If The Proposition accomplished anything, it's that it showed that there's still plenty of inspiration to be found in the once dead Western genre.  Set in Australia during England's attempts to civilize the outback, Hillcoat and screenwriter Nick Cave's bleak and violent vision shows the dark side of man when his instinctual nature is brought under the control of forced structure and order.  Pierce, Huston and Winstone all turn in career performances, each remaining menacing and vile while still being distinctly human.  Some have issues with the lack of sympathetic characters, but in fact that's part of The Proposition's thesis - that the enforcement of order and society upon a way of life driven solely by the instinct to survive will end only in bloodshed and no man remains innocent.

Bujalski's focus on the awkwardness of conversation (in all its uncomfortable pauses and interruptions) and attemps to connect with other people is what, like his first feature, makes this one of the best films of the year.  A trio of intelligent friends, briefly forming an almost, sorta love triangle, play out the struggles with women, conversation, friendship, love and finding some sort of place in the world that all twentysomethings have to deal with.  Bujalski's obsession with diction is remarkably playful and works wonders when coupled with the subtle ways he cuts between the person talking and the listener.  I'm hesitant to call any single director "the voice of a generation", but he certainly has tapped into something honest about the way young people relate today that no other director has been able to grapple with.

Of all the film's I loved this year, this one was certainly the most pleasant surprise of them all.  Del Toro delicately balances the violence of fascism with the undying hope and innocence of a child and cold, harsh realism with fantasy.  Whether or not the religious symbolism is something personally relevant, it is only a small part of the director's vision of humanity when faced with dire circumstances.  Surprisingly, most of the film is not within the realm of fantasy, which is appropriate given that these episodes are but brief escapes from reality that Ofelia grants herself to get by.  It's both magical and grounded in the horrors brought about by fascism and intelligent enough to have its message rest not just on hope, but on the questioning of authority and the willingness to stand against injustice.

Next to Rosetta, this is the most intense of the Dardenne Bros. four features.  This is a simple yet beautiful tale of redemption that takes on additional meaning through their typically deft camerawork.   In a different way than my #1 film of the year, this too brings a true sense of physicality to the screen.  We not only see the wind blowing in Bruno's face during the chase scene or see him drenched with water after hiding  in the sea, we feel the exhuberance of the first and the weight of the latter.  Their handheld camerawork has always had this effect for me, but with The Child it provides an immediacy that is rewarded twofold by the genuine, transcendent final image.

There are plenty of reasons this film ended up on my top 10 this year, but it's here first and foremost because it made me laugh more than any film in a long time.  I've been a fan of Sacha Baron Cohen's comedy for a while, but here he takes it on the road and reaches the peak of his social satire.  Cohen may be pandering to liberal audiences by picking on ultra-conservatives buried in the deep South, but he's not letting anyone off the hook.  In exposing the deep-seeded prejudices in the heartland of America, it's in some ways a revenge film for liberals who've put up with 6 years of President Bush, but since much of the film is constructed or re-enacted, it also brings into question our perception of those we're laughing at.  Are the Southern stereotype Cohen so clearly baits us to laugh at all that much more "real" than Borat is a Khazakstanian?

I'm about as interested in the Royal Family as the next American, which is to say I really couldn't give a crap.  I remember when Princess Di died but as it had no profound or lasting effect on me, I didn't expect The Queen to be of much interest.  In the skillful hands of Stephen Frears (who some have faulted with essentially not over-stylizing his film), the clash between the outdated beliefs of the queen and the demands of the public for communal grieving somehow become fascinating.  By interspersing archival television footage and contrasting the Blair administrations strict attention to televisual information vs. the queen briefly taking it in before bed, Frears explores the effects of modernization and the instant dissemination of information on the relationship between the public and public figures.  Helen Mirren's performance is full of dignity and restraint, inviting compassion yet never justifying her incessant disregard for the demands of her people.

The subtleties of the casual interaction between friends was given a fine treatment in Mutual Appreciation, but Reichardt's film carry's with it such a strong sense of the past's effect on how we behave in the present.  The gulf between old friends who've long grown too far apart to remain close has never been explored with such attention to the details - the passive-aggressive remarks, anger surfacing through awkward playfulness and the unspoken frustrations expressed only through body language.  Set to the slow-burning Yo La Tengo soundtrack and the occasional regret-tinged musings of Air America on the radio, Old Joy carefully tunes into the melancholy of two men coming to realization that there may no longer be any way for them to relate to one another.

Through long takes, the consistent (though not constant) use of real time, and realistic verite camerawork, Christi Puiu takes an intensely up-close look at the failings of the Romanian health care system and its effects on the individual.  It's not the intellectual understanding of how the system fails that makes it so fascinating, but rather the gradual decaying of Lazarescu's body in the midst of everything happening around it.  It's an extremely physical film with a disturbingly close focus on the body.  Puiu plays this against the general air of arrogance and indifference that Lazarescu encounters throughout the night. Personally, I find the contrast of death and indifference quite horrifying. It's realism taken to the extremes to reach the absurd.