Yet, knowing all this, it’s still damned fun to pore over all the critics’ lists, comparing and contrasting sentiment, searching for consensus, stumbling across diversity. The adventurous critic is given the opportunity (and platform) to champion more obscure and challenging product, if not immediately available through spotty theatrical distribution, then certainly worthy of tracking down through the more democratic channels of DVD rental/purchase or internet streaming or film delivery websites. No matter where one resides nowadays, accessibility to material is not nearly as remote as it once was, when the chance to see a new work by a favourite foreign or independent director was entirely at the whims of managers and programmers at local cinemas.

A few caveats before I launch into the list: as I spent the year in London, I had access to many films that are currently without U.S. distribution, or are awaiting their release in America (examples of such comprise over half the list), which some will certainly consider a violation of the process. In that case, my list is invalid. Similarly, I haven’t been able to view some of the well-regarded indies from the year past in the States (including “Half Nelson”, “Old Joy”, “The Illusionist”, “Fast Food Nation”, “Sherrybaby”, “Come Early, Morning”) which otherwise might have found placement on the list. My only defense: I’m beholden to my environment. I can only base my opinions on what I’ve seen. If nothing else, the list can be useful as a guide to call attention to outstanding forthcoming releases-and as, in a few cases, the chance to mention a few gems which may have slipped through the cracks in the States, now available for discovery on DVD. The process overall is not perfect, is it?

Also, in fairness, I’ll refrain from a numerical order and simply list alphabetically-a craven act, most likely, but I want to regard the films as a unit of quality.

13(TZAMETI) Dir. Gela Babluani

An intellectual horror film shot as if it were the most harrowing documentary on the perils of the immigrant experience, director Babluani follows the descent of Sebastian (brother Georges Babluani), a young Georgian labourer in France, into a mire of dangerous and annihilating games played out by a cabal of wealthy Western men with desperate immigrant men as the pawns. The plot is a queasy, grim metaphor for a grasping, economically disenfranchised underclass, and a corrupt elite that is more than wiling to exploit them for their own thrills, dangling monetary award as an excuse to indulge the poorer men in ever-spiralling humiliation and debasement. Stiffed by a client, and anxious to feed his family, Sebastian lifts a note from the home that obliquely hints at a money-making scheme, and soon is inextricably involved in a criminal netherworld that resembles a more politically and ethically charged version of “The Most Dangerous Game”. Steeped in the melancholy and violent eruption of his native Georgia, Babluani fashions a despairing, stark and lean view of existence as grave endurance. There’s a remarkable, expressive use of black and white photography that stares directly and unsparingly at an arbitrary universe of soul-shaking inhumanity and callousness. Should soon be available on DVD.

ATOMIZED Dir. Oskar Roehler

Adapted from a novel by noted misanthrope Michel Hoellebecq, director Roehler softens the bleak view of humanity without losing emotional honesty or the horror-struck awe at the vicissitudes of life. Half-brothers Bruno and Michael ,wounded and distorted by a dysfunctional past, take radically different roads to adulthood, one becoming a guarded scientist obsessed with elemental particles, the other a self-destructive teacher imperilled by his hedonistic tendencies, each searching in vain for a sense of peace in a terribly loud world that seems structured to defeat the very notion. Positing a view of human existence as an anguished state where all authoritarian organizing bodies have broken down, the poignantly adrift characters strive mightily against an unfeeling universe to establish suitable replacements, most often misguided and self-annihilating. As much as each man tries to defy feeling, as it’s treacherous to even expose the self briefly to intimacy, both are inexorably drawn into relationships that risk pain and loss. Houllebecq’s source material often (deliberately) pushes itself into the realm of scabrous existential comedy, but Roehler tempers the nastier sensibilities with a warmth that is more generous and open to possibility-and which actually feels more realistic than Houllebecq’s closed perspective of a wholly punishing, coldly implacable universe. Moritz Bleibtrau’s performance as the demonstratively troubled brother is hard to shake in its full titanic embrace of raw pain. Not yet set for release in the States

