The Best of 2006

Robert Altman's swan song displays the director's typical generosity, slow-burning humor and wit and the unique vision of an artist who at 81 remained sharper than most director's in their prime.  As a reflection on his method and cinematic vision, it's not as effective as The Company but Tommy Lee Jones "death" character remarking on the show's irrelevancy as it's framed through a rectangular window says more about Altman's state of mind than one could hope for.

A nonsensical film about a book that was "post-modern before there was any modernity to be post about".  Steve Coogan is hysterical as the arrogant, self-aggrandizing "Steve Coogan" and while the film doesn't have much to say outside of its complete inability to say anything, its unique brand of humor was more than enough to make it work.

Whether or not you're a fan of Daniel Johnston's music, his story is remarkably moving and effectively told by Feuerzeig through old footage, interviews, and Johnston's own music and artwork.  The eerie image of his "lost love" is effective in keeping ambiguity about whether his obsession spiraled into his music and mental illness or if he simply created it as some sort of objective correlative to give his life stability and meaning.

Eastwood's companion piece to Flags of Our Father's offers far more insight on the effects of war on regular men torn between their duty to their country and family.  Stylistically, he keeps it as conventional as possible allowing the simple but brutal realities of war to speak for themselves.  Remove the slightly heavy-handed, overly simplistic flashbacks and this could have been a truly great film.

A playful neo-noir that never takes itself too seriously, yet never lets you forget how serious it is to the characters on-screen.  Even as The Pin's mom briefly enters (in a hilariously self-reflexive moment) to offer milk and cookies, no one misses a beat while we're questioning if the stakes have just been reduced.  No, it's deadly serious to them and the consquences truly are a matter of life and death except that Johnson makes it clear that everyone is playing a role in this hyper-stylized world.  Essentially, it's both mocking the self-contained bubble that is the high school world and celebrating its importance in spitting out semi-mature adults into the "real world".

An intense examination of dangers of surveillance, The Lives of Others shows how it leads to an inevitable, unhealthy intermingling of personal and political motivations.  I suppose it can be taken at face value, but I found the film's structure to be very deliberate and Brechtian, implying a connection between Weisler's spying and the audiences own voyeuristic tendencies at work while watching the film.  Of course, Weisler's decision to insert himself into the personal drama of those he spies on is not an option for the audience which makes his involvement all the more intriguing.  Essentially, it's about the seductive power of voyeurism when coupled with the power and ability to actually break through to the other side.

With all the talk about Sofia Coppola's take on the historical drama, it's sad that Chereau's film was lost in the mix this year.  His stylistic departures from the typical films of this kind breathe life and energy into a story which could just as easily have been another stuffy, dialogue heavy bore.  Instead, he achieves a universality in his deconstruction of the crumbling relationship anchored by the wonderful performance of the go-to-girl of France, Isabelle Huppert.

This is one of the most impressive displays of a dystopia I've seen committed to film, yet after a single viewing I was left feeling a bit empty as if the films greatest feat wasn't given a strong enough story.  What feels somewhat like a missed opportunity is however still nonetheless a powerful vision of the future.  Much has been made of Lubezki's cinematography and rightly so.  The impressive long takes never feel showy but rather create a continuity of vision that is unflinching in revealing the dangerous future that lurks around the corner if the direction the world is heading isn't changed dramatically.  It's invigorating and frightening and perhaps a second viewing will move this into the top 10 or at least help me understand why I had reservations about placing it higher in the first place.

Ryan Gosling owned the screen in this film, but Shareeka Epps stays with him every step of the way.  His class lectures about dialectics reflect not only on its necessity for social change but is illustrated through his central relationship with Drey.  The constant push-and-pull between them allows Fleck to eschew the traditional character arcs instead showing that their decisions (right or wrong) will redefine and effect one another ever so slightly.  He even made the brave decision to move past the "obvious" conclusion suggesting that their relationship won't drive them into permanent highs or lows - they will simply continue struggling to live and hopefully make life a little easier for one another.  And yes, the brilliant use of Broken Social Scene's music throughout was a nice bonus.

Hou once again shows why he's one of the master's of the long take, using his elegant camera moves and compositions to create three distinct world's, each of which use the cinematic style of their respective time period to meditate on the role of love and the nature of relationships.  I'll admit that the second segment was at times a chore to get through (and the main reason this one is just outside the top 10), but the first and third are supremely beatiful - one, profoundly life-affirming, the other reflecting on the crisis of identity in the internet age.

If The Proposition accomplished anything, it's that it showed that there's still plenty of inspiration to be found in the once dead Western genre.  Set in Australia during England's attempts to civilize the outback, Hillcoat and screenwriter Nick Cave's bleak and violent vision shows the dark side of man when his instinctual nature is brought under the control of forced structure and order.  Pierce, Huston and Winstone all turn in career performances, each remaining menacing and vile while still being distinctly human.  Some have issues with the lack of sympathetic characters, but in fact that's part of The Proposition's thesis - that the enforcement of order and society upon a way of life driven solely by the instinct to survive will end only in bloodshed and no man remains innocent.

