6. "The World"
This was supposed to be the breakthrough work from Jia Zhangke, the 35-year-old Chinese director lauded at film festivals around the world for his tales of provincial anomie. And hey, it was! A large-scale ensemble drama set in the surreal confines of the World theme park outside Beijing -- where the characters drift from the Eiffel Tower to the Leaning Tower of Pisa to the Pyramids of Giza in an afternoon -- this was one of the most satisfying and multileveled flicks of the year. But as is par for the course with East Asian art film (i.e., lacking in kung fu, ghosts or monsters), it was beloved by critics and totally ignored by audiences. And I do mean totally. It played a handful of big cities -- never on more than three screens at a time -- and grossed a grand total of $63,662. Nancy Gerstman, who acquired it for Zeitgeist, remains unbowed. She fell in love with "The World" at the New York Film Festival, she says, but saw problems: "It was too long, it had several story lines going on at once, the filmmaker was a critics' favorite but his other films had not done well in the U.S. Our mandate was to put it out there and give it a profile, but not to expect much box office. I think the limited number of people who did go and see 'The World' fell in love with it as we did. We expect it to do very decently on DVD." That means you, people.

7. "Forty Shades of Blue"
OK, this one just bums me out. The American indie film of the year, as far as I could tell. This wrenching family drama of unexpected love blooming in unhelpful circumstances, set against the Memphis R&B music industry, would and should have been a smash art-house hit -- if this was, say, 1975. You know, there was nothing so bad about "Junebug" or "The Squid and the Whale" or whatever, and I pretty much liked "Thumbsucker." But Ira Sachs' "Forty Shades of Blue" has an emotional maturity, an artistic commitment and an almost symphonic scope, that those other flicks can only guess at. Rip Torn is brilliant as the aging music industry tyrant, but Dina Korzun gives the performance of the year as his Russian trophy fiancée, who falls hard and awkwardly for his son. But we're talking no name actors under 40 (or even 50) and a story about grown-ups set in an unhip social milieu. What does that mean? Well, on the one hand, this movie won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and got rave reviews from the New York Times and Newsweek (and, um, from Salon). That's great, right? Apparently not. It also cost about $1.5 million to make, and beyond a short run at New York's Film Forum, it's earned, hmm, let's see -- nothing. Zero. Nada. Bupkis. And that's for a better Robert Altman film than any actual Robert Altman film of the last 25 years.

8. "2046"
Wong Kar-wai's irrepressibly stylish follow-up to "In the Mood for Love" summarizes all that's amazing, and all that's maddening, about Wong as a filmmaker. This doesn't so much have a plot as a mood of persistent romantic melancholy, a prodigious sense of itself as an aesthetic creation, and a deliberate desire to overwhelm us with the visual splendor of its women in glamorous '60s clothes (most notably Ziyi Zhang, Gong Li and a brief appearance by Maggie Cheung) and Tony Leung's decadent post-Bogart suavity. I'm not so sure all this languorous indulgence is healthy -- or that this movie is likely to be a good influence on aspiring young filmmakers -- but in this case, hell, who really cares? More than $1.4 million in U.S. box office, which is really extraordinary for an arty Chinese-language costume drama with no action scenes.

9. "The Syrian Bride"
Eran Riklis' tale of a wedding that goes awry along the disputed border between Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights starts out as a typical village comedy and winds up as the gem amid this year's bumper crop of Israeli films. As the bride's indomitable sister stuck in a bad marriage, the proud and beautiful Hiam Abbass sails through "The Syrian Bride" like a ship breasting rough waters. While Riklis hits many of the expected comic beats, the cast is terrific and the film will keep on surprising you -- with its even-handed ridicule of all sides, among other things -- until it finally reveals itself as part feminist drama, part existential absurdism. This is a crowd-pleaser and button-pusher waiting to happen, and if, as Nancy Gerstman and Sasha Berman both told me, it's still possible to build an indie hit with grass-roots marketing campaigns, "The Syrian Bride" is a perfect candidate. It's fared well in New York, and if Koch Lorber Films can successfully promote it to both Jewish and Arab-American audiences around the country (along with gay audiences, those are among the most loyal of niche audiences), this one could be playing deep into 2006.

10. "Land of Plenty"
When I reviewed Wim Wenders' micro-budget post-9/11 drama a few weeks ago, I bitched out IFC for apparently screening it in New York and then abandoning it. Critics are told never to apologize, but this time I was just wrong. Apparently the wheels were moving behind the scenes, and Ryan Werner now says this will be rolled out to other markets in '06, prior to the DVD release. It's easily Wenders' best film since "Wings of Desire," with all the hopefulness and mysticism of his most potent work. I suspect that's because it was made fast and cheap, by someone who knows and loves America but is not American, and so it captured something essential about our national hangover in the wake of 2001. John Diehl plays a deranged right-wing vet roaming the streets of L.A., pursued by his lefty Christian niece (Michelle Williams). But no, it's not anti-American or even judgmental, or even, in the last analysis, very interested in politics. Is this a quick, messy, uneven movie? Yep, but it's got a dirty magic undreamed of in mainstream cinema.

Honorable mention: "3 Rooms of Melancholia," "A History of Violence," "Grizzly Man," "Downfall," "Mail Order Wife" (with a best supporting actor nomination to Jose Canseco), "Paradise Now," "She's One of Us," "Turtles Can Fly," "Wall," "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill."

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