Anastasia Pantsios

1. Noah Budin, Metaphor (self-released). Budin brings musical and life experience to his second album, filled with mature, spiritually oriented songs that tackle issues of life, death, social justice and faith in gorgeous tunes blending rock, folk and gospel influences in a way that sounds both familiar and fresh.

2. Cats on Holiday, Workin' Man (self-released). Cats on Holiday pulls off the difficult feat of making music that's got a breezy, feel-good vibe but still has substance, provided by its folk, country, blues, swamp rock, Latin and '50s rock roots, and lyrics that are never throwaway even when they're lighthearted.

3. Ann E. DeChant, Girls and Airplanes (self-released). After finding her voice with 2004's Pop the Star, one of the area's most popular singer-songwriters sounds even more confident here in her distinctive delivery of bracing pop-rock tunes like "Scattered" and "My Victoria" and intense ballads like "In and Out of Love."

4. Destructor, Forever in Leather (Auburn). Destructor finally released the follow-up to its 1985 opus Maximum Destruction, reminding metalheads how great that year was for the genre by not changing a thing in its mix of thundering riffs, explosive rhythms and hellhound vocals, played with unflagging conviction.

5. The Dreadful Yawns, Rest (Exit Stencil). Chief Yawner Ben Gmetro has taken his latest lineup in a rootsier (and more rooted) direction than his previous free-floating work, with gentle but lilting country-folk pop songs that reveal his enhanced ability to fully develop a tune and surround it with an alluring, understated arrangement.

6. Kassaba, Dark Eye (self-released). This hard-to-categorize instrumental quartet applies its classical and jazz backgrounds and a passion for percussion that adds world-music flavor to compositions by pianist/band founder Greg Slawson as well as its own interpretations of Prokofiev and Bernstein.

7. Machine Go Boom, Music for Parents (Collectible Escalators). On his band's second full-length, Mikey Machine (aka Baranick) has retained some of his trademark quirkiness while dialing down the whimsy to a manageable level where it feels less scattershot and these noisy, enthusiastic tunes cohere into fully engaging entities.

8. Tracey Thomas, Ghost Town (self-released). Tracey Thomas has evolved from a reedy-voiced new-wave chick into a pensive, layered singer with command of multiple genres that she integrates into a cohesive whole on Ghost Town, which rocks but gives her room to fill the tunes with her experienced emotions.

9. Twilight, Tempest in a Teapot (self-released). Like the Raspberries in the early '70s, the Twilight takes classic power-pop influences such as the Beatles and Beach Boys and shapes them into new classic tracks with a modern slant, crisply played to allow the songs' fine-boned essences to shine through.

10. Vacancies, Tantrum (Blackheart). The Vacancies' second album for Joan Jett's Blackheart Records continues to reveal the veteran band's weathered, bred-in-the-bone, no-nonsense approach to punk rock, stripped of fashionable posturing and riding on the pent-up energy of workaday frustrations.

By Michael David Toth

1. Future Clouds & Radar, Future Clouds & Radar (Star Apple Kingdom). Psych/power-pop gloriousness with echoes of Robyn Hitchcock, the Plimsouls and post-Rubber Soul Beatles. A 27-song, two-CD debut that achieves its ambitious aims and leaves you wanting more.

Born to be wild Sean Penn's Into the Wild scored a big thumbs-up.

2. Of Montreal, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (Polyvinyl). This latest in a series of better-than-the-last Of Montreal discs furthers the creative risks which Lennon and Bowie eventually stopped taking and succeeds with some of this decade's coolest rock.

3. Caribou, Andorra (Merge). The finest textural and sonic components of earlier Caribou are here raised exponentially with spectacularly groovy, neo-psychedelic songwriting craftsmanship.

4. Ulrich Schnauss, Goodbye (Domino). A massive, looming spacecraft of dreamy astro-pop powered by inventive recombinations of '90s electronica and shoegazer sounds.

5. Negativland, Our Favorite Things DVD (Seeland/Other Cinema). The finest recordings by the infamous media-collage pranksters, brilliantly re-contextualized with newly created visuals for a truly definitive Negativland document.

6. Youth Group, Casino Twilight Dogs (Anti-). Warm, emotive vocals and lush, intricate melodies gently crash in shimmering tides against Brian Wilson's beach with great skill and charm.

