The year's top cinema... It's been a subtle progression, from auditory to visual, but where I once ranked albums as the year closed -- as recently as 2000, or 2002 if you want to get technical -- but now, it's Hollywood that drives me. Film in general, really. So, I offer my top 20 for twenty aught six.
01. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada ... So be it that this was authentically, officially released in '05; this still makes the top of my '06 chart. Why, precisely? I saw it at one of the local "arthouses" in March of the past year, when Three Burials received its Milwaukee release. Beyond that, this debut from Tommy Lee Jones (as director) is the starkest evocation of Cervantes's opus, Don Quijote. The desolate South Texas borderland mirrors perfectly the Manchego terrain that the hero, astride Rocinante, roamed, while the personages of rancher (Jones) & border-guard (Barry Watson), in the effort to give the first man's immigrant laborer friend a proper burial in his Mexican hometown, are doubles for Quijote & Sancho. This film could not be more perfect. Another bold stroke from writer Guillermo Arriaga, who has taken nigh all the flack for the less-than-stellar Babel, even though it is Gonzalez Inarriatu who has yet to achieve a notable film sans Arriaga & cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto. But, in the end, Three Burials becomes much of for what that other film aimed. Funny, innit?
02. An Inconvenient Truth
03. Stranger than Fiction
04. Moartea Domnului Lazarescu ... Another film a year or more removed from its authentic release, I saw this in its limited Milwaukee cinema debut at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's cinema in late October, & it surprised me how true to the details of Romanian urban life it is. From Lazarescu's neighbours, who assume that the cardiac episode he faces is actually just an hallucination brought on by drink, to the cool disregard of the educated staff at the several hospitals to which the medics take the patient, this film is superb.
05. Inside Man
06. The Last King of Scotland ... What to say, other than Academy favorite for best actor? Forrest Whitaker incarnates the late dictator Idi Amin as both benevolent ascendant to the presidency & rash "royal" in the succeeding years. The events surrounding the dictator might be rooted in conjecture more than fact, as well, but they only heighten one's growing awareness of the wooly & often bloody epoch that was the 1970s.
07. Little Miss Sunshine
08. Blood Diamond
09. Driving Lessons
10. Monster House ... I confess ignorance of the mid-nineties cartooning of Rob Schrab, though I knew the name from the interest of friends & their friends in his work. With that, I must admit I was a bit flabbergasted that the manic pacing & slapstick humour I was expecting in this Spielberg-produced feature was not there. This is an evenly paced kid's movies, but not unlike the better fare of animated comedy thru the years -- in particular, the Lebowski-cribbed "Powerpuff Girls" episode that I saw whilst in Romania -- it has enough adult shadings to keep the parents as well as the children rapt.
11. The Departed
12. Casino Royale
13. Lucky Number Slevin
14. Jonestown: The Tragedy of People's Temple ... Another offering inspired by the raucous & uncertain seventies epoch, this documentary left me quite well informed of not just "the Kool-aid", but what drove so many to fly several thousand miles, to an unpeopled jungle. It would appear that the congregants of People's Temple were of the greatest of intentions, and committed to the spirit of the homilies (sorry, I was raised Catholic; but, I know that Protestants give 'sermons') of the Rev. Jim Jones, but the roiling cauldron of the minister's psyche, when away from the pulpit, sabotaged their aims. & yes, that is grave understatement. Possibly the most powerful film I saw this year.
15. The Science of Sleep
16. Half-nelson
17. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby ... This is where the hipster elite lose me. While any that Judd Apatow is golden, apparently it does not apply to this feature. The charicatures are too broad, the sentiment (especially toward the end) too gooey -- plus, its lead is a former featured player on Saturday Night Live (& we know THOSE people have never made a good film!). Pshaw, to that, I say. I enjoyed this considerably. Sublime performances by the heir to Ricky Bobby's race-team ownership & the heir's wife, plus a credible performance from Sacha Baron Cohen & softer touches from Michael Clarke Duncan & John C. Reilly than we are used to, & Ferrell's turn as a man stuck between the South's colourful but unlettered past & its checkered & heavily-capitalized future becomes perchance the best counter to the ascendance of the Texified GOP. Oh, & it's funny. & it has Amy Adams reprise the mesmerizing performance of Tawny Kitaen, from that Whitesnake video.
