My Top Ten Movie Moments of the Year
(Spoilers included. Listed in approximate chronological order within their respective films, so you can imagine them spliced together into the ultimate year-end mash-up.)

1. The fake trailers and Booty Sweat commercial before Tropic Thunder.
2. Wall-E zooming around the trashed planet with no one but a cockroach for company.
3. Seth Rogen and James Franco trash-talking on the couch. (Pineapple Express)
4. Little kids being chased through the slums of Mumbai to M.I.A.'s Paper Planes. (Slumdog Millionaire)
5. The montage of sweded movies in Be Kind Rewind. Love and energy burst from every frame.
6. The giddy pastiche of I Want It All, where Kenny Ortega rips off every important American musical maven from Ziegfeld to Fosse. (High School Musical 3)
7. Michael Cera and Kat Dennings driving through New York as The National's All the Wine blasts on the soundtrack. It's a random shot in a picaresque movie, but one that feels full of possibilities. (Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist)
8. Amy Adams telling Frances McDormand her real name. She radiates screwball moxie throughout, but here it's balanced by a touching vulnerability. (Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day)
9. The real-life pressure of Hurricane Katrina that constantly threatens and finally overwhelms the fantasy of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
10. Dianne Wiest directing the end of Philip Seymour Hoffman's life. (Synecdoche, New York)