Major studios excepted

GIVEN all the focus this year on the declining box office, it would follow that compiling a list of the year’s best movies might feel like an exercise in futility. And if I were required to choose only from the movies that pass for major American cinema these days, it would have been exactly that. There’s an odd inversion that seems to be taking place: The more big studio dramas reach for “seriousness” of the kind that tends to win awards, the more bogus they come off.

A minuscule indie such as Andrew Bujalski’s “Funny Ha Ha” leaves a more lasting impression than a trumped-up spectacle like “Memoirs of a Geisha.” An incisive documentary like “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” leaves you with more dread than a slick, safe thriller like “The Interpreter.” Foreign films and documentaries, increasingly, synthesize and reflect contemporary life in ways Hollywood seems increasingly loath to do. Hollywood may be the Titanic of the international cinema landscape, and it now comes with self-rearranging deck chairs.

All of which is to say that when it came time to compile this list, I was surprised to find it hard to keep it to just 10. Top 10 lists feel like arbitrary relics as it is, so I’ve upped the list of top films to an unlucky 13, left out and missed several excellent ones, and haven’t attempted to rank them. They are listed instead in alphabetical order, followed by a few words on some of the things that made them memorable.

“2046” (Wong Kar Wai) – Ziyi Zhang’s heartbreaking performance as the unrequited lover of Tony Leung; the best soundtrack of the year.

“Brokeback Mountain” (Ang Lee) – Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal turn in two of the best performances of the year, and Lee’s deceptively subtle direction makes the story linger longer than I expected it to.

“Capote” (Bennett Miller) – If cinematography can be rueful (in a good way), then Adam Kimmel’s was. A near-perfect script by Dan Futterman and one of the most finely hewn, complex performances of the year, by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

“The Corporation” (Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, Joel Bakan) – a surprising and chilling analysis of the modern American business as psychopathic “citizen.”

“The Edukators” (Hans Weingartner) – The only accurate, ironic and poignant depiction of what it’s like to be young and socially committed in the WTO era I can think of.

“Grizzly Man” (Werner Herzog) – Herzog took what might have been a news item-slash-nature documentary and spun it into a philosophical meditation on the urge to manufacture identity in the media age.

“Head-On” (Fatih Akin) – Brutally beautiful performances by Birol Unel and Sibel Kekilli; a strikingly contemporary take on displacement.

“Junebug” (Phil Morrison) – Celia Weston, Embeth Davidtz and Amy Adams turn in three of the best female performances of the year in one small movie.

“King Kong” (Peter Jackson) – Perfectly cast, surprisingly nuanced for a movie featuring killer dinosaurs.

“Last Days” (Gus Van Sant) – A deceptively simple, lethally incisive portrait of the effects of sudden fame on a sensitive soul.

“The Squid and the Whale” (Noah Baumbach) – Two words (though I could go on): Jeff Daniels.

“Syriana” (Stephen Gaghan) – Amazingly ambitious and complex, exhilaratingly challenging and thought-provoking.

“Turtles Can Fly” (Bahman Ghobadi) – Easily the most heartbreaking film of the year. Soran Ebrahim’s performance is unforgettable.

And the three worst, for sheer pretension, bogusness and bad taste: “Chicken Little,” “Sin City” and “Rent.”