7. Einstuerzende Neubauten, Palast der Republik DVD (MVD Visual). The German granddaddies of industrial music captivatingly bang on metal, rubber and plastic in both abrasive rage and gentle tranquility. Best both seen and heard.

8. Mary Weiss, Dangerous Game (Norton). The Shangri-Las' lead gal finally emerged from retirement with exactly the sort of fabulously hip, emotive, mature comeback record that she needed to make.

9. Erasure, Light At The End Of The World (Mute). The guys are back in tip-top form doing what they do best: ultra-catchy, feel-good, gooey bubblegum synth-pop for compulsory giddy dancing.

10. The Go! Team, Proof of Youth (Sub Pop). The Go! Team's sophomore album nicely continues to radiate the distinct, sock-it-to-me pep-rally/1970s-TV-theme personality of the boffo Thunder Lightning Strike.

By Jeremy Willets

1. Patrick Wolf, The Magic Position (Low Altitude/Universal). After delivering EPs and albums that came really close to being great, this one finally was. He might end up being the modern Bowie.

2. Iron & Wine, The Shepherd's Dog (Sub Pop). Sam Beam goes world music, and turns in the indie equivalent of Dylan going electric.

3. Los Campesinos!, Pushing Fingers Into Sockets EP (Arts & Crafts). A pleasantly unexpected and surprising sugar rush of indie-pop fun.

4. The Arcade Fire, Neon Bible (Merge). Ink has been spilled over this record all year long, and all of it's probably true to some degree.

5. The Clientele, God Save the Clientele (Merge). England's best-kept secret keeps getting better with age.

6. Field Music, Tones of Town (Memphis Industries). Really tight and quirky indie pop from the Sunderland band that isn't the Futureheads.

7. Animal Collective, Strawberry Jam (Domino). They keep making each new record better than their last. And this is their best so far.

8. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver (DFA/Capitol). James Murphy remains one of the most compelling figures in music.

9. Burial, Untrue (Hyperdub). The year's best electronic record. It sounds like a lost record from the mid-'90s.

10. Panda Bear, Person Pitch (Paw Tracks). This hazy Beach Boys-inspired cyclical ride goes hand-in-hand with Animal Collective's album.

It's all about the beard Iron and Wine's Sam Beam at the Beachland earlier this year.

A Cinephile's Fantasy

A slew of great films recalled Hollywood's golden age

By Milan Paurich

It was a damn good year for film. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It was a particularly outstanding year for - are you sitting down? - American movies. And the bounty of homegrown riches wasn't restricted to the usual suspects - mini-majors like the Weinstein Company, or top-dog specialty divisions (Paramount Vantage, Fox-Searchlight, Miramax, etc.) - either. Any year in which major Hollywood studios produced and released bona fide masterpieces like Zodiac (Paramount) and The Assassination of Jesse James (Warner Brothers) can be counted as a banner year for the art form. Blink and you might think it was the golden age of 1970s New Hollywood Cinema all over again.This year was so strong, in fact, that I had a hard time whittling my choices down to just 10 titles. I thought about cheating by including several ties, but ultimately decided to go with the more classical (and classy) Top Ten instead. Yet, any of my runners-up (see below) could have easily made the cut in another year. Without further ado, here's how things stacked up for this inveterate cinephile who spent a good chunk of the past 12 months furiously scribbling notes in the sacrosanct darkness of a movie theater.

1. Into the Wild. Sean Penn graduated to Clint Eastwood-level auteur status with this rhapsodic, emotionally bruising masterpiece based on the Jon Krakauer nonfiction bestseller. So visually majestic and profoundly, shatteringly moving that you could almost miss just how perfectly cast and brilliantly acted even the tiniest role is.

2. There Will Be Blood. Paul Thomas Anderson doesn't make a whole lot of movies (this is only his fifth release in 11 years), but why bitch when the end results are as indisputably great as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood? Based loosely on Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!, Anderson's first-ever literary adaptation references everything from Citizen Kane to Giant, Chinatown and Days of Heaven, and is infused with palpable, pulsing genius in every frame.

3. Juno. Director Jason Reitman got a lot of attention for his snarky, one-note Thank You for Smoking last year, yet it's Juno that proves he's the real deal. Whip-smart and riotously funny without condescending to any of its characters, it's also the most purely pleasurable movie I saw all year.

