[Ron Reed]

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.

This post has been edited by Ron: 20 January 2007 - 01:09 PM

[Christian]

Overstreet goes by whatever year THE NEW WORLD will have the best chance of garnering votes

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.

This post has been edited by Christian: 07 December 2006 - 01:04 PM

[Ron Reed]

Hey, are you going to ask us for a Top Ten WORST films list?

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

Is there any catch-all list of titles I can look over of 2006 releases?

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.

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.

Good resource. Thanks!

[Christian]

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.)

This post has been edited by Christian: 31 December 2006 - 04:22 PM

[Ron Reed]

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.)

[Overstreet]

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

Overstreet goes by whatever year THE NEW WORLD will have the best chance of garnering votes.

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.

This post has been edited by Jeffrey Overstreet: 01 January 2007 - 12:43 PM

[Peter T Chattaway]

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.)

[Overstreet]

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

This post has been edited by Jeffrey Overstreet: 09 December 2006 - 12:06 PM

[Ron Reed]

Overstreet goes by whatever year THE NEW WORLD will have the best chance of garnering votes.

I'm under no illusions... it doesn't stand a chance of winning any awards this year or any other year.

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

[Peter T Chattaway]

Jeff, my reply to your post is here.

[Spoon]

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

This post has been edited by Spoon: 31 December 2006 - 01:45 PM

[Doug C]

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)

This post has been edited by Doug C: 10 January 2007 - 05:20 PM

[Darrel Manson]

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

. I'd probably have those at 1 & 2 on a worst list.

This post has been edited by Darrel Manson: 07 December 2006 - 03:15 PM

[Christian]

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.

This post has been edited by Christian: 07 December 2006 - 03:55 PM

[Peter T Chattaway]

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.

[Christian]

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.

This post has been edited by Christian: 07 December 2006 - 05:39 PM

[Overstreet]

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

This post has been edited by Jeffrey Overstreet: 09 December 2006 - 12:06 PM

[Peter T Chattaway]

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?

[Overstreet]

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

This post has been edited by Jeffrey Overstreet: 09 December 2006 - 12:05 PM

[Darren H]

Cavite (Neill Dela Llana and Ian Gamazon, 2005)
The House of Nina (Richard Dembo, 2005)
The Moon and the Son (John Canemaker, 2005)
Oxhide (Liu Jiayin, 2005)
Play (Alicia Scherson, 2006)

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.