Halfway Home

It's rather late for this sort of thing, a halfway report, I should have posted something like it about a month ago. But it's worth a shot. What are the best films I've seen so far in 2006? New films, I mean - in theatrical, commercial, release, in Boston, in 2006? As usual, it's mostly last year's best foreign films - decent domestic films generally come out in the fall. But it's not a bad crop:

1. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu - easily the best, one of the best films of the decade
2. L'Enfant - the excellence one expects from the Dardennes brothers.
3. Three Times - Hou Hsiao Hsien revisiting his life and his career in a ravishing three part work.
4. Cache - "an examination of guilty consciences and the unexpected results of casual, careless cruelty, and just a hint of Duck Amuck..." (I'm rather proud of that line)
5. Clean - Olivier Assayas making the most of two brilliant performances from Maggie Cheung and Nick Nolte
6. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance - a powerful conclusion to Park Chan-wook's vengeance trilogy
7. Pulse - holy crap! I thought the American remake had disappeared without a trace - but no! it's up for release next week! Anyway, Kurosawa's original is a haunting and masterful work.
8. A Scanner Darkly - Philip K Dick brought to the screen...
9. Tristram Shandy - another adaptation, one less suited to the direct approach - which Michael Winterbottom and company handle by making the film as much about adaptation as the book is about writing. Quite enjoyable, and not requiring the facility with 19th century prose style as the novel.
10. Bubble - somehow feels as though it has been forgotten already, but deserved a better fate. Interesting experiment, and very well made.

Honearable mention to Army of Shadows, which at 37 years old is too much for me to list, even though it was released this year. Also to Cafe Lumiere, L'Intrus, Regular Lovers, Good Morning, Night, The President's Last Bang and Innocence, all of which played somewhere, once or twice maybe, but should have been given a halfway decent release, and need to be seen, however you can find them. Still - I suppose it is something of a joyful miracle that The Death of Mr. Lazarescu got a straightforward commercial release (and drew a modest crowd - better than some films I would have expected to draw, like Pulse). But it would be nice.