A&F Faves Of 2006
compiled Jan 20 from 22 lists)

1 United 93
2 New World
3 Departed, The
4 Queen, The
5 L'Enfant
6 Babel
7 Sophie Scholl
8 Little Miss Sunshine
9 Children Of Men
10 Death of Mr Lazarescu

11 Casino Royale
12 Little Children
13 Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
14 Pan's Labyrinth
15 Science of Sleep
16 Fountain
17 Inside Man
18 A Scanner Darkly
19 When The Levees Broke
20 Pirates: Dead Man's Chest

21 Climates
22 Prestige
23 49 Up
23 Thank You For Smoking
25 Tsotsi
26 A Prairie Home Companion
27 Requiem
27 Borat
29 Proposition
30 Brick

31 Akeelah and the Bee
32 Army Of Shadows
33 Ushpizin
34 An Inconvenient Truth
35 Still Life
36 Half Nelson
37 Woman On The Beach
38 Syndromes & A Century
39 Black Dahlia
40 Colossal Youth

41 Shut Up And Sing
42 Superman Returns
42 Hamaca Paraguaya
44 World Trade Center
45 Volver
45 Lady In The Water
47 Water
48 Hawaii, Oslo
49 Joyeux Noel
50 Forgiving Dr Mengele

[i]Includes lists (whether posted or pm'ed) from Ron, Jeff, Christian, Jeffrey, Spoon, Doug, Darrel, Peter, Crow, Andrew, J.R., J Robert Parks, BethR, DarrenH, Denny, Josh H, Ken, acquarello, ClintM, Anders, JoshH and John.

I will note that neither Doug nor Christian listed L'ENFANT this year, having included it on their 2005 lists: it was Doug's #1 film, I'm not sure what position it occupied on Christian's list. A #1 ranking and #10 ranking on this year's list, for purposes of illustration, would have placed L'ENFANT at #3 overall, just behind THE NEW WORLD. Just so you know. Not that it matters.

*

So, what are your top films of the year so far?

It's your list, so you can use your own criteria for determining what's a 2006 film for you: Chattaway goes by the year in which a film has its actual debut run in his city, Cummings goes by the year it debuts at a festival (I think, more or less), Overstreet goes by whatever year THE NEW WORLD will have the best chance of garnering votes, and many go by the date of a film's official non-festival release (limited or wide) in their home country or in the culturally dominant MacCountry next door (not the IMDb date by the title, but the one you can find by clicking the "Release dates" link under "Other Info" on the left hand side of a film's IMDb page: for example, SOPHIE SCHOLL had a 2005 release in many European countries and at one North American film festival, but it's USA release wasn't until 17th February, with no Canadian release cited.) I pretty much go by the year it was released in Canada, or the year it got around to opening in Vancouver (say, for late-2005 limited release films that don't make their way here until 2006), or films I see at the VIFF in 2006 (even though they don't open commercially until later, or never), or reasonably recent films (usually foreign or indie) that I didn't have a chance to view until the DVD became available here (like, say, HAWAII OSLO). Hey, it's my list, okay?

FAQ
How many can you list?
As many as you want, but please, only movies you liked a lot / have significant affection / respect / enthusiasm for to dub them "favourite" or "top" or "best" or "recommended" or whatever.

Ranked or unranked?
You can rank your list, you can leave it unranked, you can have ties, you can mix ranked and unranked (say, your first three are ranked, there's a four-way tie for fourth, then eight through thirteen are ranked, then you've got twelve more "runners up"). Knock yourself out.

So is this a list of your personal favourites? Or your perception of the "best" films of the year? Or are those the same thing, for you? Doesn't matter. No formal criteria for your list, since we're not voting for anything here. I favour the posting of your own personal enthusiasms - lets other people find movies they might otherwise overlook, and ends up creating a more varied and interesting list. But like I say, it's entirely up to you. It's your list.

Should I post my list now? There are so many movies that aren't out yet, or that I haven't seen yet.
No need to wait until December 31 to post your in-progress list - indeed, I encourage you to start soon and update often, as it makes for much list-making and movie-recommending fun - and no need to finish the list by any particular date: I'll keep tallying your revisions right up to Oscar time. (Once there are a batch of lists posted here I'll start a thread for the compiled meta-list, along with the Movie City News tabulation once it's out, and I'll supply a link here.) One request: when you do come back to update your list, could you not repost it at the bottom, but rather go in to your original post and update your existing list? Thanks!

Do I need to be some kind of film critic or something?
Nope. If you are an A&F poster (or lurker, or former participant), we want your list.

We kid because we love.

Hey, are you going to ask us for a Top Ten WORST films list? I already know which film will top mine. It releases tomorrow.

Let me think about that other Top Ten list you asked for. I'll post soon. Is there any catch-all list of titles I can look over of 2006 releases?

EDIT: A list like the one I asked about is here, although I'm not sure how exhaustive it is. Click the box in the upper right to see releases from other months.

Add that to your post, by all means! Don't know if I'll tally them, but... Have at 'er!


The Movie City News list ends up being a pretty thorough listing of movies with any merit, but even that will have omissions. And takes time to develop.

Of course, you could just work from my list, above.


Good resource. Thanks!

