It takes a while for the best films of a year to shake out - for everything you need to see to turn up, at least a strong sample. Even now, this is probably sketchy - it will be the middle or end of this year before I get a reliable read on last year. (There are a few films out there - Jia Jiang-ke's, say - that I fully expect to crack this list when I actually get to see them.) That is one of the reasons this is just the first of three posts: it's a good time to look back at 2005 and before, as well. I have been wanting to post some lists - starting, as here, with the best of the year - adding to this, top tens for each year of the 00s (for now) (I did that last year), and then by decade. I used to be more of a list keeper, obsessing over the order, things like that. These days, it's more relaxed. Kind of a snapshot of what kinds of films I'm valuing right now. I think it would be neat to post these things about once a year. Watch what changes, etc.
This list, then, is for 2006: films made or internationally debuted in 2006 - it does not matter where I saw them or when. Only that they are listed as 2006 in the record books... I'll go 25 deep, because - it's the last time I'll make that big a list for the year... it's in order, but probably only reliable (even as a record of what I liked) through the first 10-15.
1. Inland Empire - US - David Lynch
2. Colossal Youth - Portugal - Pedro Costa
3. The Woman on the Beach - South Korea - Hong Sang-soo
4. The Science of Sleep - France - Michel Gondry
5. United 93 - US - Paul Greengrass
6. Children of Men - UK - Alfonso Cauron
7. Honor de Cavelaria - Spain - Albert Serra
8. The Wind that Shakes the Barley - UK - Ken Loach
9. A Scanner Darkly - US - Richard Linklater
10. Belle Toujours - Portugal/France - Manoel de Oliveira
11. Lights in the Dusk - Finland - Aki Kaurismaki
12. The Host - South Korea - Bong Joon-ho
13. Old Joy - US - Kelly Reichardt
14. Climates - Turkey - Nuri Blige Ceylan
15. Volver - Spain - Pedro Almodovar
16. The Scream of the Ants - Iran - Mohsen Makhmalbaf
17. Pan's Labyrinth - Mexico - Guillermo Del Toro
18. Lives of Others - Florian Donnersmarck
19. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Khazakhstan - US/UK - Larry Charles
20. Half Nelson - US - Ryan Fleck
21. Prairie Home Companion - US - Robert Altman
22.Little Miss Sunshine - US - Jonathon Dayton and Valerie Feris
23. Fast Food Nation - US - Richard Linklater
24. Bubble - US - Steven Soderburgh
25. Talledega Nights - US - Adam McKay
Showing posts with label 2006 list. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2006 list. Show all posts
Monday, April 02, 2007
Monday, January 01, 2007
Films of the Year That Was
Happy New year! And you know what that means - Lists! There are some - Andy Horbal being one - who are inclined to worry about the role and uses of lists and list making. Me, not so much. I like making lists - sometimes spend a lot of time brooding over them (not as much as I used to, but still) - but try to keep them minimalist. Year end lists are guides, indexes - they draw attention to some films or other, to what people liked or thought in a given year, to the films people think are important. Kind of a sketch of what the writer likes, too, how they think. Which can be fun, might even be useful, but ought to be taken with a grain of salt.
So - what you get here are numbers, titles, maybe a pithy remark or two, maybe a link. For this list, I have rules: these are films released, for the first time, in some kind of commercial theater, in Boston, during calendar year 2006. No festival screenings, nothing that showed twice at the MFA or one night at Harvard, nothing that didn't make it to the city and I saw on DVD. This list, my literal end-of-the-year list, is the only time I care about when (or if) the film got released, commercially - after this list, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu goes back to its proper place among the 2005 films, Army of Shadows back to the 60s. (I should go back and revisit past years. The Ongoing Education of Steven Carlson does that - keeps a retroactive list of lists: you need to do that, to keep track of films as they trickle into the country.) Anyway - time to get to the movies. I give you - the best of 2006, per me.
1. Inland Empire - David Lynch upping the strangeness ante again. An exploration of the look of digital photography - light and shadow and depth of field. Rooms and doorways and lamps and hallways and faces. It's as much art as film. It's quite extraordinary.
2. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu - Christi Puiu's heartbreaking and exhilarating story of an old man lost in the hell of Romania's medical system.
3. Army of Shadows - Jean-Pierre Melville's matter of fact rendering of the French resistance though the eyes of a cell in Lyons.
4. Three Times - Hou Hsiao Hsien exploring love and movies (his own career) through three stories starring Shu Qi and Chang Chen - shifting between styles as he shifts between periods, creating a complex and beautiful work.
5. L'Enfant - The Dardennes' brothers second Cannes winner, the story of a petty thief selling his child, and then repenting of this sin and redeeming himself. They have mastered this kind of story and this kind of filmmaking, to the point of becoming a kind of genre to themselves, which they use to great effect.
6. The Science of Sleep - Charlie Kaufman films have become a bit of a genre unto themselves as well. Here is one without Charlie Kaufman's involvement. Michel Gondry directs Gael Garcia Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourgh through dreams of love.
7. United 93 - Paul Greengrass uses his documentary inspired style to great effect in showing the events of 9/11, on the ground, and in one of the planes. What happens in the plane is more conventional than it might seem - with fairly carefully constructed plot point snad character arcs, but it is still extraordinary.
8. Children of Men - the last film I saw in 2006.... what V for Vendetta aspired to, a convincing SF dystopian action film; poignant, pointedly political, a believable world, physically and psychologically, well acted, beautifully shot and masterfully directed, with action sequences worthy of Johnny To. First rate - a fitting way to finish the year.
9. Cache - kind of a slow motion Old Boy, about vengeance and surveillance and families... these three films - United 93, Children of men, Cache, start to usher in the apocalypse, a theme rather common these days; death, madness, the collapse of civilization, of the individual - with or without hope of salvation - there's a lot of that going around.
10. Clean - Olivier Assayas directs Maggie Cheung and Nick Nolte, both at the top of their game, in a film about a rock star's widow who is forced to stop fucking up.
Plus: another 15, say, that aren't far off. The miserablism starts to get thick, I notice...
Mutual Appreciation - Andrew Bujawski's minor classic about a minor rock star sinking into minor self-destruction....
Kairo (that's the Kurosawa Pulse) - a quiet apocalypse
A Scanner Darkly - personal apocalypse
Sympathy for Lady Vengeance - in which costs are tallied
La Moustache - what if the apocalypse comes and only one man knows?
Old Joy - apocalypse of a friendship
Volver - though sometimes, things turn and return
Tristram Shandy - birth
Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles - reconciliation
Battle In Heaven - repentence
Breaking News - cranes
Half Nelson - dialectics
Prairie Home Companion - perhaps the world will end not with a bang or a whimper but with a song...
Little Miss Sunshine - ...by Rick James - that works
Temps Qui Reste - it's this or Borat, but this one fits the theme a bit better. (Borat was on the list, of course, until I saw Children of Men at the last minute and pushed things down and started writing comments. This is a lesson in the arbitrariness of lists: I want just 25 titles - no more! - and when I started writing comments - a theme emerged - death, apocalypse - perhaps alongside redemption, rebirth, cycles, etc. - a theme obviously suggested by Children of Men... And so the films on the edge of the 25 get included or omitted because they fit the theme more than whether they were better or worse - though that whole better/worse thing is a bit of a sham - at best, any order of merit is really arranged in chunks of 4-5 films, that could be listed in any order. Bubble? Ten Items or Less? Fast Food Nation? Talledega Nights? Stolen? All perfectly respectable choices too. Anyway, it's time to stop worrying about it.)
And finally - though it is way too early to really even attempt such a thing - a first cut at the best films made in 2006:
1. Inland Empire
2. Children of Men
3. Science of Sleep
4. United 93
5. A Scanner Darkly
6. The Scream of the Ants (might be the only film I saw at a festival this year - the only unreleased film I saw, at least at this level. Mohsen Makhmalbaf goes looking for something in India, probably destroying his career in Iran in the process.)
