I fucked up. Last December, when I compiled my list of the ten best films of 2006, I omitted A Prairie Home Companion. Robert Altman had died the month before, and although the movie was an obvious and sentimental choice for a California Split fiend like me, I believed that I had a professional responsibility as a film reviewer to be objective, and instead I backed more respectable horses. Then, earlier this year, the Mrs. got A Prairie Home Companion through Netflix, and watching it again I felt like a real shitheel. Out of some stupid and arrogant notion of journalistic integrity—the idea that I am ubermensch enough to separate my head from my heart when the lights go down—I had blinded myself to my own views. To paraphrase Lindsay Lohan’s Prairie Home Companion number, I was an Altman man and I had done him wrong.

So I’d like to dedicate our inaugural year-end critics poll to the film director I let down. In contrast to the many excellent best-of polls out there, such as indiewire.com's, I asked Fanzine’s contributors to name their favorite films of the year. Not the best, or the most worthwhile or god forbid “most important,” but the movies that have mattered to us most. Furthermore, our writers have chosen from among all the movies that they have seen this year. That includes not just new theatrical releases, but older movies seen via cable, DVD, the internet or any other medium. Face it, the traditional viewing method of going to a movie theater is on the wane.

I’m old enough to remember the time before VCRs, and I’m going to miss the theatrical experience when it’s gone. But in truth, the Saturday afternoon matinee of my childhood—so lovingly evoked by Grindhouse—is already a relic. The New Yorker’s David Denby dreams about a coast-to-coast chain of “Starbucks-plus-cocktails.” Me, I’m looking forward to an on-demand future when thousands of ancient movies that are rarely screened even in urban repertoire houses will be available for download on a laptop in King City.

If you’re still curious, you can go here or here to see my choices for the top-ten films of 2007. But these are my favorites:

-There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson) Sometimes the heart and the head agree.
-La Chinoise (1967, Jean-Luc Godard) Vague ideas must be confronted with clear images.
-Drinking Out of Cups (Dan Deacon and Liam Lynch) No way.
–Fully Flared (Ty Evans, Spike Jonze, and Cory Weincheque) Sickest skateboarding video since Owen Wilson landed a bluntside in Yeah Right!
-The Landlord (1970, Hal Ashby) A blast from the pre-Obama past: Kill Whitie!
-Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy) I know it’s a cliché, but George Clooney really is The Last Movie Star.
-Orca (1977, Michael Anderson) Even as downloaded to my iPhone for a plane ride, it’s still way more atmospheric than Jaws.
-A Prairie Home Companion (2006, Robert Altman) I already said I was sorry.
-The Simpsons Movie (David Silverman) I haven’t watched the show since college, so it actually seemed fresh and revelatory. Plus, I loved the pig.
-They All Laughed (1981, Peter Bodganovich) Best New York City country-western stoner romcom ever.

--BENJAMIN STRONG