Marty broke my heart, Clint sided with Spielberg on the disappointing Sands of Private Ryan and a grateful American public once again leaped head first into a steaming pile of Pirate shit.

The worst of times just kept getting worse at the movies this year.

Summer seemed to last forever. The only relief multiplexes offered came from the air conditioner, not the platter. It should have been the summer’s most enjoyable blockbuster, but V for Vendetta opened (and flopped) in mid-March. Even though the enormously satisfying French action flick District B13 miraculously found its way to the multiplexes, the challenge of subtitles kept the illiterate masses at bay, awaiting instead the pre-digested, idiot-friendly MI3.

There was even an attempt to revamp 007. No more gadgets or thudding throwaway lines. Instead, the series was plainly Bourne again.

If quality is your thing, there were plenty of outstanding films that washed up from foreign shores. The Asian Film Festival was wise (and brave) enough to host the one-night San Diego “premiere” of Hou-Hsiao hsien’s essential Three Times.

At age 73, and with almost 70 features behind him, Claude Chabrol’s The Bridesmaid added more credence to the argument that the director is the most powerful force to emerge from the French New Wave this side of Godard.

Satire fared best. Not since the late ’60s/early ’70s – when Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and a pre-MPAA John Waters convulsed audiences – has there been such on-target irreverence and side-splitting laughter in movie theaters. Albert Brooks returned to form in the Muslim World. Laugh-for-laugh, the year’s funniest films, Borat and CSA: Confederate States of America, represent laconic anti-racist satire at its zenith.

A salon called Shortbus provided a liberating and explicit glimpse into the kind of sexual hang-ups that give us all a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Thanks also to Jason Reitman for Thank You for Smoking, as well as the painstakingly insensitive gang from Comedy Central’s Strangers with Candy.

Clip what follows and post it somewhere near your computer to reference for future Netflix rentals.

An experience that single handedly substantiates my emulsion compulsion. Three times? I’ve seen it 10! At least the opening segment for it contains one brain-bending continuity gap that continues to haunt me. The actress working the billiards parlor in the opening shot is unmistakably Shu Qi, yet the very next scene shows her arriving at work for what appears to be her first day on the job. So how is it possible that a film with such a glaring blunder tops my 10-best list? It’s like a pimple on the Mona Lisa. Everything else in the film is faultless, and I am delighted to overlook, even embrace, a defect. The “A Time for Love” sequence concludes with the simple physical act of two people holding hands. I swear, this timeworn image has never been depicted in a more passionate and delicate manner. If you love cinema, see to it that you discover Three Times.

The first movie I saw in 2006 turned out to be the best American film of the year. The premise was pure genius: In order to bring about peace through understanding, Albert Brooks is asked by the government to travel to Pakistan and compile a report on what makes the locals laugh. You didn’t see it. Nobody saw it. The title terrified distributors and exhibitors alike. Landmark balked and it was dumped in an upstairs Gaslamp for a couple of weeks. First and foremost, film comedy must be judged on verbal and formal execution, not some prescribed number of yuks. Aside from being one of the funniest men alive, Albert Brooks is also a master visual storyteller. As with all great comics, he is constantly aware of his body placement in the frame. His timing is impeccable; no one cuts a comedy quite like Albert. When it comes to film as a means of comedic expression, Brooks leaves Borat in the dust.

A beautiful bridesmaid’s darker shadings don’t come to light until after she runs off the groom. The “French Hitchcock” is still firing on all suspenseful cylinders. Claude Chabrol comes through with another masterful journey into the mind of a cold-blooded psychopath. The good news is, with two films in post-production, the ageless Mr. Chabrol shows no signs of slackening his pace.

Leave it to journeyman filmmaker Michael Winterbottom to tackle the unfilmable and make it work. The New York Times dubbed Laurence Stern’s 18th century avant garde masterwork one of the 10 greatest novels of all time. Winterbottom skillfully structures his adaptation by blending passages from the book with behind-the-scenes glimpses into the private lives of a fumbling crew at work on a contemporary film version.

A rousing, thoroughly enjoyable true-life adventure tale about a devoted band of loyal volunteers bent on saving wild Tibetan antelope from being slaughtered for their pelts. I warned you back in April that this one demanded the big-screen treatment. And, given the subject matter, a $30 million opening weekend was never to be. It lasted a couple weeks before quietly moving to home video.

Brilliance on a budget (would you believe $10,000?), CSA posits what would have happened if the South won the Civil War and slavery remained legal. This meticulously researched and painstakingly detailed mockumentary contains some of the edgiest satire since “SCTV.” Considering that the film is structured as a History Channel special, complete with commercials, it doesn’t lose much voltage on the small screen.

The feel-good picture of 2006! Honestly, I hated Hedwig and entered Mitchell’s follow-up feature kicking and screaming. The guy drinking his own fresh-squeezed testicle sap almost forced me out the door, but I stayed and was so happy that I did. A cast of uninhibited non-professionals play the walking wounded who gather weekly at a sexual healing salon in New York. Fresh, spontaneous, brutally honest, consistently hilarious and surprisingly innocent, this was easily the year’s most unexpected delight.

A cold, almost Lynchian examination of the murder of a young crack whore. Dark and deeply unsettling, the events play out in semi-achronological order and are told from the unrelated points of view of five women somehow connected to the crime. It’s taken me days to shake this film. Forget Bobby, here is the finest ensemble cast assembled this year. How’s this for a sentence I never though I’d write? Brittany Murphy gives a career-making performance as the title stiff.