I spent some of my lunch hour going through the titles, and here's what I've come up with.

I cheated, but every critics' list cheats in a similar way these days. Why must I be penalized? I must not.

Titles of particularly controversial/unexpected choices are in ALL CAPS:

Top 10 2006

1. Babel
2. THE BLACK DAHLIA
3. Little Children
4. United 93/World Trade Center (I expect others will make this cheat)
5. Wordplay/Akeelah and the Bee (but not this one!)
6. Little Miss Sunshine/Borat (or this one!)
7. Inside Man
8. FREEDOMLAND
9. ALL THE KING’S MEN
10. A Prairie Home Companion


(12/31/06 UPDATE: After a second viewing of A Prairie Home Companion it bumps The Proposition, which I need to see a second time. I'd like to put Children of Men on the list, but just can't bring myself to do so until I see that film a second time -- at which point, for all I know, it could move into the top half of the list. Also, I have not yet seen Pan's Labyrinth.)

(Hmmm. No foreign titles? That doesn't seem right. Of course, "Babel" might qualify, sort of. But Ron has "L'Enfant" on his list. Did I have that on last year's Top 10 list? If not, I already anticipate one revision. EDIT: No, it was on last year's list, so I'm not putting it here.)

So first out of the gate is LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE! The only film so far to appear on more than one list.

(You watch the wrong movies, Christian.)

(Well, actually, most of the titles on your list are on my To See list. So I guess maybe I... Nah.)

This is the list of films I've seen so far in 2006 that I would consider for a Top Ten list.

But I still have many, many films to see before I can publish any kind of definitive, ranked list. So they're alphabetical for now...

49 Up
A Prairie Home Companion
A Scanner Darkly
Akeelah and the Bee
Army of Shadows
Babel
Brick
Cars
Casino Royale
Children of Men
Don't Come Knocking
Flags of Our Fathers
Half Nelson
Lassie
L'Enfant
Little Children
Pan's Labyrinth
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
Stranger Than Fiction
The Departed
The Fountain
The Illusionist
The New World
The Prestige
The Proposition
The Queen
The Science of Sleep
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrads
Three Times
Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
Tsotsi
United 93



Nice, cute, and funny, but for the record, Overstreet puts The New World under the year that its wide-release theatrical cut actually came into existence and was released. It makes a whole lot more sense to consider THAT the official cut of the movie than it does to count a version that played in only two cities for a few days in order to qualify it for Oscars.

I'm under no illusions... it doesn't stand a chance of winning any awards this year or any other year. It might be the greatest film of the last twenty years, but New Line effectively spoiled things by confusing the matter. First, they rushed it for Oscar qualification, hurrying a cut into two cities that wasn't ready for wide-release. Thus, not enough people saw it for it to stand a chance of honors in 2005. And then, by successfully doing to bare minimum in order to qualify it for Oscars in 2005, New Line ensured that it wouldn't be considered for awards in 2006, when it was actually seen by the rest of the world.

Jeffrey Overstreet wrote:
: Nice, cute, and funny, but for the record, Overstreet puts The New World under the year that its
: theatrical cut actually came into existence and was released.

You mean its SECOND theatrical cut. Like it or not, the first cut that was released to a few cities on Christmas Day 2005 WAS released theatrically. (It's an interesting debate, though, whether the "redux" version of Apocalypse Now should have been eligible for the 2001 lists, or the "special edition" of Star Wars should have been eligible for the 1997 lists, etc., etc.)

[Comment deleted because this tangent is derailing the thread.]

Ah! So you have seen the light. What was it that caused you to come round to my opinion of the film?

Jeff, my reply to your post is here.

in order:

1. The Fountain

2. The Science of Sleep

3. Half Nelson

4. Lady in the Water

5. The Devil and Daniel Johnston

6. The New World

7. The Break-Up

8. United 93

9. Superman Returns

10. Blood Diamond

Honorable Mention: V for Vendetta, Joyeux Noel

I list new releases I have seen during that year, period (theater, festival, DVD, what have you).

Here are my top ten for voting purposes, but I wish to list all the films below in order to be completist.

1. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
2. Still Life
3. Oxhide
4. Colossal Youth
5. Hamaca Paraguaya
6. Climates
7. Pan's Labyrinth
8. Woman on the Beach
9. Play
10. A Scanner Darkly

Favorite new releases (alphabetically):

A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman, 2006)
A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater, 2006)
Cavite (Neill Dela Llana and Ian Gamazon, 2005)
Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa, 2006)
Climates (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2006)
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, 2005)
Dong (Jia Zhang-ke, 2006)
The Future of Food (Deborah Koons Garcia, 2005)
Hamaca Paraguaya (Paz Encina, 2006)
The House of Nina (Richard Dembo, 2005)
Iraq in Fragments (James Longley, 2006)
Iron Island (Mohammad Rasoulof, 2005)
Khadak (The Colour of Water) (Peter Brosens and Jessica Hope Woodworth, 2006)
The Moon and the Son (John Canemaker, 2005)
Offside (Jafar Panahi, 2006)
Old Joy (Kelly Reichhardt, 2006)
Oxhide (Liu Jiayin, 2005)
Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006)
Play (Alicia Scherson, 2006)
Reds (theatrical rerelease) (Warren Beatty, 1981)
Requiem (Hans Christian Schmidt, 2006)
The Road to Guantanamo (Michael Winterbottom, 2006)
Still Life (Jia Zhang-ke, 2006)
Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006)
Times and Winds (Reha Erdem, 2006)
When the Levees Broke (Spike Lee, 2006)
Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo, 2006)


