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The other day, Molly Knight and I were chatting on Twitter when we both realized how much each other loved the films of 2006. That happened to be my first fall working full-time at Variety, and it was a spectacular one for the movies, led by "Little Children," "United 93" and "The Last King of Scotland."

All three of those films would rank ahead of my favorite film of 2011, using the system I designed long ago. It's a system that is decidedly personal, because film is decidedly personal. I don't think there's any such thing as a "best" film, but only a "favorite" film, because what we bring to a film and what we desire from it is so idiosyncratic. Here's how I explained the system back then:

Ambition (1-7): How much the film is taking on, in subject matter and in filming challenges? For example, is it offering both a romantic story and social commentary at once? How difficult was the film to make technically? This allows one to distinguish between two equally well-made films when one is Casablanca and the other is Animal House. Ambition isn't the be-all and end-all, but it allows some extra credit to be given where it is due.

Quality (1-10): This is essentially how most films are graded - simply, how good are they. As objective as I can be, how well do I think the film succeeds in achieving its ambitions?

Emotional resonance (1-13): How much did the film affect me personally. This category gets the most weight because it's the most important - I'd rather see a flawed film that touches me than a technically perfect but emotionally stultifying picture.

Just to give you a quick idea of how this works, here are the scores of my favorite films of all time.

The Misfits: Ambition 5, Quality 9.5, Resonance 13, Total 27.5
Casablanca: Ambition 6, Quality 10, Resonance 11.5, Total 27.5

Both are great movies in my mind, with Casablanca being objectively better and The Misfits being the most powerful to me emotionally. Now, there probably aren't 10 people in the world who would consider these films equals, but that's the whole point, isn't it? This system helps us rank our favorites without trying to say that they're definitively the best.

And, for comparison, down near the bottom of the scale ...

The Bad News Bears Go To Japan: Ambition 1.5, Quality 2, Resonance 2, Total 5.5.

During my single days, I rated nearly 600 films using this system before it fell by the wayside. But I decided to hurriedly resurrect it to knock out the films I saw that were released in 2006. You'll see that list below.

Two last quick points: I wouldn't get caught up in single-point distinctions - those don't amount to a significant difference between films. In fact, each time I look at the list, I feel like tinkering with some of the grades.

The other thing is that in the past, an average film totaled about 16 points, which means that I did pretty well in what I saw this year. I honestly didn't feel that I saw a truly awful movie from 2006.

Now while I didn't see a movie in 2011 that I would rank ahead of the best of 2006, I did see plenty of good ones in a year that matched up well with 2010 – along with one truly awful, despicable one. So here, the day before the Oscar nominations are revealed, is my list for the past year ...

