The Bestest 2006
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The Bestest 2006
Filmmage
Writing a list like this and producing it while still relevant becomes more and more difficult every year. Something like 75% of the films on this list are released either in the last quarter of the year or spend less than a few weeks on a small screen before the long haul until a DVD release. Sure strategically it makes sense to release them so that there is still a fresh Academy Awards buzz about them, but that means that there is a theatrical wasteland for much of the rest of the year. Nevertheless, there were some wonderful films this year the best of which should be included below.
1. Lady Vengeance/Oldboy/Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance - Dir. Chan-Wook Park 
“Lady Vengeance” is the final installment of one of the finest, most tragically overlooked film trilogies of all time. As can be deduced by the titles, these films focus quite specifically on revenge. But unlike most films that attempt to analyze the morality of revenge, these films expose layer after layer of complicated but accessible plot to allow the viewer to better understand and empathize. With this year “Lady Vengeance,” director Park focuses on a beautiful woman, just released from a 13 year prison sentence for a crime she didn’t commit. Although unoriginal sounding, this film is drenched in beautiful colors which seem to mimic perfectly the pace and texture of a film which drives deep into the recesses of the human soul. Sure there is blood, and violence, but it never looked so good or seemed so thoughtful.
2. Babel - Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu (Brad Pitt, Gael Bernal Garcia, Cate Blanchette)
“Babel” is a relentless, throbbing, and sometimes too powerful film. Like both earlier collaborations between director and writer “Amores Perros” and “21 Grams”) the world is tough place, filled with more pain and hardships than we care to acknowledge willingly. In “Babel” the three interconnected plots all start and end in a puddle of frenetic emotion, that all stem from an accidental shooting in Morocco. This is a film literally and metaphorically about collateral damage, and how as humans we are always in someone’s indirect line of fire. This film plucks us cleanly out of insular safe environments and drops us abruptly into the real world of chaos where ideas like “fair” lose their meaning. “Babel” is a ten-round, heavyweight bout where everyone ends up bruised and bloody, but with slight smile on their face at the end.
3. Half Nelson - Dir. Ryan Fleck (Ryan Gosling, Shareeka Epps)
Like a much harsher and oddly thematically similar film to “Akeelah and the Bee,” “Half Nelson” is another tragically unseen jewel unfairly boxed out of most theaters in 2006. Like his breakthrough performance in “The Believer” Ryan Gosling is an enormous force onscreen, this time playing a crack-addicted inner city teacher with a genuine desire to make a difference. Both Gosling and newcomer Epps, stumble into each other’s lives, functioning as life preservers on the gritty urban streets that tend to mostly ensure hard landings. This film is both as bleak and uplifting as a film can be.
4. The Queen - Dir. Stephen Frears (Helen Mirren, James Cromwell, Michael Sheen)
Helen Mirren loves playing Queens (at least five on film according to imdb), and like almost every role she endeavors upon, this one seems up there with her best. With “The Queen” the most interesting aspect of her character is less the plot about her dealing with the death of Diana, but more an examination of the woman herself. What director Frears portrays here is a refreshing down-to-earth person, most comfortable driving an old Range Rover wearing a well worn hunting jacket, and protecting the private grief of her grandchildren. Mirren is royalty in her own right and with this film she continues to make her case.
5. Little Children - Dir. Todd Fields (Kate Winslet, Jennifer Connelly)
Like a brighter, almost comedic version of his debut film “In The Bedroom,” “Little Children” probes that well-traveled highway of dysfunctional suburbia that seems dangerously on the verge of creative and cinematic bankruptcy. But this film is yet another fresh original look at the often excruciating monotony of parenthood, the cruelty and cliquishness of adult white, upper middle class suburbia, and the rather new role of the stay-at-home-dad. This is a near perfect compulsively watchable look into the lives of adults living in suspended adolescence.
6. Little Miss Sunshine - Dir. Dayton/Farris (Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette)
Like its name, this film is an easy-breezy, clever indie dramedy ostensibly about a road trip to a children’s beauty pageant. But below the surface this is another biting look at familial dysfunction and disappointment. In addition to having one of the best ensemble casts of the year, and being the feel-good low budget breakaway, the film is exceptional in the sense that each of the six primary characters is an expertly observed, perfectly crafted, and profoundly believable in an odd way.
7. Old Joy - Dir. Kelly Reichardt (Daniel London, Will Oldham)
I am always going to be predisposed to small, talky, meandering and largely plotless films featuring men about my age struggling with the realities of adult life. “Old Joy” like films like “Naked,” “Kicking and Screaming,” and “High Fidelity” largely puts a microphone up to a few characters and lets them wax poetic, often in unchecked streams of consciousness. “Old Joy” drops two friends into the Oregon woods, with a bag of weed, and a mountain of distance that has grown between them over the years. This voyage, like all great voyages, mostly unfolds in their minds, with nothing but memories left to bond them anymore. Accompanied by the near perfect score from Yo La Tengo, this film is a short 76 minute journey that says an incredible amount in a short time.
8. Volver - Dir. Pedro Almadovar (Penelope Cruz)
Although nothing is ever as it seems in an Almodovar film, it almost always seems like his next film could be his best. With “Volver” he approaches his best work, awash with his trademark colors and equally colorful characters, and told in a more linear way than most of his earlier work which makes easier to enjoy. But the film really belongs to Penelope Cruz, whose remarkable beauty is celebrated every time the camera finds her, often making almost comically cinematic lascivious pauses. It is also wonderful to see what a controlled and accomplished actress she is in her native tongue. With “Volver,” another Almodovar homage to women, he has created a noir ghost story as easy on the eyes as it is on the heart.