Favorite older discoveries:

21-87 (Arthur Lipsett, 1964)
Abhijan (Satyajit Ray, 1962)
Army of Shadows (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969)
Barefoot Gen (Keiji Nakazawa and Mori Masaki, 1983)
Buffalo Boy (Ming Nguyen-Vo, 2004)
Casa de Lava (Pedro Costa, 1995)
Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1965)
Chronicle of a Disappearance (Elia Suleiman, 1996)
The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Daniele Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, 1968)
Documentaries by the Dardenne brothers
Documentaries by Kieslowski
Hamlet (Grigori Kozintsev, 1964)
Histoire(s) du cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard, 1988)
The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961)
Let There Be Light (John Huston, 1946)
Love (Karoly Makk, 1971)
Lucky Star (Frank Borzage, 1929)
Macario (Roberto Gavaldon, 1960)
Master of the House (Carl Dreyer, 1925)
Moonrise (Frank Borzage, 1948)
Motion Painting No. 1 (Oskar Fischinger, 1947)
Mr. Arkadin (Corinth version) (Orson Welles, 1955)
The Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis, 1963)
The Passing (Bill Viola, 1991)
Pour la suite du monde (Pierre Perrault, 1963)
The Second Circle (Alexander Sokurov, 1990)
The Story of the Fox (Ladislas Starewicz , 1939)
Threnody... (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2004)
Track of the Cat (William Wellman, 1954)
Waiting for Happiness (Abderrahmane Sissako, 2002)
Who's Camus Anyway? (Mitsuo Yanagimachi, 2005)
Winter Soldier (Winterfilm Collective, 1971)

Unordered at this point.

Decent shot at final list:
Tsotsi could well be my #1
Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
Death of Mr. Lazarescu
Lion in the House
Little Miss Sunshine
The War Tapes
A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
Babel
Sweet Land I'm sure I'll find room for this on my list
Volver

Outside shot:
Joyeux Noel
Inside Man
Thank You for Smoking
A Prairie Home Companion
An Inconvenient Truth
Brothers of the Head
Jesus Camp


Christian, you need to see Flannel Pajamas -- it could well make your #1 slot on worst list -- beating out [spoiler]Apocalypto[/spoiler]. I'd probably have those at 1 & 2 on a worst list.

It's a much less controversial decision than the ongoing New World spat, but I note that The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, which was the top film on my 2005 Top 10, has now appeared on two of the first four Top10 lists for 2006 posted in this thread! There were no alternate cuts of this movie, but it wasn't widely released until 2006. Still, I put it on last year's list.

I'm glad to see it here, though. More exposure for this excellent film.

UPDATE: Just checked my 2005 list, and Three Burials comes in at number 2, not number 1.

Just for the record, both The New World and The Three Burials... qualify for 2006 on my own list, because that is when they were released in Vancouver. Any discussion beyond that applies only if people feel compelled to go back and revise the top ten lists for earlier years, etc. I never do.

FWIW, a link to the most recent iteration of my 2005 Top 10 (plus 10 more!), which Ron asked us to submit not too long ago.

Note that in addition to Three Burials at number 2 (it was number 1 at some point, but I went back and forth between it and A History of Violence, and had seen History a second time not too long before assembling the revised list; with it fresh on my mind, I moved it back to the top slot), my Top 20 list includes Hawaii, Oslo and Three Times, which have cropped up on Ron’s and Jeffrey’s list of eligible 2006 titles.

Rather than go into the reasons for my placing these on a 2005 list, let me say that I can’t see how this debate over eligibility boils down to much—other than a hope to see others acknowledge our own tastes. That’s all well and good, I suppose, but not particularly high-minded. I’m guilty of it. It’s nice to see others picking these titles for their 2006 list, even though I count them as 2005 titles.

What I don’t get, Jeffrey, is why you would care all that much whether folks consider The New World a 2005 or 2006 film. It DID appear on some (not my) 2005 lists, right? And it WILL appear on your (and others) 2006 lists, right?

I guess my question is: Are you looking for some critical mass? Or is your concern that somehow this film will fall through the cracks? The debate over various editions of the film seems like a side issue, not your main concern, except as it relates to whether The New World shows up on many Top 10 lists as possible. Obviously, numerous critics admired this film, and have spoken very highly of it. I’m not sure what else you could hope for.

[Comment deleted because this tangent is derailing the thread.]

Jeffrey Overstreet wrote:
: I don't expect the Academy to do anything that makes that much sense, but it would be nice to see
: the film showing up in year's best lists at the end of 2006, since most critics published their lists
: last year long before they had an opportunity to see even that preliminary cut.

Oh, this I doubt. The kind of critic who would be open to this film is the kind of critic who would have caught the early awards-season screenings, like the one that I attended here in Vancouver in the first week of December. And quite a few critics were including the film on their top-ten lists in early December.

