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| The Ten Best Films of 2006 |
by Peter Sobczynski
There are hundreds and hundreds of lists floating around that claim to include the ten best films of 2006. This is the only completely correct one. Enjoy.
On the surface, 2006 may not have seemed like an especially robust year on the film scene. The theaters were frequently clogged with dumb comedies (“John Tucker Must Die”), dumber action films (“The Sentinel”), mindless sequels (“X-Men: The Last Stand”), repulsive horror films (“Turistas”) and pointless remakes (too many to cite here) Behind the scenes, the studios, aided by journalists trying to curry favor with the studios (such as uber-hack Peter Bart, the current editor-in-chief of “Variety” and the former producer of the Rob Lowe hockey epic “Youngblood”), seemed to spend all their time trying to convince everyone that film critics are no longer relevant in the world today (except for when they suddenly need quotes and critics awards for their various Oscar campaigns) by refusing to screen an increasing number of their dreckier efforts in advance in order to squeeze out one good box-office weekend before the expected bad word-of-mouth kicked in. (Ironically, a handful of those films–“Ultraviolet,” “Silent Hill,” “The Wicker Man” and the unjustly mistreated “Idiocracy”–turned out to be better than expected and might have done better if critics had been able to get an untainted look at them.)
As dispiriting as these developments may have been, they were tempered somewhat by the fact that during virtually every week of the year, there was almost always at least one or two films out there worth checking out. In fact, when I was going over this year’s titles to compose my list of the best films, I realized that the collection of ten runners-up that I put together was actually stronger than some of the official 10 Best collections that I have compiled in past years and it still left a few more-than-worthy titles untapped. Of course, just because I saw them doesn’t necessarily mean that you did–of the ten films listed below, only one was a certified box-office hit, several were hardly distributed outside of the major cities and a couple were outright flops–but the fact that these distinct and personal works managed to somehow make it through the same system that coughed up the likes of “Date Movie,” “My Super Ex-Girlfriend” and “Deck the Halls” should be enough to cheer even the most jaded film fan.
With no further ado, these were the ten films that meant the most to me in 2006. Here’s hoping that 2007 brings us a crop as fascinating as these titles.
1. CHILDREN OF MEN (directed by Alfonso Cuaron): I could have easily justified placing this film on my 10 Best list for no other reason than to honor the virtuoso technical craft evident in every single scene–if cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s astonishing efforts aren’t rewarded with an Oscar, that should serve as the final nail in the coffin for that particular institution–but what puts in at the very top is that Cuaron has presented us with a film that dazzles the heart and mind as well as the eyes. The premise of the film, a look at a not-too-distant dystopian future in which women are no longer able to reproduce, may sound bleak but there are so many wonderful elements on display–a screenplay that is alternately thought-provoking, frightening, thrilling and blackly funny, a stand-out performance from Clive Owen as a burned-out cynic charged with getting the first pregnant woman in 18 years to safe haven and three or four of the most audacious extended set-pieces ever attempted–that you’ll find yourself leaving the theater exhilarated and once again believing in the possibilities of cinema.
2. THE DEPARTED (directed by Martin Scorsese): I am hesitant to refer to this thrilling remake of the acclaimed HK police drama “Infernal Affairs” as a “comeback” for Scorsese–most contemporary American filmmakers will go through their entire careers without making a single film as impressive as such allegedly middling efforts as “The Age of Innocence,” “Casino,” “Bringing Out the Dead” and “The Aviator.” And yet, it cannot be denied that with this film, Scorsese grabs viewers from the opening frames and keeps a hold on them in way that he hasn’t since “Goodfellas” thanks to his impeccable directorial style (that manages to find new ways of showing us even the most familiar elements), a twisty and endlessly quotable screenplay and standout performances from a top-shelf cast (Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon have never been better, Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin steal virtually every scene they appear in and Jack Nicholson gets to let it all hang out in a role that finds a clever use for his over-the-top demeanor.)
3. LITTLE CHILDREN (directed by Todd Field): With all due respect to Helen Mirren’s exemplary work as Queen Elizabeth II in “The Queen,” the single best bit of acting that I saw in a film this year was Kate Winslet’s lacerating and moving turn as a self-loathing housewife who drifts into an unsatisfying affair with like-minded neighbor Patrick Wilson in Todd Field’s powerful and darkly funny adaptation of Tom Perrota’s acclaimed novel. Throw in the comeback-of-the-year turn from one-time teen idol Jackie Earle Haley as a former sex offender trying to start his life over again and you have a funny, tragic and compelling look at contemporary suburban ennui that is the film that “American Beauty” so desperately wished that it could have been.
