Hillary Rodham Clinton may be making history on the campaign trail, but 2007 has not been the year of the woman at the box office. Rats, well, at least an animated one named Remy, had better roles than some actresses.

Consider Jennifer Connelly and Mira Sorvino, two women with Oscars on their shelves. They, along with Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Ruffalo, starred in the moving "Reservation Road," but its dark subject matter (the hit-and-run death of a boy) was such an audience turnoff that the movie never made it to Pittsburgh.

Word-of-mouth hits, such as "Ratatouille," "Hairspray," "Enchanted" and "Charlie Wilson's War," often had one thing in common: They were fun.

Still, Pittsburgh had no shortage of movies, with Post-Gazette staffers reviewing roughly 320 in 2007 and the paper publishing another three dozen, typically of films not shown here in advance. In the end, there were more than enough choices for a top 10 list.

1 "ATONEMENT" -- It may be the wallflower of the Oscars (although it's too early to say), but I still loved it. Based on the Ian McEwan novel of the same name, it tells the story of Brits caught in the aftermath of a single, devastating lie. Like a small earthquake, the accusation shifts the ground under everyone's feet and knocks lives and love off kilter.

The movie reunites director Joe Wright with his "Pride & Prejudice" star Keira Knightley, and co-star James McAvoy vaults to a new level here, particularly in a five-minute scene that shows the horror of war through the expressions on his face.

2 "AWAY FROM HER" -- Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent play a long-married Canadian couple who face the ultimate test of their bond: the wife's quietly advancing Alzheimer's and her decision to enter an assisted living facility, where she transfers her love to another patient. Christie seems a surefire Academy Award nominee, but he who waits -- Pinsent -- is deserving of praise, as is director-writer Sarah Polley.

3 "THERE WILL BE BLOOD" -- Daniel Day Lewis doesn't work much. Doesn't have to. His rigorous preparation always pays off, and he reinvents himself here as a silver miner turned self-styled oil tycoon who finds gushers but rarely happiness and contentment. Loosely based on the Upton Sinclair 1927 novel, "Oil," this Paul Thomas Anderson movie should open in Pittsburgh in January.

4 "RATATOUILLE" -- The best animated movies function like double-decker buses. Passengers on both levels are headed to the same destination, but they have slightly different views of the scenery. That's true of parents and children watching this charmingly animated story about a rat with a sophisticated palate who wants to be a chef. Sounds absurd, proves delicious.

5 "MICHAEL CLAYTON" -- "The Truth Can Be Adjusted" is layered in red block letters over George Clooney's face on the movie poster. No need to adjust your opinion of Clooney, whose character rises out of the ethical muck to reclaim his life as a lawyer, not the "fixer" he's become. He plays well with others, especially Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton, but shines when alone, too.

6 "NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN" -- Never has the memory of a scuffed floor seemed so haunting. The heels on a lawman's boots scratched the marks while he was being strangled. And that's just the beginning of a cascade of drug-infused violence in this adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel set in 1980 Texas and starring Tommy Lee Jones as a weary sheriff, Josh Brolin as the unlucky man who finds $2 million in cash and Javier Bardem as the crazy, coin-flipping killer who wants it back.

7 "ONCE" -- In a year blessed with excellent movies about musicians living and dead -- the Bob Dylan experiment called "I'm Not There," the import "Control" starring an Ian Curtis lookalike, and "Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten" -- this one is like the busker played by Glen Hansard. It's so good that you have to stop and take notice, recommend the movie (now available on DVD) to friends and buy the soundtrack, too.

8 "LARS AND THE REAL GIRL" -- Yes, this movie is about a lifelike silicone doll named Bianca who becomes the girlfriend of a lonely Midwesterner, but it's rated PG-13 and clean enough to run on network TV with barely a bleep or edit. Ryan Gosling is Lars, Paul Schneider is his puzzled brother, Emily Mortimer his sympathetic sister-in-law and Patricia Clarkson the family practitioner who provides wise counsel.

9 "JUNO" -- True, Juno doesn't speak like a typical 16-year-old, but it's hip to be smart. Although Juno isn't smart enough to figure out a way to avoid getting pregnant by her pal Bleeker. Ellen Page and Michael Cera are the high school couple unprepared for parenthood, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman are the seemingly ideal parents, and J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney are Juno's dad and stepmother, who come through in the clutch.

10 "SICKO" -- The title may be flippant but the crisis is very real, and Michael Moore charts the exhaustion, sadness, bewilderment, anger, confusion and resignation that our health-care system brings. These are real people with real problems, and Moore's 123-minute documentary is worth more than all the Iowa caucus sound bites in the world.

"RESCUE DAWN" -- Director Werner Herzog revisits Dieter Dengler, an American pilot shot down over Laos in 1966, and he couldn't have asked for a better leading man than Christian Bale.

"AMERICAN GANGSTER" -- The true story of New York City drug kingpin Frank Lucas and the honest cop who hunted him is brought to vivid, entertaining life by Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.

"INTO THE WILD" -- The book marinated for a decade with Sean Penn, so he knew exactly what to do and how to do it, with help from actor Emile Hirsch, musician Eddie Vedder and others.

"THIS IS ENGLAND" -- Writer-director Shaun Meadows imbues this 1983 tale about a 12-year-old boy seduced by skinheads with raw, explosive power.

"GOD GREW TIRED OF US" -- Even without the Pittsburgh connection, this documentary about the "Lost Boys" of Sudan would have been heart-wrenching and a testament to the resiliency of the human spirit.