The Departed was my favorite movie by a pretty huge margin. Given Scorcese's history I think he might get a body of work Oscar in a year where there aren't any "national sensation" movies (see Brokeback Mountain).

I haven't seen anything in the last month, so my favorite so far would also be Little Miss Sunshine.

My wife and I want to see The Departed, The Last King of Scotland, Running with Scissors, and Jesus Camp but haven't been able to get to a theatre recently.

Watching a non-animated movie the same year it is released? Wow, what a concept!

I saw Cars in the theater this year. That's it. I liked it, didn't love it. My kids felt the same.

I thought L.M.S. was hilarious, but ultimately it isn't much of a movie. The ending is so inconsequential and the movie seems pretty derivative. Great acting and hilarious, but I don't think it is one of the best movies I have seen this year (unlike a movie like Sideways which I think was clearly a great movie above and beyond its comedy).

I have seen the following movies in the theater this year:

Date Movie
The pirate movie (twice)

That's it. That's the list.

I haven't been to a movie theater since Capote, and I probably won't until The Fountain comes out. I'm praying with every fiber of my being that The Fountain will be as good as I want it to be.

4 - I agree that Little Miss Sunshine isn't Sideways, though I think it is plenty original.

7 - By derivative I don't mean unoriginal, I just think that the plot and characters were heavily influenced by Indy-family dysfunction chic (Junebug, Thumbsucker, Chumscrubber all last year and of course the king, Royal Tenenbaums, one of my favorite movies of all time). It is very funny and the humor is mostly all its own.

The Departed.

Also, as an action movie I was really impressed by Mission Impossible 3.

Little Miss Sunshine is one of those movies that makes me care less about finding anything wrong with it, or comparing it to other films. It's just so enjoyable.

MI3 made me want to stick a pen in my eye. The ending was Tom Cruise and his lady walking into the camera grinning, as everyone clapped and freeze.... It basically was a (bad) romance dressed up with some action scenes. It did have some cool action (Tom Cruise getting beat up by Hoffman almost seemed like a present for everyone that despises the constant media attention), but in general I didn't like the movie at all.

The only movie I've seen this year in a theater is The PRestige. It was good, not great. Nowhere near the movie Memento was.

We've got a toddler and no family in the area to babysit so I don't get to go to movies much, but one of the movies I did see recently that I liked A LOT was -- get this -- Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift. Seriously. It won't win any awards but it was just a cool flick. Like I said I don't get out much.

Like many people nowadays, I mostly wait for stuff to come on DVDs. I don't know if this movie is from this year or not, but "Downfall," about Hitler's last days and the fall of Berlin, was simply extraordinary. It really drives home the insanity of not just Hitler, but his most devoted aides as well. And it encompasses what happened throughout the city too, not just in the bunker. If you're into history at all you have to see this movie.

I don't watch a lot of movies in the theaters because I rent so many movies, but some of the better films from the beginning of the year I have seen. I think this is how I would rank the best I've seen:

1. Little Miss Sunshine - hilarious movie with a lot of intriguing characters
2. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang - tons of smart dialogue
3. United 93 - very powerful, exactly how I want pseudo-documentary movies to be
4. Brick - well-done update of classic noir movies
5. Inside Man - very smart heist movie
6. V for Vendetta - lots of cool ideas and pretty enjoyable plot
7. The Prestige - quality revenge film with nice twists
8. The Proposition - very artistic western, but a bit slow

I really need to somehow start keeping track of movies I've seen in a year (it isn't tons, but is probably somewhere between 20 and 30.

Some movies that I see at the beginning of the year, slip out of memory by the end of the, even when I really liked them.

(I'm getting old.)

Side note - My mother has the best thing ever in this world: She never remembers movies that she has seen. She could really benefit from buying a movie that she loves, and then rewatching it as a "new" movie every year or two.

15 - 20-30 new movies in the theater? That isn't a ton, but is definately pretty good. I watch tons of movie at the house, but I don't get to see nearly that many on the big screen.

I'm getting so old that my (lack of) post editing is getting pretty brutal, as evidenced in 15.

I lucked out with an ex-gf of mine. She was extremely open-minded about movies she wanted to and would be willing to see, and even though the relationship is in the past, the movie-going continues. Very thankful for that.

I have a feeling once I finally pop for netflix, my viewing will skew far more heavily away from the theater and towards dvd. The tivo does consistently seem to be about 2/3 full of movies I'd think about checking out, though...