DUCK SEASON Dir. Fernando Eimbcke

Over the course of a day in a city flat in Mexico, the companionable idyll of two teenage boys is eminently disturbed by both the teenage neighbour girl in search of a working oven in which to bake some brownies, and a pizza boy with the soul of a poet who delivers the boys’ order and decides against leaving once the boys admit that they don’t intend to pay him. This utterly charming effort by neophyte director Eimbcke is vividly alive to every emotional fluctuation and flutter of all four central characters, and tenderly observant of the ways in which the young adults choose both to confess themselves to (and withhold themselves from) each other. The rich black and white photography strips all artifice and pretense from the material, and Eimbcke’s sure sense of spatial composition and adroit blocking of his actors in the relatively limited space prevents the apartment from ever feeling stagebound. Nothing really happens in a dramatic sense, yet everything happens-Eimbcke’s generosity towards and respect for the inner lives of his teen characters allows his actors to respond with beautifully open and honest performances, heartbreaking in their immediacy and bravery. Available on Dvd

HARSH TIMES Dir. David Ayers

With a brutal immediacy as live and taut as a wire, director Ayers builds to one night’s convulsive careen through the seedier environs of L.A., in which a war vet bereft of purpose and abandoned to untenably violent impulses incommensurate with civilized society sets up a trusted childhood friend to act as his deliverer from his worst self. Christian Bale tears into the lead role with an anguished fury and a comprehensiveness that never allows the audience to easily dismiss him as solely a villain (indeed, Bale infuses him with a full tragic grandeur). Ayers, for his part, uses violence responsibly; this is not the gratuitous, adrenalized criminal action of most thrillers-the outbreaks and outbursts here carry an ugly, nauseating charge, a turning in on the self that is defeating and sickening. This is the rare genre exercise that breaks through into greater existential territory and inquiry- and it manages to be a politically astute critique of an administration’s failure to properly rehabilitate military personnel following combat. On general release, forthcoming to DVD

I DON’T WANT TO SLEEP ALONE Dir. Tsai Ming-Liang

Taiwanese master and film-festival institution Tsai continues to blithely produce masterpiece after masterpiece without ever quite breaking out of his cult status into the wider recognition that his body of work deserves. I tend to approach each new effort as another chapter in a gently unfolding larger work-I wait anxiously for each new dispatch from his part of the world, usually delivered in two-year intervals. Dismissed as mannered and brain-numbingly tedious by some, Tsai’s films are peopled by drifting, anomie-ridden young adults suffering through some atmospheric or environmental disturbance, a melancholic but near-slapstick tenor in regards to the cosmic joke that is existence underpinning all action (or inaction). The first of his films to be shot in his native Malaysia, and a work commissioned as an entry in the Vienna Festival celebrating the 250^th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, the three central characters enact a dance of romantic despair and thwarted desire amidst the choking haze of fog (possibly toxic) shrouding the city. One character may be dreaming the others, and Tsai’s embrace of desire is as pansexual as ever, which lend intriguing dimension to the proceedings. There’s a meteorologically determined sex scene that lodges firmly in the memory banks. Color and composition are customarily precise: Tsai’s static shots are worthy of the extended gaze, as subtle gesture and pun await discovery. The final image in this film (at first indecipherable, but slowly resolving itself into its full startling glory) is of such lunatic romantic rapture that I was left in a reverie that only a long and contemplative walk in the crisp September air could relieve. No U.S. release date

OFFSIDE Dir. Jafar Panahi

Less sober and solemn than his previous address of the plight of beleaguered women in the patriarchal structure of  the Muslim world (“The Circle”), Panahi’s latest is this tale of the extraordinary efforts of a group of female soccer fans to sneak into the qualifying game for the Iranian team’s entry into the World Cup of 2005, a forbidden act (now rescinded, I believe). At risk of being detained and possibly arrested for daring to crash the boys-only event, Panahi celebrates the defiance and pluck and determination of the young Iranian women(even though each individual character remains unnamed, each actress is given room to establish personality and identity). With great measure and humor, Panahi gently but firmly indicts the peevishness and backwardness of such preoccupations, without ever losing sense of the possibilities of real consequences to which the girls expose themselves with their risky behaviour. Panahi manages a few tense, expertly directed sequences alert to every ounce of suspense inherent in a situation that are easily the equal of action setpieces in big-budget Hollywood films. A bold ending provides a fanciful but apt image of sudden collective euphoria, a rapture in which, momentarily, all sense of ego and rigid tradition and sexual inequality is forgotten, and the best of the world is fleetingly on offer. In limited release April 2007