Are you saying critics who DID have the opportunity to put it on their 2005 lists should give the film ANOTHER opportunity this year?

[Comment deleted because this tangent is derailing the thread.]

Doug, I haven't heard of these. Would any of them would be up my alley, and, if so, is there any chance I can get my hands on 'em? Also, I didn't realize you were so fond of Renaissance. I was put off by the style of the film, so I didn't catch it when it played in Knoxville.

Jeffrey Overstreet wrote:
: I was under the impression that most major mainstream critics, unless they happened to be lucky
: enough to travel to New York or L.A. during that fleeting awards-qualification run, didn't see the film
: in time last year. And I believe that's why it showed up on so few lists in the U.S.

Well, remember that discussion we had at CT Movies? It turns out the film DID show to critics in Chicago, as evidenced by the fact that it picked up a couple of prizes from the Chicago Film Critics Circle (or whatever the group's exact name is), but few or none of the CT Movies critics who live in the Chicago area were all that motivated to go catch the screening in the first place, hence the movie never really had a chance for CT Movies' 2005 top ten list.

: Like I keep saying, there was no Seattle press screening until mid-January . . .

FWIW, I find it hard to believe that Vancouver critics saw it as early as December 5 and Seattle critics didn't. I wonder, is there some sort of "Seattle Film Critics Circle" that might have had a screening which you weren't invited to? (I know it's happened a couple times already that I hear about local screenings after the fact, because members of the "Vancouver Film Critics Circle" were invited and I wasn't.)

: It makes no sense to me to judge THAT film against the movies of 2005.

Hey, like I say, my own top ten list is limited to films that open in Vancouver in 2006, so I've got no beef with you applying a similar principle to your own top ten list.

That's funny Darren, Renaissance isn't on my list! (I feared it would be a case of style over substance and never read anything that suggested otherwise.)

Thanks for asking about these:

The Moon and the Son was just released on the DVD A Collection of 2005 Academy Award Nominated Short Films. Canemaker is a giant in the field of animation, both as an artist and as a scholar, and this is a very touching portrait imagining a difficult but healing conversation he might have had with his father, with whom he otherwise had a troubled relationship. For someone like me with father issues, it was very moving, but I also found the hand-drawn animation stunningly creative.

Of all the films in that list, Darren, I can say with confidence that you'd love Oxhide, another intimate family portrait made by a Chinese film student and her parents in a series of late nights after all of them came home from work/school. It's apparently a fictional work, with each person playing an imagined role, but it evokes a great deal of emotional honesty through its oblique and meditative compositions capturing minute, quotidien details in their family home. MK2 in France was supposed to release a DVD...I'll have to check on it. Cinema Scope called it "the most important Chinese film of the past several years."

Cavite has been released on DVD here, and it's a surprisngly tense and effective thriller made by two Filipino Americans who devised a plot (a terrorist directs someone around a city via cell phone) that would allow them to film the movie by themslves by walking through the rarely-seen poor areas and slums of the city of Cavite in the Philippines. It's a true lesson in economy of means that sheds light on an ongoing political conflict in the region, and it offers an unusually compelling ethical dilemma as well.

Play is a wonderful, magical realist film set in Santiago, Chile that has a great feel for urban loneliness and the touches of romance and absurdity that arise from living among millions of people in a crowded, modern environment. It's an compassionate, funny, formally creative film with a strong sense of place and a notably atmospheric score. When I think of this movie, I smile. It won Best New Narrative Filmmaker at the Tribeca film fest. It's also the best-looking film shot in DV I saw all year.

The House of Nina is a more straightforward but very solid dramatic narrative film (sorely ripe for a US audience) starring the dependable Agnes Jaoui as the head of a true-to-life French orphange during WWII that cared for French Jewish children; later it begins to house Eastern European Jews returning from recently liberated concentration camps, and as you might expect there is a lot of psychological scarring on their part, which creates a lot of interpersonal tensions in a time when cultural rebirth is crucial. It was a very personal project for the director (Richard Dembo), who died during post-production, and it's the kind of intelligent, emotionally honest, historically interesting film Miramax/Wienstein should be distributing but hasn't in a long time. Alas, no US distrib or DVD yet (and I don't think the French DVD has English subs).

Oops. I misread Requiem on your list. Sorry about that. Oxhide sounds fantastic. From the Cinema Scope review:

Yeah, that has me written all over it. I've joked about this before, but I'm beginning to think that my ideal film would consist of a single, static shot. I need to track this one down.

Your description of Play reminds me of another South American film from a year or two ago -- I think it was called Whisky. It earned a lot of comparisons to Kaurismaki, which seemed about right to me. I'm also intrigued by your mention of Play's score. I think I prefer films to use only diegetic sound, but when a score is used, I like it to be, as you say, "atmospheric" rather than thematic or melodic. I can't imagine Dead Man without Neil Young's feedback or L'Intrus without that guitar loop.

Thanks for the tips. I'll probably start tweaking my year-end lists in a week or so.

I've heard that this one fits that criterion.

Since I don't see nearly as many as most of you, I'm going to throw out what I think are my top two:

Brick
Everything is Illuminated
The Baxter

Totsi and
Thumbsucker weren't bad either

I suppose some of these came out in 05, but that's what I remember from what I watched this year.