7. Old Joy
8. Volver
9. Prairie Home Companion
10. Borat (what? I told you this stuff was arbitrary. Leave me alone!)
So - what you get here are numbers, titles, maybe a pithy remark or two, maybe a link. For this list, I have rules: these are films released, for the first time, in some kind of commercial theater, in Boston, during calendar year 2006. No festival screenings, nothing that showed twice at the MFA or one night at Harvard, nothing that didn't make it to the city and I saw on DVD. This list, my literal end-of-the-year list, is the only time I care about when (or if) the film got released, commercially - after this list, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu goes back to its proper place among the 2005 films, Army of Shadows back to the 60s. (I should go back and revisit past years. The Ongoing Education of Steven Carlson does that - keeps a retroactive list of lists: you need to do that, to keep track of films as they trickle into the country.) Anyway - time to get to the movies. I give you - the best of 2006, per me.
1. Inland Empire - David Lynch upping the strangeness ante again. An exploration of the look of digital photography - light and shadow and depth of field. Rooms and doorways and lamps and hallways and faces. It's as much art as film. It's quite extraordinary.
2. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu - Christi Puiu's heartbreaking and exhilarating story of an old man lost in the hell of Romania's medical system.
3. Army of Shadows - Jean-Pierre Melville's matter of fact rendering of the French resistance though the eyes of a cell in Lyons.
4. Three Times - Hou Hsiao Hsien exploring love and movies (his own career) through three stories starring Shu Qi and Chang Chen - shifting between styles as he shifts between periods, creating a complex and beautiful work.
5. L'Enfant - The Dardennes' brothers second Cannes winner, the story of a petty thief selling his child, and then repenting of this sin and redeeming himself. They have mastered this kind of story and this kind of filmmaking, to the point of becoming a kind of genre to themselves, which they use to great effect.
6. The Science of Sleep - Charlie Kaufman films have become a bit of a genre unto themselves as well. Here is one without Charlie Kaufman's involvement. Michel Gondry directs Gael Garcia Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourgh through dreams of love.
7. United 93 - Paul Greengrass uses his documentary inspired style to great effect in showing the events of 9/11, on the ground, and in one of the planes. What happens in the plane is more conventional than it might seem - with fairly carefully constructed plot point snad character arcs, but it is still extraordinary.
8. Children of Men - the last film I saw in 2006.... what V for Vendetta aspired to, a convincing SF dystopian action film; poignant, pointedly political, a believable world, physically and psychologically, well acted, beautifully shot and masterfully directed, with action sequences worthy of Johnny To. First rate - a fitting way to finish the year.
9. Cache - kind of a slow motion Old Boy, about vengeance and surveillance and families... these three films - United 93, Children of men, Cache, start to usher in the apocalypse, a theme rather common these days; death, madness, the collapse of civilization, of the individual - with or without hope of salvation - there's a lot of that going around.
10. Clean - Olivier Assayas directs Maggie Cheung and Nick Nolte, both at the top of their game, in a film about a rock star's widow who is forced to stop fucking up.
Plus: another 15, say, that aren't far off. The miserablism starts to get thick, I notice...
Mutual Appreciation - Andrew Bujawski's minor classic about a minor rock star sinking into minor self-destruction....
Kairo (that's the Kurosawa Pulse) - a quiet apocalypse
A Scanner Darkly - personal apocalypse
Sympathy for Lady Vengeance - in which costs are tallied
La Moustache - what if the apocalypse comes and only one man knows?
Old Joy - apocalypse of a friendship
Volver - though sometimes, things turn and return
Tristram Shandy - birth
Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles - reconciliation
Battle In Heaven - repentence
Breaking News - cranes
Half Nelson - dialectics
Prairie Home Companion - perhaps the world will end not with a bang or a whimper but with a song...
Little Miss Sunshine - ...by Rick James - that works
Temps Qui Reste - it's this or Borat, but this one fits the theme a bit better. (Borat was on the list, of course, until I saw Children of Men at the last minute and pushed things down and started writing comments. This is a lesson in the arbitrariness of lists: I want just 25 titles - no more! - and when I started writing comments - a theme emerged - death, apocalypse - perhaps alongside redemption, rebirth, cycles, etc. - a theme obviously suggested by Children of Men... And so the films on the edge of the 25 get included or omitted because they fit the theme more than whether they were better or worse - though that whole better/worse thing is a bit of a sham - at best, any order of merit is really arranged in chunks of 4-5 films, that could be listed in any order. Bubble? Ten Items or Less? Fast Food Nation? Talledega Nights? Stolen? All perfectly respectable choices too. Anyway, it's time to stop worrying about it.)
