*Favorite (and others) movies of 2006

This is a list of my ten favorite movies of 2006 (not the "best" movies, mind you, as I never understood how one can judge that sort of thing, other than simply going by what one's favorites were. Right?):

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Directed by Larry Charles
Written by Sascha Baron Cohen (screenplay and story), Peter Baynham (screenplay and story), Anthony Hines (screenplay and story), Todd Phillips (story), Dan Mazer (screenplay)

What people don’t seem to get about Borat is that there are (at least) two separate levels of “victimhood” to the jokes played by Sascha Baron Cohen: those who indict themselves with their own words and actions, and those who are victims of simple practical jokes. To say that, for example, the etiquette teachers or the driving instructor didn’t “deserve” the treatment that they get is ludicrous because they didn’t get the same “treatment” as, say, the racist rodeo rider or the sexist USC frat boys. There are (at least) two separate levels of laughter here: the simple Allen Funt-ish laughter at watching people in bizarre situations (the subway passengers, the elevator passengers), and the “darker” laughter at watching people peeling away their own societal politeness and political correctness and saying what they really think. Only once you realize that you are laughing at two different things (Michael Moore could learn a lot from Sascha Baron Cohen) will you be able to judge who “deserves” laughter and who...just get it anyway. While unconvinced of Borat’s current status as political hot button, and unsure of how future societal iterations (not “generations”, as I am currently experiencing what has traditionally been known as a “generation gap” with people five years older and younger than me) will view or judge this movie, alls I know is that I laughed longer and harder at Borat than I have at any other movie this year.



Brick

Directed by Rian Johnson
Written by Rian Johnson

The hard-boiled world of 1940s pulp noir fiction transposed onto the hard-boiled world of teens, high school, and the sun-drenched suburbs of Southern California – wha? But, first-time writer/director Rian Johnson manages to transcend the conceit, bringing us a moody, brooding, and intense tale of longing and loss. Top notch.

Children of Men

Directed by Alfonso Cuaron
Written by P.D. James (novel), Alfonso Cuaron, Timothy J. Sexton, David Argata, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby

Intense, brutal, real, frightening both in plot and implication, and heart-stoppingly gorgeous, even as (or maybe because) it is all these things, all at once. Children of Men is the best movie of 2006.

Little Miss Sunshine

Directed by Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris

Written by Michael Arndt

About once a year or so (more in a good year), someone makes a movie that just hits all the right notes with me. Small movies about awkward people. Usually they look pretty straightforward and simple on paper, but start digging around a little bit and you find the story, characters, and themes discussed to be far more complex (and complicated – not the same thing) than any simple capsule description or review of the movie could express. Movies that very much speak to me on the subjects of growing up, friendship, family. And, whether it be by coincidence or design, these movies almost always incredibly funny, and very, very real. Movies of the recent past that I have felt this way about include Bottle Rockets, Next Stop Wonderland, The Opposite of Sex, Rushmore, Ghost World, and my favorite movie of 2005, Junebug. Little Miss Sunshine was long my favorite movie of 2006, until I saw Children of Men.

The Prestige

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Written by Christopher Priest (novel), Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan

A wondrous examination of obsession, jealousy, and revenge, with several decidedly sci-fi twists. Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman are awesome, and Scarlett Johanssen’s latest turn as femme fatale (after her abominable performance in the abominable The Black Dahlia) is actually pretty credible. As a whole much better than that other, more overwrought and CGI-heavy early-century magician movie that came out this year.

Renaissance

Directed by Christian Volckman

Written by Alexandre de La Patelliere, Mathie Delaporte, Jean-Bernard Pouy (translation), Patrick Raynal (translation)

An exercise in style over substance, to be sure, but oh, what style it has – motion-capture (NOT rotoscoped) animation, cel-shaded, and save for a dash or two of color here and there for emphasis, completely black and white. Not even grey, just pure, stark black and white. Though the plot (a twisty but unfortunately more-or-less familiar sci-fi affair involving corporate conspiracies and a fountain-of-youth miracle drug) doesn’t bring much to the table, the visuals alone were more than enough to keep me thrilled for the entire duration, and intrigued even days later.