Adding: And, yeah, I know that's more than two

Updated 1/23:

1. Pan's Labyrinth
2. Sophie Scholl
3. United 93
4. L' Enfant
5. The Three Burials of Melquiedes Estrada
6. The Fountain
7. The Science of Sleep
8. Brick
9. Cars
10. Inside Man

Honorable Mention:
The Prestige
Children of Men
Casino Royale
The New World
Cache
Thank You For Smoking
Don't Come Knocking
Citizen Dog
The Aura
Babel
Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos
The Lost City
Wordplay
The World's Fastest Indian

Older films I've discovered this year:
The Great Escape
Ran
Goodfellas
Taxi Driver
City Lights
Leon (The Professional)
Pickpocket
Safe
Code Unknown
Paris, Texas
Voyage to Italy
Stromboli
The Flowers of St. Francis
Lamerica
Rosetta
La Promesse
Nine Queens
Labyrinth
Cat People
I Walked With a Zombie

The camera's static gaze in this film is particularly effective, both in what it frames and what it doesn't. There's a fun scene where the father (a struggling businessman) pesters his daughter to redesign his sales flyer by looking over her shoulder at a computer screen and attempting to talk/order her through software he's clearly unfamiliar with. Yet the camera stays fixed on the printer the entire time; we only glean the scene through their dialogue as they argue about the interface, text, placement, font sizes, etc. Eventually, the scene ends with the flyer emerging from the printer so that we finally see the subject/culmination of their conversation.


With its constant visual invention and tone poetics, I'd compare Play more to a warm and slightly surrealist Godard, if you can imagine it, although there is a genuine sense of grief and loss that runs beneath the entire film. The Evening Class interviewed the director here and I think Scherson is someone to watch in the coming years.

I agree with you about music, too. One of the reasons I love Bernard Herrmann's scores is that they are all about mood and psychology rather than melody; you don't hum Herrmann scores for weeks on end like so many pop-y contemporary scores. The other film in my list with a standout score is Times and Winds, which uses Arvo Pärt very effectively--I asked you and Girish about him at TIFF, if you'll recall.



Looking forward to it!

Crow, thanks for the heads up on The Aura here and in your SLIFF coverage. (Boy, do I wish that was around when I lived near St. Louis.) It's playing in Los Angeles at the moment and your praise definitely makes me want to check it out.

And what a fine list of older films, many of which are personal favorites for me. Although I suspect I'd love Kings of the Road if I could ever track it down, my favorite Wenders movie at present is Paris, Texas. Such a beautiful, empathic, character-driven film.

A disappointing year for new releases, but a fantastic year for expanding my film horizons overall.

New releases:

1) When the Levees Broke
2) Hawaii, Oslo
3) Thank You for Smoking
4) Water
5) Borat
6) Little Miss Sunshine
7) Prarie Home Companion
8) Lady in the Water

Discoveries:

- the films of Akira Kurosawa (21 films this year)
- the films of Francois Truffaut (8 films)
- Buffalo Boy
- Tokyo Olympiad
- My Life to Live
- Masculin/Feminin
- Hiroshima Mon Amour
- Passion of Joan of Arc
- Kings and Queen
- Safe
- Birth
- Grizzly Man
- White Diamond
- Reel Paradise
- Sunset Boulevard
- Shakespeare Behind Bars
- Tampopo
- Double Suicide

(update: geesh, how could I have forgotten Spike Lee's documentary?!? Your post, Ken, was an apt reminder for me.)

Perhaps you need to check out live theatre.






Crow, my man.


Crazy! I just re-watched TAXI DRIVER last week, and it went from "I don't see what's the big deal" to "Wow!" The three Rossellinis are sitting on my living room table right now. ROSETTA and LA PROMESSE became huge favourites within the past year or so, and the two Tourneurs this summer. Kind of creepy. (Am I you?)

Andrew, I didn't know you'd also discovered Masculin/Feminin this year. I watched it for the first time a couple weeks ago and loved every minute of it. By coincidence, a few hours after watching it, I had dinner with Caveh Zahedi (of "The Holy Moment" in Waking Life fame), who consistently cites Godard as his biggest influence. I was surprised to learn that he'd never seen all of Masculin/Feminin, because the scene where Jean-Pierre Leaud interviews Miss Nineteen is the most Zahedi-like moment I've ever seen in a Godard film. I love the way that "documentary" interview is doubled by similar "fictional" interviews throughout the film.


I think I asked you this same question when we talked about Pärt at TIFF, but I can't remember your answer: Have you seen Reygadas' Japon? It ends with an amazing, seven-minute tracking shot that is scored by Pärt's "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten." It's one of those film moments that is so remarkably executed, it forces you to reevaluate your opinion of the entire film that preceded it.

Come to think of it, my favorite movie music moment of 2006 might have been the three or four minutes of pounding feedback that opens Fantasma. Actually, I would have preferred another thirty minutes of that to Alonso's film.

That's so great that you met with Zahedi, Darren. I'm so behind in my blog reading, but I hope you posted something about it?