18. Miami Vice
19. Babel
20. Thank You for Smoking
01. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada ... So be it that this was authentically, officially released in '05; this still makes the top of my '06 chart. Why, precisely? I saw it at one of the local "arthouses" in March of the past year, when Three Burials received its Milwaukee release. Beyond that, this debut from Tommy Lee Jones (as director) is the starkest evocation of Cervantes's opus, Don Quijote. The desolate South Texas borderland mirrors perfectly the Manchego terrain that the hero, astride Rocinante, roamed, while the personages of rancher (Jones) & border-guard (Barry Watson), in the effort to give the first man's immigrant laborer friend a proper burial in his Mexican hometown, are doubles for Quijote & Sancho. This film could not be more perfect. Another bold stroke from writer Guillermo Arriaga, who has taken nigh all the flack for the less-than-stellar Babel, even though it is Gonzalez Inarriatu who has yet to achieve a notable film sans Arriaga & cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto. But, in the end, Three Burials becomes much of for what that other film aimed. Funny, innit?
02. An Inconvenient Truth
03. Stranger than Fiction
04. Moartea Domnului Lazarescu ... Another film a year or more removed from its authentic release, I saw this in its limited Milwaukee cinema debut at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's cinema in late October, & it surprised me how true to the details of Romanian urban life it is. From Lazarescu's neighbours, who assume that the cardiac episode he faces is actually just an hallucination brought on by drink, to the cool disregard of the educated staff at the several hospitals to which the medics take the patient, this film is superb.
05. Inside Man
06. The Last King of Scotland ... What to say, other than Academy favorite for best actor? Forrest Whitaker incarnates the late dictator Idi Amin as both benevolent ascendant to the presidency & rash "royal" in the succeeding years. The events surrounding the dictator might be rooted in conjecture more than fact, as well, but they only heighten one's growing awareness of the wooly & often bloody epoch that was the 1970s.
07. Little Miss Sunshine
08. Blood Diamond
09. Driving Lessons
10. Monster House ... I confess ignorance of the mid-nineties cartooning of Rob Schrab, though I knew the name from the interest of friends & their friends in his work. With that, I must admit I was a bit flabbergasted that the manic pacing & slapstick humour I was expecting in this Spielberg-produced feature was not there. This is an evenly paced kid's movies, but not unlike the better fare of animated comedy thru the years -- in particular, the Lebowski-cribbed "Powerpuff Girls" episode that I saw whilst in Romania -- it has enough adult shadings to keep the parents as well as the children rapt.
11. The Departed
12. Casino Royale
13. Lucky Number Slevin
14. Jonestown: The Tragedy of People's Temple ... Another offering inspired by the raucous & uncertain seventies epoch, this documentary left me quite well informed of not just "the Kool-aid", but what drove so many to fly several thousand miles, to an unpeopled jungle. It would appear that the congregants of People's Temple were of the greatest of intentions, and committed to the spirit of the homilies (sorry, I was raised Catholic; but, I know that Protestants give 'sermons') of the Rev. Jim Jones, but the roiling cauldron of the minister's psyche, when away from the pulpit, sabotaged their aims. & yes, that is grave understatement. Possibly the most powerful film I saw this year.
15. The Science of Sleep
16. Half-nelson
17. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby ... This is where the hipster elite lose me. While any that Judd Apatow is golden, apparently it does not apply to this feature. The charicatures are too broad, the sentiment (especially toward the end) too gooey -- plus, its lead is a former featured player on Saturday Night Live (& we know THOSE people have never made a good film!). Pshaw, to that, I say. I enjoyed this considerably. Sublime performances by the heir to Ricky Bobby's race-team ownership & the heir's wife, plus a credible performance from Sacha Baron Cohen & softer touches from Michael Clarke Duncan & John C. Reilly than we are used to, & Ferrell's turn as a man stuck between the South's colourful but unlettered past & its checkered & heavily-capitalized future becomes perchance the best counter to the ascendance of the Texified GOP. Oh, & it's funny. & it has Amy Adams reprise the mesmerizing performance of Tawny Kitaen, from that Whitesnake video.
18. Miami Vice
19. Babel
20. Thank You for Smoking
posted by whykiki at 22:16
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