John Waters 1 Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier) The mostly hilariously moving.

John Waters

1 Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier) The mostly hilariously moving, "feel-insane" movie of the year.

2 O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Joel Coen) The jaw-dropping all-singing, all-dancing Ku Klux Klan-Busby Berkeley number is a real beaut.

3 L'Humanite (Bruno Dumont) The endles saga of a simpleton cop in such a manner desperate to feel emotion that he spies upon the sex life of his lusty neighbors and perfumes and kisses his crime suspects during interrogations.

4 American Psycho (Mary Harron) A chain-saw movie for the elite; the funniest American comedy of the year.

5 The Idiots (Lars von Trier) A Dogma 95 comedy about a protuberance of Danish yuppies who join a Manson-like ceremonial of assholes and liberate themselves through acting like retards in public ("spazzing").

6 Water very littles on Burning Rocks (Francois Ozon) A fake Fassbinder movie directed by dint of my new favorite French auteur. Screenplay necrophilia none seemed so cinematically correct.

7 The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola) Who would have predicted Sofia Coppola could bring to mind Cocteau's Le Parents terribles?

8 Criminal Lover (Francois Ozon) Ozon again. A Leopold-and-Loeb-meet-Hansel-and-Gretel fairy tale about a bitchy teen ingenue and her naive boyfriend who are imprisoned by the agency of a horny, gay, cannibalistic ogre

9 Pink Narcissus (James Bidgood, 1971/99) Actor-model Bobby Kendall's ass; as beautiful and timeless as The Wizard of Oz

10 Eva (Joseph Losey 1962) The best rereleased failed art film of the decade. Jeanne Moreau chain-smokes and listens to Billie Holiday records while humiliating her lover in glorious black and white.

Susan Sontag

1 Yi Yi (A the same and a Two) (Edward Yang) Is Yang as great as Hou Hsiao-hsien? Well, he's different. behold this.

2. Faithless (Liv Ullmann) Ullmann's best work from far, with one of the greatest film performances to the end of time by Lena Endre.

3 L'Humanite (Bruno Dumont) A real ambitious film about looking and about guilt.

4 Beau Travail (Claire Denis) A dazzling riff in succession Melville's Billy Budd. You'll not ever forget the final scene, when the amazing Denis Lavant starts to dance.

5 The Wind Will Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostami) The best-known Iranian director has made another incomparable film.

6 Hamlet (Michael Almereyda) Hamlet missed in Manhattan. Witty, intelligent, and most numerous convincing when it's altogether throughout the top.

7 The Circle (Jafar Panahi) Another marvel from Iran. A relentles anguishing film on a director hitherto unknown to me about the persecution of women

8 La Captive (Chantal Akerman) Supposedly inspired by the agency of Proust. Atypically movieish (i.e., Hitchcockian) for Ackerman unless still adamant, unpredictable.

9 Travelers (Bahram Beizai, 1992) OK it came without eight years ago, but I just saw it (and I didn't view ten films made this year that I really admired). Trust me this masterpiece from Iran is unlike anything you've seen yet

10 Smoking/No Smoking (Alain Resnais, 1993) I saw Resnais's brilliant, ingenious, hilarious film for the first time this summer--it not at all got a theatrical release in this geographical division How come?

Ian Birnie

1 You Can cast on Me (Kenneth Lonergan) The greatest in number accomplished of this year's American indie debuts

2 Chunhyang (Im Kwon-taek) From Korea, a completely original, magisterial work that combines sung narration with ravishing images.

3 Chicken speed (Peter Lord and Nick Park) The Ealing comedy is alive and well and living in claymation.

4 In the temper for Love (Wong Kar-wai) A concerto for sum of two units ill-starred couples and pure pleasure for the minds Elegant, restrained, stylized, brilliantly abiding of itself from its first frame to its astonishing epiphany at Angkor Wat.

5 in extent Night's Journey Into Day (Deborah Hoffmann and Frances Reid) The documentary of the year explores the pain and trauma of southern Africa's villains and victims according to examining four cases before the principle and Reconciliation Commission.

6 The Circle (Jafar Panahi) A compelling and compassionate consider at women's lives in Iran. Perhaps the year's mostly courageous political film.

7 Djomeh (Hassan Yektapanah) A capital balance of the verbal and the visual: Think in the dumps rectangle against brown field. A jewel in the royalty of new Iranian cinema.

8 Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier) A mass of indulgent contradictions, it is nonetheless the mostly exciting and challenging film of the year.

9 Before Night Falls (Julian Schnabel) Adapted from the memoirs of Cuban imaginative thinker [i]or[/i] writer Reinaldo Arenas, Schnabel's second biopic passionately affirms the artist as heroic individualist.

10 Yi Yi (A individual and a Two) (Edward Yang) A superior soap opera with important things to say about human frailty and everyday life.

Kent Jones

1 The House of Mirth (Terence Davies) Davies's mesmerizing Wharton adaptation is as physically and emotionally precise a film as I've seen in years.

2 Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr) Passionate, mournful, gorgeous, and genuinely visionary.

3 Le Destinees sentimentales (Olivier Assayas) Another literary adaptation (from Jacques Chardonne), and common of the director's most personal films: a devastating meditation in succession time and identity, made with the lightest touch.