6. American Gangster

"Judges, lawyers, cops, politicians. They stop bringing dope into this country, about a hundred thousand people are gonna be out of a job."

Though set firmly in the '70s, Ridley Scott's epic has the timeless quality common to all great crime sagas. What drives this particular rise-and-fall tale, however, is the contrast between dedicated family man/criminal entrepreneur Frank Lucas and dedicated cop/inveterate womanizer Richie Roberts (Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, each knocking their respective roles out of the park). It is a photo negative of The Untouchables, where Ness' focus on the family (I swear if they say "It's nice to be married" one more time in that film...) is the counterpoint to Capone's solitary existence among a faceless entourage. Also like all great crime sagas, it has a lot more on its mind than crime, touching on issues of race, economics and what exactly makes a "good" man, much of which coalesces in the film's showstopping verbal mano a mano.

5. 300

"It is not a question of what a Spartan citizen should do, nor a husband, nor a king. Instead, ask yourself, my dearest love, what would a free man do?"

It would be enough for this film to revolutionize filmmaking by delivering on the promise of techniques introduced way back when when Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow hit screens, but Zak Snyder's war saga delivers tight, brutal storytelling that would work with any technology. Grandiose without faltering into self-parody (or is that just Frank Miller in general?), the film creates that rarity in the action universe, a unique, memorable experience. In context, it's also surprisingly de-politicized. If you really try you can eke out a "support our troops" subtext, but the strokes here are so broad that about the deepest I think you can dig with any veracity is "Spartans sure could fuck your shit up two times before you hit the ground."

4. There Will Be Blood

"I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people."

From the film that is all about war, but not at all about the current war, to a film that has nothing to do with war, but is particularly about the current war. Suffice it to say Paul Thomas Anderson's latest masterpiece swims in two things, oil and religion. Equal parts character study and political allegory, the film piles baptismal imagery on top of another whirlwind performance from Daniel Day-Lewis to produce a dark fable about what happens when an "oil man" who raises misanthropy to an art form comes to town. The scary thing about this is that Anderson, already an accomplished filmmaker, is getting better. And keep your eye on Paul Dano, who between this and Little Miss Sunshine is eclipsing most of his peers.

3. No End in Sight

"When we were first starting the reconstruction, there were 500 ways to do it wrong and two or three ways to do it right. What we didn't understand is that we were gonna go through all 500."