Nothing's more satisfying when compiling an end-of-year list than the fleeting moments after a top 10 list's completion. It looks bulletproof, peppered with personal favorites and objects of quality and admiration. But panic quickly sets in, and an agonizing revision phase ensues, sometimes lasting years. Rational people who lead healthy and substantive lives should never engage in such frivolity.

This abstinence from geek-dom would come at a price, however, since the film calendar of 2004 proper demands to be celebrated. Being cinematically landlocked in Milwaukee (where many features fail to appear in even the artiest art house), DVDs once again provided access to the foreign and smaller films on this list, projects that would've benefited from a fraction of the marketing budget of "Shrek 2."

But first, join me in redirecting the poisonous vitriol critics heaped onto my first two selections toward "Garden State," "Scrubs" star Zack Braff's odious debut. Close friends, distant associates and anonymous strangers are well-aware of my hatred, so I'll just say that any movie that makes me feel ashamed for liking the Shins is doing something wrong.

Now, my top 10:

1. "I Heart Huckabees" — A Marx Brothers romp as penned by Sartre, David O. Russell's critically reviled "existential comedy" zipped, probed and enchanted like no other film last year, dovetailing deeply felt philosophical inquiry with airy, zany slapstick. The results, while polarizing, offered bountiful giggles, tears and evocative touches of transcendence.

2. "Dogville" — Equally reviled was Lars von Trier's incendiary parable (starring Nicole Kidman and a roster of talents), a blistering critique of American greed and hypocrisy whose stagy set was devoid of decorations but rife with provocation and gut-wrenching human tragedy. Politically, the dastardly Dane didn't let the audience off the hook like the facile "Team America" or Michael Moore did —"Dogville" forced us to question our cushy moral certitudes and basest instincts.

3. "The Return" — This beautiful debut by Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev flew under Milwaukee's radar — it had a weeklong run at the Times Cinema, 5906 W. Vliet St. — but packs considerable staying power. The simple yet gripping story — an estranged father's fishing trip with his two sons, neither of whom he's ever met — avoids maudlin pathos and cheap sympathy in favor of economy and tension. Seek it out on DVD.

4. "Vera Drake" — British master Mike Leigh's latest socially conscious drama concerns the title character — a middle-aged, devoted housewife and mother in lower-class London who, unbeknownst to her loved ones, doubles as an abortionist. As Jean Renoir would say, everyone has their reasons. Vera, heartbreakingly embodied by the stiff-lipped Imelda Staunton, and her tragic reasoning inspire some of the cinema's most profoundly moving images.

5. "Before Sunset" — Richard Linklater is clearly on a roll. The Austin-born director peaks with this delightfully talky, real-time sequel to his essential 1995 romance "Before Sunrise." Basically, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy walk around Paris for 80 minutes, reflecting on their meeting nine years earlier, their love lives, their work — and the conversation and Linklater's flawless execution — couldn't be more engaging, or ultimately, suspenseful.

6. "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" — Thank you, Quentin, for repackaging every pleasure, sensation and superficial thrill to be had in a movie into a neatly assembled, blood-soaked valentine to Uma Thurman, kung-fu and all the schlock that came before you. Also, thank you, David Carradine, for giving the performance of the year as the nefarious, monstrously funny Bill.

7. "The Terminal" — Spielberg cribs from French legend Jacques Tati and delivers a wonderfully amusing human comedy that serves as potent reflection upon America's post-9/11 anxieties and gives Tom Hanks another opportunity (following "The Ladykillers") to broaden his range courtesy of a nuanced, believable accent. (Speaking as a Cornhusker, though, there's no way Catherine Zeta-Jones character is a Nebraskan.)

8. "The Brown Bunny" — Jack-of-all-trades Vincent Gallo proved it's better to revel in your narcissism and artistically confront it rather than obfuscating with a thinly veiled, poorly realized onscreen version of yourself (I'm looking at you, "Garden State"). A fascinating and mesmerizing foray into grief and anguished recrimination, "The Brown Bunny" is the worst date movie of the year — all the more reason to cherish it.

9. "Birth" — As a widow who's suddenly confronted by a reincarnated dead husband in the form of a 10-year-old boy, Nicole Kidman deserves many accolades for fearlessly carrying the year's two trickiest, potentially hazardous dramas ("Dogville" being the other, of course). The movie's style and muted tone was uniformly compared to Stanley Kubrick's work and it stands as an equally chilly, hypnotic complement to the deceased director's oeuvre.

10. "National Treasure" — The same impulse that drives me to McDonald's for a Big Mac contributed to my enjoyment of this Bruckheimer junk-fest — hi, I'll take Nicolas Cage, globe-spanning locales, improbably goofy Masonic traditions, gun-toting baddies and Indiana Jones-like set pieces, but please hold any profanity, gratuitous violence or pathetic stabs at drama. Could you rate it PG, too? "Treasure" is old-fashioned, Disney-approved family entertainment, and it can't be faulted for that.

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on Jan. 20 2005.