I haven't seen Japon, but I will if you recommend it. I was worried about what was reported as rampant animal cruelty, which I can be really sensitive about--but maybe it was overplayed? After our conversation, I checked out IMDb and noticed Pärt's music adorns some of Godard's late films, and that fits my recollection of the few I've seen.

Speaking of Godard, I really have to see Masculin/Feminin, and since UCLA is programming a Godard retrospective this spring after their Rossellini series, I expect I'll catch it then. (And Rialto's Two or Three Things I Know About Her plays here in a couple weeks.) As I suggested above, seeing an unexpectedly sold-out screening of Histoire(s) du cinéma last spring was a high point of my viewing year. The Gaumont French DVD keeps getting delayed...and delayed...I'll believe it when I see it.



Indeed--it was pretty derivative of Tsai's film, wasn't it? There's a difference between tribute and bald reproduction!

Andrew, it's amazing that you've seen 20 Kurosawa pictures this year. Do you have five favorites?

::Andrew, I didn't know you'd also discovered Masculin/Feminin this year. I watched it for the first time a couple weeks ago and loved every minute of it.

How cool - I just watched it a few weeks ago myself, and was captivated by it. Yes, this was my year to major in Kurosawa and minor in the French New Wave. I hope you'll post more about your adventures with Godard; he's an artist I can envision myself studying in the future also.

As for 'Masculin/Feminin,' I really need to see it again. On first viewing, I simply found myself enjoying the ride, with its shocks, humor, and beauty (regarding the latter, if there's ever been a more charming onscreen laugh than when Madeleine is first flirting with Paul, I have yet to see it). Maybe on the second viewing, I'll actually understand a bit of what I'm watching.

Watching the extras, it was fascinating to learn a bit about Godard's methods in this film. After studying Kurosawa and learning of his obsessive attention to every detail of scenery and acting, Godard's improvisatory technique was a striking contrast.

re: Japon, as I recall there's a hunting scene fairly early in the film that I may have fast-forwarded through. It didn't leave much of an impression on me, though, so I feel pretty safe in recommending the film. I don't know if you'll like Reygadas or not. If nothing else, rent the DVD just to watch the interview with him. He talks at length about Bresson and Tarkovsky. Even if you don't care for his films, I'm sure you'll enjoy him. (Rob Davis sent me a transcript of an interview that he did with Reygadas when he was promoting Battle in Heaven. I can't remember if it was ever posted/published or not.)

I haven't written about my evening with Caveh, and I kind of doubt I will. We spent most of our time talking about our marriages, actually. There's something about his personality that makes one want to speak intimately. I now understand how he's able to get his friends and acquaintances to reveal so much about themselves on camera.

He did have some fun Godard-related gossip from a friend of his who used to produce Chris Marker's films, but I'll keep that stuff off of the public forum.

Preliminary List (in no order):

Brick
V For Vendetta
The Prestige
The Departed
The Proposition
Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest
A Scanner Darkly
The Black Dahlia
Science of Sleep
The Fountain

Other possible contenders: The Puffy Chair, United 93, Inside Man

::Andrew, it's amazing that you've seen 20 Kurosawa pictures this year. Do you have five favorites?

Wow, that's hard to answer. This is very prone to change, with repeat viewings:

1) 'Seven Samurai' - I now know why this is in so many All Time Top Ten lists. Incredible in every way, with a grand vision for social change as well.

2) 'Ran' - Amazing how Kurosawa adapted 'King Lear.' The central battle scene is breathtaking and horrifying, as it should be.

3) and 4) 'Ikiru' and 'Rhapsody in August' (I'm not sure which I rank higher) - the former is well-recognized here for its greatness, while the latter film's depiction of history and its trauma across three Japanese generations is terrific (with much to say about spirituality and reconciliation, to boot)

5) either 'Red Beard' or 'Hidden Fortress'

I'm struck, though, by the consistent greatness of art and philosophical commentary across the 20 films I've seen. There hasn't been a dud in the bunch, and each one has scenes and characters that made a significant impact on me. Examples are too many to name - the detectives' evening chat in 'Stray Dog,' the wash of grays and black in the painting-like landscape of 'Throne of Blood,' the evolving use of cloud symbolism in his final films, etc. - so I'd better stop now. Thanks for asking, though - this personal retrospective has been an inspiring journey for me.

John Podhoretz:

The inside money has the Oscar going to Dreamgirls, a musical that opens Friday. But a movie like United 93 scrambles the whole award business going in, because it is unquestionably not only the most worthy film from a high-minded Hollywood point of view but it's actually the best. The problem is that people have real difficulty getting themselves to see it. That's not a problem once the movie begins, however, because it is so gripping and so un-exploitative.

--A few years ago, Jeffrey picked “Stevie” as best film of the year, and when I posted that “In America” was my choice (I think these were released the same year), Jeffrey wrote that he could’ve selected any one of his three or four top contenders as year’s Number 1 film.

