Mario Van Peebles as Melvin in Baadasssss! (photo: Michael O'Connor/Sony Pictures Classics)

Our 94 participants collectively cited a total of 142 films; of those, 43 won a single, defiant Top 10 mention from a maverick voter. Below, some critics defend their orphan picks.

Beyond the Sea is full of holes as a Bobby Darin biopic, but as an exposé of Kevin Spacey's own feelings about performing and as an exploration of performance itself, it's a complete surprise: daring, gutsy, bursting with life. DONNA BOWMAN

Just as Sideways flatters middle-aged critics, Secret Things intimidates them. This fiercely operatic chronicle of two women who use sex to overthrow a demonic hottie's empire not only evokes women breaking—no, smashing—through glass ceilings but disenfranchised masses everywhere contriving to depose tyrannical leaders. Its contemporary relevance is flabbergasting. Though straight male critics seemed to dig the hot lesbian action, their otherwise sheepish responses suggest they're more comfortable fantasizing about women stroking their egos (Virginia Madsen, anyone?) than fathoming why women would want to kick them in the nuts. ED GONZALEZ

Zach Braff's Garden State never finds a consistent tone. Yet its offbeat gags still floor me. Adolescent in the finest sense, the film dives headfirst into the absurdities of adult life and ultimately floats to the surface. J.R. JONES

Underestimated to the degree of pathological mass delusion, M. Night Shyamalan's The Village took the direct-address political tactics of Michael Moore and Jean-Luc Godard and transubstantiated them into something nearly unheard of these days in a Hollywood product: allegory! A more lucid attack on American political subterfuge than even Dogville, The Village begs re-examination; its detractors require re-education. MICHAEL KORESKY

The Quad's projector went berserk on the opening-night screening of Thomas Vinterberg's It's All About Love, resulting in a fun-house effect of anamorphically smudged faces. Had this been any other film I would have bolted in an instant. But the snafu somehow enhanced the movie, adding yet another level of refraction to Vinterberg's fantastical prism world. DAVID NG

Baadasssss! is at once the biography of the father as a young, angry, brilliant filmmaker and the autobiography of the ambitious, competitive son. Mario Van Peebles reimagines the story in personal, political, weirdly psychological terms (the oedipal thing is what it is). Father and son have resolved their tensions. Sweetback, as he was 30 years ago, is still running. CYNTHIA FUCHS

Clint Eastwood gets praise for his humorless inflation of the clichés of '30s movie melodrama. No such luck for Gary Winick's 13 Going on 30, which opens a door right back to the nonchalant spirit of '30s movie comedy. Jennifer Garner gives the sort of performance that made audiences fall in love with Carole Lombard and Margaret Sullavan. Before the conventional ending lets Garner and the movie down, Winick captures the romance of the big city that was always the magic of '30s comedy. And he does it as if it were no big deal, which is exactly the point. CHARLES TAYLOR

I'm too scared to watch the unrated DVD of Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead. Even in its R-rated cut, this ferocious movie meets the challenge of competing with the zombie horror of the nightly news. ROB NELSON

Like Mean Girls, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle marks a familiar but always refreshing socio-comedic process: the revenge of the second banana. This typically involves not only tweaking old stereotypes, but discovering new ones. Witness the cafeteria table full of witheringly hip, designer-clad "cool Asians" in Mean Girls, or the insatiably horny Jewish boys in Harold & Kumar who lust after the same. ED HALTER

The pivot point between American radicalism and TV-forged celeb-frenzy, Patty Hearst's 1974 kidnapping got a thorough breakdown in Robert Stone's Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst. No academic pontificating here—just Hearst's spectacularly bored voice cooing out of those tapes ("Mom, Dad—I'm with a combat unit [sigh]") and a trove of rediscovered footage capturing the befuddlement of Nixon's keystone kops. Note to current heiresses: Consider the merits of getting kidnapped. It's hot. JOSHUA ROTHKOPF