THE PAGE TURNER Dir. Denis Dercourt

A tight, ferociously efficient and economical French thriller that excels in quiet menace, director Dercourt’s film accomplishes in less than an hour-and-a-half more than most films that labor on for two-plus hours never manage; there’s not a wasted moment, every image and exchange precisely judged. An unnervingly self-possessed young girl prepares with grave will for a piano audition that will decide her placement in a prestigious music conservatory program. During her piece in front of the judges, her concentration is fatally arrested by one female juror’s callously distracting signing of an autograph for a pushy fan: she is unable to regain her composure, and fails the exam. Defeated and enraged, she returns home and with scary finality closes the book on her music career. Years later, now embodied by the beguilingly blank Deborah Francais (from “L’Enfant”), and clearly having plotted a course of retribution with unstinting patience and determination that hints at truly unfathomable malevolence, the aggrieved student insinuates herself into the troubled home of the woman whose disregard cost her a scholarship and placement at the music school (she uses the woman’s husband, a lawyer for whom she works as an assistant, as a liaison, which raises questions as to how comprehensive and detailed her scheme is). She sets about almost immediately to undermine the emotional balance in the home, steadily and surely wrecking vengeance. The girl is a tantalizing mystery; the viewer is never certain just how far she’ll go, yet one suspects that she is most likely capable of anything. The film doesn’t need to trip over into hysterics or melodrama, as it is absolutely nerve-wracking and alarming enough through its sheer stillness-it doesn’t require such coarse tactics to achieve effect. Dercourt teaches at a music conservatory by day (he’s a terrifically accomplished moonlighting film director!), and his knowledge of the milieu and its people imparts quite a mesmerizing focus to the events depicted. Opening in limited release February 2007

RED ROAD Dir. Andrea Arnold

The deft feature debut by director Arnold (who won an Oscar for a previous short film) calls to mind the ready-made brilliance and verve of fellow Scot Lynne Ramsey’s “Ratcatcher”. Hers is a fresh, fully-formed vision, beautifully stubborn in its individuality. A fascinating study of the dichotomy of observing life as opposed to directly engaging in it ,the plot revolves around withheld female surveillance worker Kate , who is quite content to sit quietly behind a camera and spin out the whole of people’s life -stories from the few scraps of visual information available to her, all the while happily erasing all evidence of her own life (she shares bi-weekly carnal sessions with a lorry driver that seem more biological releases than engaged lovemaking). Suddenly and uncontrollably shaken by the image of a man from her past -Tony- who walks into camera frame, she moves from the studio to the streets in shadowed pursuit of him. Arnold intriguingly withholds information from the audience, and one of the tremendous strengths of the film is that a viewer is continually forced to change perspective as more is revealed about the characters (perhaps the ostensible heroine is more troubled than we imagine, perhaps the man written off as the villain is something much more complex). It’s the best kind of puzzle, one that we are solving right along with the people on screen, which gives the observer a very direct involvement in the piece moment to moment. As Kate emerges from her torpor and builds towards the will to confront Tony, the frame is electric. Also charged is Arnold’s bold and frank regard of screen sexuality, one encounter especially alive to a harrowingly precarious connection in which it is unknown whether the partners want the act to subsume or liberate them. It’s an astute study of the ways in which closing off from trauma and grief can channel the self into dysfunction and alienation, and how confessing your vulnerability can be a form of salvation. Some may read the film as unrelentingly bleak, but Arnold suggests hope in a closing image that is in keeping with the tenor of what’s come before, tentative and coolly expressed. Release date in U.S. Spring 2007

