Best Films of 2006
January 3, 2007
And so we come to the end of another movie year, one that, while hardly the best year we’ve had in recent memory, one that nonetheless proved to be better than what the lackluster summer season originally predicted. This fall, when the studios released their favorite prestige pictures for Oscar consideration, made up for the poor summer outing with solid films like Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s maddeningly depressing but thematically inventive “Babel”, Mel Gibson’s exhilarating and violent jungle epic “Apocalypto”, Stephen Frears’ sturdy royal drama “The Queen”, and Daniel Craig as the best James Bond since Sean Connery (with some of the best poker scenes of all time) in “Casino Royale”. Films like these, good enough for mention in any end of the year wrap-up, but not quite good enough to make a best of the year Top Ten list, helped 2006 get over a surprisingly slow start and equally as uneven summer which saw expensive films like “Superman Returns” and “Mission: Impossible 3” flounder at the box office, while populist trash like “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” plundered the wallets of families everywhere for an ungodly amount of money. That one of the worst films of the year was ultimately the box office king is kind of depressing, especially considering how quality films like “Stranger Than Fiction” and “Flags of Our Fathers” failed to drum up even minor interest from mainstream moviegoers, despite critical praise and big names, but when you look at other success stories of the year, like the big take for the great Sundance hit “Little Miss Sunshine”, or the career best take for Martin Scorsese with his Oscar worthy Boston mob drama “The Departed”, than you begin to appreciate the fact that sometimes good films do get to outshine the countless horror films and bad romantic comedies for your viewing dollar.
Of course what makes money and what doesn’t will always be a frustration for film buffs who actually care about that kind of stuff, but for others who merit films based on quality and not on what the public decides to spend its time on, the year did have a handful of films that deserve mention as some of the year’s best. Some of the movies that I had much admiration for but fell just short of the list below includes the early year satire “Thank Your For Smoking”, which was one of the best comedies of the year; Steven Soderbergh’s little digital experimental film “Bubble”, which flopped upon its tri-release on film, DVD, and TV; Michael Winterbottom’s hilarious filmmaking spoof “Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story”, which beats out Christopher Guest’s uneven “For Your Consideration” as the year’s sharpest movie industry satire; and the little seen German thriller “Lemming” from director Dominik Moll, one of Europe’s best young directors. As for mainstream fare this year, you could do no wrong with “V For Vendetta”; Spike Lee’s “Inside Man”; Oliver Stone’s somewhat tame “World Trade Center”; Christopher Nolan’s tricky magicians act “The Prestige”; and Mark Wahlberg’s Rocky-esque football drama “Invincible”, which was easily the year’s best football related sports weepie, and there seemed to be a lot of them this year. Before proceeding with the list of the Top Ten films of the year, it must be noted that potential list worthy films like “Little Children”, “Pan’s Labyrinth”, “Children of Men”, “Volver”, “Curse of the Golden Flower”, “The Last King of Scotland”, and Clint Eastwood’s universally praised “Letters From Iwo Jima” have yet been made available for me to see, so the list may feel incomplete, but I feel these ten movies make a great list by any standards, and prove that 2006 did indeed have some gems in the offering.
10. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu: Two and a half hours in the final night of a sick old man traveling from one Bucharest hospital to the next, unable to get the medical attention he needs to save his life. Romanian director Cristi Puiu’s lengthy humanist masterpiece is anything but easy to sit through, as 62-year-old Dante Lazarescu (Ion Fiscuteanu) and his frustrated nurse Mioara (Luminita Gheorghiu) get bogged down in red tape at every stop, encountering unsympathetic doctors and overcrowded ER rooms in a desperate search to cure the man’s multiple ailments. What it ultimately amounts to, as Lazarescu finally reaches the end of the road, prepped for the brain surgery he needed four hours ago, is that death, like the mundane nothingness of everyday life in single room apartment buildings and on empty neon-lit streets, is hardly glamorous – filled with road blocks, duplicate consent forms, and cynical health care officials who have seen it all, and care not for your singular predicament. Look for this film on DVD if you can find it, it’s not the most exciting film you’ll see, but it’ll stick with you for a long, long time.
9. Sympathy For Lady Vengeance: The final entry in S. Korean master Park Chan-wook’s revenge trilogy, following “Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance” (’02), and the blockbuster “Old Boy” (’03), this violent and at times heartbreaking film starring Lee Yeong-ae as a just released prisoner out for revenge on the partner (Choi Min-sik) who wrongfully set her up years back, is the kind of visually inventive pop violent thriller that most film buffs will tell you the Koreans do best. It’s true, and Chan-wook, along with Kim Ki Duk, is the country’s leading director in making these sprawling character studies that feature multiple narrative structures (including much use of flashbacks) and characters that can be at once off-putting and entirely sympathetic to the audience. Choi’s Mr. Baek, the villain of the piece, is a monster, and he gets what he deserves in the end, but Chan-wook is hardly glorifying revenge murder, he makes it as grisly and unglamorous as it should be, and for all those people who watch torture films like “Saw III” and “Hostel”, films that have no soul, should rent any one of the films in this brilliant trilogy to see what the true meaning of screen violence really is, and believe me, it’s not what you think.
