Charlie Wilson's War, Mike Nichols, 2007

Nichols and Sorkin's film is imminently charming and breezy, but likewise naive and flippant in its treatment of the United States' involement in the Soviet-Afghan conflict.

Atonement, Joe Wright, 2007

Wright's realization of Ian McEwan's epic meditation on regret is a resolutely assured one, deploying an impressive compliment of affecting visuals in service of its tragic narrative.

There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007

Anderson's mercurial character study is impressive if wildy uneven, creating in oil man Daniel Plainview a conflicted and ultimately incomplete vision. Daniel Day Lewis' lead perfromance is likewise inconstant, reminiscent in its best moments of Jimmy Stewart's steel-headed work with Anthony Mann, but also possessed of overwrought, all too familliar histrionics.

Juno, Jason Reitman, 2007

Reitman's film eventually, and deceptively, overcomes insufferably stylized dialogue and well worn American indie cliches to acheive a sweet, winning rhythm.

I'm Not There, Todd Haynes, 2007

Haynes' sprawling Bob Dylan tapestry is part riff, part caricature, part revision, and part hallucination, its ultimate, overwhelming, and bewitching success won from Haynes' precision in managing his film's myriad parts.