4. I'm Not There. Todd Haynes' Bob Dylan phantasmagoria has the same reckless inventiveness and mastery of form of mid-'70s Robert Altman (think Nashville with Dylan music replacing Altman's country playlist). It's a mindblower of the first magnitude and the greatest cinematic tribute Dylan could ever wish for.

5. Zodiac. As great a newspaper movie as it is a police procedural, David Fincher's best film since Seven got a raw deal from audiences who were pissed off by the ambiguous ending. But it was the lack of closure that made Zodiac so haunting and profound. I still get chills just thinking about it.

6. The Savages. Like a great Woody Allen movie - say Manhattan or Hannah and Her Sisters - if Allen's glib, articulate, over-educated characters actually had to deal with life-and-death problems instead of trifling infidelities and where to have dinner on the Upper West Side. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney gave my favorite performances of the year in Tamara Jenkins' smart, ruefully funny, extraordinarily touching film about sibling rivalries, difficult (and dying) parents and middle-age malaise.

7. No Country for Old Men. Based on Cormac McCarthy's pared-to-the-bones 2005 novel, this is the strongest overall work by Joel and Ethan Coen since their Oscar-nominated Fargo came out 11 years ago. McCarthy's lean, angular prose finds the perfect visual correlative in the Coens' rangy, elegant style. An instant classic.

8. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Julian Schnabel follows up worthwhile if uneven past efforts Before Night Falls and Basquiat with this dazzlingly, intoxicatingly cinematic film about Elle magazine Editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who was paralyzed by a stroke that left him with the use of only one eyelid. Mathieu Amarlic is astounding as Bauby, and the three lead actresses (Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josee Cruze and Anne Consigny) are all superb.

9. Brand Upon the Brain! Shot as a silent movie, Winnipeg fabulist Guy Maddin's chef d'ouevre was screened on last year's festival circuit accompanied by a live orchestra, foley artists and a narrator. Yet even without that bells-and-whistles treatment, Brand Upon the Brain! is still a dazzler. Maddin's film uncannily replicates a hallucinogenic, dreamlike state of unconsciousness in which your senses are both heightened and notoriously unpredictable at the same time.

10. Once. Ebullient and soulful, writer/director John Carney's DIY Irish musical/unrequited love story was as close to minimalist perfection as a movie can get. No wonder audiences embraced it like a 21st-century Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

Some bad movies practically write their own review. Going into The Game Plan, Bratz, The Last Mimzy or Delta Farce, you kind of knew what to expect and were rarely disappointed. So, instead of merely compiling a list of anonymous atrocities (Good Luck Chuck, Code Name: The Cleaner, Dragon Wars, et al) that practically scream, "Unclean! Unclean!," I've chosen to aim my brickbats at spirit-deflating disappointments that actually looked promising on paper. I mean, who wouldn't have been excited about a new Brian DePalma flick about Iraq or the first Francis Ford Coppola film since 1997's The Rainmaker?

For what it's worth, the single "worst" movie I saw this past year was a truly pitiful amateur hour - actually an hour and a half - called Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour. But since nobody involved with that brain-rotter is ever likely to be heard from again, it seems almost churlish to waste valuable space bemoaning just how truly abysmal it was. These are the 2007 films that angered and, yes, saddened me the most because of the talent involved. They could (and should) have all been contenders.

1. Redacted. Framed as a video documentary shot by a Latino infantryman, Brian DePalma's worst film ever makes little attempt to sustain the illusion of its ham-fisted premise. How badly does DePalma bungle his Iraq message? Redacted is so clumsy and inept that it nearly turned this Hillary supporter into a Bush defender. Now that's scary.

Can't knock it Judd Apatow's comedy Knocked Up was a 2008 highlight.

2. Norbit. A one-joke movie (fat black women are funny) that becomes increasingly shrill, tiresome and offensive, Eddie Murphy's vainglorious attempt to recapture his old Nutty Professor magic by playing three roles was KO'ed by slapdash, mean-spirited execution.

3. Perfect Stranger. Cleveland native Halle Berry's latest clunker was such a campy, trashy hoot you'd swear that no one involved with the project even bothered reading Todd Komarnicki's criminally inept script before signing on. Not even the generic title made any sense.

4. Revolver. I originally saw this Guy Ritchie trainwreck at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival, and have been patiently waiting to put it on my 10-worst list ever since. Hey, better late than never.

5. Reign Over Me. The first 9/11-inspired movie to feature blow job and boob jokes, this meretricious misfire was less of an Adam Sandler Stretch than a Sandler Stench.

