15. A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD (Dir: Michael Mayer)

As religious lunatics in America continue to cram their own rigid ideas of what constitutes a family down everyone's throats, the more I find myself gravitating towards films like this one. Michael Mayer's treatment of Michael Cunningham's novel about a trio of friends who form a family as close -- and as dysfunctional -- as any, is so heartfelt and so real that you leave them only reluctantly at the end of it. Stage veteran Dallas Roberts is nothing short of sensational, and Colin Farrell, once you get past his awful hairstyles, shows a human side as the needy and confused Bobby. If you missed this one in theatres, don't miss it now on DVD.

14. ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND
(Dir: Michel Gondry)

While I didn't love Michel Gondry's creation of Charlie Kaufman's meditation (if anything coming out of Charlie Kaufman's mind can be called meditative) on love as much as some of my compatriots, there's no denying that this was the most imaginative, while at the same time plaintive, American movie of the year. Perhaps the biggest surprise is their ability to turn Jim Carrey (in his most disciplined performance yet) and Kate Winslet (in her most freewheeling since Heavenly Creatures) into the kind of screen couple you want to revisit in ten years.

13. KILL BILL, VOL. II
(Dir: Quentin Tarantino)

The wildest ride on cinema this year. If Quentin Tarantino seems at times like a little kid seeking attention for "Look what I did now!", there's no denying that he's a brilliant stylist. Less bloody than the first film, less chopsocky and more like a Sergio Leone spaghetti western than a wuxia film, it's suspenseful, stylish, sometimes outrageously funny (emphasis on outrageous), and a quirky showcase for its offbeat cast.

12. FAHRENHEIT 9/11 (Dir: Michael Moore)

Does any more ink need to be spilled about this film? Angry, important, and alas, just sloppy enough to provide the Republicans with fodder for their bile.

11. BROTHER TO BROTHER (Dir: Rodney Evans)

This beautifully constructed film, in which the personal and cultural struggles of a young black gay artist are juxtaposed against a somewhat fictionalized version of the Harlem Renaissance, is a terrific debut by director Rodney Evans. The stylish flashbacks and use of vintage music give the film a larger-budget feel, while wonderful performances by Anthony Mackie and Roger Robinson as two generations of men dealing with the same struggle anchor the film. The protagonists of this film may be gay, but its themes transcend gender, sexual orientation and race.

The best seen-by-no-one film of the year. The idea of a dark romantic comedy about a suicidal man, directed by a Danish Dogme 95 disciple with an all-Scottish cast doesn't sound promising, but this one is so charming, so well-written, and so beautifully acted, particularly by newcomer and Hank Azaria lookalike Jamie Sives as the eponymous Wilbur, I defy anyone not to be won over. It's a Harold and Maude for the millennium, and an absolute winner.

Because cultural critics never seem able to let a cartoon be just a cartoon, this wildly successful Pixar entry about a family of superheroes forced to live in a kind of witness protection program after the costs of litigating the aftermath of their exploits become more than the government can withstand has been derided as a Randian objectivist fantasy. Churls. It's an absurd leap from Craig T. Nelson's harried superhero dad and Holly Hunter's pluckily flexible mom to John Galt and Dagny Taggart. This is just a wildly inventive retro fantasy that pokes good-natured fun at most of American culture without ever being outright topical. Stealing the show is director Brad Bird himself in the role of Anna Wintour's mini-me.

Another of Robert Greenwald's quickie documentaries, Outfoxed reveals, as if that were necessary, the role of Fox News as the nearly official propaganda arm of the Bush Administration. Aware of the magnitude of the target he's going after, Greenwald does his homework, recording weeks upon weeks of Fox News footage to make his points. With on-camera analysis by many of the usual suspects, including the ever-repentant David Brock, the film also offers some inside insights by a former Fox news personality whose voice is just barely disguised, but is easily recognizable as that former ESPN guy who also happens to be the only journalist in America actually exploring the voting irregularities that took place on November 2nd.

Simply astonishing. A hybrid documentary in the style of Robert Flaherty, the film portrays a family of nomadic shepherds in Mongolia as they try to reconcile a newborn camel with the mother who has rejected it. Not only are filmmakers Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni providing a look into a culture most of us never see, but the film is also loaded to the gills with "cute factor", in the form not just of the newborn camel, who is a natural screen hog, but of young Uuganbaatar Ikhbayar, who plays the younger of two brothers. This is a heartwarming family film in the very best sense.

Fahrenheit 9/11 may have gotten all the press, but in order to understand how the Iraq war looks through the eyes of the people in the region, and arguably through the eyes of the reality-based community, Jehane Noujaim's look inside the Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera is an eye-opener. In comparing the way U.S. broadcasters handled the early days of the war to that of Al-Jazeera, one would think they were covering two different wars. Widely derided as Islamic propaganda, the film is surprisingly sympathetic to those caught in the middle, such as U.S. Marine press spokesman Lt. Josh Rushing, who, unlike the Pentagon civilians he reported to, at least tried to understand the people and culture he was dealing with.

Joshua Marston's astounding debut as a director and author gave us a window into the world of the drug mule that most of us had never considered. This well-paced, thoughtful film contained some powerful, if controversial imagery, such as the obvious parallel between the Roman Catholic mass practiced in Latin American countries, and the ritual swallowing of capsules filled with heroin. Featuring a focused and determined performance by impressive newcomer Catalina Sandino Moreno, the film contains one of the most suspenseful airplane flights you'll ever see. What would make a young woman do something like this? The answer is surprisingly simple.

2004 was undoubtedly the Year of Flying Zhang Yimou, and while the director's late-year entry House of Flying Daggers overshadowed its only slightly less spectacular and far less preposterous older brother, for my money, this color-themed variations on an assassin's tale made for a more compelling film. Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung as assassin/lovers burn up the screen with a greater intensity than their younger counterparts in Flying Daggers, for all that theirs is not the film's driving story.

Mel Gibson's spatter-porn epic The Passion of the Christ may have generated all the ink, but it was South Korean writer/director Kim Ki-duk who delivered the most spiritually enlightening film of the year. Tracing the life of a young Buddhist monk through the seasons of his life, Spring Summer plays out like a quiet meditation on life itself. Gorgeously photographed, spare of dialogue yet fraught with meaning, this film brings its Buddhist precepts to a mass audience in a way no one could have imagined. Compared with this film's quiet wisdom on man, nature, and the cycle of life, Gibson's tub-thumping brand Christianity seems something invented by barbarians.

Far more than "the black Schindler's List", Terry George's impeccable profile of Paul Rusesabagina, who gave safe harbor to over 1200 Hutu and Tutsi moderates during the Rwandan genocide of 1994 brings both a country and an extraordinary individual to life. Don Cheadle inhabits his character without ever once going over the top. The genocide is effectively handled without once resorting to the kind of sledgehammer tactics that marred Spielberg's so-called masterpiece. Impeccably paced, beautifully constructed, well-cast, emotionally shattering, the film zeroes in on individuals to tell the story of the people of Rwanda and what they endured that terrible year. This may be the most important film of the year.

THE BEST OF THE REST:

The Mother, Touching the Void, Super Size Me, Ray, Undertow, Closer, Collateral, Finding Neverland