2. The Wrestler
What defines an auteur? Is it the idea that if you took the director’s name off the movie, you could still tell who made it? In that case, Darren Aronofsky would surely fail the test, for The Wrestler is unlike any of his earlier features, and yet, the fact that he’s willing to break from his earlier style (abandoning the meticulously storyboarded approach of Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain for a more documentary-like naturalism) and succeed at something so radically different seems the very essence of directorial accomplishment. Working with Mickey Rourke (who seems to have achieved the comeback his character covets), Aronofsky achieves a one-of-a-kind portrait. A great tragic figure in the vein of Death of a Salesman’s Willy Loman or On the Waterfront’s would-be contender, Robin Ramzinski (Randy “The Ram” to his fans) merely wants the American Dream, only to realize the game is rigged against him.

3. Man on Wire
James Marsh has made a heist movie disguised as a documentary — or perhaps it is the other way around. Either way, he has brought the kind of energy that makes your palms sweat to the story of a most amazing caper: In 1974, a team of French acrobats breached the World Trade Center’s security, climbed to the top and extended a wire between the two towers. What performance artist Philippe Petit did next broke the laws of nature, gravity and, of course, New York City, stepping out into thin air 110 stories above his street-level audience. Through a mix of archival footage, fresh interviews and b&w reenactment, Marsh recreates Petit’s insane exploits and, without coming right out and saying it, reminds us that there are those who would bring these towers to the ground, and others who embraced the structures for putting them a quarter mile closer to heaven.

4. Gomorrah
The title refers to the Camorra crime syndicate, which has infiltrated nearly every aspect of life in Naples, Italy, but it couldn’t be more appropriate in that Matteo Garrone’s expose of the region’s squalor and corruption suggests Hell on Earth. Gone is the handsome, semi-aspirational quality of gangster movies like The Godfather and Scarface, replaced with a gritty, disorienting aesthetic influenced in equal measure by Italian neorealism and the Euro-crime exploitation movies of folks like Fernando Di Leo. Others have compared the film’s complex, interwoven approach to HBO’s “The Wire,” and the analogy works: Garrone throws his audience behind enemy lines, never slowing down for routine hand-holding or exposition. He expects us to keep up — not easy, given the unfamiliar turf — as he reveals the System’s toxic reach into every aspect of life, from sanitation to the fashion world, drug dealing to otherwise respectable businesses. Welcome to Dante’s ninth circle.

5. The Order of Myths
At first glance, this insider’s view of Carnivale from Mobile’s own Margaret Brown functions as a sharp critique of centuries of American racism, documenting the city’s still-segregated Mardi Gras celebrations and their deep-running ties to less enlightened times. But Brown’s documentary never lectures; its most telling details can be observed in the background of other scenes, such as how the only black faces at one relatively modern-minded debutante’s party are the hired help serving champagne, or the genuine enthusiasm with which an older white woman pauses to thank the uncomfortable black king and queen for attending their coronation ceremony. Progressive audiences will surely cluck their tongues and ask why the black and white contingents don’t fuse their respective pageants into a single parade, but the big revelation here is that neither side is especially eager to subvert their proud 300-year tradition for the sake of a more politically correct event.

6. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
To call Woody Allen’s latest his least neurotic film in ages doesn’t mean its characters aren’t saddled with the same second-guessing self-analysis for which he’s known, but there’s a refreshingly impulsive quality to the romance this time around. On vacation in Spain, Scarlett Johansson’s Cristina has no trouble succumbing to her impulses, allowing the local surroundings and swarthy men (namely, impassioned painter Javier Bardem) to seduce her, while engaged-to-be-married Vicky (Rebecca Hall) could stand to be a bit more unbuttoned in her affairs. It is a delirious period of experimentation for both women, which the narrator (a vaguely condescending Christopher Evan Welch) affectionately dismisses from the sidelines — though Allen clearly puts more stock in their naive emotions than his voiceover does. That contradiction makes for a perfect tension in which Allen himself may be old enough to know better, but his heart is with characters still too young to care.

7. Shotgun Stories
On the surface, Jeff Nichols’ debut sounds like simple hixploitation: A standoff between two sets of Arkansas siblings with separate mothers but a father in common spirals into violence and tragedy. What sets Shotgun Stories apart is that Nichols chooses to tell the story from the side that would normally be the villains in such a tale, revealing more in the quiet moments between confrontations than the outbursts themselves, which unfold largely off-camera. When you think about it, it is lead character Son (played by Michael Shannon) who turns up at his dad’s funeral, spits on the coffin and slanders the man’s good name in front of his new family, pushing the longstanding tension between the rival clans to a tipping point. Yes, the four redneck brothers on the other side are just as bloodthirsty and mean, but Son remains the one character with the power to stop the violence.

8. Hunger
Is there any less appealing subgenre than the I.R.A. movie? Violence begets violence, hate breeds hate and all that — it all makes for bloody tiresome cinema. And then comes Steve McQueen, a multimedia artist making his first foray into feature directing, to examine the phenomenon sideways. Like Julian Schnabel before him, McQueen’s unique perspective suggests how much these art-world darlings have to offer the silver screen. Hunger breaks its story into three sections, the first detailing the sheer brutality with which Irish prison guards treated the “terrorists” in their custody. The middle portion presents an impossibly long conversation between Bobby Sands (played by Michael Fassbender) and his priest, in which the former lays out his plan to hunger-strike for political status. The last recreates Sands’ slow and painful starvation for his cause — a form of nonviolent protest more effective than all the car bombs and assassinations depicted in more sensational I.R.A. films.

9. The Visitor
Walter Vale is the type of man whose blood pressure never rises far above barely-there, until the mild-mannered economics professor comes home to his seldom-used New York apartment to find that two illegal immigrants have moved in. Rather than freak out or call the cops, Walter befriends the couple and allows them to stay. With no scenery chewing to speak of, it’s an unlikely role-of-a-lifetime for talented character actor Richard Jenkins, and yet the film’s low-key quality supports an incredibly nuanced performance. Credit writer-director Thomas McCarthy, whose script treads close enough to all those movies that exploit our fear of the other that Walter’s simple generosity toward his guests manages to constantly surprise, even as the story steers into more overtly political territory. As a follow-up to his wonderful debut, The Station Agent, this equally perceptive study cements McCarthy’s place as one of the great humanists working in American independent cinema.

10. The Dark Knight (with honorable mention Quantum of Solace)
Two of the most enduring characters in pulp-to-screen history came into their own this year, as the second installments in the newly rebooted James Bond and Batman franchises burrowed into the fractured psychology of their respective protagonists. The Dark Knight was obviously the more popular of the two, pitting the Caped Crusader against Heath Ledger’s ingeniously anarchic Joker, though few seem to appreciate how effectively Quantum of Solace builds on the loss of Bond’s beloved Vesper Lynd and makes the action genre’s “this time it’s personal” cliché mean something for once. Of course, neither film could stand alone had the groundwork not been so effectively laid by Batman Begins and Casino Royale, but it’s intensely satisfying to see both heroes taken seriously after being used to sell kid-friendly action figures so recently in their careers. For those who complain that Quantum has the weaker villain, I counter, but Bond is (finally) the more interesting hero.