Scott Tobias
Top 10
1. The Departed
2. Children Of Men
3. United 93
4. Old Joy
5. Brick
6. Volver
7. L'Enfant
8. The Devil And Daniel Johnston
9. Neil Young: Heart Of Gold
10.Half Nelson
The Next Five
Though it centers on another group of fumbling, inarticulate proto-slackers, Andrew Bujalski's Mutual Appreciation refines his uncanny semi-improvisational style and builds to a touchingly real conflict between friendship and romance. A remarkably thorough piece of journalism, Jonestown: The Life & Death Of People's Temple recounts the harrowing circumstances that led Jim Jones' followers to mass suicide, but it resonates most for showing how a beautiful vision of community got squandered by one man's hang-ups and paranoia. Much like Edward Norton's smooth-talking cowboy in the contemporary West, Down In The Valley seemed entirely out of place in modern arthouses, but it would fit in nicely next to sun-dappled '70s classics like Badlands and Two-Lane Blacktop. Patrice Chereau's intense chamber drama Gabrielle captures the fallout of a shattered marriage within ornate walls that seem to be closing in like a noose. Michelangelo Antonioni meets Albert Brooks' Modern Romance in the quietly mesmerizing Climates, a tale of romantic obsession and ennui that confirms Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Distant) as a distinctive talent.
Performance
Judi Dench, Notes On A Scandal
Granted, Dench has cornered the market on imperious shrews, but as an embittered old spinster whose friendship with a bohemian art teacher (Cate Blanchett) veers into psychosexual obsession, she elevates her signature role to an intensity level that's just short of high camp. It's a wonder that those who fall under her sharp, withering glare don't turn into stone.
Overrated
Dreamgirls
Anointed the prize Oscar pony before anyone actually saw it, Bill Condon's turgid adaptation of the hit Broadway musical plays like Motown as a Disney revue, with precious little connection to the sonic and social upheaval of the era. The songs induce an outpouring of melisma that would be pure American Idol cheddar even without AI also-ran Jennifer Hudson, and the film's distant relation to real people and events underlines its suffocating insularity.
Underrated
Bubble
Director Steven Soderbergh manages his career like a junkie in-and-out of rehab: One year he's on a wild bender of perversely idiosyncratic projects, the next he's sobering up with a penitential Ocean's Eleven movie. This year, Soderbergh went off the wagon with the B&W post-war pastiche The Good German and Bubble, a digital curiosity that earned more attention for its day-and-date release strategy than its considerable merits as outsider art. Before the film evolves into a bizarre procedural, Bubble captures the workaday lives of doll factory employees with hypnotic precision.
Most Pleasant Surprise
Slither
Horror comedies are often at war against themselves, because the laughs have a tendency to negate the scares, but Slither strikes just the right balance between silly Tremors-like redneck humor and sight gags, and spooky creepy-crawlies from outer space. A first-rate group of character actors help, especially Michael Rooker (Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer) as a brute who undergoes a hilariously disgusting transformation and Serenity's Nathan Fillion, who brings his trademark unflappability to the role of a small-town cop who tries to thwart an alien invasion.
Guilty Pleasure
Beerfest
Okay, so the world probably doesn't need another lowbrow comedy for frat guys to get loaded to. And yes, two hours is probably more time than necessary to tell the story of a secret underground German beer-guzzling competition. But for all of Beerfest's obvious deficiencies, the Broken Lizard crew deserves credit for sheer off-the-wall daffiness, like casting sweet Cloris Leachman as a former Bavarian whore or contriving a passionate French kiss between Jürgen Prochnow and Mo'Nique or stuffing the movie with Das Boot references. Dumb rarely gets much smarter.
Best Non-2006 Film Seen This Year
The Double Life Of Véronique
Though he'd been making movies for years, including the brilliant monolith The Decalogue, Krzysztof Kieslowski's international breakthrough was the first exposure many American arthouse mavens had to his work. But in light of what followed, especially the famed Three Colors trilogy, The Double Life Of Veronique now seems like the linchpin to his career, a poetic meditation on beauty and fate that's the blueprint to Kieslowski's unique cosmos.
Future Film That Time Forgot
BloodRayne
Thanks to a loophole in German tax law, Uwe Boll's game-to-movie adaptations have earned him the reputation as a modern-day Ed Wood—though critics probably shouldn't say that out loud, lest the former amateur boxer offer to pummel them in the ring. BloodRayne doesn't reach the fevered heights (or is it depths) of Boll's Alone In The Dark, but the cast alone will have obscure video archeologists of the future scratching their heads. Ben Kingsley, Meat Loaf, Billy Zane, Udo Kier, Michael Madsen, Michelle Rodriguez, Geraldine Chaplin, Michael Paré… that must have been one crazy wrap party.
Worst Of The Year
The Holiday
Romantic comedies are painful enough without the characters referring to themselves as if they were characters in a romantic comedy, but lines like "I enjoyed my meet-cute" cut to the synthetic soul of Nancy Meyers' calculating dreck, which embarrasses every member of its first-rate cast. Meyers even has the audacity to exalt an Old Hollywood screenwriter who complains that they don't make 'em like they used to. No kidding.
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