Best Films of '07

Nothing like knocked-up chicks, a real-life princess, a drag queen and a foodie rat to get someone through 2007. Those zestful personas were the meat and potatoes of a pretty tasty box-office year. Even though some dumb disappointments scored big bucks ("I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry"), namely the indies - like rom-com "Juno" and modern-musical "Once" - scored with the critics. Like yours truly.

5. Knocked Up
Something is big in this love-child comedy from perverted director Judd Apatow ("40 Year Old Virgin"). And it isn't just Katherine Heigl's belly. It's those king-sized laughs, earned from zingers like: "It's doggie style. It's just the style. We don't have to go outside or anything." With class-A players (newcomer Seth Rogen! SNL's "Penelope" Kristen Wiig! Hottie Paul Rudd!), Apatow's morally-ambivalent film finds an optimal balance of raunch and chicken-soup moments.

4. Once
Told through some low-fi indie tunes, this small-scale mellifluous gem is an atypical-musical masterpiece. Writer-director John Carney's simple tale centers on two folks, a street musician (real-life singer-songwriter Glen Hansard) and a woman swooned by his music who urges him to record his tunes. There's nothing that particularly screams hit: Two people, some instruments, and a mess of alluring tunes. But with its realistic reflections on music and relationships, this nostalgic Irish-indie film brilliantly scores the beat between two souls.

3. Enchanted
Once upon a time, Walt Disney thought up something so good, so magical and so charming. Its name: "Enchanted," a mostly live-action charmer about a blissfully-ignorant princess who's forced into the happily-ever-after-less New York City. With a CG-created chipmunk and a brain-dead prince (the yummy James Marsden), giddy Giselle (a super-duper dazzling Amy Adams) tries to ward off a wicked witch to return to her Happy-Go-Lucky Land. Adams glows in this live action-animated hybrid, a cleverly-scripted romp that sizzles with wit, romance and hella-pleasing Disney parodies.

2. Atonement
Simply breathtaking in every sense of the word - luscious cinematography, first-rate performances and a dashing musical score - "Atonement" is a masterful, epic love story. The decade-spanning screen adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel begins in 1935 and gradually, and gracefully, builds to a bittersweet finale that hits like a natural disaster - both hard and without much warning - resulting from a young girl's selfish lie. A serious weeper, the seven-time Golden Globe nominee, much like "Titanic," isn't easily forgettable.

1. Hairspray
Nothing can top this bubbly dance-off piled high with hardy-har-har gags, fab bouffants and a dress-donning John Travolta. As more-femme Edna Turnblad, Travolta shakes his badonkadonk in '60s Baltimore, where chubby daughter Tracy (the smashing Nikki Blonsky) scores a stint on a local shimmy show and becomes a bona fide household name. With dazzling musical numbers, an all-star cast and an accept-everyone motif, this rambunctious feel-good flick isn't one bit sticky. It just shines.

To see selections 6-10, visit www.pridesource.com.

What were your favorite flicks of '07? Did "Hairspray" make you wanna shimmy and shake? Was "Atonement" the best epic love story since "Titanic"? Let me know ....