The Science of Sleep

Directed by Michel Gondry
Written by Michel Gondry

In less capable hands, this bittersweet story about the awkward romance between Stephane, a young man who can’t differentiate between dreams and waking life, and Stephanie, the pretty young thing who lives next door, would have ended with the obvious celebration of the Stephane character, who moves about the world with a freshness and innocent beauty to which we should all aspire. But hold on, isn’t this guy a schizophrenic? And a somewhat paranoid one at that? Kudos to Michel Gondry for ending the film with a firm shake of our shoulders, telling us to get real, there’s no way you could have a relationship with someone like this in real life. Truthfully, had Gondry gone for the obvious ending, this movie, with its cuteness, humor, imagination, and yes, its sweetness, would have earned it a special place in my heart; it is that ultimate realness, however, which elevates it to one of my favorite movies of the year.

Stranger Than Fiction

Directed by Marc Foster
Written by Zach Helm

Taking major issue with everyone saying that this is Will Ferrell’s first “serious” role. First of all, it’s not very serious. Secondly, we saw him a year ago in Winter Passing, wherein he actually DID have a serious role. That he also played and sang straight the entirety of The Eagles’ “I Can’t Tell You Why” is beside the point. Coincidentally, Winter Passing starred Zooey Deschanel, who is sort of a poor man’s Maggie Gyllenhaal (no offense to Zooey, I adore Zooey, but...right?). Stranger Than Fiction is like any number of stories where the main character has a near-death experience, or learns that he is going to die, and because of this decides to become a better person, or at least try, and in the end they do become a better person, not so much because they achieve their goal, but because they tried, and Yoda be damned, the act of trying is when the real magic happens. Tale as old as time, but well-told, with wonderful performances by all except Queen Latifah, who is sadly given an underwritten, throwaway role presumably with the abstract assumption that she would “bring something to it”, but she doesn’t.

Thank You for Smoking

Directed by Jason Reitman
Written by Christopher Buckley (novel), Jason Reitman (screenplay)

A hard-edged comedy, one of the funniest and most biting of the year, that dares to put a human face on the tobacco industry. A smirking, funny, poignant, conniving, flawed, real, and utterly human face.

V for Vendetta

Directed by James McTeigue

Written by Alan Moore (novel) and David Lloyd (novel), Wachowski Brothers (screenplay)

I actually liked the movie better than the book, which just made me feel kinda dizzy and nauseous and claustrophobic and restless. Of course, that was probably the point. Or, it could have been because I read it on a plane. A lot has been made of Alan Moore’s detatchment and disgust with this project, but from what I’ve read Moore’s primary complaint is that his original story was a reaction to a Thatcher-era police state, and that there is no way that the story in its present form could be “updated” to be about post-911 society. Actually, the anxieties and truths about totalitarianism and government manipulation are universal, and even so, the genius of the story is that even politics aside, it works as straight adventure-thriller (the expression “ripping good” comes immediately to mind).

Other movies I liked a lot this year: Casino Royale (a textbook study in how to do a “reboot” right, worthy of examination for future generations), The Descent (a genuinely scary horror movie – how often can you say that?), District B13 (Parkour hits the mainstream, leaps through the tiny crack above the door, drops two stories, does a roll, and just keeps on running), Eight Below (a movie about dogs), Hard Candy (ouch! Just that: ouch), Night Watch (what the Underworld movies really should have been), Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (a few issues, but in all a well-crafted, even superbly-made film), Running Scared (a linear Pulp Fiction as family drama, minus the jokes), Superman Returns (a bit cold; still glorious), Tristram Shandy (an unfilmable film of an unwriteable book, genius in execution), and Volver (Pedro Almodovar’s return to small, silly, and cute (but not cuteSY) movies, and a very welcome one at that).

Movies that disappointed me (not movies that I disliked, for that list would be far too long, but simply movies that for whatever reason I walked into with a fair amount of expectations, and left the theater wondering how I could somehow get my money and time back):

Art School Confidential (dir. Terry Zwigoff, wr. Daniel Clowes)

First, understand that I LOVED the previous collaborations of Zwigoff and Clowes. Second, understand why: it wasn’t for the bitterness and cynicism toward the world that they so clearly and cleverly express, but for the obvious affection that they feel for the (very) few people they believe deserve it. Art School Confidential, unfortunately, was pure vitriol with (save one tiny cameo by Anjelica Huston) zero heart. Yes, people by and large are selfish, petty, phony, and mean. Now tell us something we don’t know.