6. Reservation Road. How bad could a movie directed by Terry George (Hotel Rwanda) and starring Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Connelly be? Focus Pictures must have known they had a turkey on their hands since they unceremoniously dumped it after an October platform release tanked. An even worse - and more unintentionally laughable - suburban vigilante flick than Kevin Bacon's ludicrous Death Sentence.

7. Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. There's precious little magic or sense of wonder in this overproduced and under-imagined kiddie fantasy. Directed and written by gifted screenwriter Zach Helm (Stranger Than Fiction) and starring Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman, it was the most depressing "family" movie of the year.

8. Sleuth. Kenneth Branagh's reductionist, revisionist mangling of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1972 film basically discarded the original source material, replacing it with a coldly mechanical, juiceless Harold Pinter script and a distracting, needlessly fussy visual style.

9. The 11th Hour. Gee, what did we learn from this sanctimonious agit-prop snoozer? Global warming is bad, and Leonardo DiCaprio is cute. Thanks for the news flash.

10. Youth Without Youth. While discussing Josef von Sternberg's insubstantial later films, critic John Grierson remarked, "When a director dies, he becomes a cinematographer." Francis Ford Coppola must have died without telling anyone because his first movie in a decade is vapid, meandering, hopelessly muddled, howlingly pretentious - and absolutely gorgeous.

Coming up with a Top 10 list wasn't easy for this film critic

By Charles Cassady Jr.

Unless the Hollywood writers' strike goes viral and spreads and persists for years, spelling the demise of the movie/television entertainment industry as we know it (can't say I'll raise much objection to that), the 2007 year in cinema won't be very notable for much, except the economics of sequels, and maybe the rather painfully symbolic deaths of major filmmakers Bergman, Antonioni and Altman.

If 2007 looms as a milestone for me, the reasons are wholly personal. It was 10 years ago, in 1997, that I started as a film reviewer for the Free Times. That's 10 years of my life given to patrolling the movie beat for this noble paper - and I am grateful to the publishers for their patience and tolerance. But that is a whole decade of my life. Ten years. Ten years of unbelievably tedious dialogue, annoying characters, worn-out premises, banal dramatics and disastrously misconceived romances.

And guess what? The movies weren't all that good either.

I'd be hard-pressed to name 10 titles from those 10 years that were really all that worth getting excited about. Coming up with a 10-best list of feature films released in the last 12 months - now that's an onerous thing. But noblesse oblige such a list, as an end-of-year summation. On with it, as we welcome in a 2008 in which the live-action Speed Racer and the next Batman seem to be considered the highlights.

1. China Blue. A Canadian documentary from very early in the year, going behind the scenes of a mainland Chinese mass-manufacturing plant for blue denim. Like a Zhang Yimou or Chen Kaige drama, it succeeds in humanizing the pitifully paid hive workers and their employers, and it makes clear that the capitalists of the West (not just Wal-Mart, but Europe, the business sphere in general) are just fine and dandy with the globalized sweat-shopocracy. With lead-paint toxins and product recalls demonstrating the wonders of globalization, it proved extraordinarily timely.

2. My Kid Could Paint That. Another example of great nonfiction storytelling, one in which an adorable, non-communicative 4 year old named Marla becomes a media sweetheart and marketable commodity for apparently being able to paint abstract-expressionist masterworks a la Jackson Pollock. When skeptics question whether this could be a hoax, both you and the documentary filmmaker are completely caught off guard, and both the big-money art-investment market and public opinion suddenly, angrily turns on Marla's family. Maybe modern art itself is the hoax.

3. Gone Baby Gone. Ben Affleck's directorial debut (in which he stays behind the camera and lets younger brother Casey take the lead) is a pitch-perfect crime thriller about a novice couple of detectives reluctantly investigating a child kidnapping in the sordid Irish-Catholic ghettoes of modern Boston. Like Clint Eastwood's Mystic River, it's based on a Dennis Lehane novel, and in my book, it's a better film (readers, incidentally, tell me that Lehane's narrative is still superior to Affleck's).

4. Hell on Wheels. Ostensibly a documentary about the rebirth of women's roller-derby in Austin, Texas, this could have easily become one of those "dork-umentaries" about narrow fan obsessions and team supporters. But the upstart sport is being put together by an all-female collective with high ideals but little experience in organization and business. Catfighting out of the arena gets to be more compelling than the skating action inside, and you're left with a vivid picture of group dynamics, dysfunction and the breakdown of modern feminism. And lots of fishnets and fetish tattoos, just the thing missing from most treatises on worker-management relations.