SHORTBUS Dir. John Cameron Mitchell

Not a perfect work by any means, but by setting himself a very ambitious agenda, and realizing it to the degree that he does, director Mitchell earns a place on this list. It’s no easy thing to assign yourself the task of finding a way to incorporate pornographic sequences into an otherwise mainstream film that follows a group of appealingly lost figures searching for the key to self-fulfilling lives. Through workshops heavy on improvisation, Mitchell and his actors created a safe space of intimacy and relaxation to prepare for the film’s scenes of unsimulated sex. Why the scenes don’t fail is because Mitchell respects the sex act in all its manifestations: as passion, as comedy, as tenderness, as mystery. He places sexuality in context of the whole of his character’s lives, and illustrates how inextricably linked it is to the wider dynamics of personality and emotional states. He’s so good at illustrating sex as just another facet of his pleasant characters that after an initial opening sequence of confrontational couplings (and one solo workout) the film (and the audience) relaxes into the easy groove of the film’s pace, and the individual dramas take more precedence than the next sexual escapade. The soul of the film is very gentle and tender, and the titular club where the characters gather for release is positioned as a safe and nurturing haven that has only one’s best interests at heart. I only wish that Mitchell trusted his instincts more, and fully believed in his achievement-there’s a tentativeness that sometimes defeats the bolder nature of the film; the ending especially suffers from this reticence. Where it needs to gather its various strands and make a strong overarching statement, it instead elects to trail off wanly. Despite this, there’s much to admire in this brave endeavour. In release

SNOW CAKE Dir. Marc Evans

The most conventional film on this list by far, but it’s the central trio of tough and vivid performances that have stayed with me that recommend the piece. As an autistic woman whose daughter is killed in a car crash, Sigourney Weaver brings her customary fierce intelligence and conviction to the role, never sentimentalizing or cheapening the character (a trap into which the film itself occasionally-and unfortunately-drops). Her performance is every bit as detailed as Dustin Hoffman’s Oscar-anointed turn in “Rain Man”, and it lingers in the heart and head in its majestic humanity and forceful individuality. Her Linda is not the easiest to relate to, and Weaver doesn’t hold back in showcasing how difficult and maddening trying to communicate with her may be; yet she also draws you intriguingly inside the unique perspective of the woman, and mesmerizes you. Weaver is matched by Alan Rickman’s understated melancholy as a British man in flight from past sorrows who was involved in the accident that claimed Linda’s daughter; he treks to Linda’s home to deliver the awful news, and winds up staying to help with the funeral arrangements. He starts a tentative, delicate relationship with the free-spirited next door neighbour played by a no-nonsense, forthright Carrie-Anne Moss. It’s the sure instincts of the actors that take what could be stock characters and fashion from them startlingly detailed and gritty personalities, a masterclass in avoiding cliché. You sense the nearly imperceptible ways in which the characters are affecting each other, tweaking the best parts of one another, and Weaver manages to suggest shifts that do not violate the core of her character or compromise its integrity, remaining true to the nature of autism. Set for U.S. release in the Spring

I need to list a few honourable mentions, as is the way of all good top ten lists. “Tsotsi” is a poignant study of a sudden redemptive urge in a thug from a morally defeating township in South Africa upon discovering a baby in the backseat of a car he jacks; “Right At Your Door” is a cautionary tale of listening less to your government and more to your heart, charting the paranoid domestic movements of a young married man in the wake of the detonation of dirty bombs in downtown L.A.; “Pan’s Labyrinth”, an impressive commingling of fantasy and horrific reality that plays out in the hills of Spain just after the triumph of Franco, in which a young girl confronts the perils of both imagination and human potential for evil; and “Time To Leave” in which a young photographer not given to much reflection has a stubbornly personal response to the sudden news that he has a terminal illness, setting off on a most peculiar journey to settle himself with mortality. Although not released in 2006, I caught Robert Le Page’s “Far Side of the Moon”, a cinematic adaptation of his experimental theatre piece about the vastly different adult lives of two brothers, one a rather dreamy romantic, the other a headlong materialist. Le Page is a French-Canadian theatre artist of great renown, and the film astounds with ceaseless imagination and clever imagery that makes full and rapturous use of film vocabulary. If you don’t know Le Page, here is a good place to start. And if you ever get the chance to see him live, do not hesitate.