Philadelphia Weekly

Bio diversity: Richard Gere is one of six actors who conjure Dylan's spirit in I'm Not There.

Reports of the death of cinema have been greatly exaggerated.

Sure, 2007 took quite a while to get rolling, and I believe it was about halfway through Transformers that I started seriously considering a career in real estate. But then sometime around August the damnedest thing happened--movies started getting good again. Really good. By year's end it was actually difficult to narrow a list of the best ones down to just 10.

1) I'm Not There
Todd Haynes' positively-fourth-street Bob Dylan flick isn't just a formalist assault on tiresome Hollywood biopics. It's also a playful kaleidoscope of cinematic touchstones, half-kidding rants and arcane references that flow so seamlessly and rhythmically between multiple Bob personas, the movie itself conjures all the mystery, grandeur and elusive poetry of a great Dylan tune.

2) No Country for Old Men
The Coen brothers' hushed, relentless Cormac McCarthy adaptation contains at least half a dozen of the most breathtakingly assured suspense sequences in years, but becomes something much richer, sadder and stranger during the final reels. Javier Bardem's single-minded psychopath will haunt your nightmares, but it's Tommy Lee Jones' weary, despairing sheriff who breaks your heart.

3) There Will Be Blood
Another volcanic, galvanizing turn from Daniel Day-Lewis anchors Paul Thomas Anderson's cruel tale of oil, religion and seething misanthropy at the start of the 20th century. Almost Kubrickian in its austere pitilessness, this simmering psychodrama eventually boils over into a gonzo closing so gloriously theatrically baroque, it's already the stuff of legend. Bravo.

4) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
This is a gorgeously gloomy throwback to those great druggy 1970s anti-Westerns like McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid from writer/director Andrew Dominik. Brad Pitt is slyly cast as the frontier's first tabloid superstar, with a wonderfully wormy Casey Affleck playing Mark David Chapman 100 years ahead of schedule.

5) The Bourne Ultimatum
Now this is how you make a summer movie. In the final chapter of a trilogy that deepened with each installment, director Paul Greengrass raises the bar for blockbuster action sequences, imparting a jittery intensity alongside sharp political commentary and an uncommon respect for the audience's intelligence. Also, it's totally fucking awesome.

6) Zodiac
Form meets content in director David Fincher's meticulous, hyperdetailed account of the endless hunt for the Bay Area's celebrity serial killer. In a nifty rebuke to our current tidy TV procedural craze, Fincher focuses on how facts and evidence can often cancel each another out in a fog of minutiae, obsession and wasted lives.

7) Superbad
Teenage hormonal panic hasn't been so funny or so heartfelt since Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Co-writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have penned some spectacularly potty-mouthed dialogue, but beyond the dick jokes you'll find a core of authentic anxiety, conveying the confusion and uncertainty that comes with the end of adolescence.

8) Linda Linda Linda
Speaking of great high school movies, Nobuhiro Yamashita's irresistible tale of four teenage gals starting their own punk band unfolds in such droll, deadpan long-takes, it sometimes feels like Jim Jarmusch directing a John Hughes movie. Funny, melancholy and attuned to the redemptive powers of rock music, the final scene is pure pop ecstasy.

9) No End in Sight
Suck on this, Michael Moore. A corrective to every annoying documentary trend of recent years, Charles Ferguson's precise, even-tempered, skillfully assembled autopsy of our blundering Iraqi occupation proves once and for all there's no need for cheap shots, grandstanding or publicity stunts when you've got the facts on your side. More like this one, please.

10) Bug
Director William Friedkin, finally back in Exorcist mode, films Tracy Letts' play as a relentlessly claustrophobic, zoomed-in audio-visual chamber of horrors. Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon deliver go-for-broke performances, dragging one another down into a codependent, drug-fueled, paranoid dementia as frightening as it is heartbreaking. Almost impossible to watch, but even harder to forget.

And finally, one last parting shot at 20 hours of my life I'll never get back: Transformers, 300, Southland Tales, Across the Universe, Hostel: Part II, Lions for Lambs, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, Shrek the Third, Wild Hogs and the first reel of Juno.