On The Also-Rans
Jackass Number Two: Half accidentally and half on-purpose, the aggro boys from MTV coughed up an avant-garde masterpiece. What makes this superior to anything Knoxville and Co. have done before is a sneaky self-awareness that suggests they've been in on the joke the whole time, and all that stuff that highbrow academic types have been saying is latent in their shenanigans. Piled gooch-high with radical/confrontational queer sexuality and my-body-is-a-canvas artistic masochism, this might be the most fucked-up and alienating thing released by a major studio in the past few years. Reasonably, it would be the kind of thing that plays at [New York's] Two Boots Pioneer for a week, loved only by an adventurous few; instead, it became one of the year's biggest cash cows as well as the single most mind-blowing and gut-busting communal experience 2006 had to offer me. —Steve Carlson
Idiocracy: Ow, my follow-up film! Mike Judge took it in the groin again and again, as Fox delayed, cut, then released his film in seven cities with no advertising. Was it because, despite the overbreeding of dumb people, it was the surviving corporations that were really keeping everyone stupid, even to the point of annihilation? Maybe. Or maybe they couldn't abide by the unmistakable sadness at the film's core. Despite Judge's dumb-comedy-for-smart people m.o. and the standard issue happy ending, I'm still haunted by the dead-eyed hospital receptionist and the guy with the head wound, playing a slot machine for free health care. —Kent "kza" Beeson, Seattle, Washington
The Death Of Mr. Lazarescu: Moving from the realm of the fantastic to grim reality, Cristi Puiu's remarkable second feature charts the title character's one-way trip through Romania's bureaucratic health-care system. The power of the movie lies in the director's unwillingness to divide his cast into clear-cut heroes and villains. True, many of the doctors and nurses aren't very helpful, but the ornery Lazarescu doesn't exactly make their jobs easier. Ultimately, this is a film that presents human beings as who we often are—selfish and self-absorbed—rather than who we'd like to be. It's an undeniably depressing vision, but it makes the small moments of kindness between the characters that much more meaningful. —Ethan Alter
With a title like The Death Of Mr. Lazarescu, one does not go in expecting to have a good time, but while the film is harrowing, it's also essential viewing for anyone who takes world cinema seriously. Much of the credit for the film's success can be attributed to Ion Fiscuteanu, who embodies the title character with a complete lack of guile, fearlessly venturing through the bowels of the Romanian health care system that, over the course of one night, will suck away his dignity and his humanity, leaving him naked, barely breathing, and waiting to die. Meanwhile, the system swirls around him, with hospitals sending him elsewhere, doctors taking him to task for his drinking and diet rather than dealing with the problem in front of them, and everyone trifling over paperwork and procedure, perhaps to cope with all the suffering. Director Cristi Puiu never allows his film to devolve into a wallow, leavening the story with sardonic humor borne out of exasperation and impotence in a way that hasn't been done this well since Terry Gilliam's Brazil. —Paul Clark
For me, no film this year was as moving, as uplifting or just as out and out entertaining as Michel Gondry's Dave Chappelle's Block Party. Ostensibly a concert documentary, Block Party is less concerned with the actual concert—which is admittedly spectacular—than with the circumstances surrounding it. Frequently cutting back and forth between the concert and its preparation, Gondry turns his film into the story of a man who used his newfound money and fame to bring people from all backgrounds together. The result is one of the most movingly optimistic films I've ever seen, one that posits that no matter how bad things look, all it takes for Americans of all stripes—from Harlem youths to Ohio grandmas—to come together in joy and celebration is a kickass rap concert. In other words, it was the perfect film for 2006; suddenly, two more years of Bush don't seem that bad. —Matt Noller
The Devil & Daniel Johnston: I was never a huge Daniel Johnston fan, but this film went a long way toward giving me a greater appreciation of his work, although I'm not sure if that's a good thing, in light of all the problems appreciation of his work has led to. It's easy to get high-minded about The Purity Of An Artist's Vision in the abstract, but when you see some of the very real consequences of the artist's eccentricites, such arguments seem petty. Maybe our culture would be worse off if Mozart and Van Gogh had had the opportunity to receive useful psychiatric treatment, but there is little doubt that the people closest to them would have been much better off. —William Dewey, San Jose, CA
Shortbus: Hardcore emotion, ejaculation, and pleasure in one wholesome package. Director John Cameron Mitchell even has a male character singing The Star Spangled Banner in the asshole of the guy he's eating out, and it didn't offend me the slightest bit. Who knew that group sex could be so meaningful? —Mallory Adamczyk, Chicago, IL
Marie Antoinette: Sofia Coppola's empathy may or may not be misplaced, I don't know. But contrary to what critics say, she is interested in the political milieu of the era. Even if the film omitted all reference to the rest of France, as many claim, it would be an absence so ornate as to only have been intentional. But even that's not the case: the last third of the film takes place largely at a cottage where Marie and her girlfriends fetishize "the simple life," an idea so disconnected from what the real "simple life" consisted of that it speaks to how remote France must have seemed from Versailles. In a narcissistic film about narcissism, Coppola turns that self-absorption against itself, and makes her most conceptually ambitious film to date. —Jeremy Cohen