	Film	A	Q	ER	Total	Comment
1	Beginners	4	9.5	10.5	24	A wonderful grown-up multi-person love-and-loss story, perfect in tone.
2t	The Artist	4.5	9	10	23.5	I know some don't get the fascination with it, but I found it simply winning.
2t	Moneyball	4	8.5	11	23.5	Some unnecessary missteps on the baseball side, but a really affecting story of a man at war with himself.
2t	50/50	4	9	10.5	23.5	Sincere and meaningful, with some genuinely brilliant touches
5	Martha Marcy May Marlene	4	9	10	23	They should have gotten her treatment sooner, but otherwise, really strong, intense movie.
6t	Hugo	4	9	9	22	An involving, well-executed ride. Got kids interested in origins of film, which was very cool.
6t	A Separation	4	9	9	22	"Carnage" for grownups. Serious themes and believable stakes.
8t	The Descendants	4	8	9.5	21.5	Too much voiceover and lag early on, but hits home hard in second half.
8t	The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo	4	9	8.5	21.5	Pretty riveting, and enjoyed Mara and Craig greatly. Didn't like the Villain Explains It All ending much.
10t	Take Shelter	4	8	9	21	A sincere depiction of the confusion that comes with mental illness, with tremendous work by Michael Shannon
10t	Win Win	3.5	8.5	9	21	Good entertainment, fun and unique story.
10t	Warrior	4	8	9	21	Except for its detour into conventional ESPN sports movie midway, very well-done.
10t	The Guard	3.5	8.5	9	21	Sharp and entertaining, a good companion with "In Bruges."
14t	Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy	3.5	9	8	20.5	Well-executed (though as challenging as anything to follow) and Oldman is amazing.
14t	A Better Life	4	7.5	9	20.5	Earnestness is mostly well-earned. Bechir is great. The gang stuff feels a little staged.
14t	The Help	3.5	8	9	20.5	Solid storytelling that mostly feels familiar and not groundbreaking. Liked the performances.
17t	A Dolphin's Tale	4	7	9	20	After a somewhat rough start, I got swept up in the film despite (okay, maybe because of) its earnestness.
17t	Midnight in Paris	4	8	8	20	Rachel McAdams' disaster character harms an otherwise smart ride.
17t	Rio	3.5	8.5	8	20	Fun. This and "Gnomeo" are underrated as far as this year's animated movies.
20t	Rango	3.5	8	8	19.5	Cool in its way but the story didn't completely enthrall me.
20t	Tyrannosaur	3	8.5	8	19.5	Searingly intense with great lead performances.
22t	Higher Ground	4	7.5	7.5	19	Slow-starting but kicks into something kind of unique.
22t	Crazy, Stupid, Love	3	7.5	8.5	19	Fun but not special. Feel-good movie.
22t	Gnomeo and Juliet	3	8	8	19	See "Rio."
22t	Jane Eyre	3	8	8	19	Few complaints of this adaptation.
22t	The Tree of Life	4	7	8	19	The ambition, care and commitment are evident, but I couldn't make all the connections the movie wants me to.
22t	Young Adult	4	7.5	7.5	19	On the edge of too unsympathetic, but overall it succeeded, and performances were great.
28	Hanna	3	8	7.5	18.5	A good exciting ride. Ronan is awesome. Cate Blachett's Texas accent, not so much.
29	A Dangerous Method	4	7	7	18	Good elements, but didn't come together as an impactful movie.
30t	Carnage	3	7.5	7	17.5	Only partially successful adaptation of the play, with many of its strengths but more of its artificiality.
30t	Shame	3	6.5	8	17.5	Didn't dislike it, but we end up basically where we began.
32t	The Muppets	3	6	8	17	You know, the plot wasn't much, but I enjoyed it.
32t	The Adventures of Tintin	3	7	7	17	A good adventure built around a bland, bland central character.
32t	Cedar Rapids	3	7	7	17	Lightly fun, mostly unassuming comedy.
35t	Cowboys & Aliens	3	6	7	16	Kind of a mess, but I didn't mind all that much.
35t	Kung Fu Panda 2	3	6	7	16	Movie didn't hold me.
35t	We Need To Talk About Kevin	3	6	7	16	Well-meaning, well-acted, but with serious flaws and lack of insight
35t	The Iron Lady	3	7	6	16	More strange than entertaining.
39t	J. Edgar	3.5	6	6	15.5	Not bad but not reveletory, kind of dull. Not once did I feel the actors disappeared into their roles.
39t	Margaret	3	5.5	7	15.5	Promising start derailed by contrived shrillness. Needed much more nuance.
41t	Albert Nobbs	4	5	6	15	Well-intentioned but with inexplicable plot and character choices.
41t	Bridesmaids	3	6	6	15	Melissa McCarthy as good as advertised, but otherwise almost as overrated as I thought "The Hangover" was.
41t	My Week With Marilyn	3	6	6	15	Other than watching Michelle Williams, who is convincing, not much there. Lead male is two-dimensional.
44	The Ides of March	3	5.5	5	13.5	Boy falls in love with politics and an hour later is jilted. That's all there is?
45	Cars 2	3	5	5	13	Flat and uninvolving - a big drop from the original.
46	Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close	3.5	3	3	9.5	As phony and manipulative as anything you'll ever see, to the point of being offensive. Garbage plotting.

Often when you read TV or film criticism, you see the word "manipulative." I've spent a lot of time thinking about what this word means in the two weeks since I saw a screening of "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," which officially opens Christmas Day, because if any film is manipulative, this one is.

