My one wish for the New Year would be to wipe my brain clean of all the movies I've ever seen. With a fresh slate, I could sit back and enjoy, say, some new neo-noir without comparing it to "Chinatown." On a bad day I'll think that cinema is most intense at first blush, that the films that imprint themselves onto our youth will never be surpassed. But then I'll go out and see something like Makoto Togashi's performance in "Koi no Tsumi (Guilty of Romance)," as powerful and disturbing as Malcolm McDowell in "A Clockwork Orange" oh-so many years ago, and realize that the thrills are still out there.
1. "Black Swan": How Darren Aronofsky managed to pull off an Oscar-winning blockbuster with this surreal and elusive film about a paranoid ballet dancer is beyond me, but the director's canny use of horror-movie shock and an all-out performance by Natalie Portman somehow combined to pull in the punters. While Hollywood is loathe to finance nonformulaic films, "Black Swan" took $330 million on a budget of only $13 million.
2. "The Illusionist": One look at the beautifully textured world on display in this animated film about an aging magician and his sad attempts to impress his last fan, and you have to wonder why in the world Steven Spielberg chose that plasticy CG for "Tintin"; "The Illusionist" is like the look of Herge taken straight off the page, with a magical story that barely needs any words to deliver it.