Happy New Year. Most of these reviews were written in late November and early December in a flurry of end-of-the-year award viewing for the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. With the mad rush over, I look back on these capsules with a lot of fond memories – they accurately capture the emotional sensation of watching all these films. Let me be the millionth critic to say that 2007 was indeed a great film year. And now that I’ve said all that, let’s start with one of the weakest (and most popular) movies on this list.

Juno (Fox Searchlight)

I tend to know halfway through a movie if I like its characters and like its style. After that, things can always go downhill, buy they rarely improve greatly – if I'm not loving what I'm seeing after that long, how can the film significantly improve for me? Juno is a real exception. What starts off as a cutesy hipster teen comedy – the sort where the main character has a smart mouth and is clearly more "real" than all the phonies around her – turns, finally, into some semblance of the great film I'd heard about. Perhaps it's a compliment to say that Ellen Page does such a good job with Juno's snarky, sullen personality that I wanted to sock her – don't us in the real world eventually learn that such people are total poseurs? But, as most of us remember, high school is the proving ground before we get to the real world, and the filmmakers slowly show this young twit soften into someone truly lovable. Though too charmed by its own perceived specialness, Juno is undeniably pretty funny. And though you’ve heard accolades about just about every performance in this movie, I’m here to say that most of them are overrated, but Jason Bateman is just great.

There Will Be Blood (Paramount Vantage)

The seeds for this movie's greatness are there in Paul Thomas Anderson's least-beloved film. Punch-Drunk Love demonstrated his interest in filling the screen with an obsessive, probably deranged protagonist and then draping the soundtrack with an unhinged score that matched the character's fluctuating, fragile mental state. Punch-Drunk Love also marked another first for Anderson: It wasn't just a structural rip-off of one of his idols (Scorsese, Altman). I loved Punch-Drunk Love, but There Will Be Blood is something else entirely. There are hints of Citizen Kane and Kubrick and every major existential Western you want to name-drop, but this is a singular vision perfectly rendered. Its period detail is extraordinary, its non-flamboyantly masterful camera work flawless, and its cast can do wrong. Then there's the script, which like Punch-Drunk Love is powered by its untrustworthy protagonist, creating one more amazing portrait of American greed to add to all the other great portraits in film history. Daniel Day-Lewis may do the sort of acting that calls attention to itself, but he's playing a man who does nothing but call attention to himself, so it's a marriage made in heaven. Paul Dano will no longer be the kid from Little Miss Sunshine – you can only wonder if he'll ever find a comparably great role the rest of his career. (Maybe he should just hang it up and start a crappy indie-pop band.) Jonny Greenwood's score is, no joke, the best Radiohead in years. Contemporary political parallels are there if you want them, and perhaps the final stretch isn't as wholly magnificent as the rest. But I didn't care – and the film's very final moment is brilliant.

Persepolis (Sony Pictures Classics)

The best animated movie I saw in 2007 could possibly work for children, but I wouldn't recommend taking them. But what it does do is remind adults what it's like to be a child – Persepolis manages to convey the wonder of being young while at the same time observing the journey of its protagonist (a French-Iranian girl coming of age during Iran’s revolution) with a sober, mature perspective. Without an ounce of whimsy, this French feature is very fun and very engaging and very moving about how growing up in troubled times becomes an indelible part of that person's maturation process. Like you and me, she experiences movies and music and love, but living with the threat of violence intensifies those adolescent memories – and the graphic-novel animation only builds that intensity. Persepolis is so wonderful through its first two acts that I wanted to forgive it for losing some of its propulsion as it reaches its conclusion – the third act is meant to be more of a holding pattern in a way, but the spark goes out nonetheless. Still, here's how I know the film worked on me: I saw a trailer for it later in the day and I really couldn't wait to see it again.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (THINKfilm)

