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People who look for perfect movies are like people who search for the ideal lover: disappointed and dull. I think of movies the way the poet, essayist and novelist Randall Jarrell defined the novel: “A novel is a prose work of a certain length that has something wrong with it.” What I treasure in movies are the moments that have nothing wrong with them.

A top 20 list, and then a few dozen other highlights of 2002 follow. Films I've seen in unusual places are noted.

1. The Pianist, Roman Polanski. Art as witness.

2. Adaptation, Spike Jonze. Ouroboros, over easy.

3. Talk to Her, Pedro Almodovar. Teasing the absurd to dandle the sublime.

4. Atanarjuat - The Fast Runner, Zacharias Kunuk. Dawn, at the top of the world, since time immemorial.

5. Morvern Callar, Lynne Ramsay. The muse as blank. I interviewed Ramsay for the current issue of Cinema Scope.

6. Far From Heaven, Todd Haynes. So fake it's real, largely down to the stellar eye of director of photography Ed Lachman.

7. Spirited Away, Hideo Miyazaki. The glory that is the Stink God, plus a great artist’s call to curiosity for 10-year-old girls, whose imagination he found neglected by today’s culture.

8. Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore. Not a documentary, but a polemic. Questions are asked and people are talking.

9. The Son's Room, Nanni Moretti. Loss and sorrow in a close family. Some says it’s similar to In the Bedroom, but not really. The use of Brian Eno’s “By The River” is heartbreaking. (The same song is cunningly employed in Y Tu Mama Tambien.). “Through the day /As if on an ocean /waiting here, /Always failing to remember /why we came, came, came: /I wonder why we came.”

10. Tully, Hilary Birmingham. There is emotional power in the state of reserve, Birmingham and her collaborators know, in story as well as in form. Tully is the laconic soul of an unremarked Midwestern generation.

11. 10, Abbas Kiarostami (Vancouver International). Maxi-minimalism. A heartbreaking, well, masterpiece.

12. Y Tu Mamá También, Alfonso Cuarón. As John Waters wrote in his Artforum Top 10, “Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal get my vote for screen couple of the year (even if they were drunk and don't remember a thing).”

13. The Man Without A Past, Aki Kaurismaki. Sad and beautiful and funny: mature absurdism.

14. Bloody Sunday, Paul Greengrass. A worthy successor of up-close, in-tight portrayal of street conflict to Gillo Pontecorvo’s great Battle of Algiers.

15. Heaven, Tom Tykwer. The Washington Post’s Anne Hornaday said “Heaven might represent the worst of what both Kieslowski and Tykwer could offer -- it's a mannered, precious exercise that seems to have less to do with lived moral dilemmas than with the smug piety of its makers.” Wonder what movie she was watching, rather than this cool search for grace.

16. Merci pour le Chocolat, Claude Chabrol. Forget Isabelle Huppert’s deeply disturbing turn as a masochist in The Piano Teacher; check this Chabrolian chiller for the great actress at her most accomplished.

17. All or Nothing, Mike Leigh. Sorrow and redemption.

18. Catch me If You Can, Steven Spielberg. Larceny and expiation.

19. Read My Lips, Jacques Audiard. The strangeness of watching, hearing, desiring another.

20. Rules of Attraction, Roger Avary. This is one fucked-up movie. But not as fucked up as its reviews, punishing Avary in the same way his source, Bret Easton Ellis is, each time he publishes a book.

Among major releases, I have not seen Antwone Fisher, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, About Schmidt, The Quiet American or Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. A long-ish review of The Hours appears below.

Among reissues or discoveries in 2002, I treasure a couple of things I discovered at the International Thessaloniki Film Festival . Shirin Neshat’s 2001 Passage, an eleven-and-a-half minute film commissioned by Philip Glass, the images of which, shot in Morocco and portraying a funeral procession along water’s edge and then deep into a desert are mysterious and plain at once,

Korean director Hong Sang-Soo’s four features were also shown at Thessaloniki. Hong’s a deadpan modern master whose The Day A Pig Fell Into The Well thrilled me to no end. (The title is never explained.) While influenced by American short story writers, there is a quiet accretion of detail in all four of his features that defeats suspense yet packs a serious wallop when he ties all his strands together. You can order DVDs of three of Hong Sang-Soo’s features online.  Rialto Pictures continues its tradition of terrific restorations with H. G. Clouzot’s 1947 voluptuously human hard-boiled masterpiece, Quai des Orfevres. Look for the Criterion DVD in the coming year.

Here’s what else I liked in 2002.

Abandon, Stephen Gaghan. We love Katie Holmes struggling to be squirrelly with her squinched-up kewpie features. Abandon, Steven Gaghan’s directorial debut after his Oscar win for writing Traffic is an oft-assured variation of Paramount’s woman-in-jeopardy genre; Gaghan’s ear for the language of intelligent people makes for several quietly hilarious character turns.

