2007 was an above average year at the movies, far better than the depressing state of 2005 or 2006. And for me it was also the year of the Western. By coincidence I happened to be studying the Western in a graduate course taught by Jim Kitses, who is arguably the #1 Western movie scholar in America. During my semester, 3:10 to Yuma, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and No Country for Old Men opened in theaters, and we studied them in class. Two of these would have made my top ten anyway, but looking at them in-depth gave me even greater pleasure and made me even surer of my choices. Seraphim Falls and There Will Be Blood were also Westerns of a sort, and the number and general high quality of these films make this the strongest year for the genre since the early 1970s, or perhaps even the late 1960s.

The most frustrating thing about the year is that three of my favorite movies didn't qualify for list consideration. David Lynch's Inland Empire opened in 2006 but didn't screen for the San Francisco press until early 2007. (You can look for it on my best-of-the-decade list instead.) Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep is a masterpiece, and an essential part of the history of American cinema. It had its official theatrical debut in 2007, but I decided that its contribution to cinema has more to do with 1977, when it was made, than 2007. Finally, Quentin Tarantino's uncut version of Death Proof was a revelation, and far, far better than the truncated version that most people saw in Grindhouse. It screened at Cannes and then went straight to DVD in the U.S., so it, too, was disqualified. No matter. I came up with ten excellent films anyway.

1. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik, USA)
Normally I like to save my #1 slot for a film by a proven master, and Dominik is far from that; his only other film, Chopper, failed to prepare me for the astonishing, haunting dreamlike quality of this new film. I have to admit I thought about this movie just about every day since I saw it. It's too easy to label this as a "revisionist Western," since it contributed so many new ideas to the genre. It's by far the best Jesse James movie ever made, and certainly one of the greatest Westerns I've ever seen.

You surely disagree with *something* on this list – so comment away, and stay tuned for our Worst Of, coming tomorrow.

1.  Match Point

Match Point has the conventions of an easy-to-follow thriller - a busty seductress, a suspicious wife, a scheming husband and an act of murder - but what it lacks is what makes it special. The film is a post-religious parable, with no overriding moral authority at the center. "Faith is the path of least resistance," one character scoffs at a dinner party. In other words, the only meaningful struggle with moral choice is the one that we are willing to have internally. Is the main character - an ambitious, social-climbing young tennis coach - willing to have that struggle? The signs aren't promising. He reads a Penguin edition of Crime and Punishment with the attention you would give US Weekly, and morally-loaded Verdi operas inspire nothing more from him than a blank stare. On the other hand, he has the self-preservation instincts and the dumb luck of a Patricia Highsmith fox. Watching him operate will keep you on the edge of your seat for the full two hours. The year's best film. – Ryan Stewart



2. A History of Violence

A History of Violence is a rare thing: a genre hybrid film that actually works. On one level, it's an effective thriller about a mild-tempered Midwesterner who may or may not be a stone killer masking his identity; on another level, it's a schlock horror film with make-up effects that would be appropriate for a Friday the 13th film, circa 1987. A lot of bullets fly, but when they do, people aren't simply knocked down or off-screen - they are disfigured, maimed or reduced to chunks of sputtering flesh. It's as if an EMT was present on set as an advisor, and piped in with "no, no...a shotgun blast at that range would do much more damage..." The result is that the audience's ho-hum desensitization to violence is briefly circumvented and the central question about the main character – why is he so at home with blood and gore? – is brought into sharp relief. Director David Cronenberg is asking the same question of the audience. – RS



3. Pride & Prejudice

Pride & Prejudice is, in some ways, a perfect film. Director Joe Wright follows the much-worshipped source material closely and never steps wrong with character, music or scenery. When we think of Austen, our first thought is not wild animals roaming through the Bennett house, but little details like that seem to have some historical grounding, and it adds to the realism. The screenplay also modernizes and clips Austen's language in the most surgically careful ways, so that only those who pay their Austen Society dues a year in advance will notice the seams. Keira Knightley, though certainly more athletic and forcefully feminist than anything Austen could have imagined for her Elizabeth Bennett, somehow owns the role like no one before her. Austen characters famously speak in unbroken paragraphs, expounding themselves purple in the face, but Knightley handles the language and the meaning behind it as easily as slipping into a warm bath, and the other characters fall into line behind her. – RS



4.  The New World

Don't be fooled by New Line's last-ditch efforts to recoup their investment in Terrence Malick's latest: The New World is not a de-Disneyfied tale of pilgrims and indians and a snow-crushed first Thanksgiving full of pious pumpkin eyes; it is not a battle-heavy, voodoo-tinged culture-clash adventure; it is not, by any means, a Colin Farrell film. Sure, Farrell is stunning as Captain John Smith, the borderline-infidel who is spared from execution just in time to meet and fall powerlessly in love with a 12-year-old native princess. But this is The Pocahontas Story, and from its opening frames of still-water reflection to its near-hallucinogenic final sequences, The New World  reimagines a historical footnote known to most six year olds as a fairy tale rich enough to seduce most adults. Drunk, in grand Malick fashion, on sunlight and internal monologue, The New World will irk those who want their historical epics to function as freeze-dried educational substitutes. The rest of us will stare slack-jawed at Q'orianka Kilcher, as she and Farrell and Malick recast the silliest of American myths as a swirling tale of obsession and longing on the order of Lolita. – Karina Longworth