Part of the attraction of sites like Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes is how easily they illustrate the uniform tastes of mainstream American critics, especially in year-end tabulations. Top Ten-worthy films and albums are forced upon discerning Americans, their repetitive laurels eventually becoming more important than the work itself (how else will we remember “Crash”?). Nowadays the Oscar consensus is set well before the nominations, and the obvious self-congratulatory nature of these entertainment award shows is becoming clearer with each passing year.

Still, we trudge out our favorites and defend them against people whose taste is naturally different than our own. Here are ten movies and albums that captured my imagination this year.

“The Departed”, dir. Martin Scorsese
Sunset Rubdown — Shut Up I Am Dreaming
Maybe we won’t cannibalize our classics. Sitting in the presence of “The Departed,” I kept thinking of its role in VH1 throwbacks 20 years from now as a hallmark of mid-Aughts filmmaking—it’s been that long since we had a meaningful, popular adult movie. A work of majestic violence, complicated characters, lots of cell phones, and colossal self-importance; it was almost enough to negate Jack Nicholson’s completely insane performance. And forget Travis Bickle’s apartment: Matt Damon’s approach to his sterile skyrise at the film’s end is the most moving thirty seconds of Scorsese’s career.

Weirdly violent, too, was Spencer Krug’s Sunset Rubdown. “Snakes Got A Leg II” (not a plane) and the title track were movies unto themselves, mixing metaphors and intimate lyrics, allowing us to project our own drama onto Krug’s—maybe this is exo-emo? His unique arrangements are familiar to us now, with Wolf Parade, Swan Lake, and the Rub, but his lyrics will always disarm us: “Us Ones In Between,” in particular, evokes some strange malaise and humor as he crackles about eating babies against a twinkling xylophone. No other song got me quite like this one.

“Running Scared,” dir. Wayne Kramer
The Knife — Silent Shout
Holy SHIT did you see this movie? Paul Walker had a pretty good year, considering his turns in the hit doggie movie “Eight Below” and “Flags of Our Fathers,” but this one’s in a class of its own—a smart post-“Pulp Fiction” movie with the usual assortment of quirky crackpot characters taken to disarming extremes. An abusive Russian meth dealer obsessed with John Wayne? A mobster with a minor league hockey team to do his bidding? “Running Scared” would just be an overachiever were it not for a particular sequence tucked into the film’s second half that recalibrates the audiences understanding of surprise and horror—and elevates this to something like a great movie.

That’s all it takes sometimes, and the same for albums—_Silent Shout_ is pretty incredible all-around, but as the title track skitters and spirals with mad arpeggios, it builds to a non-climax that is in line with the song’s point: it exists in a real space, pointing to other songs perhaps hidden within it, establishing its own dimensions and its own rules.

No other movie and no other song created the same sense of boundless promise—and, interestingly, the same sense of imminent terror—as these two suckers.

“A Prairie Home Companion,” dir. Robert Altman
Josh Ritter — The Animal Years
Neil Young’s Living With War and “Prairie Wind” may be a better match for Altman, his cinematic equal—the word “maverick” has been worn out in their respective biographies. Altman’s mindblowing 1970s and Young’s equally remarkable decade would cement any other artists’ reputation, but they remain vital in old age. Altman’s ethic was thoroughly Midwestern, and “A Prairie Home Companion” was a joyous celebration of pointless kindness and backstage singalongs. Credit Garrison Keilor for the tone, but Altman let his camera buoyantly float around dressing rooms and the St. Paul Theatre. Altman didn’t make movies—he shot pictures, and among his late-career triumphs, the calming “Prairie Home” is the finest.

I spurn Young because The Animal Years was the only young singer-songwriter album I’ve heard since Heartbreaker that wasn’t even halfway wretched. Ritter’s sometimes maudlin arrangements are spiked by producer Brian Deck and Ritter’s bizarre narratives. “Prairie Home” opens with a sole radio tower, already nostalgic for a technology we’ve yet to lose; The Animal Years yearns for silent film and sparse imagery. These were both enjoyable, well-sequenced minor masterpieces.

“United 93,” dir. Paul Greengrass
Jesu — Silver EP
As I left the theater, I saw a man leaning against the wall weeping uncontrollably, his head buried into his forearm and his posture indicating total surrender. Maybe not Saturday night escapism, but it’s amazing that a major studio will still pony up for something like this—the most absorbing and moving American film in decades, even if it was directed by an Irishman. Non-actors, documentary-style coverage, pitch-perfect objectivity and an unconventional, honest-to-goodness portrayal of heroism conveyed in the chaotic crescendo made every other movie this year seem trivial.

The devastating title track from Jesu’s spring EP is a cathartic monster saturated with crashing instruments, dry vocals, and a lovely, shimmering static that slowly beats away the noise. It’s exhausting, exhilarating, and strangely hopeful—not unlike United 93.

“The Death of Mr. Lazarescu,” dir. Cristi Puiu
Jason Molina — Let Me Go Let Me Go Let Me Go
Don’t know if I could sit through either of these again, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t fine the first time around. Lazarescu is a long joke that follows the ill title character and his caretaker, a middle-aged paramedic, around Romanian hospitals as he regresses to a vegetative state and she tries to get him proper care. Pretty big bummer of a movie, but Puiu dots the story with strange details (a doctor obsessed with his cell phone, a blossoming romance between two other unhelpful doctors) and handheld long takes that give the film a realist edge without totally suffocating the viewer.