About a Boy, Chris and Paul Weisz. Charm in the form of Hugh Grant and Toni Collette; forget the little boy.

All About Lily Chou-Chou,  Shunji Iwai.  A lovely, poetic study of internet-borne obsession; among recent work, only William Gibson’s upcoming novel, “Pattern Recognition” has felt as present tense to me.

Ararat, Atom Egoyan (Vancouver).

Beijing Bicycle (Toronto 2001). Kids are mean and Chinese protagonists are obstinate. A small gem about the search for truth, the search for simple beauty with thematic directness and a willingness to embrace emotions, tempting melodrama.

Blissfully Yours, Apichatpong Weerasethakul. (Vancouver) A humid daydream of desire, sex and border crossing.

The Bourne Identity, Doug Liman. Liman (with Matt Damon’s capable assistance) shows us the strangeness of (movie-style metaphorical) amnesia, suggesting through tempo, cutting and camera placement the “newness” of each room Bourne enters.

Cherish, Finn Taylor. Robin Tunney needs a movie written for her. Another movie, I mean. Straining the limitations of Taylor’s conceits, the way she did in Niagara, Niagara, Tunney burns with off-center charm.

Chicago. Catherine Zeta-Jones' legs and shark's smile.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, George Clooney.Soderbergh-lite, but good in moments.

Demonlover, Olivier Assayas. (Vancouver) A film audit if there ever was one, Assayas' conflation of Pasolini's Salo, Egoyan and Lynch won't leave my mind. After its disastrous opening in France, I wonder in what form, if ever, it might wind up in North America.

Les Destinees, Olivier Assayas. A family history of porcelain, cognac and regret. Many lovely touches in a long telling.

Decasia, Bill Morrison. (Sundance) Film decays, and the results are beautiful.

Divine Intervention, Elia Suleiman. Buster Keaton goes to the West Bank.

Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, Guy Maddin. (Filmexchange, Winnipeg) Ballet, blood, madness, gory glory.

8 Mile, Curtis Hanson. Hanson’s smartly modest making-of-the-rapper tale is gifted with cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (Amores Perros), whose handheld camerawork, tight close-ups and gritty, grainy images, makes the movie seem like the first Mexican film shot entirely in Detroit.

8 Women, Francois Ozon. La pop.

11' 09' 01, various. (Bootleg) “Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's shock-tactic glimpses of people jumping from the towers is crudely exploitative,” insists the Observer’s critic. Phooey. Sample Gonzalez Inarritu's explanation of his deeply haunting, shattering segment here. Or as the final words of his segment say, in Arabic, "Does God's light guide us or blind us?"

Femme Fatale, Brian DePalma. DePalma’s most elegant waking nightmare (or dreamy terror) in many, many years.

FILM: Dzama, Deco Dawson. (Filmexchange, Winnipeg)

Ken Park, Larry Clark, Ed Lachman. Tenderness? In spite of itself: sorrow begets fucking begets some kind of cracked youth utopia.

Full Frontal, Steven Soderbergh. He said he wanted the DV portions to look like they'd been processed in gasoline. Yep.

Gangs of New York, Martin Scorsese, Harvey Weinstein. So much lumber. The last five minutes soar.

Home Movie, Greg Smith. If you lived here, you’d be home by now.

Horns and Halos, Suki Hawley, Michael Galinsky. (Chicago Underground) Compelling doc follows the tragic fortunes of George W. Bush biograper J. T. Hatfield as he defends “Fortunate Son,” as well as the efforts of Sander Hicks, renegade publisher of Soft Skull Press.

The Hours, Stephen Daldry. “I seem to have fallen out of time,” one of the three interleaved heroines of The Hours says, and the great accomplishment of this rich, civil movie, directed by Stephen Daldry from David Hare’s adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, is its ability to move in and out of time without ever becoming precious, always in a delirious present tense. (Cinema, the invention without a future, August Lumiere said. Without a future tense.)

The surge of Philip Glass’ score impels us to consider their sorrows as one, another note of dark beauty against the great young cinematographer Seamus McGarvey’s startling work, luminosity of many transformations. “False comfort” is something another of the three cautions against. Three women, each on a single day in their lives. The trio includes a writer, Virginia Woolf, played by Nicole Kidman, who hides behind an exaggerated proboscis, yet etches a performance of sage delicacy. A reader: Julianne Moore’s Laura Brown, a 1950s housewife who cannot understand her feelings—like Woolf, tides of depression—and the need to maintain the façade of normalcy. And a namesake: Clarissa (Meryl Streep), a contemporary Manhattan book editor, surrounded by privilege, in a passionless long-term lesbian relationship, nicknamed Mrs. Dalloway by her dying once-lover Richard (Ed Harris). She mutters a line from the novel as she goes to buy flowers.  The precision of Streep’s disarray is awe-inspiring, a physical performance of noteworthy intensity. But there is intensity to spare.