What I concluded is that a manipulative film is one crafted to make you feel a certain way in a given moment, with little regard to the film's own internal logic and sometimes any logic at all. A plotline, a character or a scene doesn't have to make sense, because if it generates a strong enough feeling, the audience won't stop and ask questions.

That works except for the audience members who find the whole thing preposterous, as I did with "Extremely Loud." (And I don't appear to be alone.) The way the characters behave in this movie, the way the story unfolds, is so obviously phony that I was gritting my teeth through almost the entire enterprise.

For example — trying to avoid spoilers here — there's a major plot element in the movie that defies belief. And then, in an effort to explain that element, the film introduces an even more insane element. All of this happens so that you can undergo this theoretically cathartic experience, but the minute you question it, the entire film falls apart.

Another word you'll see in TV and film criticism is "forgivable," when a viewer is willing to let some things go because the ride is worth it. Some will feel differently, but for me, what happened in "Extremely Close" was unforgivable. Extremely and incredibly so.

I would say it was calculated, except I don't doubt the filmmakers' sincerity. I don't doubt that it all made sense to director Stephen Daldry and screenwriter Eric Roth, who adapted the novel of the same title. But I think they were suckered by their own emotions. It felt right, so they didn't really examine whether it made sense. They meant well. Not that I don't doubt they want their film to succeed financially, but I'm willing to believe they saw their path to financial success depended chiefly on making the best possible film.

I find myself asking whether the same could be said about Frank McCourt. Did he have the best intentions but severe blind spots, as he now would have you believe? Or was he extremely proud but incredibly lame.

I'm not willing to say that McCourt didn't care at all whether the Dodgers won or lost. His ultimate goal was personal wealth, but that doesn't make him unique — far from it. However, McCourt's priorities did conflict in a harmful, cynical way. He didn't operate as if the Dodgers' success was a path to his own success. The Dodgers were something to exploit. And he's always tried to tell us otherwise.

How phony and manipulative can you get?

If you looked at their past eight seasons as a movie, the McCourt Dodgers are actually worlds better than "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." But as the man behind the camera, the man who has put the franchise at such a disadvantage, Frank McCourt deserves the figurative tomatoes that are thrown his way.

There's a level of sincere humility to the film version of "Moneyball" that might shock those expecting to see it cloaked in arrogance.

Next to the question about whether the material in Michael Lewis' book was viable for a movie in the first place, the most common shot I've seen taken at the idea of the film, which I saw a screening of Monday, is "what's the point?" Because Billy Beane's Oakland A's have never reached the World Series, much less won it, why would they worthy of the big screen?

Putting aside the fact that this criteria would eliminate about a thousand works of art – "Rocky," "The Bad News Bears," "Major League," the entire history of "Peanuts" – note this well: The Billy Beane of "Moneyball" would share the same question. No one is more acutely aware of the A's shortcomings than he.

But "Moneyball" does have a story to tell, a worthwhile and engrossing one. It is not a sermon. "Moneyball" is about faith in a calculated belief, and all the torment that comes when that faith is tested, and the unexpected kind of reward you can get for taking that test, no matter how it comes out. It's a movie about a pursuit, not a coronation. It's anything but a coronation.

It's my belief that, while no movie is universally beloved, this approach opens the door for "Moneyball" to be accepted and enjoyed by those who took the book as a mockery of the game they love, by those who were entertained and embrace what was articulated in Lewis' book, and by those who have no vested interest in the debate, or even the sport. It's such a human movie – with Brad Pitt's Beane a nuanced, multidimensional character, one with many faces – that it's not easily dismissed.

You won't like everything Beane does in this movie – but that's cool, because the character doesn't even like himself completely. Yet you will clearly understand where he is coming from, and I find it hard to believe that most filmgoers won't get on board with his journey. He cares so passionately, and the way he places his faith in a new system doesn't, contrary to what some might think, mean he has no appreciation for what personalities and romance mean in the game.

