Welcome to the second annual MSN Movies' Top 10 films poll. We are continuing our, ahem, long tradition of presenting 10 view points from 10 critics that add up to some sort of hodgepodge representing the best movies of 2008. The method is simple: 10 critics vote for their 10 favorite films. Films are assigned points based on their ranking -- and ta-da: What develops is a list that no one is happy about but sure causes much heated debate -- at least among ourselves and hopefully with you as well.

I have no doubt that this year, you'll have plenty to say. See, it was a weird year at the movies. As in, outside of a few splendid titles, Hollywood stunk up the joint. Why? Remember that writers' strike? Turned out to not be good for anyone, movie-goers included. Instead, to find great movies, you had to look outside of Hollywood offering and span the globe or duck into art-house theaters. And because of this, the voting in this year's poll was all over the place. Forty-four films received votes, but only two films were voted as No. 1 (compare that to last year, when "No Country for Old Men" steamrolled the competition, earning six No. 1 votes). This year's voting was much tighter (forcing us to do more math. We hate math.), and the titles selected are more obscure. How obscure? Four of the top 5 are foreign-language films, whereas the fifth is a small, independently produced film that, nonetheless, will probably loom large come Oscar time. Last year, studios dominated our top 10. This year, they only produced three of our top titles.

So, what I'm trying to say is this: You may not have seen (hell, you may not have heard of) some of the titles on our list ... and some won't open for several weeks. But do yourself a favor and seek them out. Many are calling 2008 a horrible year for movies (especially because 2007 was one of the best year's in recent memory). However, there were many great titles, if you looked in the right places. We hope these essays explain why these films are fantastic and thereby encourage you to discover them.

At the end of the gallery list, we've included links to either send us an e-mail with your own list of top films or sound off on our message boards. Ultimately, we hope this list inspires you to check out these terrific films.

Here's the list...

--posted by Kim