Four stars for 2007!

Never before in my 29 years as a film critic for the Daily Herald has this occurred: Every movie on my year-end Top 10 list has earned four stars.

Amazingly, I wound up with 11 four-star movies in 2007, which means this was the year of some real kick-butt filmmaking. Here are 2007's best motion pictures:

1. "Juno" -- No cliches allowed in this fresh, offbeat and highly affectionate story of a pregnant teen (Ellen Page) who decides to put her unborn child up for adoption. Page gives us a spotless window to her character, who camouflages her obvious vulnerability with pluck and sass. She's the next generation of Hollywood greats. Ironically, this is the liveliest-written, bluntly pro-choice movie I've seen. "Your parents are probably wondering where you are," Vanessa says. Juno replies, "Nah, I mean, I'm already pregnant, so what other kind of shenanigans could I get into?" Directed with compassion and a great ear for comic tone by Jason Reitman on his second film.

2. "Michael Clayton" -- A magnificently machined modern morality tale about a desperate attorney (George Clooney) at the end of his professional and personal ropes. Conspiracies, hit men, drugs, cancer, destroyed documents, class-action suits and an ambitious corporate woman figure into Tony Gilroy's pulsating plot of perfect perniciousness.

3. "Atonement" -- An epic World War II romance brimming with betrayal and forgiveness, wrapped up with the year's most impressive tracking shot (in the Dunkirk sequence), Dario Marianelli's brilliantly inventive score and a stunner ending that changes everything. Not that it matters, but the movie also contains the sexiest moment of 2007 when Keira Knightley rises out of a garden fountain with her drenched, flimsy clothing hiding nothing.

4. "No Country for Old Men" -- Yes, the ending is a head-scratcher. No matter, the Coen boys are back in perfect "Blood Simple" form with a crime thriller more sophisticated and textured than any they've done before. (It's based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy.) Using smooth Hitchcockian techniques and their own in-your-face style, Joel and Ethan Coen turn the story of a Texas lawman's search for a sociopathic killer (a really scary Javier Bardem) into the stuff epic nightmares are made of. Yes, Bardem plays the evilest movie villain since Hannibal Lecter in "The Silence of the Lambs."

5. "The Orphanage" -- Not only does J.A. Bayona's ominous, atmospheric ghost movie borrow elements from great horror films ("The Shining," "The Haunting," "Turn of the Screw" and "The Legend of Hell House"), it creates its own artistic black magic as a tale of an adult orphan searching for her missing son. A scarifying and surprisingly touching ghost movie. In Spanish with subtitles.

6. "Away From Her" -- A heartbreaking account of a man (Gordon Pinsent) losing his wife (Julie Christie) to Alzheimer's disease. You thought "The Notebook" was sad? Quadruple the tears and strip away the gooey sentiment. A phenomenal directing debut by indie actress Sarah Polley.

7. "Knocked Up" -- Another brilliantly conceived, affectionately tawdry romantic comedy from Judd "40-Year-Old Virgin" Apatow. A drunken one-night stand leaves a TV employee (Katherine Heigl) pregnant with a goofy doofus (Seth Rogen) as the father. Can they make a relationship work? Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann (Mrs. Apatow) could be a whole movie unto themselves, they're that ingeniously comical.

8. "Ratatouille" -- Brad Bird's funny, funny, funny animated comedy about a bumbling chef who relies on a culinary genius rat to help him conquer the taste buds of Paris. The movie had me at Anton Ego's summary of critics: "In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new." Tears of truth, Anton, tears of truth.

9. "Waitress" -- Joyously rendered comic drama about a pregnant young woman (Keri Russell), trapped in an abusive marriage and a dead-end job, who cowgirls-up the courage to take charge of her life. Andy Griffith's persnickety diner owner is worth the price of admission alone. The promising directorial debut of actress Adrienne Shelly, murdered in 2006 by a construction worker in her New York apartment.

10. "There Will Be Blood" -- "Tour de force" and "chews the scenery" are two cliches that never come close to describing Daniel Day-Lewis' barnstorming performance as a ruthless oil baron in P.T. Anderson's almost biblical account of one man's obsessive, self-destructive path to success. This drama has the patina of a classic epic from the 1950s coupled with a story of capitalistic craziness that only Sinclair Lewis could write.

And the best documentary of 2007 goes to my 11th four-star choice:

"Sicko" -- Michael Moore's documentary assault against the U.S. health-care system has been attacked for being inaccurate, unfeasible and against U.S. corporate values. Forget all that. In pushing for America to take care of its poor and sick, Moore delivers the greatest Sunday-morning sermon ever given on film by a nonclergyman.