Sharing credit with Steven Zallian ("Schindler's List"), screenwriter Aaron Sorkin ("The West Wing," "The Social Network") famously worked on the long-percolating script, but the film doesn't have what would be considered the classic Sorkin touches – monologues with overflowing words and hyper-articulate speech. Characters in "Moneyball" – most notably Beane himself, who is in nearly every scene – tend to get to the point quickly, often bluntly. Except for some moments, particularly early in the film, when there are talking points disguised as dialogue ("It's an unfair game," a paraphrase of the subtitle of Lewis' book, is spoken), the dialogue is naturalistic.

And yet, as the movie goes on, increasingly electric. There are numerous scenes with very sharp, pointed exchanges – make no mistake, there is a fierce tug o' war going on in Oakland and in the game – and in particular, the depiction of the July 31 trading deadline maneuverings is really cracking good fun.

The storytelling is formulaic in the strictest sense of what the sports film formula is, but the scenes themselves don't really feel that way. This is buoyed by the fact that the film, despite whatever liberties it takes here and there, is grounded in what did happen. But there isn't a dead or cloying scene in the film – there's a purpose to each and every one. "Moneyball" isn't a short movie, coming in at 133 minutes, but its pacing, under the direction of Bennett Miller ("Capote") is excellent. (I'd add that Mychael Danna's music, at times minimalist, at times evoking the loveliness of television's "Friday Night Lights" and at times appropriately grand, is a real boon to the film.)

The film also isn't a comedy, but there's plenty of humor, most of it almost catching you almost by surprise. That being said, the thing that might amuse baseball fans the most is the idea of how much life-and-death importance is placed on names like Jeremy Giambi and Ricardo Rincon. (And pity poor Mike Magnante.)

There are brief sidelights into Beane's personal life – which some might interpret as mere lip service to entice female viewers. I would argue instead that in the best sense, they're economical (given the film's existing length, almost necessarily so). They inform the lead character of the movie, leaving for you to infer what you don't see, while playing a wonderfully unexpected role in the film's climax.

While Pitt anchors the film, Jonah Hill's performance as Peter Brand – the character that takes the place of former A's (and Dodger) executive Paul DePodesta, is the film's second-most pleasant surprise.

Hill's casting was the red flare for fans of DePodesta and/or the book, a vexing warning that the advanced analysis underscored in the book would be played for laughs the same way as, say, Hill's quest for booze and sex in "Superbad." Instead, Hill plays Brand in reserved, endearing fashion. He's the twigs and branches for Beane's fire.

I do think that fans in the know have to let go of the idea that Brand is DePodesta – despite whatever similarities there are, the differences are too obvious to ignore. But whether you think of Brand as Brand or as DePodesta, I think the character works much better than you'd expect, and in ways different than you'd expect. While Philip Seymour Hoffman, as Oakland manager Art Howe, offers an even starker example of what I would call dynamic restraint, it's Hill who carries the most secondary weight to Pitt.

Where are the movie's flaws? There are certainly moments where the conversation feels forced, with thinly disguised talking points. But probably for me, the baseball scenes, which were praised for their authenticity by panelists at the Variety Sports Entertainment Summit in July, don't measure up to that standard. Miller mixes real-life footage with the newly filmed scenes, and it's not so much that the mix doesn't work, but that it really highlights how different the re-creations look. In fact, there's a stylistic approach to some of the baseball scenes that all but removes any pretense of reality. It's probably the one part of the movie that doesn't seem to have been executed with authority.

Elsewhere, the script shortcuts some explanations of Beane's rationale. In general, although the "Moneyball" philosophy is about broader ideas about value in the marketplace – and this is definitely alluded to – some viewers might be left with the impression that it's only about on-base percentage. In particular, I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Beane at one point comes down hard against bunting and the stolen base, and Old School fans might think this is where he's gone mad. The fights that Beane has with Howe over the Oakland starting lineup struck me as more black-and-white than they probably were in real life. There are other small details that rang a bit false, and some fussing with the real-life timeline, but I would venture to call these quibbles.