Another dark puzzle that’s been tagged “a critic’s film.” An unhappily married couple begins receiving surveillance videos that monitor their everyday existence. Could the tapes have been made by an Algerian who our protagonist tortured in his youth? Taut, suspenseful and ultimately satisfying, even though we are never really quite sure who the videographers are.

A small-town teenager is forced to come to terms with the accidental death of his twin brother and subsequent separation of his parents, both of which he feels responsible for. This ferociously honest, cliché-free examination of alienated American youth outdoes Larry Clark on his own turf. The mean-spirited exploitation of an oversized family brings much-needed comic relief.

Letters from Iwo Jima, Borat, Notes on a Scandal, Why We Fight, The Proposition, Babel, V for Vendetta, District B13, The Promise, Don’t Come Knocking, La Moustache, Sir! No Sir!, Tideland, L’Enfant, Factotum, Perfume, Who Killed the Electric Car?, The Cave of the Yellow Dog, Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, Deliver Us from Evil, Fur, Stranger than Fiction, The Illusionist, Haven, Thank You for Smoking and Strangers With Candy.

Actress

Judi Dench in Notes on a Scandal, Helen Mirren in The Queen, Amy Sedaris in Strangers with Candy, Evan Rachel Wood in Down in the Valley and Nicole Kidman in Fur.

Actor

Matt Dillon in Factotum, Steve Coogan in Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, Ken Takakura in Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland and Peter Muller in On a Clear Day.

Supporting actress

Brittany Murphy in The Dead Girl, Juliette Lewis in Aurora Borealis, Lili Taylor in Factotum, Adriana Barraza in Babel and Lily Tomlin in A Prairie Home Companion.

Supporting actor

Bob Hoskins in Hollywoodland, Len Cariou in Boynton Beach Club, Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine, Michael Pena in World Trade Center and Ray Winstone in The Proposition.

Best performance by an oil painting

Bob Hope in Who Killed the Electric Car?

1. Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Everything that’s wrong with cinema today. It’s manipulative, overblown, joyless and mechanical; like being trapped in a two-hour theme park ride that has you vomiting two minutes in. If you’re that desperate for a dose of Depp, rent Ed Wood.

2. Tibet: A Buddhist Trilogy: Torture. A training film for monks, this private rental was erroneously screened for critics. Hey, fellas, I’m all for incense and spirituality but how about a little cinematic enlightenment?

3. Date Movie: One of this year’s few satiric misfires. An unfunny and inept attempt to lampoon a genre (teen comedies) that by its very nature is riddled with self-parody.

4. The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Greene: Unfabulous and interminable. It just goes to show that people of all sexual predilections are entitled to have bad films made about them.

5. Just My Luck: Teen mess Lindsay Lohan stars in a Petrie-fied role-reversal comedy. What the fuck was I thinking when I signed on for this? For Lohan laughs, nothing this year rivals her rambling condolence letter to Robert Altman’s widow.

6. Firewall: It wouldn’t be a 10 Worst list without a contribution from Harrison “Knotty Pine” Ford, and this high-tech reworking of The Desperate Hours is a particularly putrid qualifier. The “actor” has two modes of expression: pained and more pained. He’ll be pushing 70 if they ever get around to filming another Raiders sequel (Indiana Jones and the Lost Bladder?). If Rocky whatever-number-it-is does well, I’m banking on a three picture Alien vs. Predator-style series pitting Rocky against Indy.

7. Beerfest: Beer drinking as sport. What else is new? This premise could only have worked had the filmmakers been sportsaphobics. While Artie Lange’s Beer League didn’t seem to screen anywhere outside of Jersey, this flat keg of suds earned a wide release. The stein-toting fräuleins with the pretzel pasties in Mel Brooks’ Springtime for Hitler number summed up everything Beerfest had to offer and did it in 10 seconds.

8. Nacho Libre: I don’t know what horrified me more: this bungling mess or the fact that I actually got a few laughs out of Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny.

9. Marie Antoinette: Sofia Coppola’s tale of a beautiful young woman born into royalty who spends her spoiled teen years listening to rock music, buying shoes, gorging on sweets and indulging in all sorts of pretentious behavior. Not many people remember, but Marie Antoinette made her acting debut in The Godfather Part III.

10. Trust the Man: Writer/director Bart Freundlich crafted this bogus romantic comedy for his wife, Julianne Moore. I call it grounds for divorce.

The second annual Dana Award, named after dependable (to show up drunk) leading man Dana Andrews, is bestowed on a film that’s so bad it’s educational. This year’s dishonor goes to the gaseous comedy The Benchwarmers. Deuce Bigalow, Joe Dirt and Napoleon Dynamite play a trio of rejects who form a three-man baseball team that takes on the Little League. High concept, low brow. Mormon boychild Jon Heder’s refusal to appear in anything R rated may account in part for the film’s oppressively juvenile tone. The rest of the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of director – and I use the term loosely – Dennis Dugan. I thought he hit rock bottom when he played the lead in Norman… is that You?, a sort of Guess Who’s Gay, Interracial and Coming to Dinner offspring, opposite Redd Foxx and Pearl Bailey. Dugan puts a fresh spin on incompetence. I swear that peripheral characters flinch when the camera dollies in. If you must see it, turn on HBO, wait three hours and it will turn up.