I feel that way about my list this year. I’m surprised to see “United 93” coming in at #4. It’s such an amazing film. But “The Black Dahlia” was a different experience for me, an ecstatic work of cinematic showiness that left me helpless to whatever flaws that movie might have. “Little Children” was simply the most enjoyable film about sexual sin I’ve ever sat through, and anyone who’s seen it, or read the book, knows what I mean by that: The film isn’t prurient; its narration is the key, I think, “looking down” on the foolish behavior of all involved, and yet the movie ends not with cynical judgment, but with compassion. It’s a beautiful movie. Then there’s “Babel.” Maybe it tops my list by virtue of being the most recently viewed film of the top 4, but I suspect there’s more to it than that. That movie took me places the others didn’t, and challenged my political and social views without making me feel like a heel. So there it sits, at Number 1.

But as with Jeffrey’s list from a few years ago, I could’ve gone with any of those four films atop my list. Great movies, all.

Ron: Note that I've changed my "Worst" list to add "The Da Vinci Code" at #2. And a big Number Two it was. Can't believe I overlooked it in my earlier post.

RON'S TOP FILMS OF 2006 (SO FAR)
Jan 20
1 Son Of Man
2 Pan's Labyrinth
3 L'Enfant
4 Sophie Scholl
5 Little Children
6 History Boys
7 The Queen
8 The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
9 Requiem
10 Ushpizin
11 Hawaii, Oslo
12 United 93
13 The Painted Veil
14 Little Miss Sunshine
15 49 Up
16 Perfume
17 Superman Returns
21 Children Of Men
21 The Departed
21 The Proposition
21 Tsotsi
21 The Edukators
21 Happy Feet
21 Apocalypto
21 The King

*

Dec 30
1 Son Of Man
2 L'Enfant
3 Sophie Scholl
4 The History Boys
5 The Queen
6 The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
7 Requiem
8 Hawaii Oslo
9 Ushpizin
10 49 Up
11 Little Miss Sunshine
12 Superman Returns
13 The Departed

Dec 17
1 Son Of Man
2 Sophie Scholl
3 L’Enfant
4 Requiem
5 The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
6 Hawaii, Oslo
7 The Queen
8 Little Miss Sunshine
9 Ushpizin
10 49 Up
Runners Up
Tsotsi
Superman Returns
The Edukators


OTHER FILMS WHICH BECAME FAVOURITES IN 2006,
BUT WHICH IN NO WAY QUALIFY FOR A 2006 LIST
Joe Vs. The Volcano
Ryan
Born Into Brothels
Cat People (Tourneur)
I Walked With A Zombie
Metropolitan / Barcelona / The Last Days Of Disco
Big Country
Stop Making Sense
Nicholas Nickleby (RSC)
The Neon Bible
Grizzly Man
A River Runs Through It

The first compilation of people's Faves Lists-In-Progress is up. You'll find it at the top of this thread. Sure to be some significant shifts once the unranked lists get ranked, and as more people get opportunity to see all the strong late-release films. I'll keep updating until the Oscars.

If you haven't started a list, I encourage you to join the fun: let us know what you've loved this year, and update it as often as you like.

If you've posted a list, feel free to go back to your original post at any time and make changes.

Making a list, and checking it often,

Ronta Claus

I'll be doing an update to our cumulative list on Jan 1 or 2, so if anybody's got a list-in-progress to post, or an update to what they've already posted, bring it on!

Ron

Top ten films I saw this year, either in theaters or on DVD, in alphabetical order.

Au Hasard Balthazar
Capote
Joyeux Noel
My Brilliant Career (finally released on DVD--it's still great!)
The New World
The Notorious Bettie Page
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
Stranger Than Fiction
Tsotsi
The "Up" Series (7 UP-49 UP)

Also rans--mostly children's movies:
Hoodwinked
Lady in the Water
Night at the Museum
Over the Hedge
Shall We Dance? (Masayuki Suo, 1996)
The Story of the Weeping Camel
Summer Magic (Disney, 1963--pure childhood nostalgia, plus--Burl Ives!)

The final list.

Darrel's Dozen:
1. Tsotsi
2. Lion in the House
3. Letters From Iwo Jima
4. Little Miss Sunshine
5. Volver
6. Double feature: The War Tapes & My Country, My Country
7. Death of Mr. Lazarescu
8. Double feature: Sweet Land & The Secret Life of Words
9. Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
10. Three Burials of Mequiades Estrada
11. Pan's Labyrinth
12. Babel



Worth mention even if they don't make the list - which they still might (alphabetical):
Children of Men
The Departed
An Inconveneint Truth
Joyeux Noel
The Proposition
Thank You for Smoking

Grade for the year: B+

Favorite discoveries or revisits from past years:
A Time for Burning
Hiroshima Mon Amour
Walkabout
Boys of Baraka
What's Eating Gilbert Grape?

I've made a few adjustments to the bottom half of my list. The Proposition, formerly #10, is now off the list, due chiefly to my not having seen it two times. A Prairie Home Companion, which I liked quite a bit the second time I saw it earlier this month, takes that last spot, and the bottom half of my list has been reordered somewhat. The chief beneficiary: Spike Lee's Inside Man, which deserves more end-of-the-year attention, IMHO.