And finally - though it is way too early to really even attempt such a thing - a first cut at the best films made in 2006:
1. Inland Empire
2. Children of Men
3. Science of Sleep
4. United 93
5. A Scanner Darkly
6. The Scream of the Ants (might be the only film I saw at a festival this year - the only unreleased film I saw, at least at this level. Mohsen Makhmalbaf goes looking for something in India, probably destroying his career in Iran in the process.)
7. Old Joy
8. Volver
9. Prairie Home Companion
10. Borat (what? I told you this stuff was arbitrary. Leave me alone!)
Friday, December 29, 2006
Year End Music Post
It's Friday, and time for a Random Ten - but wait! It's the last Friday of the year - and that means, time for a List. Music! What did I like this year? How much? I backed down on my buying this year, but still got a pretty good lot to choose from - and found plenty to like. So here goes.
1. TV On the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain: a breakout record, as far as I am concerned, bringing everything I like - avant-garage, soul, jazz, experimentation, epic sprawl (a la Mercury Rev) - great songs.... it's a contender for the best records of the decade.
2. Six Organs of Admittance - Sun Awakens: a band that's been growing on me since I discovered them a couple years ago. They're evolving from weird folk to weird folk avant garde prog something - remaining hypnotic and addictive. I'm a sucker for an obnoxious bleat of electric guitar and they provide it, along with clattery percussion (I'm a sucker for that, too), acoustic drones....
3. Scott Walker - Drift: this is one of those records that would normally suffer from the iPod - except it's the CD I've had in the stereo for the last couple months. So it's one of the few records on this list I have actually listened to from beginning to end more than once. Anyway - a stately, menacing work of great power, and to be honest, that goes as much for the individual songs as for the record as a whole.
4. Decembrists - The Crane Wife: this, on the other hand, benefits greatly from the iPod - fine as it is taken as a whole, it is full of songs that really do leap out at you when they come up on shuffle. Crane Wife #3, When the War Came, Sons & Daughters, Summersong, have all gotten into my head for days at a time - really beautiful music.
5. Pere Ubu - Why I Hate Women: when I got it, I wasn't completely sold - even now, I don't think this quite matches their best work. But it grows on you - grows on me anyway. Worms into your brain. They are, David Thomas is, the most reliable band of the last 30 years. Everything they do is worth hearing, and most of it gets better every time you listen to it.
6. Yo La Tengo - I am not Afraid of you and I will Beat Your Ass: did I mention I was a sucker for anobnoxious bleat of electric guitar? I don't think there was anything on record this year better than "Pass The Hatchet, I think I'm Goodkind" - 10 minutes of Guru Guru style wanking - what more could anyone ask? The rest of the record is also quite good, though nothing else quite lives up to that promise. But they are another band that you can count on - they can't do anything less than enjoyable.
7. Liars - Drum's Not Dead: another one that takes some time to work its way into your head, but it does. Stripped down version of the percussive post-punk of their last record, haunting where that was abrasive.
8. Mission of Burma - the Obliterati: so the Liars managed to sneak in here. An actual contemporary band rooted in 80s post-punk/indie rock - alone, among a host of actual honest to god post-punk/indie bands from the 80s (or Beyond!) bands. Mission of Burma went away after one record, long before their time, but have come back in the 00s and now made 2 very good new records. Who needs the Strokes when you can have Mission of Burma?
9. Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped: what did I just say? another band that can be simply counted on to provide value.
10. Outkast - Idlewild: I suppose this is coming a bit out of left field, among all the old indie rockers, but really - they are good. And branching out all over the place here - still rap and hip hop, the soul styles they were trying on the last record, now jazz, jump jazz, Funkadelic style guitar jamming (A Bad Note, say) - they're great. What can I say? Why didn't I see this movie though?