Inland Empire: Lynch's most experimental work since Eraserhead is one of his greatest films. It's a film filled with trap doors that lead to other rabbit holes that lead to other time zones and states of being— Alice In Wonderland meets Celine And Julie Go Boating. Laura Dern's performance is brave and extraordinary. A major film, which really needs to be seen in a theater on a big screen with the sound system CRANKED UP! —Matt Severson, Los Angeles, CA
Miscellaneous Kisses And Disses
In an essay for The New York Times about a year ago, film critic A.O. Scott posited that the lack of mindblowing cinematic masterpieces was directly related to the lack of mindblowing disasters. His argument was that the insane, outsized ambition that leads to movies like Apocalypse Now also lead to movies like Heavens Gate. He ended the essay by pleading for more filmmakers to risk disaster in the fulfillment of their visions; if 2006 is any indication, at least a few people were paying attention. Two of the most interesting studio films of the year, M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water and Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, were the results of wildy ambitious—and, in at least Shyamalan's case, egotistical—directors refusing to hold back or compromise. Naturally, the mainstream critical establishment—the same people who often bemoan the mediocrity and sameness of Hollywood cinema—responded with hostility or indifference. The Fountain, with its emotional content and stunning visual brio, has found supporters, some of whom even claim the film as a masterpiece. Lady in the Water… um, not so much. Certainly the film is a mess, often silly and self-important, but it's also deeply personal, not to mention absolutely gorgeous (that last scene is one of the most transcendently lovely sequences I've seen since The New World). Everything Shyamalan feels—about the current political climate; about the critical reception to his work; about the art and conventions of storytelling; about how all of the above intersect and relate—is on clear display. It's his psyche and soul laid bare, slashed crimson (or, in this case, a sort of bluish-green) across the screen, and audiences and critics didn't like what they saw. Shyamalan is now reportedly having trouble getting funding for his next project, which is a shame; if we had more directors like him, I think the mainstream film scene would be a much better and more interesting place. After all, would you rather watch Lady In The Water again or Epic Movie? I think the choice is clear. —Matt Noller
Confronting death head on seemed to be a large theme in movies this year. Letters from Iwo Jima, The Fountain, Children of Men, and Stranger Than Fiction all have characters who knowingly face their own impending mortality. In the case of Iwo and Children of Men, it's not even just the mortality of the main characters, but of all people, and nations, and ideas, and fights. For a long stretch in the past 20 years, death in cinema has been treated solely as an ironic device, and a means for dark laughs. Some of these are successful (Fargo, Pulp Fiction), but most just continue to reinforce the death, denying American culture by treating death and murder as lightly as possible. Stranger Than Fiction even acts as a reaction to the prevalence of these devices. It could be a reflection of our "post-9/11" culture, and certainly United 93 would fit in with Iwo Jima thematically, but even the genre films seem to be taking death more seriously. The multiplexes are filled every week with a new sadistic torture film, that while they may not confront any issues with any insight, don't contain the wink-wink tongue-in-cheek killing off of characters that was so prevalent in the '90s slasher resurgence. We've become a braver culture perhaps, and it's a unique time for films with ideas to be able to be financed and released respectably. —Nicholas Tinsley, Glenview, IL
Marie Antoinette: I've read reviews suggesting it's Sofia
Coppola's meditation on female powerlessness or some such, but I still haven't gotten over my strong initial reaction, which was: Really, why was this movie made? Nothing happens. None of the key characters make any interesting decisions or have any urgency. It's visually lush, but the whole movie should have been reduced to 20 minutes of clips and interludes strewn throughout a much better movie—you know, one with a plot. —Daniel
The Ed Wood Jr. Award for the Worst Film of the Year goes to What Is It?, a would-be edgy art film directed by Crispin Glover, featuring snail-killing by salt and decapitation (screams supplied by Fairuza Balk), an old man with cerebral palsy lying in a giant clam shell being masturbated by a woman with an ape mask on. And oh yeah, most of the cast are people with Down's Syndrome. That description actually makes it sound much more interesting than it is. It's really just a big stinking pile of garbage. —Matt Severson
The Honorary Paul Haggis "Uncomfortable = Profound" Screenwriting Award goes to Guillermo Arriaga for Babel. See the Moroccan boy masturbate to thoughts of his sister! See the Japanese deaf-mute girl lose every shred of dignity! See Oscar Winner Cate Blanchett urinate in a pan! Okay, so that last scene is actually kind of affecting, but only because we'd all like to be held by a rugged and caring Brad Pitt. Otherwise, Babel misses the mark nearly as wide as last year's stinker Crash. —Jack Monahan
« Previous | 1 | 2 | 3
- Comments