I never did see Elephant, I'm still waiting on Cold Mountain, and there are literally dozens of good movies still in theaters that I would probably love. (The big one: The Company, which I'm hoping to see with a friend later this week.) But all the other film critics are compiling their Best of the Year lists right now, and I'm feeling left out. Here, then, is my provisional, subject to revisional, top ten list for the year:

1. Spellbound. Easily the funniest and most suspenseful movie of the year, with the most memorable cast of characters. I often write about those rare movies that grow in your imagination after the initial viewing, and this is one of them.
2. Kill Bill Vol. 1*. For all I know, Vol. 2, due in February, could be terrible. But what we have at the moment is a slice of pure, violent, aching cinema that gloriously embodies most of the less reputable, and totally indefensible, reasons that I go to the movies.
3. Big Fish. The critics are surprisingly divided on this movie; I have a hunch that if you're closer in age to Albert Finney than Billy Crudup, you'll dismiss it as a bunch of hooey. But I'm still young enough that I haven't been divested of all the romantic notions about love with which I commenced life, and I found it almost unbearably beautiful. Not sure how well it will hold up over the years, but there we are.
4. The Return of the King. So much better than its predecessors that I'm at a loss to explain why. Maybe Peter Jackson grew up in the intervening years, or maybe he just learned how to edit an epic movie, but the result is far better than anything I would have expected.
5. Master and Commander. Another miracle; I would love to know how such an intelligent, exciting, uncondescending movie came to be made for $120 million. Almost absurdly rich and satisfying.
6. Capturing the Friedmans. Comes closer to a guided tour of hell than just about any movie I've seen. Interviews, home movies, suburban interiors, and then suddenly: the abyss.
7. The Fog of War. Robert McNamara is much too intelligent and too articulate to stumble into the abyss that Elaine Friedman (or Gollum) unwillingly enters, and he stops just short of the rim. That's a disappointment, but only a small one, and what we're left with is merely fascinating, terrifying, essential.
8. Lost in Translation. A great, beautiful movie about a foreign city at night where nothing much happens, worthy of putting alongside Wong Kar-Wai's movies about Hong Kong. Silences, unheard conversations, slapstick, rain, light.
9. Finding Nemo. It doesn't quite hold up to repeat viewings, but my first glimpse of this movie was possibly the most exhilarating evening I've had at the movies this year: awe-inspiringly beautiful, gut-bustingly funny.
10. Pirates of the Caribbean. Yes, there's way too much skeleton-on-skeleton violence, but with Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, and Kiera Knightley happily devouring the goofiest roles of their careers, this is a movie I'd happily rewatch any night of the week.

And what about The Last Samurai? Well, heck. Tom Cruise had to drop off the list one of these days, and this happened to be the year. And if the last five minutes had been removed, would The Last Samurai have made this list? Maybe. Yes; just possibly maybe.