2007 was a year of surprises. I didn’t have high hopes for some of these movies (28 Weeks Later, 3:10 to Yuma, 300, The Hoax), knew nothing about others (Once), had some recommended to me that I’d never have seen otherwise (Lars and the Real Girl) and was knocked on my ass quite unexpectedly by still others (Breach, The Namesake, No Country for Old Men, Zodiac). I’m quite happy with that. I’ve seen 80 new-to-me movies this year, and what’s passable for the casual movie-goer becomes gratingly annoying (or simply sleep-inducing) for someone who’s in a theater as often as I am. Surprises are a rare commodity, and all the more welcome for it.

Listed here are my personal 11 best movies of 2007, in alphabetical order. I eschewed ranking much like a parent would eschew ranking their children. These movies are all great for their own (often quite different) reasons, so saying one is better than another would be a disingenuous exercise at best. And please don’t ignore the Honorable Mentions, listed last; The Namesake, for instance, was one of the most moving films I’ve seen in years.

Without further ado:

28 Weeks Later – One of the most frightening experiences I’ve had in some time. 28 Weeks Later did for 28 Days Later what Dawn of the Dead did for Night of the Living Dead: it widened the scope in inventive ways. The cast and ambitions both grew, and the inventiveness needed to keep the material interesting was there in spades. It’s also true to what I believe is the core concept of the Romero-style zombie movie: that humans are imperfect creatures, and in a remorseless world, those imperfections are what break us down.

3:10 to Yuma – Few genres provide such ample opportunity to test a character’s true moral fiber as the Western. That’s what frontier life is: determining what you can and cannot do to your fellow man in a place where lofty concepts like “the law” are often nonexistent. Christian Bale and Russell Crowe occupy this territory well, and 3:10 to Yuma is a slow-building Western with a climax that can rightfully be called “explosive” for just that reason.

300 – There are three reasons this movie is important for the future of film making. 1) The artists involved (Zack Snyder, Frank Miller) got to make exactly the movie they wanted to make, right down to the last frame, thanks to new technology. 2) They did so for $60 million, cheap by modern blockbuster standards. 3) It made a lot of money (gross revenue over $456 million) and shattered several box office records for both mainstream release and IMAX release, while generating huge word of mouth. It’s also damned entertaining and a thrilling look at what unfettered film making can look like.

Breach – Not many will remember this February release, and it’ll be a crime if Chris Cooper doesn’t get a Best Actor nomination for his work as a devout Catholic and FBI agent selling secrets to the Russian government. Ryan Phillippe is the young understudy assigned to build the case against him. In lesser hands these would be the makings of a shoddy thriller, but for director Billy Ray (Shattered Glass), it’s a close, quiet character study of a man who at first appears to be a complete contradiction. It is also one of the most devastating movies of the year.

Eastern Promises – If Anton Chigurh (see below) is the year’s scariest character, Viggo Mortensen’s Nikolai isn’t far behind. He’s just a low-level flunky in the Russian mafia in London, but everything about him – how he moves, how he talks, how he dresses, even how he stands – suggests he’s a barely-concealed weapon, a walking open threat with a mirthless smile. Between Mortensen and director David Cronenberg, what could have been a fairly standard crime story becomes something much more elemental. Fear, real genuine mortal fear, underscores almost every scene. It’s breathless.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters – I cannot remember the last time I had more fun at the movies. King of Kong is about the reigning champion of the video game Donkey Kong, an arrogant and unpleasant tyrant challenged by a likable prodigy, and all the weird politicking – both bizarre and hilariously familiar – that takes place when something just like that happens. The key to this documentary’s magic is that it takes its people seriously; if there’s any hanging to be done, the people do it to themselves. You’d never think extensive strategies on the best ways to defeat Donkey Kong would be this damn engrossing, but there you are.

Lars and the Real Girl – So just how do you film a movie about a man and his super-realistic love doll and make it funny, touching, and sweet? Very carefully. And care is exactly what director Craig Gillespie and writer Nancy Oliver – not to mention Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, and others – bring to Lars and the Real Girl, which veers from odd to funny to heartbreaking and back again, all with a casual grace most filmmakers never achieve. It’s never quite what you expect, and that’s to its credit.

No Country for Old Men – Full disclosure: I am not much of a Coen Brothers fan, though I do prefer their dramas to their comedies. In No Country for Old Men they curb the excesses they’re known for and let the setting do the talking. Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh has already become one of the great bogeymen of cinema, but really he’s almost an extension of the brutal landscape of west Texas. No Country is more mythical than literal, and contains such stark tension, fear, and awe that it will stay with you for days.

Once – When is a musical not a musical? When it’s about musicians who speak most clearly through their songs. In Once, they are simply Boy and Girl, street musicians who meet by chance and bond over the course of about a week. There’s a love story here, submerged under soulful duets and one sleepless weekend in a recording studio, but Once plays this as close to its vest as the characters do. That decision is a wise one. Your typical musical is 95% flash to 5% soul, but Once is the rare film that inverts that formula.

Persepolis – Based on Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel of the same name, Persepolis is about a girl growing up in Iran during the overthrow of the Shah and her eventual exile to Europe. Like the graphic novel, Persepolis starts off so light and episodic it threatens to remain merely that. But almost without you knowing it, this animated movie has its hooks in you. It’s easy to relate to and laugh at the growing pop culture awareness of young Marjane through the 70’s and 80’s – as in her embrace of the Bee Gee’s, only to declare later that they suck after she discovers heavy metal. The building emotional connection to that animated little hellion sneaks up on you, until the slightest emotional inflection can have you on the verge of tears or uproarious laughter. Persepolis is a touching story of one girl and her family’s survival in a time of increasing religious fascism, and a snapshot of Iran and Europe throughout the 70’s and 80’s.

Zodiac – A commercial flop, perhaps because audiences aren’t quite used to a serial killer movie that clocks in at nearly 3 hours and has no easy resolution. But this is a film about paranoid connections, dead ends, and the frustration of trying to solve a puzzle when you’re clearly missing several important pieces… and the pieces you do have don’t seem to fit together. This is David Fincher’s most mature movie, relying on his directorial virtuosity rather than the visual gimmickry his earlier works are known for.

Honorable mention: The Bourne Ultimatum, For the Bible Tells Me So, Gone Baby Gone, The Hoax, Knocked Up, The Namesake, The Orphanage, Ratatouille