The Fountain (dir. Darren Aronofsky, wr. Darren Aronofsky, Ari Handel)

I disliked both Pi and Requiem for a Dream with a passion unexpressable by words, so it is hard to imagine how and why I could have any expectations for this one. Advanced word was good, though, and we all know how I would watch anything with Hugh Jackman in it, even if he was just reading the phone book (I did watch that once, in fact -- it was called Kate & Leopold. Ooh, burn!). Though the trailer spoke to a certain level of overwrought pomposity that I felt specific (and appropriate) to Aronofsky’s past work, I genuinely did walk into this theater hoping, even somehow expecting, to enjoy this movie. I did not. Okay, it did look very pretty, and I did enjoy it more than I enjoyed both Pi and Requiem put together (which, admittedly, still isn’t very much), but to populate this story of pure, undying, eternal love (or is it?) with such empty ciphers to be filled in with our own memories of pure, undying eternal love (or is it) was either a collosal miscalculation (how many among us have ever felt such love? I was certainly having a bad day, in any case) or, perchance, lazy writing.

A Scanner Darkly (dir. Richard Linklater, wr. Philip K. Dick (novel), Richard Linklater (screenplay))

School of Rock aside, I’ve not been a very big fan of Linklater’s non-improvised, non-following-people-walking-around output. Still, a purported faithful film adaptation of Philip K. Dick (quite possibly the first in history) is a work to be admired (I’ve read much Philip K. Dick in high school and beyond – can’t claim to have understood more than half of it, but I have read a lot). Expectations were high, and though I did like the ending, I felt the movie took far too long to get where it was going, and the combination of high cop-drama and low stoner-comedy frequently made me feel like I was watching two, three, sometimes four completely separate movies concurrently – was that the point? Speaking of point, I’ve seen this movie two-and-a-third times, and cannot for the life of me understand why they chose the animation (rotoscoping, if you want to get technical) route, other than somebody somewhere probably thought it would look “edgy”, or something. Isn’t that the worst? If you’re going to be make a big deal about making a “non-traditional” animated feature, go look at how a serious filmmaker like Satoshi Kon actually DOES something with the form, rather than just using it because it’s cool or, like, whatever.

X-Men: The Last Stand (dir. Brett Ratner, wr. Zack Penn, Simon Kinberg)

So people credit the new, post-Burton wave of superhero movies to Spiderman, which I always felt was a bit too silly to be taken seriously (let alone be truly enjoyable). No, this new wave goes back a year or two further, to the first X-Men movie. The first two were great, serious studies into the world and characters of the comic. But with director and mastermind Bryan Singer off to try and repeat the same with Superman (he couldn’t, but whatever), leave it to walking horror show Brett Ratner to do with X-Men what Joel Schumacher did with Batman, that is, listen to people like my idiot co-worker who’s always saying, “Movies based on comics should be wacky and crazy and fun!” The two previous X-Men movies, while not completely bereft of good humor (and certainly, in their ways, flawed), carried with them a level of genuine human emotion and gravitas that just rang true to me. Ratner takes every moment of said human emotion and gravitas from the two earlier movies, and replaces them with campy, Adam-West-era Batman humor, wacky plastered haircuts, cleavage-baring cut-out bodysuits, pretty much everything but fart jokes and those “WHAM! BOOM!” text-explosion effects. Truly, the only thing anyone who’s opinion I trust liked about this movie was the idea of the “mutant cure” and the internal turmoil it causes among the will-they-or-won’t-theys of the X-crowd – an idea that Ratner lifted wholesale from Joss Whedon and John Cassaday’s run of Astonishing X-Men, without any credit whatsoever.

*Children of Men

Directed by Alfonso Cuaron

Written by P.D. James (novel), Alfonso Cuaron, Timothy J. Sexton, David Argata, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby

That many cooks in the screenwriting kitchen never produce any movies worth mentioning, do they? Kudos to Alfonso Cuaron for keeping this movie to his taut, singular vision. I kept flashing back to his beautiful and elegiac Y Tu Mama Tambien, which also had an epic vision of the world and society, separate from the narrative of the travellers, played out through moving car windows on the passed roadside. Children of Men had that feel in addition to its admittedly epic main storyline.

