I'd be sort of sad if I had to start my annual year-end film detrius thread here.

Rex Reed's best and worst:

The 10 Best Films of 2006

1. Babel
2. Notes on a Scandal
3. The History Boys
4. The Painted Veil
5. The Queen
6. Flags of Our Fathers/Letters from Iwo Jima
7. The Illusionist
8. Infamous
9. Dreamgirls
10. Volver

Honorable Mentions: Water, Scoop, Find Me Guilty, Deliver Us from Evil, The Last King of Scotland, Kinky Boots, Our Daily Bread

THE 10 WORST FILMS OF 2006

1. Borat
2. The Fountain
3. Apocalypto
4. Lucky Number Slevin
5. The Black Dahlia
6 All the King’s Men
7. Lady in the Water
8. Brick
9. Inland Empire
10. Fur

Extra hisses and boos to: The Da Vinci Code, A Prairie Home Companion, Déjà Vu, The Prestige, Rumor Has It, Freedomland, For Your Consideration, Perfume

Yup. He sez:

I am SO happy with these nominees. I don't agree with all of them, I can't imagine anybody does, that's the nature of democracy, but I think we made some great choices, ignoring several recent disturbing trends like Dreamgirls for pic and Blood Diamond for anything. Babel had a much stronger showing than I thought it would and that makes me happy too. Seeing Brick, Children of Men, and The Fountain score their nominations is great too - they've been underepresented in critics awards so far. They deserve each and every one of them. I love the tech nods for The Fountain. A few categories, including our great choices for breakthrough performer, score, and cinematography include five of my ten (in the first round we voted ten in each category). That's cool.

And here are the Chicago Film Critics nominees (winners to be announced on Dec. 28):

BEST PICTURE
Babel
The Departed
Little Miss Sunshine
The Queen
United 93

BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM
Apocalypto
Letters From Iwo Jima
Pan's Labyrinth
Tsotsi
Volver

BEST DIRECTOR
Clint Eastwood: Letters From Iwo Jima
Stephen Frears: The Queen
Paul Greengrass: United 93
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu: Babel
Martin Scorsese: The Departed

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Babel: Guillermo Arriaga
Letters From Iwo Jima: Iris Yamashita
Little Miss Sunshine: Michael Arndt
The Queen: Peter Morgan
United 93: Paul Greengrass

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
The Departed: William Monahan
Little Children: Todd Field & Tom Perrotta
Notes On A Scandal: Patrick Marber
A Prairie Home Companion: Garrison Keillor
Thank You For Smoking: Jason Reitman

BEST ACTOR
Leonardo DiCaprio-The Departed
Ryan Gosling-Half-Nelson
Peter O'Toole-Venus
Will Smith-The Pursuit of Happyness
Forest Whitaker-The Last King of Scotland

BEST ACTRESS
Penelope Cruz-Volver
Judi Dench-Notes on a Scandal
Maggie Gyllenhaal-Sherrybaby
Helen Mirren-The Queen
Meryl Streep-The Devil Wears Prada
Kate Winslet-Little Children

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Ben Affleck-Hollywoodland
Jackie Earle Haley-Little Children
Eddie Murphy-Dreamgirls
Jack Nicholson-The Departed
Brad Pitt-Babel
Michael Sheen-The Queen

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Adriana Barraza-Babel
Cate Blanchett-Notes On A Scandal
Abigail Breslin-Little Miss Sunshine
Toni Collette-Little Miss Sunshine
Jennifer Hudson-Dreamgirls
Rinko Kikuchi-Babel

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Babel: Gustavo Santaolalla
The Fountain: Clint Mansell
Letters From Iwo Jima: Kyle Eastwood and Michael Stevens
Notes On A Scandal: Philip Glass
The Queen: Alexandre Desplat

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Babel: Rodrigo Prieto
Children of Men: Emmanuel Lubezki
The Departed: Michael Ballhaus
The Fountain: Matthew Libatique
Letters From Iwo Jima: Tom Stern

BEST DOCUMENTARY
Deliver Us From Evil
An Inconvenient Truth
Jesus Camp
Shut Up and Sing
Wordplay

MOST PROMISING PERFORMER
Ivana Baquero-Pan's Labyrinth
Sacha Baron Cohen-Borat & Talladega Nights
Shareeka Epps-Half-Nelson
Rinko Kikuchi-Babel
Keke Palmer-Akeelah and the Bee

MOST PROMISING DIRECTOR
Rian Johnson-Brick
Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris-Little Miss Sunshine
Gil Kenan-Monster House
Jason Reitman-Thank You For Smoking
James McTeigue-V For Vendetta

Gee, maybe All the King’s Men is worth a look after all.

The Painted Veil and Children of Men are getting more praise than I would've expected, but given Curran and Lubezki (resp) I guess I'm seeing both.

http://filmlinc.com/fcm/poll/2006pollcritics.html

That top 10 isn't THAT much more middbrow than Rex Reed's! Half Nelsom, The Queen andeven Borat -- this is the magazine in which Schrader's canon was too safe for the room?

And some won't. I don't have a handle on the state of foreign-film distrib in the UK, but many of their choices on that list in past years have still never, ever been released in the US. So they most certainly are being kept from the ever more miniscule number of punters who are interested in world cinema that doesn't have an easy genre hook.

Philippe Garrel's Regular Lovers (two years old) is opening in NYC next week -- he's been making features since the '60s, and I'm pretty sure this is his first commercial release in America.

14. Southland Tales (Richard Kelly, Germany/U.S.)* 53

UH

i mean that so has a distribution deal right?

Also, directors of cult movies starring Jake Gyllenhaal are much higher on the arthouse foodchain than, say, Raul Ruiz or Tsai ming-Liang.

kelly's film will see the light of day in 1x form or another -- trimmed maybe but that's not unusual. cannes is like a test audience of rich media folk.

Bounces back from being "only" nineteenth on the FC poll to slam into ninth-place on the IndieWire nee VV poll.

http://indiewire.com/critics2006/

Neither Departed nor Inland Empire at #1 (though the latter feel within a 10-point margin of the former, good enough for #3 and #4 respectively). The blue ribbon goes to Lazarescu ... presuming that the voting body is more or less the same as it was in the VV poll days, that has to count as the most surprising winner in the poll's history, in my opinion.

I didn't think charges of obscurity/annoyance vs Lynch would disturb the VV poll's core given their past love for the likes of Safe.

http://ballot.indiewire.com/ballots/display_ballot/127

Wish I had caught up with Broken Sky, I feel in my gut the DVD may not appear til summer.

I'm pleased with the high finish of Nolte in Supporting Perf, who would be my runaway choice at the moment.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/criticspicks06/movies/

I've never been a big Melville fan, but I don't remotely get the Army of Shadows mania. I recall maybe two scenes from it.

Eric or Morbs -- seen The Painted Veil yet? It hasn't opened here yet. At present I'm deciding whether to catch The History Boys or re-screen Withnail & I; doesn't Richard Griffiths give the same perf?

enrique might want to glance at all 200 of these:

http://ballot.indiewire.com/ballots/scores#best_undist

(ie libs are exulting that the Dems are now the party in Congress who will do nothing about Iraq)

I can't seem to find out; also the NY opening has been bumped to Jan 19.

(also, a '50s lib is a radical in today's environment, just sayin)

The Good Shepherd does have its supporters (Cheshire, Armond):

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/002935.html

Also, the world should remain centrist or skewed to the right if it means Chris Marker will continue to make bemusedly outraged movies.

(btw, Eric, I like the first 80 minutes of All That Jazz)

That's great to hear, but I sort of think the last 10 are what pushes it into insane, embarrassing greatness.

Why is Nicholson taking a beating for "showboating" in The Departed when that's more diverting than Damon's vanilla corruption or everything embarrassing about the Vera Farmiga scenes? This William Monahan guy is great at the local color and alpha-swearing, characters not so much.