5. Mr. Bean's Holiday. I complain about the "foreign mouth-breathers" off whom Hollywood makes its profits by shipping idiotic action potboilers to the overseas markets - but here their tastes proved superior to the American knuckle-walkers. The second big-screen appearance (in just 10 years!) of Rowan Atkinson's non-verbal comic creation was surprisingly sweet, G-rated, and affectionately recalled Tati and Chaplin. Mr. Bean's Holiday was a hit worldwide - except in the US, where marketing execs will no doubt send memos to Aktinson's suggesting the next Mr. Bean feature involve giant alien transforming warrior robots.

6. The Host. The best Far East giant-monster-movie-with-baggage since the original nuke-doom Godzilla was this South Korean crowd-pleaser, ostensibly about a big amphibious mutant snacking on people around the Han River, and one misfit family that leads the fight against it. You can jam on both the cool CGI creature design and/or the ripped-from-the-headlines anxieties about flu epidemics, economic discord and the questionable presence of the US military.

7. Great World of Sound. An almost pitch-perfect little indie tragicomedy about two guys trying to make a career selling for a rip-off vanity record label that preys off the desperate American Idol fantasies of common folk. The central performances by Pat Healy and Kene Holliday are about as good as any screen acting you're liable to see this or any year.

8. The Rape of Europa. A sprawling art-history documentary about an attempt to build a giant Austrian museum by entrepreneurial gallery-owner A. Hitler and his board of directors, H. Goering, J. Goebbels and other tastemakers. The Nazis' systematic looting of the world's greatest art treasures after the blitzkrieg into Poland - and heroic countermeasures by France and Russia to thwart them - is a crackling good war yarn, minus the carnage. And the US are good guys, both on the battlefield and in the legal wrangles of the aftermath. Call it Saving Private Rembrandt.

9. Abel Raises Cain. Alan Abel is a lifelong professional hoax artist, stinging the media constantly with phony press releases and fooling reporters who don't check their facts sufficiently (that covers most of them, as Gulf War II proved). He claims to be no angry activist with a political agenda, but rather a humorist trying to lighten the national mood. Years of failed attempts to mount an Abel-based feature (one involved Cary Grant) culminated in this in-house production, a lovingly laugh-out-loud docu-biopic co-directed by Abel's own daughter. A cameo by the late Joel Rose, of Cleveland TV, meant more to me than the Euclid Avenue scenes of Spider-Man 3.

10. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Had to be one token sequel in the bunch. This wins grudging franchise-achievement points from me just for eye-candy, world-building and mind-blowing escapism. Also my "protest vote" against critics who put the animal-rights themed Year of the Dog in their Top 10, only because their PETA-supporting bitch girlfriends threatening to withhold sex, child visitation or life-saving insulin.

One writer's movie pleasures in 2007

By Pamela Zoslov

THE CONCEPT OF "10 best movies" strikes me as about as arbitrary as that slice of time we call a year. The reasons we like or dislike movies are quite personal and sometimes hard to explain. Why one film and not another? Some of this year's films are worthy and well-made - A Mighty Heart, for example - but that doesn't mean we recall them with affection, as we might a hopelessly vulgar comedy like Knocked Up. Other films have moments of sublime melancholy that linger in your mind - Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited, Patrice Leconte's My Best Friend - but overall aren't "list-worthy" achievements.

This is a rather windy way of saying that my list probably won't resemble anyone else's. Absent are the noisy summer blockbusters, very violent movies, limp adaptations of Broadway musicals and the Coen Brothers' irresolute exercise in nihilism, No Country for Old Men. My roster is lopsided in favor of documentaries, I think because the brazen deceptions that characterize our times stimulate a greater appetite for facts.

Here, then, are the movies I liked best this year:

1. Crazy Love. Dan Klores' riveting human-interest documentary based on a perennial New York tabloid story about the tortured multi-decade romance of Burt Pugach and Linda Riss. Burt, a married 32-year-old lawyer, began romancing the beautiful 21-year-old Linda in 1957. When she tried to end the relationship, Burt stalked and harassed her, eventually hiring a thug to throw lye in her face. Linda was blinded, and Burt sentenced to prison, but the story found its way back into the tabloids years later when Linda, who felt like "damaged merchandise," improbably agreed to marry her tormentor. Expertly constructed, the movie raises interesting questions about love and obsession, 1950s sexual mores, mental illness, the legal system and the limited options women faced in decades past.

