Year in Review: 2006
A year late, you say? Yes, it is. But I figured that a list like this would be good for a few reasons. Distance with these kinds of things is a good tactic. So often, we film lovers get caught up in the media blitz that accompanies the month of December as awards are given out from various critics’ groups and nominations for every award are announced. Predicting the Oscars is practically a science now, and anyone who follows with some semblance of enthusiasm can guess three of the five nominees in each category without trying. What I’m saying is that even the most open-minded critics can fall into this influence. So distance is useful, in my opinion.
Also, as a self-funded critic with my own little website, I have no access to free critics’ screenings, meaning it takes me a little longer to get through all the films I want to. Now that a year has passed, I feel much more confident putting a respectable list together.
As everyone else will be telling you what the best films in theaters are with their lists of the best films of this year, I ask that you consider this my plea for you to go rent these on your way home from the theater. And it’s a nice look back at films we may have already forgotten about.
With that, here are my favorite films (saying they’re the best is just presumptuous, yes?) of 2006:
The most underrated movie of the year by far was The Break-Up, a film that was the most surprising viewing experience I had in a theater in 2006. I haven’t seen it since it came out in June ‘06, but I still fondly remember laughing at the right moments and being genuinely moved when the film wanted me to be. Vince Vaughn gives an actual performance, which is such a welcome respite from the usual frat guys he tends to play these days, and Jennifer Aniston proves she’s got the acting legs to have a career outside of sitcoms.
I am a fan of the Dixie Chicks. A big fan, in fact. And while this perhaps clouded my judgement about Shut Up & Sing, from an objective standpoint, this is a brilliant film on three fronts. It’s a brilliant chronicle of a band’s creation of an album, it’s a touching story about camaraderie and sisterhood (biological or otherwise), and a fascinating account of misguided anger with its portrayal of the swift and brutal attack the band received after lead singer Natalie Maines’s comment that she was “ashamed that the President is from Texas.” From this viewer’s perspective, the Dixie Chicks got the raw end of a deal, but as this documentary ultimately shows, they trudged through with grace and were the subjects of a hell of a documentary in the process.
Bryan Singer wasn’t reinventing the wheel when he made Superman Returns, and I don’t think we would have had it any other way. He took his dauntingly huge budget (upwards of $250 million when all was said and done, according to most reports) and crafted a wonderfully entertaining film, while building on and furthering the whole mythos behind Superman. The film was flawed, to some extent, but when all was said and done, the film was an exhilarating action film, a nicely acted character piece, and a triumph of special effects. It was as successful as it was because it wasn’t trying too hard to be anything but a continuation of a series, and with the Superman franchise, this was the right way to go.
Who knew Todd Field had it in him to make a film like Little Children based on his only previous film, the much-lauded and highly-overrated In the Bedroom? In his latest, Field crafts a satire of suburbia more successfully than American Beauty did. And this is coming from someone who counts American Beauty among their favorite films. While the film suffered in other areas, nothing was so detrimental as to take away from the beautiful cinematography, pitch-perfect narration, and superlative acting from nearly everyone involved.
As someone who’s seen a lot of Michel Gondry’s short form work, I can’t say that the “dipping from the same well twice” criticism isn’t without merit with his feature-length work. There are trends to be found and perhaps it is a bit overtly quirky. But with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and now The Science of Sleep, Gondry has proved himself to be not just a master of the quirky or outlandish or esoteric, but of the emotional. For all the visual wizardry on display in this film, the end is so achingly bittersweet that you can’t really fault the film for employing visual flourishes in the process (especially when the flourishes are so ingenious).
Since first seeing Mission: Impossible III, I’ve seen director J.J. Abrams’s Alias. Every single episode. So perhaps I’d be a little more hesitant to call his directorial debut a flat-out action masterpiece, for he’s employing the same tropes he loved so much in television: the mixing of the personal drama with the outlandish missions and action, the short intro with a “36 Hours Earlier” type flashback as a storytelling device, amongst others. Regardless, I was so giddy while watching this film that all I could do was congratulate Abrams for crafting a near-perfect action film. There’s literally nothing I would change about the film. It’s that solid, that well-cast, that well-executed.
What started out as “That Film by the Hedwig Guy With Real Sex and Non-Actors!” turned out to be a touching, funny, insightful look at relationships and what it means to be human. Shortbus is sexually explicit, yes, but after an exhilarating opening sequence with real sex galore (and an… ahem… grand finale you have to see to believe), you quickly get over the fact that yes, there will be boobies on the screen. That’s how life is. Life has nudity. And sex. And this would be a problem for the film if it was a crutch that the filmmakers relied on to add interest to the story. But the stories are interesting enough on their own to sustain a film, and the sex is just there to add verisimilitude to the surroundings.
It’s nice to see the Academy get something right amidst egregious errors like Crash winning Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. Instead of falling for the histrionics of Babel or the overt cuteness of Little Miss Sunshine, they chose The Departed for Best Picture, and while they should have nominated one particular film in the first place which should have won (scroll down to see what I’m talking about), of the nominees, Scorsese’s latest was the obvious pick for the win. It’s immensely entertaining, tightly-written, well-acted, and more suspenseful than anything you’ll likely see in the next year. Once Leo steps off that elevator in the final act, I had to remind myself to breathe, it was so masterfully crafted.
If Stranger than Fiction slips to the second position for one reason, I suppose it’s because my number one choice is indeed a “better” film. But no film from 2006 made me as happy as this film did. It has been called Charlie Kaufman-lite, but I find the central premise an amusing one. Furthermore, the film doesn’t seem to take the premise as the only place for creativity in the film. It’s not like writer Zack Helm said “guy hears omniscient narrator” and called it a day. There are so many wonderful touches, so many beautifully-written exchanges, and at the film’s core, an achingly sweet love story. This film is near-perfection in my eyes, and I know that others will disagree, but I just happen to find the film magical. I dare you to tell me Emma Thompson’s final monologue isn’t profound.
No other film from 2006 was so clearly a masterpiece yet so clearly overlooked at the awards season (or even with critics’ prizes and Top 10 lists, for that matter). Children of Men is flat-out brilliant from first frame to last, and even before the film begins. The premise is itself genius, and director Alfonso Cuáron takes the source material and crafts it into an allegory for modern trials and tribulations. This is dystopia so realistc and plausible that half the work is done on the filmmakers’ part in creating suspense and interest. But they don’t just settle for riding the coattails of the central conceit that no one on Earth has been pregnant since 2009. The finished film is a marvel of technical achievements, a showcase of subdued but great acting, a fascinating look at an all-too-possible future, grandly entertaining, and simply the best film of 2006.
© 2004-2009 Ben Waldorf. Posted December 20, 2007.