As you can tell from my list, if not my reviews, I'm a sucker for movies with strong real-world stories that grab me by the throat, drag me in and force me along for the ride.

	Clint Eastwood's "Letters From Iwo Jima" showed the famous battle from the Japanese point of view. Click photo for larger image. Related stories Best Movies of 2006: Barb Vancheri Best movies of 2006: Barry Paris

1. "UNITED 93" -- In 2006, no film did the above with the ferocity of "United 93," which plays like a fly on the wall of the wrong airliner at the wrong time. Writer-director Paul Greengrass wisely chose unfamiliar faces to play real people and composite characters in the real-time story of what may have happened on that plane on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. (See review)

2. "FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS" and "LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA" -- It's easy to pair director Clint Eastwood's back-to-back releases about the Battle of Iwo Jima as seen from the perspectives of American and Japanese soldiers who fought and died there. Writer Paul Haggis contributed to both stories. Nearly as poignant as "Saving Private Ryan," the films pre-sent an overview that neither lionizes nor demonizes the "enemy," highlights the emotional and physical trauma of war and shows that bravery, loyalty, integrity, terror and selfishness are shared equally among all men. (See review)

3. "THANK YOU FOR SMOKING" -- Jason Reitman's sarcastic take on political correctness is as funny as it is thought-provoking. Katie Holmes is sort of a drag, but star Aaron Eckhart and the rest of the cast are superb in a great little story about the power of spin. (See review)

4. "AKEELAH AND THE BEE" -- Precisely the kind of movie that usually doesn't get made, writer-director Doug Atchison's "Akeelah and the Bee" challenges the racism of low expectations when almost everyone in one girl's world thinks she'll embarrass herself in a series of academic contests. Thanks, Laurence Fishburne and Pittsburgher Mark Cuban, for doing the right thing by investing in an important movie. (See review)

5. "CASINO ROYALE" -- To breathe life into the oldest film franchise, trustees of the James Bond empire could have just hired a new face, as they've done before. Instead, they turned back the pages to Ian Fleming's original darker, less debonair Bond and released a thrilling prequel that takes much of the squeakiness out of the character, even as it documents the origins of some of Bond's trademark toys and catchphrases. Daniel Craig is a tougher, edgier Bond built, perhaps, for a tougher, edgier time. (See review)

6. "THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND" -- Technically released in 2006 (although it doesn't open in Pittsburgh until next month), Kevin Macdonald's "The Last King of Scotland" casts Forest Whitaker as African strongman Idi Amin in a story that places a purely fictional character in the center of historical events. It's a movie that works best when it's followed by coffee and conversation.

7. "THE DEPARTED" -- Martin Scorsese's English-language adaptation of a Taiwanese police drama teams Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin and Jack Nicholson in a tense drama set in the gray area between mobsters, cops, informants and police internal affairs investigators. The duplicity is excruciating -- don't blink or you'll miss something. (See review)

8. "LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN" -- Another don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it mob story. Everything you need to know about Paul McGuigan's film is revealed in the first few minutes, if you can wrap your brain around it. I couldn't and was both frustrated and delighted to see all the pieces dovetail in the last few minutes. One tight and tragic scene, pitting Morgan Freeman against Ben Kingsley, is perhaps the most riveting of 2006. (See review)

9. "THE MATADOR" -- I doubt writer-director Richard Shepard's unlikely buddy film is making many year-end lists. But I'm still fascinated by "The Matador's" moral ambiguity in which a bad guy (Pierce Brosnan) justifies a selfless act, a good guy (Greg Kinnear) flirts with the bad side, and somehow it all makes some kind of sense. Kinnear plays that squeaky guy he often plays, but Brosnan is uncharacteristically dark and sleazy. (See review)

10. "LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE" -- And you thought "The Simpsons" were a dysfunctional bunch? Kinnear (who appeared in four films in 2006) plays an annoying wannabe author of a self-improvement book who crams his warring extended family into a VW microbus for an uncomfortable, tragic and hilarious cross-country trip to enter his daughter into a beauty pageant. (See review)