TOP 10 MOVIES OF 2006

Star film critic Marshall Fine shares his picks for the best movies of 2006.

1. The Departed: Martin Scorsese's best film since "Goodfellas," this exciting, entertaining and amazingly violent film featured a killer performance by Jack Nicholson and terrific book-end roles for Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio.
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2. Volver: Murder, ghosts, family - it sounds like "Hamlet" but it was an all-female world created by Spanish master Pedro Almodovar in a movie that never failed to surprise. It featured a best-ever showing by gorgeous Penelope Cruz.
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3. Pan's Labyrinth: Mystical, mysterious, full of fantasy and cruelty, this film by Guillermo del Toro was like a mash-up of "Alice in Wonderland" and Picasso's "Guernica," with its story of a little girl who discovers that she might be a princess.
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4. Babel: Four seemingly disconnected stories come together in an intense and vivid film that featured Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett - among others - about the way people fail to communicate with each other and the pain that lack of communication can bring.
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5. Borat: Cultural Learnings of American for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan: Gross, outrageous, off the charts - who else but British comic Sacha Baron Cohen? His bogus Kazakh journalist toured America and suckered his subjects into revealing their worst impulses in this hilarious blend of character comedy and "Candid Camera."
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6. The Queen: Look for Helen Mirren to win a well-deserved Oscar for her performance as Queen Elizabeth II, caught between protocol and human feelings when she is forced to respond to the death of the former Princess Di.
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7. An Inconvenient Truth: Al Gore was the unlikely star in this crucial documentary about global warming. Gore not only made it understandable - he scared the heck out of viewers, who finally got the point that it's up to them to help save the planet.
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8. Little Miss Sunshine: A family with lots of problems finds common ground in this darkly funny and original comedy about a trip to a kiddie beauty pageant that never goes where you expect it to. It features a wonderfully edgy performance by a cranky Alan Arkin.
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9. Flag of Our Fathers: In jigsaw fashion, Clint Eastwood told the story of the World War II battle for Iwo Jima - and the way a photograph helped fuel the war effort, in a movie that also questioned the way the government hypes heroism for its own ends.
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10. Notes on a Scandal: How interesting is a story about a friendship between two schoolteachers? Grippingly - when one of them is the deliciously devious and manipulative Judi Dench and her victim is Cate Blanchett. A year-end treat.
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