Heist gone wrong, crime drama with a nagging tendency to flashback at regular intervals, the long slow process of guilt wringing out ordinary guys until they cry "uncle." Yeah, yeah, right, right, you've seen this all before. Except here you haven't – not quite this way, and not quite so intensely, and not quite this movingly. What starts out as a merely well-acted genre piece becomes something deeper and more special – a crime drama that at its heart is a superb character piece and family story, one bordering on tragedy but too muscular to allow itself to be so melodramatic. And, yet, the film is nearly operatic in its emotions, in its ability to turn ordinary guys into unforgettable individuals. Especially in comparison to the softly "satiric" The Savages (see below), Philip Seymour Hoffman is absolutely astounding in this – a man so seemingly powerfully and yet so wounded and frightened and weak that his downfall takes on epic proportions. Perhaps more surprisingly because we sometimes forget that he can act when the need arises, Ethan Hawke plays one wonderfully inept human being, constantly imploding from one self-inflicted disaster after another. Marisa Tomei plays another form of spineless individual in a performance that loses none of its grandeur because she's naked so much during it. Woody Allen has made films about how crime eats away at the soul, but none of his has made that guilt and fear and knot-twisting anxiety so palpable as what happens here. Maybe its ending is its only conventional part, but even there Sidney Lumet finds a couple different variations on an outcome you know in your bones is coming. And as for the Tarantino-esque narrative backtracking, it only adds to the claustrophobia and twitchy nervousness of the piece – even the movie itself can't keep its wits about itself to tell its story in a straight line.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (IFC Films)

It's easy to see why this won the big prize at Cannes this summer – it's like a Dardenne brothers film set in Romania. Though shaped like a melodrama, 4 Months plays like a thriller – it's unbearably tense, especially in its second half, and the lack of any sort of score makes it even more nerve-wracking. It'll forever be known as "the abortion movie," but the film isn't concerned with moral slipperiness or a woman's right to choose. Well, it's worried about one particular woman's right to choose – the main character, the one who isn't getting the abortion. Both women give excellent performances, and like The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, this is a Romanian film where nothing much seems to be happening until, whap, something really starts to happen. And like Lazarescu, I find that I have a hard time describing this film’s greatness other than to say, really, you need to see it.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Miramax Films)

Julian Schnabel got very near to making an extraordinary film. Turning the life of Jean-Dominique Bauby – an Elle editor who became paralyzed, save for his ability to blink one eye – into a motion picture (pun intended, as bad as it is) took exceptional guts. And what The Diving Bell and the Butterfly has over many, many other "disease" movies it that it demonstrates in clear terms just how torturous Bauby's affliction must have been. There's nothing noble about his suffering – only terror and agony await us. (I seriously wanted to scream as we watch through Bauby's POV as he tries to communicate, which I mean as a compliment to Schnabel.) In technical terms, it's ingenious because the film forces us to feel what he feels and live inside his imprisoning body. In turn, the music and the film's tone are correctly melancholy – there is no inspiration to be found in this shell of a man, just the cold, hard reality of what he went through. But then comes my big problem: the man himself. The flashbacks to Jean-Dominique Bauby's old life present a regular ladies man and jet-setter, but the lack of telling moments doesn't match with the power of what else is on display. Maybe that's the idea: We're not supposed to think this particular man's life made his ailment a tragedy. But I found myself disinterested with the man while being very, very interested in how Schnabel choose to portray it.

Atonement (Focus Features)

Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice showed class, with a hint of passion that kept it from being just another literary run-through. Atonement has almost the exact same feel, but this time my lingering impression is more of disappointment because now I wonder if this is all he’s capable of. Love lost, lives ruined, impeccable production values, an engaging sound design, a showy tracking shot in the middle that doesn’t add much to the story but will surely impress lots of people – if this is all it takes to get a Best Picture nomination, how sad.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Paramount Pictures)

Lack of familiarity with the source material shouldn’t be an impediment to my enjoyment: I had never heard a note of Chicago going in, and I still consider it the high-water mark of 21st-century movie musicals. So my problems rest elsewhere. Johnny Depp’s youth doesn’t guarantee that he’s only a mediocre Sweeney Todd, but his singing voice doesn’t help – nor does the fact that I could never completely forget the Captain Jack Sparrow mannerisms that creep into his performance. After her great work in Conversations with Other Women, I had hoped Helena Bonham Carter would ditch period pieces for a bit so the contemporary woman could show herself, but alas she’s back at it, and her voice is even weaker than Depp’s. As for the esteemed director, Tim Burton really Tim-Burtons the hell out of the material, but does it really surprise? And other the ending, does it really move you at all?