8. Dreamgirls: Perhaps the most anticipated film of the year, “Dreamgirls” isn’t the equal of “Chicago” movie musical fans were waiting for, but it’s a ripper in its own right, with a stunning array of soul and funk songs, an a few knockout performances that are rightfully garnering Oscar talk. Writer/director Bill Condon’s adaptation of the 1981 stage musical, about a girl group that oddly resembles The Supremes, in a Detroit music scene that oddly resembles Berry Gordy’s Mo-Town of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, is heavy on the gloss and has no shortage of high powered musical moments (though unlike the original, much of the dialogue is spoken, not sung), but the characters, from Eddie Murphy’s James Brownian singer James “Thunder” Early, and Jamie Foxx’s Gordy-esque Curtis Taylor Jr., to Beyonce Knowles’ Diana Ross surrogate Deena Jones, and newcomer Jennifer Hudson’s Effie White, who steals the show with powerful renditions of “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” and “Faith in Myself”, are all well defined and never get lost in the glamour of the songs and staging. Murphy has never been better, and Hudson, a reject from “American Idol” no less, is the breakout star of the year, and they both deserve Oscars for their performances in a film that shows you the ugly side of backstage music business, and the pretty side of some damn good song writing.
7. Monster House: 2006 was a surprisingly good year for animated films, with stuff like “Over the Hedge” and “Happy Feet” somehow escaping the dreaded Talking Animal Syndrome, and Pixar’s “Cars” continuing that famed studio’s run of excellent family geared comedy-adventure stories, but my favorite animated feature of the year was this all human, all haunted house CGI extravaganza from director Kil Kenan and exec producers Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg. Filled with stunning visuals, especially the house, when terrorizing local pre-adolescent children on Halloween, and agreeable characters, realized mostly in motion capture performance animation, “Monster House” was released in the dead of summer to strong reviews and mild box office, but as time passes I think, especially around Halloween, when it should have been released, it could rightfully become an annual children’s classic.
6. Akeelah and the Bee: One of those films from the first half of the year that totally got passed over, this incredibly sweet underdog story, about an inner city girl who puts her spelling gifts to work trying to get to the national spelling bee in Washington D.C., is the best family film of the year, and should be required viewing in grade and middle schools for its honest and heartfelt approach to education and learning persistence. Kiki Palmer gives the year’s best kid performance as 11 year-old Akeelah Anderson, a girl from S. Central L.A. who reluctantly gets involved in the school’s spelling program but comes to love the challenge when a tutor, played by the always reliable Lawrence Fishburne, instills in her a passion for memorization and word usage that most 11 year-olds would cringe at. I could easily compare this film to 2002’s documentary “Spellbound” for its look at the national spelling bee, but ‘Akeelah’ stands alone for its sympathetic understanding of children of violence torn homes, the difficulties of being different (e.g., smart) in a tough inner city school, and the touching relationship the girl has with her mother (Angela Bassett), her fellow competitors, and her grieving, lonely teacher. This is a special film, and I hope more people discover it on DVD.
5. The Devil and Daniel Johnston: This slot was even harder to choose than the animation slot because the year had so many great documentary films, from the musicals “Neil Young: Heart of Gold” and “Dave Chappelle’s Block Party”, to Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Michael Apted’s most recent entry in his famous ‘Up’ series “49 Up”, but I picked this little seen independent gem about the mentally troubled singer-songwriter/artist Daniel Johnston based more on the wealth of content, and how fascinating Johnston’s story is, than on whether it’s a better film than the others. Director Jeff Feuerzeig collected hours and hours of Johnston’s own personal recordings, from his self-made musical recording studio in his parent’s basement to his amazingly inventive teenage film projects and art works, to fashion a portrait of a very talented artist who flirted with national fame, coming out of the hot Austin, Texas music scene, but was continually crushed by his own schizophrenic mental problems and inability to conform to industry standards. Johnston is still performing these days, but he’s just as troubled as he was in his 20’s and 30’s, and this riveting documentary suggests that even with all of the personal problems, a cult figure with work this great is just as good as the sanest artist in the world, and deserves to be noticed.
