THE BEST

For a change, the holiday movie rush has brought an embarrassment of riches – so much so that the year’s earlier contenders may get shunted to the side.

Not that anyone will forget “WALL-E,” a lock for the year’s best animated feature. But all that summer-time talk about the computer-animated comedy as a best-picture nominee has been pushed aside as a dazzling crop of year-end winners move into the theaters (except, of course, to the L.A. Film Critics).

Indeed, out of my top 10, seven have been released since the beginning of October – and six since Thanksgiving. As of this writing, four of them aren’t even out yet.

Talk about a seasonal assortment. When I was voting yesterday at the New York Film Critics Circle for best actor, there were at least six different candidates for whom I could have voted in good conscience – and felt bad I could only vote for three at a time.

It’s a strong year-end crop of films, full of serious, thought-provoking movies that challenge and entertain at the same time. They mark 2008 as one of the movies’ better vintages, full of outstanding performances and movies that will stand the test of time.

1. “Revolutionary Road”: Director Sam Mendes returns to suburbia circa 1956 and reteams Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in this film version of Richard Yates’ novel. The acting is terrific – nuanced yet passionate – and Mendes captures the novel’s era-defining feeling of seekers putting their dreams on hold to chase conventional success.

2. “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”: This nearly three-hour film is pure wizardry, blending personal romance with the sweep of history – and casually throwing in a little magic realism – in the story of a man born old who gets younger as the years pass. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett strike sparks as destined lovers who take years to actually find each other.

3. “WALL-E”: This may be the most magical animated film ever made, about a little drone robot who falls in love and saves the world. Gorgeous and visionary in its visual approach, it evoked memories of Chaplin and Keaton in its ability to capture powerful emotions – and tease out laughs – while uttering barely a word.

4. “Frost/Nixon”: Based on the hit Broadway play, this film about a famous set of presidential TV interviews brought both personalities – David Frost and Richard Nixon – into sharp focus. Ron Howard made it a combination duel/tango – and Michael Sheen (as Frost) and Frank Langella (as Nixon) executed it to perfection, rendering both characters as intensely human.

5. “The Visitor”: For critics, Richard Jenkins has been a secret joy for years as a character actor. Here, finally, was a movie that gave him a role worthy of his talents, as a closed-off college professor who rejoins life after befriending a pair of undocumented immigrants. Writer-director Thomas McCarthy (“The Station Agent”) created a beautifully subtle drama around Jenkins’ superb performance.

6. “Doubt”: Next to Frank Langella and Michael Sheen, the pairing of Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman was the year’s juiciest, in this film of John Patrick Shanley’s Pultizer-winning play. As a priest and nun who clash over traditional church values – and an accusation of abuse – they squared off to create moments of great power in a haunting and provocative film.

7. “Milk”: Sean Penn may have lined himself up for his second Oscar in this stirring biopic about gay-rights activist Harvey Milk. As the doomed but joyful politician, Penn gave a performance full of life and love – and did it in a movie that is still exceptionally timely, in this era of California’s Proposition 8.

8. “The Wrestler”: Sean Penn will have competition at Oscar time from Mickey Rourke, whose comeback performance is as moving as anything else seen this year. Rourke plays a has-been pro wrestler, barely getting by, whose career – or what’s left of it – is threatened by health problems. Rourke gives a touching performance as a man-mountain with a soft center.

9. “Elegy”: Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz steamed up the screen in this thoughtful adaptation of Philip Roth’s novel, “The Dying Animal,” as an aloof college professor and the grad student who pierces his barriers against intimacy. Sexy, smart and sad, it was one of the year’s sleepers, a romance for grown-ups.

10. “Happy-Go-Lucky”: Remember the name Sally Hawkins. In this Mike Leigh comedy, she was its sturdy, joke-spritzing foundation. As a kindergarten teacher who loves life, she battled a sour driving instructor (Eddie Marsan) with a barrage of one-liners – and gave a performance that was magnificent in its vitality, wit and courage.

And, for the record, a half-dozen runners-up: “Tell No One,” “I’ve Loved You So Long,” “Vicky Christina Barcelona,” “What Just Happened,” “Rachel Getting Married,” “Slumdog Millionaire.”