2. The Hoax. Directed by Lasse Hallström, this drama about author Clifford Irving's audacious attempt to publish a fake autobiography of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes was a pleasantly nostalgic trip into the Nixon era, with nicely observed period details and splendid performances by Richard Gere as Irving, who descends into a fever dream of grandiose self-delusion, and Alfred Molina as Dick Suskind, Irving's hapless partner in crime.

3. SiCKO. The most focused and effective of Michael Moore's documentaries, SiCKO sparked needed debate on the flawed US healthcare system, which leaves 50 million uninsured and the fates of those who have coverage in the hands of profit-mad insurance companies. Moore wisely stayed mostly in the background this time, allowing ordinary people to tell their tales of medical neglect and financial ruin. Predictably, the movie generated voluminous attacks, most of them focused on Moore's somewhat idealized portrayals of the public health care systems in Canada, the UK, France and Cuba. But the basic question is a vital one: Why can't - or won't - the most prosperous nation on earth guarantee health care for all?

4. Knocked Up. Judd Apatow's unplanned-pregnancy comedy inspired countless magazine essays about its meaning: Anti-abortion screed? Slacker version of The Miracle of Morgan's Creek? Whatever the movie's cultural implications, it's a safe bet they weren't intended by Larry Sanders and Freaks and Geeks veteran Apatow, who is all about the jokes. The spectacularly vulgar Knocked Up contains more fast, funny repartee than any comedy in recent memory. Seth Rogen is hilarious as the slothful stoner whose one-night stand with a TV correspondent played by Katherine Heigl pulls the mismatched pair into an unlikely relationship.

5. An Unreasonable Man. Steve Skrovan and Henriette Mantel's superlative documentary about Ralph Nader, the uncompromising consumer advocate who is today, unfortunately, best remembered as a presidential election "spoiler." The movie details Nader's tireless crusades to force corporate giants like General Motors to ensure their products' safety, often at his own peril - GM famously launched a harassment campaign against him in the '60s. One former "Nader's Raider" suggests that if seatbelts, air bags, water, pharmaceuticals and other mainstays of daily life were labeled "This product was made safe by Ralph Nader," his legacy would be better appreciated.

6. Ratatouille. A very nearly perfect piece of modern animation, directed by Simpsons alumnus Brad Bird. The tale of a country rat with culinary aspirations features clever, anthropomorphic rats to entertain the kids, and a sophisticated Paris setting and gastronomic theme to appeal to grownups. An instant classic.

7. Talk to Me. This warmhearted biography of Ralph "Petey" Greene, an ex-con who became a popular 1960s Washington, DC radio personality, could have made the list solely for its electrifying soundtrack of songs by James Brown, Otis Redding, Les McCann and Sam Cooke. (A couple of the best songs, unfortunately, do not appear on the soundtrack CD.) But the movie also has meaty performances by Don Cheadle as Greene and Chiwetel Ejiofor as his friend and manager. The funky energy gives way to sentimentality in the second half, but the movie is still a fun evocation of an era.

8. Waitress. The ghastly murder of its writer and director, Adrienne Shelly, is not the only reason critics and audiences embraced this quirky story about a small-town waitress and expert pie baker (the winning Keri Russell) trapped in an abusive marriage, whose unwanted pregnancy leads her into an affair with her obstetrician. The movie is a little uneven, but its piquant eccentricity enables it to transcend its commonplace theme.

9. Wristcutters. The kind of movie that used to define "indie" style, a sweetly mordant road-trip comedy about suicide. Goran Dukic adapted a short story by Etgar Keret that imagines a kind of purgatory where those who commit suicide dwell, which looks like the dreary outskirts of many American towns. Nothing earth-shaking, but an unassuming, effective and highly original movie.

10. No End in Sight. Charles H. Ferguson, a software entrepreneur who initially supported the Iraq invasion, made this sober documentary detailing the colossal blunders of the occupation's first disastrous year. Regrettably, the movie doesn't question the rationale for the war, but is still remarkable for its portrait of hubris and ineptitude, and because those interviewed aren't left-wing administration critics, but former Bush loyalists.