Films of the Year

6. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
An old, sick, widowed, drink-soaked Romanian man seeks emergency medical help, and for two and a half hours, he doesn't get what he needs in this profound and engrossing life-and-death drama that just happens to be two and a half hours long and in Romanian. Don't be put off: Mr. Lazarescu himself could be any loved one, lost in a rat's maze of Western medical care. Cristi Puiu's riveting documentary-style drama understands the power of TV-scaled intimacy and soap-opera length, during which all of life's awful, matter-of-fact intimacies, absurdities, indignities, and little graces bump up against one another. And in the midst of crisis, the grim and grimy story also leaves room for humor, and the faintest recuperative whiff of hope.

7. The Proposition
The year's best Western that wasn't on HBO took place in a wildness Down Under, in this breathtakingly bloody, broody, gorgeous, and grandly violent saga set in the Australian outback of the 1880s — a version of Deadwood minus the curlicued language and twisted manners of Al Swearengen. Here, outlaw brothers play out their dead-end fate against their tracker, who is himself a man half-civil and half-savage. (Guy Pearce is one spectacular sibling, Ray Winstone a ferocious lawman.) Directed by John Hillcoat from a script by musician Nick Cave, the movie is a dazzle of mood, style, and mythologized history. I've never seen an Australia in the movies like it.

8. Old Joy
Like a walk in the woods itself, Kelly Reichardt's alert, alive, and quietly profound little study in the mutations of male friendship follows a path dappled with unexpected marvels. On the surface a simple chronicle of a relatively uneventful weekend camping trip for a couple of old pals, the movie is most nuanced and alive in moments when conversation dwindles and the unspoken sadness that inevitably comes with change is palpable — that's when the movie is as deep and coolly refreshing as the spring in which the two men soak. Old Joy is a small, delicate thing, and a huge achievement in honestly independent filmmaking.

9. The Queen
The populace well knows that, by royal decree, Helen Mirren is this year's queen of queens: Her Elizabeth II invites closer, fairer access to a modern monarch than any performance in memory, and Mirren deserves each and every honor bestowed upon her by the rulers of Hollywood. What this non-subject of the realm would like to celebrate now, however, is the movie beyond the movie star, with its astute observations about the tensions between tradition and change, responsibility and popularity, public display and private feeling, glamour and reliability (not to mention queen and prime minister). You thought you had soaked up every scrap available regarding the 1997 death of Princess Diana? Think again.

10. Days of Glory
Same infernal war as the backdrop of Letters From Iwo Jima but different (and lesser-known) warriors. Rachid Bouchareb's stirring, classically told epic reveals the story of the undersung, patriotic North African soldiers who signed up to defend a French motherland they hardly knew against her German enemies during World War II. Yet on French soil, the men were treated as second-class citizens. This engrossing, marvelously composed picture — the year's other great war pic born of war in our time — helped right that injustice, inspiring legislation that finally brought parity to the pensions of North African veterans, over a half century after their service.