If this year’s motion pictures were distilled into scenes, what follows would be the best of the year’s best.
1. “No Country for Old Men”
In Joel and Ethan Coen’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) shows up at a hardscrabble gas station. The attendant is as Texas howdy as can be. Only Chigurh starts to goad him. Then Chigurh insists on a coin toss. We know the killer that is coiled inside the quietly sadistic Chigurh. Toward movie’s end, another character is faced with the same game. How she reacts says something heartbreaking and vital about women in the “country” of the title.
2. “Michael Clayton”
In an alley in lower Manhattan, corporate fixer Clayton (George Clooney) confronts his friend but also his biggest cleanup job. Arthur, a brilliant litigator, has forgone his bipolar meds and created a class-action-size disaster for his firm’s biggest client. Holding far too many French baguettes for one man, he faces Clayton. And for five minutes, Tom Wilkinson plays his character as lost. Then the ferocious litigator resurfaces and asserts what a dramatically swift, psychologically smart film this is.
3. “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”
In Julian Schnabel’s version of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s memoir about awakening after a stroke, locked in his body, a kind physical therapist wheels Bauby to see a priest. With a series of blinks, Bauby recounts a visit he once took to Lourdes. Moments later, the movie breaks free of the blue-gray of the church, the compassionate piety of Bauby’s caretaker and gives us a vision of Bauby’s mistress Inez’s mane swept up into the air as they race toward a weekend in Lourdes. The shift from sober to celebratory is the most ecstatic on film this year.
4. “Juno”
The family sitdown in which 16-year-old Juno MacGuff tells her folks she’s knocked up proves that director Jason Reitman and newbie screenwriter Diablo Cody knew where the minefields were and how to avoid them. They elude every misstep that could have made this a familiar coming-of-age romp. Instead of heavies, Juno’s dad and stepmom are terrifically can-do. Played by J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney, they are even better once Juno leaves the room. “Did you see that coming?” he asks. “Yeah, but I was hoping she was expelled or into hard drugs.”
5. “There Will Be Blood”
Oilman Daniel Plainview kicks the heck out of evangelical Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), making him yelp for mercy in the dust of a California oil field. In a jarring scene of Christian theater, Plainview (Daniel Day- Lewis) receives his comeuppance when he endures a similar humiliation in Sunday’s church. Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has drilled deep into the rich, awful relationship of spirit to capital in this austere beauty inspired by Upton Sinclair’s “Oil!”
6. “Persepolis”
If only all bouts of depression ended with the fighting song “Eye of the Tiger.” Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Parranoud’s adaptation of Iranian Satrapi’s graphic memoir is a rich argument for the empathic power of the drawn — hand-drawn, that is — over live-action.
7. “Atonement”
With every viewing, Joe Wright’s World War II romance, based on Ian McEwan’s novel burrows deeper. From the start, Seamus McGarvey’s extravagant tracking shot of Robbie Turner arriving at the beach at Dunkirk has been a marvel. It follows James McAvoy’s dazed and thwarted lover then peels off for its own walk amid the ruins.
8. “Once”
An Irish bloke, referred to in the credits of John Carney’s musical as the “Guy,” and the “Girl,” a Czech immigrant, find the first of many beautiful notes together in a Dublin music store. For the audience, it is love at first sight. Credit the movie with a sweet discipline that it takes the duo longer to figure out their own relationship.
9. “Talk to Me”
Kasi Lemmons’ vibrant period piece about Washington, D.C., deejay Petey Green (Don Cheadle) goes from raunchy comedy to cultural dirge in a matter of moments when the bickering, battling radio personalities learn of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.
10. “Into the Wild”
By the flickering light of a campfire, Catherine Keener’s “rubber tramp” mama tells wanderer Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch), “You look like a loved kid, be fair.” She speaks for so many who love the tender spirit of Sean Penn’s film, but want someone to tell the headstrong McCandless a bit of truth.
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com