That End of the Year Post

1. Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006)
2. Still Life / Dong (Jia Zhang-ke, 2006)
3. Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa, 2006)
4. Hamaca Paraguaya (Paz Encina, 2006)
5. Bamako (Abderrahmane Sissako, 2006)
6. Climates (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2006)
7. Half Nelson (Ryan Fleck, 2006)
8. A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater, 2006)
9. In Between Days (So Yong Kim, 2006)
10. Schuss! (Nicolas Rey, 2005)
11. I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (Tsai Ming-liang, 2006)
12. Stranger Than Fiction (Marc Forster, 2006)
13. Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo, 2006)
14. Flandres (Bruno Dumont, 2006)
15. The Queen (Stephen Frears, 2006)

We'll come out with our list before the Academy Awards - but these are the films we gave 4 stars to (some are released earlier and we just now reviewed them)


Akeelah and the Bee (4 Stars - 2006)
An Inconvenient Truth (4 Stars - 2006)
End of the Spear (4 Stars - 2006)
Joyeux Noel "Merry Christmas" (4 Stars - 2006)
Nativity Story, The (4 Stars - 2006)
One Night with the King (4 Stars - 2006)
Pursuit of Happyness, The (4 Stars - 2006)
The Ten Commandments - 50th Anniversary Collection (4 Stars - 2006)
United 93 (4 Stars - 2006)
Ushpizin (4 Stars - 2005)

Denny

Darren, I followed the link to your Sept. 10 summary of Climates, curious to know more about this film. I'd read some less than enthusiastic comments about it on festival blogs this past year, but I'm a huge fan of Distant and suspect I'd like, if not love, Climates.

You concluded your post on Climates with this:

After I get home, I hope to give more thought and time to Climates, which, like Atom Egoyan's Calendar, also uses photography and ancient religious architecture to raise questions about memory and national identity. (That last phrase is such an art film cliche [or maybe an art film criticism cliche], but I'm confident it's true in this case, and it will make this film fun to write about and discuss.)

Nearly four months after writing that, do you have anything to add? I'll keep your comments in mind when/if I ever get a chance to see Climates.

I'm really eager to see Climates again, Christian. After TIFF I watched Ceylan's earlier films, which helped contextualize it a bit. Doug and I have been debating this since September, but I see his first three features as being so heavily influenced by Tarkovsky that I wasn't really sure what Ceylan had to say as a filmmaker (I love all three of the films, regardless). Climates, I think, is a step out from under the shadow of his influences. In many ways it's a more traditional film, both in narrative and form. There are fewer of the magical Tarkovsky-like flourishes, and, photography scenes aside, it's not so self-referential. In other words, it's not about making art or the struggles of the artist like his earlier films (and Tarkovsky's) are. I wasn't blown away by Climates the way I was by Distant, but I think that's because it isn't the film I was expecting. (Also, the lead character, played by Ceylan, is a real bastard, which makes entering the film emotionally more difficult.) The more I've thought about Climates, though, and the more I've discussed it with others, the higher my opinion of it has become.

re: Egoyan's Calendar . . . I still think that's a good angle to pursue here. It makes me really want to see Egoyan's latest, which Rosenbaum has raved about but which Egoyan apparently has no plans to distribute. It's another meta-home movie, and is being compared to Calendar.

Interestingly, Filmbrain mentions in his Climates post about how the Ceylans had just had a child shortly before filming, so I seemed to make sense within the comparison to the Egoyans' Calendar being so close to the birth of their own son. I do think they're tapping into something of the same vein in terms of transforming a relationship from something more romantic and ephemeral to something more enduring and concrete...architecture as a metaphor for "legacy" if you will.

Oops! To keep in line with the top ten, I guess I should post mine.

Paprika (Satoshi Kon, 2006)
Días de campo (Days in the Country, Raoul Ruiz, 2004)
Coeurs (Private Fears in Public Places, Alain Resnais, 2006)
Iklimer (Climates, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2006)
Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006)
Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo, 2006)
Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006)
L'Enfer (Danis Tanovic, 2005)
Honor de Cavallería (Quixotic, Albert Serra, 2006)
Batalla en el cielo (Battle in Heaven, Carlos Reygadas, 2005)


Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order):

Bamako (Abderrahmane Sissako, 2006)
Belle Toujours (Manoel de Oliveira, 2006)
Camden 28 (Anthony Giacchino, 2006)
Iraq in Fragments (James Longley, 2006)
Kinetta (Giorgos Lanthimos, 2005)
Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006)
Saratan (Ernest Abdyjaparov, 2005)
United 93 (Paul Greengrass, 2006)
Unser täglich Brot (Our Daily Bread, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, 2005)
When the Levees Broke (Spike Lee, 2006)

Thanks, acquarello--I'm so excited to see the Kon, Ruiz, and Serra films (I'll get to see the latter next week). Inland Empire is showing here in L.A., but my track record with Lynch has been so spotty at best that I haven't made room in my schedule for it. Knowing me, would you recommend it?

I'm also undecided on Our Daily Bread, which I appreciated for its formal austerity, but it almost seemed too schematic for me. Certainly, the slaughter scenes were excruciating to behold, but I'm not sure how else its form improves on its content. Did you see Fast Food Nation?


I'm unfamiliar with these--any further comments?

Darren, I'm kicking myself for having missed In Between Days--did you see it at TIFF?

FWIW, the thread on Fast Food Nation, which includes some comments on Our Daily Bread, is here.