Monica Guzman's Top Ten
1. Million Dollar Baby?A story of love and loyalty where even shadows illuminate and silence speaks poetry, Eastwood's masterpiece finds beauty in simplicity and completely won me over.
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?A "f**ed up movie looking for its own peace of mind," this film is proof that Charlie Kauffman needs professional help and we can't let him get it.
3. The Incredibles?Because it's funny, because it's not just for kids, but ultimately because it made me feel like one.
4. Team America: World Police?Politics and puppet sex: somebody had to do it, but no one expected to laugh this hard.
5. Sideways?Tipsy from wine and wisdom and brimming with subtlety, this light comic masterpiece is ultimately about regaining your balance.
6. Before Sunset?It's one long, captivating conversation between two former lovers in Paris and the most romantic film I have ever seen.
7. Hotel Rwanda?The most socially significant film of the year shakes your very foundation and won't let go for days.
8. Kill Bill Vol. 2?Made by one of the most artistically brutal directors working today, this sequel reveals the heart, soul, and bloody brilliance behind this tale of a woman who knows how to kick ass.
9. Collateral?This is what all serious action films should aspire to.
10. Friday Night Lights?Rough, ready, and surprisingly powerful, this story of a town where football is life is easily the best goddamned sports movie ever made.
Mike Nugent's Top Ten
1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?This resonant romance adds another comic masterpiece to screenwriter extraordinaire Charlie Kaufman's oeuvre, and tops all the others with its broken heart.
2. Before Sunset?Revisiting characters from Before Sunrise to intimate and moving effect.
3. Sideways?This light angsty middle age buddy comedy will make you drunk with pleasure.
4. Bad Education?Pedro Almodóvar's film noir with a transvestite twist expertly weaves beautifully executed imagery and complex narrative structures without breaking a sweat.
5. The Aviator?The best biopic of the year successfully avoids genre conventions with dynamism and aplomb, and is a return to form for Martin Scorsese.
6. Maria Full of Grace?This Colombian film on drug mules treats the subject with probing tact and features Catalina Moreno's outstanding Oscar-nominated debut.
7. Hero?A spectacle in the best sense of the word, combining with eye-widening visual elements, dazzling fight sequences a la Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and epic scope.
8. Collateral?Rising far above a typical thriller as well as imaginatively furthering the digital film art form, it's the most fun you'll ever have in a cab.
9. Spider-Man 2?Simply put, it's the best comic book movie ever.
10. Closer?Telling the story of a warring quartet of desperate and cruel-hearted characters, it incisively cuts to the dark core of love.