A few impressions: Laura Brown cannot take the crushing feelings that have no name, her small boy watches, his gleaming child face also uncomprehending, his numinous eyes accusing her. Laura considers leaving, or worse. She bakes a cake. When it is done, the kitchen is exquisite, supernally clean. In order, all is amiss. And Laura’s words after she refuses her first attempt at betrayal, driver telling her small passenger: “I love you, sweetheart, you’re my guy.” Moore, in that moment, gives the most heart-wrenching shred of performance I’ve seen this year.

Toni Collette, as her glib neighbor and friend, has her own instant of perfection, glimpsing a copy of Mrs. Dalloway and flouncing across the kitchen toward it, exclaiming shinily, “Oh! You’re reading a book!” (Collette’s brief, outstanding role is surely Oscar-bound.)

In the Virginia Woolf portion, her sister’s children find a dead bird and make a bed of grass for it. She places her head beside it, and from Woolf’s point-of-view, the dead black bird, a glassy-eyed study pinioned between the petals of a yellow rose to the left, an orange rose to the right. At first glimpse, the image seems studied, and of course it is: the writer studies the world, this small emblem of passed life. And in the New York portion, one detail: The quiet yet shattered jingle of Clarissa’s masses of protective bangles at each wrist. “You cannot find peace by avoiding life, Leonard,” Woolf tells her husband. “I took the Xanax and Ritalin together. It never occurred to me!” the dying Richard says. Between these extremes, The Hours.

Hukkle, György Pálfi. (Thessaloniki) The dialogue-less student film David Lynch never made; a Hungarian bit of colorful surrealism that added a song at the end so it qualifies as a “foreigh-language” film.

I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco, Sam Jones. Music is work.

Igby Goes Down, Burr Steers. Steer’s savage verbal wit is a bonus in a jaw-droppingly mean Salingeresque black comedy of Swiftian bad manners among uppercrust Georgetown and Manhattan. And Kieran Culkin is a star. Culkin plays Igby Slocumb, a sarcastic 17-year-old who hates the old money world he was born into, especially his distant, selfish mother, played with spite by Susan Sarandon, who notes "His creation was an act of animosity, why should his life not be?" Steers understands wicked dysfunction, as well as emblematic behavior, such as having Jeff Goldblum goofy-grinning, literally caught with his pants around his ankles, and Amanda Peet watched by a boy and a boy-man as, bare-chested, she shaves her underarms. Then there's Clare Danes' pissy turn as older-woman Sookie "I am not a JAP" Saperstein, who provides Igby with drugs, sex and attitude. How does he endear himself to her? Calling himself "Pavlov's pothead."

In Praise of Love, Jean-Godard. (Toronto, September 13, 2001) Black-and-white images that throw color to the winds.

Italian For Beginners, Lone Scherfig. Dogma romantic comedy? No music in a comedy? Worked for me

IVANSXTC,  Bernard Rose. Hated it when I saw it on HD at Toronto 2000, but Danny Huston’s dark performance as a dying agent is worthy of Malcolm Lowry.

Jackass: The Movie, Jeff Tremaine. I was at a Christmas party at a filmmaker’s house in New York and was amused to find a half dozen women in the industry, all in their thirties, confessing their secret love for Johnny Knoxville and his homoeroticism-embracing breathren. Steam rose with each cascading description.

The Kid Stays in the Picture, Nanette Burstein, Brett Morgen. “Ego?” Robert Evans might ask. “Me?”

The Last Kiss, Gabriele Muccino. Superheated Italian roundelay of sexual manners is a sweet, post-Altman sugar rush.

Late Marriage, Dover Koshashvili. Ronit Elkabetz’s forceful performance as a very sexual woman is simply great.

Lilo & Stitch, Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders. Like a one-man "Gremlins," little blue Stitch snarls, garbles, spits, coos, and generally enforces havoc on Lilo's peaceful village until the sentimental power of a small girl's love turns him cute while remaining just a little naughty. The expressive characters suggest the influence of illustrator Rick Meyerowitz, and the young women characters would delight R. Crumb with the depiction of their frankly powerful haunches. Another treat is that the entire picture (written and directed by Chris Sanders and Dean Deblois) uses gorgeously colored watercolor backdrops, the first in a Disney feature in sixty years.

Lilya 4-EVer, Lukas Moodyson. (Vancouver) But for a misjudged coda, a tale of the sexual exploitation of children; a sorrowful feat of emotional identification from a young master.