4. THE BLACK DAHLIA (directed by Brian De Palma): Okay, so let me get this straight–when Robert Rodriguez makes a lurid, crafty and visually stunning film noir homage that allows him to indulge his fascinations for twisty plots, over-the-top violence, dark humor and deliberately stylized performances, everyone worships him as a god. However, when the perennially undervalued De Palma does more or less the same thing, only with the easy grace of a master filmmaker firing on all cylinders, he gets thrashed around by critics and audiences who have apparently been too dulled by years of by-the-numbers moviemaking to recognize the achievements of a supreme cinematic stylist when it appears right in front of their eyes. (De Palma wasn’t the only auteur to suffer for the crime of being a unique filmmaker in 2006–Michael Mann and Terry Gilliam both turned in deeply personal works with “Miami Vice” and “Tideland” and both paid the price for their sins.) Now that it has hit DVD, I can only hope that adventurous viewers will ignore the negative hype and check it out for themselves, if only for the heartbreaking turn from Mia Kirshner as the would-be starlet whose death brings her the fame she craved in life and the wonderfully operatic performances from Hillary Swank (as a femme fatale’s version of a femme fatale) and Fiona Shaw (whose deliciously campy work must be seen to be believed).
5. MARIE ANTOINETTE (directed by Sofia Coppola): In her follow-up to her award-winning hit “Lost in Translation,” the gifted Coppola eschewed the trappings of conventional biopics to give us a giddily exciting, surprisingly moving and visually breathtaking mood piece that showed us the court of Versailles entirely through the eyes of a young Hungarian princess (Kirsten Dunst) who was plucked from her home and installed as the future queen and later executed as a symbol of royal decadence without ever really doing anything to deserve either one. Another film misunderstood by many critics, who seemed hell-bent on slamming Coppola for doing something different instead of giving them a standard-issue historical epic, I suspect that this is one whose reputation will grow in stature over the years as audiences begin to discover its treasures–including a wonderfully eclectic cast and the amazing deployment of The Cure’s “Plainsong”–for themselves.
6. A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION (directed by Robert Altman): Of course, in light of the recent passing of Robert Altman, it is impossible to look at his final work–a lovely free-form adaptation of Garrison Keillor’s beloved radio program that served as a deceptively light meditation on the cheerful inevitability of death–as just another movie or even as just another Altman movie. That said, it would have been on this list even if Altman were still alive and kicking today because his deft juggling of some great music, a uniformly strong cast (that included the priceless double acts of Meryl Streep & Lily Tomlin and Woody Harrelson & John C. Reilly, the hilariously goofy Kevin Kline, a better-than-expected Lindsay Lohan and the perennially unflappable Keillor as himself) and a deceptively simple storyline that grows in power and resonance when you revisit it a second time (especially that final shot) resulted in a hugely entertaining film that was his most satisfying work since the one-two punch of “The Player” and “Short Cuts”
7. THE FOUNTAIN (directed by Darren Aronofsky): Easily the most wildly ambitious film of the year, Aronofsky’s long-planned sci-fi epic turned out to be a time-tripping exploration of love, loss and the quest for eternal life that was more in tune with Kubrick’s “2001" (especially during the deliriously free-form final half-hour) than anything currently playing at the multiplex. An instant cult classic, this is the kind of visionary work that will last longer than most contemporary films because of Aronofsky’s ability to simultaneously touch the heart (aided considerably by the millennia-spanning performances from Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz) and blow the mind.
8. VOLVER (directed by Pedro Almodovar): This was such a wonderful film–alternately blackly funny and deeply touching and always fascinating–that I can still hardly believe that it was made by Almodovar, a filmmaker whose previous films have always left me coldly indifferent. Once again, he has conjured up a wildly melodramatic plot–a woman (Carmen Maura) returns to her home town years after her death in order to lend assistance to her daughters, Sole (Lola Duenas) the proprietress of an illegal beauty shop and Raimunda (Penelope Cruz), a headstrong type who will do anything to protect her own child (Yohana Cobo) from harm–but he approaches the emotional drama in a disarmingly direct manner that eschews the self-consciousness that he has often displayed in the past and handles the comedic elements with a lighter touch than usual as well. Aiding him immeasurably is Cruz, a generally underrated actress who has been blessed with the meatiest role she has had in a while and tears into it with a fierce and passionate performance that is easily the finest work of her entire career.