For reasons unknown and vague (possibly due to an influenza plague that wiped out a huge chunk of the human population, resulting in general global chaos), women have stopped giving birth, have in fact lost the ability to become pregnant. It’s been over 18 years since a recorded live birth, and that “child” has just been murdered. Theo (Clive Owen) lives his life as quietly as can be managed in these harsh times: work, home, helplessly watching the news, trying to ignore the literally truckloads of illegal immigrants all around him being systematically rounded up and shipped off to refugee camps, and spending time with his few remaining friends, in Theo’s case, the neo-hippy Jasper (Michael Caine, who is brilliant) and his near-catatonic wife.

Make no mistake – this is a fascist state. But it is also apparently the only still-functioning government and society on the planet. So does that mean....? Cuaron is brave enough to present us with a world of hard questions, and is audacious enough to answer very few, if any, of them, other than the power of the human will to simply carry on.

As Theo gets involved in a plot concerning his long-estranged wife Julian (Julianne Moore, who we don’t see nearly enough of nowadays, much less in non-50s-housewifey roles), the last pregnant human Kee (newcomer Claire-Hope Ashitey, who is brilliant), and the enigmatic “Human Project”, he is also dragged into the world of terrorists, military dictatorships, refugees, refugee camps, dangerous double-crosses, and all things, of course, not being as they appear. This is the movie V for Vendetta should have been, wanted to be, and maybe almost was.

The term “documentary style” has become a cliché when talking about modern cinema and television, but Cuaron truly and masterfully uses it here with his long takes with a handheld camera that takes the viewer directly into the heart of brutal, violent warfare. At one point a few drops of blood spatter onto the lens, and remainder of that single, long take is shot with the blood still spattered on the lens. You watch this and think about how a Michael Bay or a Ridley Scott would have captured the scene, with quick edits, slow-motion explosions, a soaring Hans Zimmer score telegraphing every single emotion that We Should Be Feeling Right At This Moment.

Naming the boat “Tomorrow” is a bit on-the-nose, but forgiveable, considering.

Intense, brutal, real, frightening both in plot and implication, and heart-stoppingly gorgeous, even as (or maybe because) it is all these things, all at once. Children of Men is the best movie of 2006.

Pan's Labyrinth

Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Written by Guillermo del Toro

Not that i had any to begin with, or even cared if I did or did not, but I am sure I have lost every shred of movie reviewing street cred I could ever have with the following statement: I did not like Pan's Labyrinth. I wanted to like it, and there were things that I did like about it, but if you were sit me down and force me to choose between whether I did or did not like it, I would have to come down firmly on the side of did not like it.

Pan's Labyrinth tells the dual stories of the Spanish resistance against the fascist regime of 1940s Spain, and a fairy story of young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) called by the mythic Faun/Pan (del Toro alumnus Doug Jones, who had to learn to speak Spanish for the role) to complete three tasks by the next full moon in order to restore her status as princess of the underworld. Surely, you would think that in a movie of this nature the two stories would come together in a satisfying, possibly magic realist way at the end, wouldn't you? Even thematically? Otherwise it would just feel like we're watching two completely separate movies, right?

Most reviews I've read for this film refer to it as "magic realism" - I totally disagree. Magic realism is when forces and figures of magic actually exist in the "world" (diegesis?) of the story, which must always bear a strong resemblance to the world in which the audience exists (hence realism). In Pan's Labyrinth, there is little or no indication that the "magic" exists anywhere outside of Ofelia's imagination. So what we have here is NOT magic realism, it's one story of the "real world" and another story that exists only in somebody's head.

And what's the deal with that story going on inside Ofelia's head? Unless figures like the giant toad and the creepy guy with nostrils instead of eyes (also played by Doug Jones) are archetypal figures from Spanish folklore unknown to me, their placement in the story is completely random. With the story existing in this girl's head, you would think that these figures would have some sort of symbolic or thematic connection to figures or situations in her real life, wouldn't you? Think of Dorothy's fantasy in The Wizard of Oz (another story which is not magic realism). With no connection to life, these figures, these tasks she must perform, are just completely random.

That's how this part of the movie felt to me - just random. Which I suppose it could be argued was the point. Just a story a kid would tell. A rambling, incoherent, make-it-up-as-you-go-along story.

But, the movie had some nice visuals, and much as in del Toro's earlier The Devil's Backbone I found the "real" story far more interesting. Good performances by all; I just wish they had a more coherent story to tell.