9. The Proposition - Dir. John Hillcoat (Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone)
This film is a parched and perfect outback Western that mingles Peckinpah with Cormac McCarthy under a sun soaked Aussie dessert. The debut screenplay by the legendary singer Nick Cave pits a gaunt and stoic Guy Pearce against the explosive Ray Winstone in a morally ambiguous Catch 22. Pearce is asked to kill one brother in order to save another. As such, the film asks us to think about whether or not the people that seem the most evil really are. The film looks wonderful, with cameras blowing across the dusty desert and filling each character with a kind of brittleness that brings everything together.
10. United 93 - Dir. Paul Greengrass (JJ Johnson, Polly Adams, Cheyenne Jackson)
There is no doubt that this will be a difficult film to watch. But there is also nothing Hollywood or glamorous or exploitative about the film either. In many ways it represents the power and versatility of the film medium more than any other movie this year. Everyone who will see it already knows what happened to United 93, but the details are incredibly imagined and the story is so focused and specific that, in a way, it makes it easier to watch. In “United 93″ director Paul Greengrass just kind of lets the film roll, in a quasi-documentary way, making no judgments but just letting the story unwind for itself so you can take it all in with just the right amount of distance.
11. The Last King of Scotland - Dir. Kevin MacDonald (Forest Whitaker, James McAvoy)
A film like this with a sprawling topical story and a performance as obviously career defining as Forest Whitaker’s Edi Amin, is destined for top ten glory. Although one could argue that too much of the story focuses not on Amin but on the young Scottish doctor who becomes his aid, but perhaps the raw power of Whitaker might have been too intense to watch uninterrupted for two hours. Ultimately this film could have been much longer to fill in more of the holes around his rise and fall, but nevertheless this debut directorial feature is a marvel.
12. The Departed - Dir. Martin Scorsese (Leo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson)
Of the many great films that Scorsese has made over the years, “The Departed” ranks right up there with “Casino” as the easiest to enjoy without the pressure to admire. Even though the cast is so good they could probably make curling look interesting (surprisingly the most memorable performance might come from Mark Wahlberg), and the adapted plot is largely unoriginal, the film drifts slickly in enough interesting directions that the film is over long before you want it to be despite its 2.5 hours. The master is certainly hitting a second stride.
13. Letter’s From Iwo Jima - Dir. Clint Eastwood (Ken Watanabe)
This is a film intended primarily for those people who genuinely love war films. There is very little dialogue, and when there is it is terse and subtitled. But the visual style of the film, almost no color except the blood red of the Japanese flag and the occasional explosion of human flesh, helps reinforce the shades of gray that wars often symbolize. This is an anti-war epic in the truest but non-preachiest sense of the word. The Japanese men, mostly recruits from the civilian world can sense almost from the first frame that they are literally digging their own grave while hollowing out the tunnels of Iwo Jima. Like most great war films the enemy doesn’t look like the enemy once you get to know them. Eastwood gracefully reveals the humanity these men, and in so doing sheds another light on the futility of war.
14. Thank You For Smoking - Dir. Jason Reitman (Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello)
Books this funny don’t usually translate very well to the screen. But Aaron Eckhart single-handedly carries the spirit and irony of the film on his head. Eckhart plays a fast talking, smart-assed lobbyist capable of refuting even the most rational arguments, while making you scratch your head incapable of diffusing his odd puzzling moral compass. This is light-hearted, laugh-out-loud stuff, which is so crisply executed it almost feels like it is over before it even began. Given that the book was written fifteen years ago, it is interesting to think about how the movie would have played then - in that gilded age when you could still smoke inside? I should think it is somehow much funnier today.
15. Apocalypto - Dir. Mel Gibson (Rudy Youngblood, Dalia Hernandez)
I’m not sure how this film got here but it did. In some ways “Apocalypto” was the most fun I had in the theater all year. Sure there is a ridiculous amount of blood, gore, and savagery throughout the film, and like pop-schlock like “24″ you must suspend reality in order buy into the sheer athleticism and death-defying resilience of the film’s Jack Bauer-esque protagonist. But from the very first moments and relentlessly through the final scene, this film races faster than any action movie this year. Like all of us Gibson is a flawed human, but if you are able to look beyond the headlines you will see the fruits of a truly gifted filmmaker.
Once again, very much worth your while, but one most draw a line somewhere:
The Devil and Daniel Johnston - Dir. Jeff Feuerzeig (Daniel Johnston)
The Road to Guantanamo - Dir. Michael Winterbottom (Riz Ahmed, Farhad Harun)
Pan’s Labyrinth- Dir. Guillermo del Toro (Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú)
L’Enfant - Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (Jérémie Renier, Déborah François)
Art School Confidential - Dir. Terry Zwigoff (Max Minghella, Sophia Myles, Matt Keeslar)
Borat - Dir. Larry Charles (Sacha Baron Cohen)
Brick - Dir. Rian Johnson (Lucas Haas, Joseph Gordon-Levitt)
Clean - Dir. Olivier Assayes (Maggie Cheung, Nick Nolte)
Sherrybaby - Dir. Laurie Collyer (Maggie Gyllanhaal, Giancarlo Esposito)
The Illusionist - Dir. Neil Burger (Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti)