George's Top Ten movies of 2007

This list is all over the place, but the best films of 2007 came from all corners. In many years, the greatest cinematic experiences tend to be prestige projects from the independent world, but the majority of films on this list found wide release and a few are certifiable blockbusters. Like any other year, 2007 was caked with multiplex garbage, but these and quite a few others that bubbled underneath them made it all worthwhile.

1. “No Country for Old Men” — Over two decades into their filmmaking career, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen made what could be their masterpiece. Based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel, “No Country for Old Men” is a brutal mediation on fate and death centered on $2.4 million in drug money; the doomed man who found it (played by Josh Brolin in the best year of his acting life); the relentless, Grim Reaper-like assassin who wants it back (Javier Bardem); and the West Texas sheriff at the end of his career (Tommy Lee Jones) who, in his heart of hearts, knows he is powerless to save anyone in this mess.

There are scenes in “No Country” that will stay with viewers for months, and others will simply have audiences baffled, asking, “How in the known world did they do that?” To paraphrase Jones’ Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, if this isn’t the best film the Coens have done, it will do until it gets here.

2. “Zodiac” — A sprawling story about journalists, detectives and the one that got away, David Fincher’s “Zodiac” covers the notorious Bay Area serial murders of the ‘60s and ‘70s with the detail of fine reporting. Foregoing the visual flash of “Fight Club” and “Se7en,” Fincher filmed “Zodiac” in the stark, just-the-facts style of Alan J. Pakula and Sidney Lumet, and the film sucks viewers into this time and place thanks to realistic depictions of the incidents and great performances by Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo and Jake Gyllenhaal.

3. “Juno” — Director Jason Reitman and screenwrit