In the end, I think "Moneyball" is an important film for baseball fans. Whether you bought into the book or ignored it, "Moneyball" was (next to angst over performance-enhancing drugs) the central conflict of baseball in the past decade. The film puts forth this debate in a richly entertaining way, making it clear why it was such a big deal without falsely overstating its legacy.

I honestly don't expect I'll see many better movies than "Moneyball" in 2011, and I think it will get serious consideration for an Oscar nomination – though, appropriate to the team it depicts, it will probably fall short of winning. But the thing is, I've been comparing it to "The Social Network" for a long time now, but I'm not sure "Moneyball" is not a better film. I think most will view "Social Network" as having told a more important, more timely story. But the character at the heart of "Moneyball" and his personal story are more compelling, possibly more universal. I told you that Hill was the second-most pleasant surprise in the film – the most pleasant surprise is how much "Moneyball" rang true to me even after you strip all the baseball away.

With the Oscar nominations coming out Tuesday morning, I thought I'd detour into my favorite films of the past year ...

(Read full post)

With today a total washout, on the field as well as in the trainer's room, let's gather everyone who isn't a New York viewer of Cablevision for an 82nd Annual Academy Awards chat and pick-the-winners pool. The ceremony begins at 5:30 p.m.

Nominees are here. We used do an Oscar pool at my old Screen Jam blog at Baseball Toaster – I don't know if there's interest here, but would love to see your picks in the comments. Here are the guidelines – please total your own points when you're done:

4 points: Picture

3 points: Lead and supporting actor and actress, director, adapted and original screenplay, animated feature, documentary feature, foreign language film

2 points: Art direction, cinematography, costume design, film editing, makeup, original score, original song, sound editing, sound (sound mixing), visual effects

1 point: Documentary short, animated short film and live-action short film

Tiebreaker: Time of day that the telecast ends in Los Angeles.

If you've been following the best picture race, you know that it's considered a tossup between "Avatar" and "The Hurt Locker." Neither would have my personal vote. "Avatar" was entertaining (astounding in all the places you'd expect) but had no emotional impact, while "The Hurt Locker" just struck me as a series of well-produced anecdotes without being deeply revelatory. Guy who defuses bombs in hellish spot and is just a little crazy doesn't break enough new ground for me.

It's been tough for me to decide what my favorite movie of the year was. There were several that I admired greatly and found affecting, including (but not limited to) nominees "Precious," "Up in the Air," "Inglorious Basterds" and "A Serious Man." The marriage montage in "Up" is probably the single best sequence in the movies of 2009. And I continually found myself frustrated that "Sugar" did not get more attention. This film was absolutely one of the finest of the year – in my top five without a doubt. That it was a baseball movie makes it all the more surprising, since it's so easy for a baseball movie to fail. But even with the pedigree of the filmmakers of "Half Nelson," "Sugar" just couldn't get off the ground for awards season.

Of the nominees, I find myself more and more coming back to "An Education," which was deeply moving and engrossing – with a radiant performance from Carey Mulligan, who won't win the lead actress Oscar but would also get my vote among the nominees I saw.

There are two Oscar favorites that I'm completely on board with. One is Jeff Bridges in "Crazy Heart." Outstanding and underrated actor giving just a terrific performance, and I couldn't have been happier about it. The competition in the category is tough, but the Oscar really has to go to him. Secondly, I don't know how Mo'Nique wouldn't get the supporting actress Oscar for her work in "Precious" – I don't think that race is even close.

Christoph Waltz has won all the pre-Oscar supporting actor honors for "Inglorious Basterds," but I'd be fine if Woody Harrelson had the out-of-nowhere upset for "The Messenger." Similarly, I enjoyed "Up," but would be even happier if "Coraline" won for animated film. (I'm still pouting that "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" wasn't nominated.)

I'll cut off my own thoughts there, but if you want more from an ESPNLosAngeles.com writer – and why wouldn't you? – check out Steve Mason's Oscar picks. For following the Oscars online, in addition to chatting here, check out Variety's coverage, along with the live blog at GreenCine led by Dodger Thoughts commenter CraigUnderdog.