There are plenty of reasons this film ended up on my top 10 this year, but it's here first and foremost because it made me laugh more than any film in a long time.  I've been a fan of Sacha Baron Cohen's comedy for a while, but here he takes it on the road and reaches the peak of his social satire.  Cohen may be pandering to liberal audiences by picking on ultra-conservatives buried in the deep South, but he's not letting anyone off the hook.  In exposing the deep-seeded prejudices in the heartland of America, it's in some ways a revenge film for liberals who've put up with 6 years of President Bush, but since much of the film is constructed or re-enacted, it also brings into question our perception of those we're laughing at.  Are the Southern stereotype Cohen so clearly baits us to laugh at all that much more "real" than Borat is a Khazakstanian?

I'm about as interested in the Royal Family as the next American, which is to say I really couldn't give a crap.  I remember when Princess Di died but as it had no profound or lasting effect on me, I didn't expect The Queen to be of much interest.  In the skillful hands of Stephen Frears (who some have faulted with essentially not over-stylizing his film), the clash between the outdated beliefs of the queen and the demands of the public for communal grieving somehow become fascinating.  By interspersing archival television footage and contrasting the Blair administrations strict attention to televisual information vs. the queen briefly taking it in before bed, Frears explores the effects of modernization and the instant dissemination of information on the relationship between the public and public figures.  Helen Mirren's performance is full of dignity and restraint, inviting compassion yet never justifying her incessant disregard for the demands of her people.

The subtleties of the casual interaction between friends was given a fine treatment in Mutual Appreciation, but Reichardt's film carry's with it such a strong sense of the past's effect on how we behave in the present.  The gulf between old friends who've long grown too far apart to remain close has never been explored with such attention to the details - the passive-aggressive remarks, anger surfacing through awkward playfulness and the unspoken frustrations expressed only through body language.  Set to the slow-burning Yo La Tengo soundtrack and the occasional regret-tinged musings of Air America on the radio, Old Joy carefully tunes into the melancholy of two men coming to realization that there may no longer be any way for them to relate to one another.

Through long takes, the consistent (though not constant) use of real time, and realistic verite camerawork, Christi Puiu takes an intensely up-close look at the failings of the Romanian health care system and its effects on the individual.  It's not the intellectual understanding of how the system fails that makes it so fascinating, but rather the gradual decaying of Lazarescu's body in the midst of everything happening around it.  It's an extremely physical film with a disturbingly close focus on the body.  Puiu plays this against the general air of arrogance and indifference that Lazarescu encounters throughout the night. Personally, I find the contrast of death and indifference quite horrifying. It's realism taken to the extremes to reach the absurd.

Not a film I could enjoy, and certainly not understand, on a single viewing, but it's clear that Lynch isn't simply moving forward with his art, but catapulting over boundaries that most filmmakers aren't even familiar with.  Inland Empire exists in a black hole in the Lynchian universe, spinning the audience through multiple temporal realities in a journey that weaves in and out of the protagonist's, and Lynch's, own fragmented mind.  To date, it's also probably Lynch's most effective meditation on the effects of filmic reality and the nature of recording on the identities of those involved.  Per usual, the deeper we get in the film, the more reality and fantasy begin to blur and the more dangerous the stakes become.  Mulholland Dr. at least offered the catharsis of death, but here Lynch's uncompromising vision further breaks characters and realities apart only to continually piece them back together fascinating, but increasingly bewildering, ways.

Claire Denis' masterpiece is the first film of her's I could wholeheartedly embrace.  Beau Travail, Trouble Every Day, and Friday Night are all gorgeous and moving in their own way, but here she leaves behind all traces of narrative to create a uniquely powerful abstract feature which relies not on intellect, but the pure physicality of her images and emotional logic.  The film's separate threads never come together as they would in a more traditional film, but are united through Denis and cinematographer Agnes Godard's gorgeous use of landscapes - from the arctic chill of the early scenes to the mystical energy of the tropic where Louis's journey comes to a close.  At its core, the film is about the pain of loss and trying to fill that void through both physical and metaphysical means.  Denis makes us feel the significance of both.

---

The 10 Worst Films of 2006

10. The Omen (John Moore)

To be honest, I was a little surprised that this was still in my bottom 10.  It's stupid and the little kid made even Julia Styles look good, but at least it's watchable.

9. Battle in Heaven (Carlos Reygadas)

Art films at their worst.

8. Night Watch (Timur Bekmambatov)

Incomprehensible and completely disjointed.

7. Cars (John Lasseter)

When Larry the Cable Guy isn't the worst thing about your film, you're in a lot of trouble.

6. Hard Candy (David Slade)


5. Beer League (Frank Sebastiano)

Ayyaashole. Jerrrkoff.

4. Lucky Number Slevin (Paul McGuigan)

Can we stop with the Tarantino derivatives already?  These guys are like 10 years late.

3. The Wicker Man (Neil LaBute)

The bees!  No, not the BEEEES!!

2. Madea's Family Reunion (Tyler Perry)

Apparently spousal abuse and hypocritical attitudes towards women still have a pretty strong niche market. 

1. Little Children (Todd Field)

I've said all I'm going to say here.