4. The Hidden Blade: With a high regard for the samurai classics of Akira Kurosawa and the intimate character studies of Yasujiro Ozu, director Yoji Yamada, perhaps Japan’s greatest living filmmaker, has made a film of quite beauty and tremendous universal power with “The Hidden Blade”, his second masterpiece, following “The Twilight Samurai”, in the past three years. The story takes place in the important transitional period of the late 19th century, when American weaponry was making its way east, forever changing the structure of Japanese militarism from a samurai based honor system to one of canons and gun powder, as Munezo (Masatoshi Nagase), a pacifist samurai, is called on by his government to kill his former friend Yaichiro (Yukiyoshi Ozawa), a rebel who is opposed to the new weaponry and training. What follows is a study in transition, not unlike the postwar transition of traditional to modern living in Ozu’s countless ‘50’s masterworks, as Munezo struggles with the ethics of killing his friend, who he thinks is just in his criticisms, and with the code a samurai has of completing the orders of his masters. For fans of old fashioned Japanese filmmaking, with universal appeal, Yamada’s film is as classical in structure, symbolism, and storytelling as any of the great masters of the past.
3. The Proposition: For anybody who thinks they don’t make great westerns any more, check out this violent, metaphysical Australian Outback drama for proof that indeed the genre is still alive and kicking. More Peckinpahian than Hawkesian, “The Proposition” stars Guy Pearce as an outlaw who is given a second chance by the local sheriff (Ray Winstone) to find and bring to justice his no-good murdering brother (Danny Huston). Along the way he encounters a grizzled bounty hunter (John Hurt) also after the fugitive’s head, and struggles with himself over the prospects (like Munezo in “The Hidden Blade”) of turning on his older brother, until something violent happens to the sheriff’s wife (Emily Watson) that changes his mind for good. Directed by John Hillcoat, written and scored by Nick Cave, and beautifully photographed in golden hues by the great cameraman Benoit Delhomme, this simple tale of lawlessness and justice in 19th century Australia is an homage to the violent character types of old Sam Peckinpah films, and a rare example of poetic realism in a genre known primarily for its rather un-poetic, ultra violent, story resolutions.
2. United 93: The first major film to directly document the attacks of September 11th, 2001, writer/director Paul Greengrass’ difficult docudrama details, with stunning accuracy and non-partisan politics, the pre-attack routine of both the hijackers and the air traffic personal, and the increasingly dire situations on ground and in the air as United 93 makes its way toward Washington, and a potential fourth strike. As a thriller, Greengrass (“Bloody Sunday”) brings his skills as an action director to the fore to craft an exciting story of professionals in an extraordinary (and unprecedented) situation, but more importantly, as a historical non-documentary fiction document of the worst day in American history, he presents an even handed, utterly wrenching portrait of chaos and confusion on what looked like your average sunny weekday morning. The year’s other big 9/11 studio effort, “World Trade Center”, was a more melodramatic effort geared towards the civil service workers who lost their lives at Ground Zero, and that had its fair share of gut wrenching and heroic moments as well, but “United 93” is by far the better of the two, not just for its commitment to realism, showing the hijackers, victims, and air traffic controllers, but for its unflinching stance that some things, no matter how horrible, are simply unpredictable, and regrettably, impossible to prevent.
1. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan: If I wanted to go for the classier pick for number one I would have gone with “United 93”, but I would have felt hypocritical in doing so, because even though it’s crude, offensive, and childish, Sasha Baron Cohen’s “Borat” was, I thought, the smartest film of the year, and of course, one of the funniest 80 minutes you’ll ever witness in your entire life. By now you know the premise, have seen most of the funniest clips (and will never forget the image burned into your brain of Azamat and Borat wrestling naked on a hotel bed), and have read about all of the pending lawsuits from the subjects duped into participating as Borat’s unsuspecting satirical targets, so I don’t need to rehash each particular moment in the film, and why each singular gem of a scene says more about the American way of life (or lack thereof) than most political writers could ever dream of equaling, but it does need to be said still about how outrageous and courageous the project was, and how flawless it looks, fully edited by Larry Charles, like a mixture of supreme performance art, Swiftian political satire, and lowbrow Jewish Vaudevillian standup. It’s amazing the lengths Charles and Cohen went to get the perfect physical joke, terribly humiliating normal citizens whose only crime it was to belong to a certain belief, profession, or caste structure, but they pull it off in seamless fashion, often in hostile and dangerous environments, and what we get is a roving imbecile from Kazakhstan who fearlessly, with insensitive ramblings in a hilarious broken English vocabulary, comes to represent, through mockery and physical and visual puns, what unfriendly foreign country’s think of the United States as a domineering political beast, filled with single-minded religious zealots, and idiotic racists. Most of that is true, but the genius of the film, and Cohen’s stunt, is that even though it seems genuinely critical and hateful, it really is just in jest, and anyone who doesn’t understand that probably deserves to be the butt of Borat’s next comedic attack, if we could only be so lucky.
by Adam Suraf