THE WORST

There are so many movies released every year that holding a worst-films list to a mere 10 seems like an impossible task.

So here’s the challenge I put to myself: They have to be big-budget and have actual stars – or have such a heavily vetted art-house pedigree that they qualify as a major release.

It was tempting to put films that disappointed me mightily on the list, movies like the year’s most overrated success, “The Dark Knight” (pretentious, inflated and generic), Spike Lee’s “Miracle at St. Anna’s” (it came close) and “Burn After Reading” (a rare Coen brothers’ misfire).

But don’t worry: There are 10 movies listed below well-deserving of scorn – and then we shall never speak their names again.

1. “Speed Racer”: Five years after they drove the “Matrix” franchise into the ditch with “Matrix Revolutions,” the Wachoski brothers crashed and burned with this garish live-action remake of a Japanese anime series. There wasn’t a genuine-looking frame in the whole neon-colored mess. And for all the racing sequences, you’d have been hard-pressed to squeeze an ounce of excitement, humor or coherence out of it.

2. “Be Kind Rewind”: Michel Gondry wrote and directed this laughless, plodding comedy, about a pair of video-store clerks (Jack Black, Mos Def) who accidentally erase every videotape in their store. So they surreptitiously shoot their own 20-minute versions of classic films – and the neighborhood renters like them better. It was full of mock profundity about the relationship between movies and dreams – and wholly devoid of actual jokes.

3. “Funny Games”: Naomi Watt, Tim Roth and Michael Pitt were all tortured by writer-director Michael Haneke in this hateful remake of his equally hateful 1997 German film, about psychotic teens who brutalize a family for no reason other than that they can. Which, apparently, was the same reason Haneke made – and remade – the movie.

4. “The Happening”: M. Night Shymalan went to the “Twilight Zone” well one too many times (OK, two: remember “Lady in the Water”?) with this silly would-be thriller starring Mark Wahlberg, in which people inexplicably start killing themselves – because the trees make them. No, really. The only thing scarier was the thought of paying for a ticket to this turkey.

5. “My Blueberry Nights”: Hong Kong hype Wong Kar-Wai tried to bring his shtick to the U.S. and fell flat with this stale road movie, starring singer Norah Jones and Jude Law in an aimless, dreary travelogue. For the first time, critics noticed that the over-praised Wong had nothing to deliver, perhaps because there weren’t subtitles to distract them.

6. “88 Minutes”/”Righteous Kill”: Al Pacino dumped dual stinkers on the audience this year. In “88 Minutes” (which was actually 20 minutes longer than that), he acted with his rooster-like haircut, which changed color from scene to scene. And in “Righteous Kill,” he wasted a chance to team with Robert De Niro with a frantic, nonsensical cop movie. Give it a rest, Al.

7. “Synechdoche, New York”: For his directing debut, writer Charlie Kaufman (“Adaptation”) chose this depressing meditation on death and tricked it out with faux philosophical trimmings about the nature of art. Philip Seymour Hoffman was the best thing about this relentlessly downbeat film, which was the movie equivalent of listening to someone tell you about their dreams – and not even their most interesting dreams, at that.

8. “Nights in Rodanthe”: Weepy melodrama and romance-novel coupling met their match in this laughable adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ drippy novel. Two lovelorn types (Diane Lane, Richard Gere) meet at a tiny inn on the North Carolina coast and hit the sheets during a hurricane – and rediscover their zest for life! Soap doesn’t get much sudsier than this.

9. “Get Smart”: The idea of Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart was a good one. Too bad it was squandered on this humor-challenged script, which favored massive action sequences over carefully crafted jokes – or even badly crafted ones. Carell worked hard (so did Anne Hathaway) but only Alan Arkin as the Chief actually provoked chuckles.

10. “Australia”: The “Speed Racer” of sweeping historical romances, full of green-screen phoniness and artificial romance, with a political theme tacked on for good measure. Yes, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman had some chemistry – but so does itching powder. The bloated script and digitally created backgrounds stretched this slow-moving tale to almost three hours, which was two too many.