Nathan Rabin
Top 10
1. Children Of Men
2. United 93
3. Letters From Iwo Jima
4. Jonestown: The Life & Death Of People's Temple
5. Idiocracy
6. The Departed
7. The Devil And Daniel Johnston
8. Half Nelson
9. The Queen
10. A Prairie Home Companion
The Next Five
After two collaborations with Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry wrote and directed The Science Of Sleep, a waking dream of a film about a petulant man-child who'd rather live in his own elaborate fantasy world than grapple with reality. The barely-released documentary Danielson: A Family Movie or Make a Joyful Noise Here examines another loopy man-child in Daniel Smith, a Christian indie-rock oddball whose strange odyssey parallels that of Daniel Johnston, who turns in a cameo. Rian Johnson's slangy, atmospheric Brick cross-pollinated noir with high school angst with such verve and assurance that it's remarkable no one ever sought to fuse the two genres before. Nicole Holofcener's sprightly dramatic comedy Friends With Money and Pedro Almódovar's Volver each explore communities of women with wit and compassion.
Performance
Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat
Both extremes in the Borat debate got it wrong: the left-field blockbuster is neither a satirical masterpiece nor a hateful affront to the human spirit. However, just about everyone could agree that Borat is hilarious thanks almost entirely to Cohen, a fearless chameleon and comic one-man-band whose dogged conviction and brilliant improvisation made the film's one joke go a very long way.
Overrated
World Trade Center
Longtime scourge of the right Oliver Stone finally made a movie arch-conservatives could get behind, but retained his weakness for turgid melodrama and quasi-spiritual hallucinations. World Trade Center boasts a gripping first half-hour, but quickly devolves into a ham-fisted, flag-waving movie of the week. United 93's bracing, heart-pounding verisimilitude threw the film's hokey dramatic excesses into even sharper relief.
Underrated
The Science Of Sleep
Director Michel Gondry's undiluted blast of whimsy turned out to be more than most critics or audiences could take. Admittedly, on a narrative and character level, The Science Of Sleep is a mess, but since the film operates almost exclusively in the realm of images and ideas, that's not really a problem. Gondry crams a lifetime's worth of half-baked conceits and surrealistic constructs into a wonderfully homemade dreamscape that seems to have emerged whole cloth from his overactive subconscious.
Most Pleasant Surprise
Idiocracy
Who could have guessed that a barely released, unpublicized, and not-screened-for-critics comedy would prove the year's timeliest, most savage satire? Along with the otherwise antithetical Children Of Men, Mike Judge's futuristic comedy brilliantly filtered the predominant fears and anxieties of today through the sturdy prism of dystopian science fiction. Just remember: Brawndo has electrolytes! It's what plants crave!
Guilty Pleasure
The Marine
A colorful gaggle of baddies tangle with the wrong ex-serviceman in this tongue-in-cheek action schlockfest, which is as deliriously, delightfully idiotic as only a vehicle for an inexpressive wrestler/rapper can be. Star grappler John Cena doesn't seem to be in on the joke, but everyone else clearly is, especially world-class bad guy Robert Patrick as a gleefully insane heavy.
Best Non-2006 Film Seen This Year
Mysterious Skin
A longtime poster boy for suspended adolescence, director Gregg Araki made a giant leap forward with this mesmerizing Lynchian character study about the very different ways two young boys deal with molestation at the hands of their Little League coach. Araki's hauntingly stylized Mysterious Skin radiates heartbreak, horror, and unexpected tenderness, while star Joseph Gordon-Levitt—a million miles removed from the inanity of Third Rock From The Sun—establishes himself as one of the most promising young actors since Johnny Depp, with a tough, unsentimental lead performance as a male hustler with a closet full of skeletons.
Future Film That Time Forgot
One Last Thing
Just about the only thing less palatable than a drama about a terminally ill teenager out to bang a supermodel as his final wish is a comedy with the same premise. Alex Steyermark's jaw-droppingly misconceived One Last Thing alternates between glib sex comedy and maudlin sentimentality in its unwieldy tale of a sensitive dying teen and his heartfelt yearning for the sexual services of self-destructive human mannequin Sunny Mabrey. Throw in Wyclef Jean's cameo as a magical cab driver and you have a time-capsule oddity that'll only grow stranger with time.
Worst Of The Year
The People Vs. John Lennon
VH1's super-slick, empty-headed canonization of John Lennon bravely champions its subject's controversial pro-love, pro-peace, anti-hate rhetoric, but ignores the contradictions and idiosyncrasies that made him such a fascinating artist and icon. In the process they reduce Lennon's life and activism to a series of trite bumper-sticker slogans.
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