2. Manufactured Landscapes
You think global warming is scary? Had there been cameras to record the waste, excess and folly of the Industrial Revolution in America, the images might have looked something like the beautiful horrorshows photographer Edward Burtynsky captures on his visit to contemporary China, where a massive transformation is underway. But amid such enormous potential lies another inconvenient truth: China has learned nothing from the mistakes of our past, stripping natural resources and polluting the environment like there's no tomorrow, encouraged by the demands of Western consumers. For the sake of this documentary, director Jennifer Baichwal accompanies Burtynsky on his journey. Last year, Our Daily Bread examined the food industry through a series of similar haunting tableaux, but did so — as Burtynsky's pictures do — without any additional information. Baichwal's film puts everything in perspective, giving context to the photographer's work and complimenting his images with breathtaking compositions of her own.

3. Romance & Cigarettes
Love it or hate it, we have Moulin Rouge! to thank for opening the doors to all sorts of experimentation with the musical form, the results of which have delighted even the likes of me, who never had much use for all that singing and dancing anyway. But this wild and weird blue-collar variant, in which a schlubby middle-aged adulterer (James Gandolfini) takes to the streets in song, is my favorite of this year's exciting offerings — which include Tim Burton's visionary gothic take on Sweeney Todd; the frothy screen-to-stage-and-back-again John Waters riff that is Hairspray; Julie Taymor's hit-and-miss slice of Beatlemania, Across the Universe; the "real world" Disney fairytale Enchanted; the musically challenged but otherwise inspired coming-of-age tale, Colma; and Once, a scruffy Irish romance with a neorealist twist. I've written about Romance & Cigarettes at length elsewhere, so suffice it to say, John Turturro's gutsy creation just keeps growing on me.

4. There Will Be Blood
In the semi-stooped silhouette of Daniel Plainview, director Paul Thomas Anderson has crafted a singular portrait of an American titan confounded by personal demons. It's Citizen Kane without his "Rosebud" to reveal the source of his monstrous inner turmoil (or The Aviator without its bogus insights), which puts the mystery to the audience: What drives Daniel Plainview first to success and later to self-destruction? For some, the excitement peters out after the first hour, when the man's white-knuckle search for oil gives way to the slow unraveling of his character, but Anderson is a master manipulator of his audience, and Daniel Day-Lewis creates such a compelling screen presence, I was never less than riveted. In ambition, energy and scope, this is a seismic achievement, as deeply flawed as its subject. I'm still not sure what it all means — but that makes the experience all the more fascinating.

5. No Country for Old Men
Joel and Ethan Coen's first-ever adaptation (to make it to the screen, at least) represents an ideal pairing of sensibilities, mixing the brothers' gift for regional caricature with the gritty, guy-talk worldview of Pulitzer-winning novelist Cormac McCarthy. It also marks a welcome return to form for the duo, back to intense, observational thrillers after a series of underwhelming comic frivols (o brother, indeed!). In fact, the only reason I'm not more enamored with the Coens' latest, in which a weary West Texas sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) tries to save a local man (Josh Brolin) from his own stupidity, is that it rehashes so much of what they did right in their best film, Fargo. But these twisted sibs are such expert craftsmen, even when they break the rules, they manage to get away with it — if only their characters were so lucky.

6. Private Property
At last, a film that understands and captures the fallout of divorce as real people experience it. The inimitable Isabelle Huppert plays a middle-aged mother, Pascale, who's stuck picking up after her two grown sons: fraternal twins Thierry and François (real-life brothers Jérémie and Yannick Renier). Recently divorced and ready to move on with her life, Pascale wants to sell the house and move in with her lover. Thierry objects. This is the family home. What right does she have to give it up and, by extension, push her own children out of the nest? There's psychology to spare in Joachim Lafosse's domestic study (and little to no stylistic interference in his direction), yet the characters don't easily reduce to simple explanations. The Squid and the Whale came close, but this movie gets it right, with the kids turning hostile and the mother overwhelmed.

7. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
I know what you're thinking: Not another paraplegic story to lecture us about how much we take life for granted. But Julian Schnabel isn't interested in making Hallmark movies. Instead, this enfant terrible of the New York art-world allows his ragged, irascible aesthetic to inform both the character (Paris Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby — who's kind of a bastard, even after a stroke leaves everything but his left eye paralyzed) and experimental style of showing how Jean-Do copes with locked-in syndrome. The movie begins inside his head, peering out through bleary eyes, and eventually breaks free, alternating between the realms of fantasy, flashback and ornery everyday reality. I suppose one could see it as weepy or inspirational, but what fascinates me about Schnabel's approach is how successfully he manages to approximate the human mind, using cinema to better understand how we experience the world.

8. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
Abortion is a touchy enough issue, even without factoring in the cultural implications of considering it through the lens of Nicolae Ceauşescu's Romanian dictatorship, when procreation was seen as a national imperative ("The fetus is the property of the entire society"). Director Cristian Mungiu paints a grim picture of two university roommates, one of whom is pretty, pregnant and disconcertingly ambivalent about her condition, the other a more resourceful young woman who assumes the terrible responsibility of making arrangements. Mungiu's unflinching approach is comment enough on the terrible price the two girls pay in body, soul and psyche to go through with the illegal procedure. Between this and last year's equally unsettling The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, it's clear there's a New Wave of searing social commentary afoot in Romania. These movies may look raw and unprofessional by Hollywood standards, but they expose truths no studio film will touch.

9. Lake of Fire
Speaking of abortion, troublemaker Tony Kaye drove himself to bankruptcy orchestrating this landmark — not to mention remarkably even-handed — survey on the subject. The movie features insights from an exhaustive range of sources, alternating between interview footage, protest rallies and, most effectively, a doctor's office visit in which a shell-shocked young woman actually goes through with the procedure. The thought-provoking documentary grapples with the many paradoxes that surround anti-abortion rhetoric (including the "choice" of some "pro-life" activists to murder offending doctors) while demystifying the operation itself. By draining his footage of color, Kaye asks us to focus on ideas over cinematography (some of which is downright avant garde) or individual gut-wrenching images (including an eviscerated fetus), but it also reminds us that this is not a black and white issue, but a complex and deeply personal dilemma in which universal pronouncements simply do not apply.

10. Juno
Still haven't got your fill of pregnancy-themed movies? This trendy, crowd-pleasing comedy may be the polar opposite of 4 Months, but it's no less vital. Ever since Hard Candy, I've considered Ellen Page to be an actress wise beyond her years, and here she proves the perfect fit for a young whippersnapper who thinks she's got it all figured out. Her experience humbled me, too: On first viewing, I found myself resisting screenwriter Diablo Cody's hipster stylings. Then, about 20 minutes in (right about the scene where Juno tells her parents she's having Paulie Bleeker's baby), the movie won me over. Sure, everybody talks in the casual, constantly evolving slang of text messages and blogs, but Cody's insights are genuine. Not since John Hughes has there been such a fresh voice in that most insipid of genres: the high-school sitcom. With any luck, teen movies will never be the same again.

Just to name-drop the next 10, I also loved Eastern Promises, Golden Door, Superbad, Broken English, The Savages, Sweeney Todd, Away From Her, Once, The King of Kong and Stardust, but rather than elaborating on them, I want to leave you with a recommendation for a film without distribution:

Honorable Mention: The Singer (Quand J'Etais Chanteur)
Is there anything more heartbreaking than watching the woman of your dreams slow-dancing with someone else? From where washed-up lounge singer Alain Moreau sits, crooning schmaltzy old standards to crowds of half-interested retirees, Marion looks different. She's young and beautiful, yet already injured by life. Together, in a relationship that is neither passionate nor fully reciprocated, the two lonely adults manage to sort themselves out. Watching Gérard Depardieu (who remains peerless in roles such as this) and Cécile De France (as fetching a young actress as you'll find working today) engaged in this melancholy courtship, I was reminded of Sofia Coppola's exquisite Lost in Translation, as two individuals who aren't quite suited for the long term find themselves to be just what the other needs at that particular moment. Xavier Giannoli's polished French valentine so poignantly expresses how life sometimes proves sweetest in denying what we want most.