Charlie Wilson's War (Universal Pictures)

The glib review would be, "It's like a longer, draggier West Wing episode, with boobs and swearing." It's unfair, but does a glib movie deserve any better? This may be the most "entertaining" of the season's message movies, but it's certainly the most smug. I'm not opposed to Aaron Sorkin – I actually defended Studio 60 – but his script is more "clever" than sharp. (Let's pause for a moment and remember how terrific The American President was.) As for Mike Nichols, you don't turn to him for stunning combat footage in the first place, but the overall cartoon-y look of Charlie Wilson's War suggests not satire or irreverence but a certain laziness. Hanks and Hoffman are solid, Julia Roberts needs Soderbergh, and as for the ending, the message is dead-on but by the time you get to it you knew these self-congratulating liberals were going to go there from the outset.

The Savages (Fox Searchlight)

Of the articulate-siblings films of the season, this is my least favorite. It's not because Laura Linney plays a horribly unlikable person – Nicole Kidman was great doing the exact same thing in Margot at the Wedding. And it's not because the siblings in question are self-centered and dysfunctional in "quirky" ways – The Darjeeling Limited handled that problem just fine. It's that unlike those two films, Tamara Jenkins' preciousness-fest acts as emotionally immature as its characters. Not the dad, I mean – after all, we hardly get to know him, although his descent into dementia is, in theory, what's bringing on all the growth and change in the siblings. Jenkins is one more indie filmmaker who thinks worlds she doesn't understand are inherently weird and definitely lame – but, boy oh boy, does she love educated, artsy people because, even when they're as shallow as a thimble, they're interesting! And while The Savages pretends to take us down the dark road of mortality, shame on anyone who prefers this to Away From Her. There's nothing wrong with characters who are terribly flawed, but if the filmmaker coddles them too long, I start thinking, "Oh my god, I think she wants us to like these people."

The Orphanage (Picturehouse)

“This year’s Pan’s Labyrinth” is the sort of advertising that will appeal to most everybody but me, but still I was intrigued enough to check out Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona’s tale of a woman who returns to the orphanage where she grew up to do a little remodeling. Naturally, bad things happen – this is a ghost story, after all – but the elegance of the slow-motion chills are pleasure enough, even if the more hardcore horror fans will miss the bloodshed and the overall sense of gruesome dread that even producer Guillermo del Toro (of Pan’s Labyrinth fame) often prefers. But slow-motion chills only take you so far, and eventually you’ll want the story’s mysteries to start being explained – or at least revolved in an interesting manner – and that’s where the film flounders. Much like del Toro’s beloved Oscar-winner, The Orphanage isn’t much of a character study, relying more on a fairy-tale form of horror/fantasy that never quite succeeds as either allegory or unsettling frightfest. Is it better than One Missed Call? Of course – what isn’t, though?

Day Night Day Night (IFC DVD)

This film's strength is also its weakness. Minimalist to its core, Day Night Day Night is a bare-bones drama whose effects come from how little we know about these characters' back stories, how little we understand about why this group of terrorists has chosen this girl (played wonderfully by Luisa Williams), and why this girl has volunteered herself to be a suicide bomber. Nonetheless, it's fascinating and gripping; every thing is pulled so tautly that the film's gradual build from training to mission execution makes it hard to breathe at points. (It can also be laugh-out-loud bitterly ironic in its dry approach to terrorist interactions.) But ultimately the movie's sparse plotting becomes a bit dramatically limiting, and the conclusion is a mixture of poetic ambiguity and mild disappointment. But despite its flaws, consider this: The movie sure makes the case for how easy it could be to walk a bomb into Times Square, doesn't it?

Flanders (Koch Lorber DVD)

A familiar tale told well, Bruno Dumont's Flanders is a war film about how young people lose their Utopian outlook and cheery disposition once the inhumanities of armed conflict smack them upside the head. But Dumont's young people have no such outlook or disposition – they start out feckless and slow-witted, slutty and vacant. When they face war – or they stay home and wait aimlessly for their countrymen to return – their innocence isn't so much a casualty, but Dumont manages to make us ... "care" isn't quite right, but he definitely forces us to feel what these folks feel. Unlikable to their core – or, at best, simply inarticulate and oafish – Dumont's characters suggest more about the "average soldier" than a more provocative work like Redacted can understand. Shades of Full Metal Jacket and The Deer Hunter are here, to be sure – but Dumont's disinterest in explaining his film's ambiguous meanings are unique and, to my mind, oddly compelling.