Lovely and Amazing, Nicole Holofcener. Some have compared its style to that of television comedy. So why aren’t there a dozen shows with this level of lived-in detail?

Lundi Matin, Otar Iosseliani (Thessaloniki). Absurd, near-wordless comedy of utmost sophistication.

Maelstrom, Denis Villeneuve  Fate is cruel.

Me Without You, Sandra Goldbacher. Girls are cruel.

Minority Report, Steven Spielberg. All-too-relevant SF. John Ashcroft is cruel.

Monsoon Wedding, Mira Nair.

Mostly Martha, Sandra Nettelback. Food, love, food, love, fooooood.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Joel Zwick. I put it off so long I got to see it …in Greece.

Narc, Joe Carnahan. Blood, bullets and octane, indeed. Alex Nepomniaschy, who photographed Safe, among other films, brings a dank greasy grunge to Narc that seeps into the soul and chills it.

Nine Queens,  Rafael Bielinski.

The Piano Teacher, Michael Haneke. Isabelle Huppert. Sigh.

Promises, Carlos Bolado, B.Z. Goldberg, Justine Shapiro. Important doc about children on both sides of the battle for the West Bank.             

Punch-Drunk Love, Paul Thomas Anderson.

Quitting,  Zhang Yang.

Rabbit-Proof Fence, Philip Noyce. Touching. Kenneth Branagh as a perfect shit who thinks he can do no wrong. Lovely images of inconstant weather by Chris Doyle.

Road to Perdition, Sam Mendes. Too bad the storytelling ended after hiring Conrad Hall.

Roger Dodger, Dylan Kidd. Campbell Scott stuns with Kidd's arias of male self-loathing.

Russian Ark, Alexander Sokurov. More stunt than vision, Sokurov's ninety-minute one-take HD wonder does have great forward momentum; Tilman Buettner, manning the Steadicam after working on Run Lola Run must have the most muscular arms in the business, if you don’t count Madonna in Swept Away.

Secretary, Steven Shainberg. Loathed the movie, but Maggie Gyllenhaal is a marvel. The last five minutes seem to be from another, consequential movie.

Solaris, Steven Soderbergh. Sorrow is good for you, c'mon. As beloved by audiences as cold rain without an umbrella.

Songs From The Second Floor, Roy Andersson. (Thessaloniki 2000, Chicago 2002) A weird and wondrous masterpiece that would be on the top of my list if only it weren't a two-year old film I've gotten to see three times in two years and am still in awe of. It’s Swedish black-comic parable of a world in unending gridlock with a dry wit that suggests Terry Gilliam, Ingmar Bergman and Luis Buñuel having a big laugh over several pitchers of Buñuel’s Virgin Martinis.

Stevie, Steve James. A March commercial release, this longitudinal doc is a marvel of empathy for a deeply troubled, troubling real-life character.

Sunshine State, John Sayles. Edie Falco, Edie Falco. Edie Falco

13 Conversations About One Thing, Jill Sprecher. Alan Arkin is so good.

Time Out, Laurent Cantet.

Transporter, Cory Yuen. Taiwanese former model Shi Qu, dreamy in Hou Hsiao-hsien's Millennium Mambo, is otherworldly strange in this Luc Besson-produced goof, trying to force action picture dialogue through her resisting, pillowy lips.

Trouble Every Day, Claire Denis. I saw this with a producer the second time round, who turned to me afterwards, exclaiming, "How could you have even sat through this once?" The answer: this failed vampirism-meets-AIDS-meets-Agnes b. thriller is the most gorgeous, luminous trainwreck of the year. I mean, except for Demonlover.

24 Hour Party People, Michael Winterbottom. Shot on video by camera great Robbie Muller, and chronicling the late 1970s Manchester music surge through the life and times of Factory Records. If not love, handheld cameras will tear us apart again.

Unfaithful, Adrian Lyne. Diane Lane. What a performance. Lyne’s movie’s pretty good, too.

Unknown Pleasures, Ja Jia Zhang-ke. (Vancouver) Disposable lives. The future. In China. On drugs. On DV.

Vendredi Soir, Claire Denis (Thessaloniki). A tribute to Nan Goldin. A whisper of a waking daydream.

War Photographer, Christian Frei, James Nachtwey. A sturdy portrait of the great war photographer at work..

Warm Water Under A Red Bridge, Shohei Imamura. Koji Yakusho is my favorite everyman. Imamura’s late pictures get stranger in their logic and sexuality, to enjoyable effect: Koji meets a woman who cannot live properly without gushing orgasms that fill the nearby river.

What Time Is It There? Tsai Ming-Liang. Mad digressions on time and space.

Woman of Water, Hideo Sugomori. (Thessaloniki) Lovely, lyrical exploration of rain, faces, the color blue, pop songs, and fires that burn inside us all.