Molina’s Let Me Go x3 is also paralyzing in its sadness. A departure from the country-rock of Magnolia Electric Co. (whose Fading Trails sampler was also a 2006 highlight) and more of his minor-key Songs: Ohia work, Molina intimately plays an acoustic guitar with the occasional drum machine. These slight arrangements and Molina’s ethereal living room vocals are unsettling apparitions that linger over the album like Lazarescu’s impending death.

“Mutual Appreciation,” dir. Andrew Bujalski
Bishop Allen — monthly EP’s
Hate to say it, but this is Cassavetes gone Malkmus. “Mutual Appreciation’s” main character is an indie rocker played by real-life indie rocker Justin Rice of Bishop Allen, who plays his real band’s songs (like “Quarter to Three”). In another scene he is asked how to describe his music. He simply says it’s catchy pop music—that age-old defense of the indie vanguard coyly aligning itself with mainstream music but holding onto some abstract, elitist “authenticity.”

Bujalski’s made two of these directionless Young Person films (this and 2003’s “Funny Ha Ha,” which confusingly co-starred the other major member of B.A., Christian Rudder), and as grating as they sound, they’re both inoffensive and touching. Shot in black and white with Bujalski and friends in supporting roles, the film admirably captures the overwhelming minutiae of livin’ small as Rice decides whether or not to hook up with his friend’s girlfriend in Brooklyn. Simple goals for a simple film and a simple band, it would seem: Bishop Allen released an EP a month for all of 2006, providing plenty of their charming, unpretentious pop. I’m partial to November but April isn’t bad either. And hey, I was turned onto the band through the movie—here’s to indie synergy!

“Rocky Balboa,” dir. Sylvester Stallone
Mew — And the Glass-Handed Kites
So synonymous with his greatest creation, pop culture has written off Sylvester as a bull-headed has-been, the fallen idol of that Planet Hollywood empire. See this, then: Rocky Balboa recalls the boring, lower-class idleness that the original Rocky captured so well—Rocky just runs around Philly making small-talk. Stallone wrings ennui out of Balboa’s tacky restaurant, a complicated opponent in Mason “The Line” Dixon, and even purposefully disappoints with the climactic bout, covering it like a PPV fight with annoying announcers and only occasionally going ringside for some of that bloody action. Compared to this fall’s other moralizing rags-to-riches treacle “The Pursuit of Happyness,” Rocky’s single-mindedness and simplicity is as difficult to resent as his compromised glory.

The Rocky films all maintain a strange balance of sincerity and strangeness that has a sonic match in Denmark’s Mew, who produce irresistible, soaring tracks (even instrumental—could Rocky train to “Circuitry of the Wolf?”) with fantastical subjects and characters. We will always need boundless music like Mew’s to soundtrack imaginary triumphs.

“The Aura,” dir. Fabián Bielensky
Midlake — The Trials of Van Occupanther
It could be the imagery with these two. Maybe not. “The Aura” was made by the late Fabian Bielensky, a longtime assistant director in Argentina who made his debut with 2000’s “Nine Queens,” an enjoyable caper that does little to indicate the unwavering command the director wields over his last film. An unnamed, daydreaming taxidermist ventures into the Argentine woods with a friend, then stumbles into a leading role in a casino heist. It’s heavily plotted but with ample atmosphere and a quiet tension established by stoic star Ricardo Darín. The shadow of Bielensky’s premature death looms over “The Aura,” particularly in its spooky closing shot.

The cover of Midlake’s second album recalls the sticks of “The Aura,” but it’s more the feel of the record—an unassailable creepiness and a strange, morose beauty that also happens to sound like Fleetwood Mac. The band’s analog synths, harmonizing vocals, and eureka! flourishes—check the rise in volume at 1:27 of “Head Home“—made this sublime, if a little unsettling.

“Shortbus,” dir. John Cameron Mitchell
Maritime — We, the Vehicles
2006 was a weak year for America’s foreign films. “Apocalypto” and “Letters from Iwo Jima” were in another language but, ironically, came from two stalwart Hollywood conservatives; the success of bland overseas action films means the great foreign films now take years to reach America (both “Lazarescu” and “The Aura” were 2005 productions).

A common trope of the foreign film export is sex, usually presented liberally but either as the familiarity of nudity or as rosy, cheeky eroticism. “Shortbus” is predicated on a simple notion—if sex is important in relationships, why don’t we ever talk about it?—that the movie, rather remarkably, nails. Very funny and surprisingly affecting, Mitchell gets his orgies out of the way early, choreographing the rest with Animal Collective tracks and Yo La Tengo’s score. We, the Vehicles might be better suited for “Shortbus’” level-headed look at relationships—warm, airy, and calm; it’s a complete and colorful album with enough annoying wordplay and catchy leads that it ends up fascinating as background music.

“Inland Empire,” dir. David Lynch
Subtle — For Hero: For Fool
Fine, fine; I haven’t seen “Inland Empire,” but I saw the trailer, and Laura Dern’s screaming and a living room full of rabbit-people were plenty. These latecomers are a contentious subject for cinephiles seeking year-end closure, something music fans usually don’t have to fuss with.

Though Lynch is an outspoken Rammstein fan, he might dig Subtle’s stunner of an album, which fell into my lap only last week. It’s a complicated concept album, I’m told, though I’m not at the concept part yet—I’m still digesting the opening “Tale of Apes” suite, which is musically and lyrically as original as Lynch’s nostalgic, disturbing tableaus.