9. DON’T COME KNOCKING (directed by Wim Wenders): Twenty years after combining their talents on the extraordinary “Paris, Texas,” Wenders and screenwriter Sam Shepard reunite for this dazzling, funny and touching work about an aging Lothario actor (Shepard) who flees the set of his latest film and hits the road in search of an old flame (Jessica Lange, in one of her best performances in a long time) and the now-grown son (Gabriel Mann) that he never knew he had. Once one of the leading lights on the international film scene, Wenders has inexplicably fallen out of favor in recent years and as a result, it is likely that most of you have never even heard of this movie, let alone had the chance to see it. You owe it to yourself to check it out, though, for it is the best and most satisfying work that he has done in a long time and serves as a perfect bookend to his earlier collaboration with Shepard.
10. NEIL YOUNG–HEART OF GOLD (directed by Jonathan Demme): Neil Young has been making music for nearly 40 years now but he has never allowed himself or his work to sound as naked and vulnerable as he did in this hauntingly beautiful concert film that showed him on stage at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium premiering the powerfully elegiac songs from his “Prairie Wind” album, a collection of tunes that he wrote and recorded after dealing with a life-threatening brain aneurysm. One of the few filmmakers who really knows how to fuse the worlds of rock music and the cinema together, Demme has given us a full film experience–not just an extended music video–that deserves to be ranked alongside his own “Stop Making Sense” as one of the best concert films ever made.
My ten runners-up are Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth,” Richard Linklater’s “A Scanner Darkly,” Michael Mann’s “Miami Vice,” Michael Winterbottom’s “Tristram Shandy: A Cock And Bull Story,” Christopher Nolan’s “The Prestige,” Albert Brooks’ “Looking for Comedy in the Muslin World,” Rian Johnson’s “Brick,” James McTeigue’s “V For Vendetta,” Asia Argento’s “The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things” and Kurt Wimmer’s “Ultraviolet.”
Throughout the year, I also enjoyed (listed roughly in the order in which I saw them) “Why We Fight,” “Bubble,” Nightwatch,” “The Pink Panther,” “Ask the Dust,” “16 Blocks,” “Tamara,” “Dave Chappelle’s Block Party,” “Thank You for Smoking,” “Running Scared,” “Find Me Guilty,” “Somersault,” “Duck Season,” “She’s the Man,” “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days,” “Take the Lead,” “The Inside Man,” “The Syrian Bride,” “The Notorious Bettie Page,” “Go For Zucker,” “Akeelah and the Bee,” “The Promise,” “Art School Confidential,” “Sketches of Frank Gehry,” “United 93,” “Silent Hill,” “The Death of Mr Lazarescu,” “Poseidon,” “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Army of Shadows,” “Clean,” “District B-13,” “Wordplay,” “Wassup Rockers,” “Clerks II,” “Superman Returns,” “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,” “Monster House,” “Three Times,” “Waist Deep,” “Quinceanera,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dean Man’s Chest,” “Edmond,” “The Ant Bully,” “Lemming,” “Brothers of the Head,” “Accepted,” “Beerfest,” “Invincible,” “Conversations With Other Women,” “Time To Leave,” “This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” “The Gridiron Gang,” “Idlewild,” “The Wicker Man,” “Idiocracy,” “The Ground Truth,” “Fearless,” “Jesus Camp,” “American Hardcore,” “Jackass 2,” “Shortbus,” “The Queen,” “Shut Up and Sing,” “Come Early Morning,” “Man Push Cart,” “Tideland,” “Deliver Us From Evil,” “Borat,” “49 Up,” “Lunacy,” “Flushed Away,” “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer,” “Happy Feet,” “Candy,” “For Your Consideration,” “Casino Royale,” “10 Items Or Less,” “The Good German,” “Charlotte’s Web,” “Apocalypto,” “The Lives of Others,” “The Good Shepherd,” “The Aura,” “Rocky Balboa,” “Arthur and the Invisibles” and “Inland Empire.”
And while they didn’t play theatrically, I would like to give honorable mentions to Spike Lee’s “When the Levees Broke” (a epic-length HBO documentary about the twin disasters that befell New Orleans in the forms of Hurricane Katrina and the embarrassingly ill-planned response from the local and federal governments that was so powerful that it single-handedly made up for that “She Hate Me” nonsense), Ridley Scott’s full-length version of “Kingdom of Heaven” (which reinstated nearly an hour of deleted footage and transformed a rambling mess into a grand example of epic-scale filmmaking) and the video for Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie” (for reasons that presumably need no explanation from me).
link directly to this feature at http://hollywoodbitchslap.com/feature.php?feature=2041
originally posted: 01/01/07 15:27:20
last updated: 01/01/07 21:46:39
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