And some honorable mentions - quite a few more I could add - the only really lame record I got this year was the new Who record. But I'll stick to the ones that I could see myself putting on the list some other day...
Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood [as good a voice as there is in rock music]
A Hawk and a Handsaw - The Way the Wind Blows [god bless the Ottoman Empire!]
Mars Volta - Amputechture [more prog guitar heroics]
Scissor Sisters - Ta-dah! [you can look them up under "infectious"]
Danielson - Ships [a bit hit or miss, but some great stuff]
Raconteurs - Broken Toy Soldiers [not as good as the best White Stripes records, but full of fine songs, played with gusto]
Miho Hatori - Ecdysis [mellower than her Cibo Matto days, but very nice]
And finally - an inline video. Has to be the best band of the year. Live clip of Dirtywhirl - not great video, but pretty good sound....
1. TV On the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain: a breakout record, as far as I am concerned, bringing everything I like - avant-garage, soul, jazz, experimentation, epic sprawl (a la Mercury Rev) - great songs.... it's a contender for the best records of the decade.
2. Six Organs of Admittance - Sun Awakens: a band that's been growing on me since I discovered them a couple years ago. They're evolving from weird folk to weird folk avant garde prog something - remaining hypnotic and addictive. I'm a sucker for an obnoxious bleat of electric guitar and they provide it, along with clattery percussion (I'm a sucker for that, too), acoustic drones....
3. Scott Walker - Drift: this is one of those records that would normally suffer from the iPod - except it's the CD I've had in the stereo for the last couple months. So it's one of the few records on this list I have actually listened to from beginning to end more than once. Anyway - a stately, menacing work of great power, and to be honest, that goes as much for the individual songs as for the record as a whole.
4. Decembrists - The Crane Wife: this, on the other hand, benefits greatly from the iPod - fine as it is taken as a whole, it is full of songs that really do leap out at you when they come up on shuffle. Crane Wife #3, When the War Came, Sons & Daughters, Summersong, have all gotten into my head for days at a time - really beautiful music.
5. Pere Ubu - Why I Hate Women: when I got it, I wasn't completely sold - even now, I don't think this quite matches their best work. But it grows on you - grows on me anyway. Worms into your brain. They are, David Thomas is, the most reliable band of the last 30 years. Everything they do is worth hearing, and most of it gets better every time you listen to it.
6. Yo La Tengo - I am not Afraid of you and I will Beat Your Ass: did I mention I was a sucker for anobnoxious bleat of electric guitar? I don't think there was anything on record this year better than "Pass The Hatchet, I think I'm Goodkind" - 10 minutes of Guru Guru style wanking - what more could anyone ask? The rest of the record is also quite good, though nothing else quite lives up to that promise. But they are another band that you can count on - they can't do anything less than enjoyable.
7. Liars - Drum's Not Dead: another one that takes some time to work its way into your head, but it does. Stripped down version of the percussive post-punk of their last record, haunting where that was abrasive.
8. Mission of Burma - the Obliterati: so the Liars managed to sneak in here. An actual contemporary band rooted in 80s post-punk/indie rock - alone, among a host of actual honest to god post-punk/indie bands from the 80s (or Beyond!) bands. Mission of Burma went away after one record, long before their time, but have come back in the 00s and now made 2 very good new records. Who needs the Strokes when you can have Mission of Burma?
9. Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped: what did I just say? another band that can be simply counted on to provide value.
10. Outkast - Idlewild: I suppose this is coming a bit out of left field, among all the old indie rockers, but really - they are good. And branching out all over the place here - still rap and hip hop, the soul styles they were trying on the last record, now jazz, jump jazz, Funkadelic style guitar jamming (A Bad Note, say) - they're great. What can I say? Why didn't I see this movie though?
And some honorable mentions - quite a few more I could add - the only really lame record I got this year was the new Who record. But I'll stick to the ones that I could see myself putting on the list some other day...
Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood [as good a voice as there is in rock music]
A Hawk and a Handsaw - The Way the Wind Blows [god bless the Ottoman Empire!]
Mars Volta - Amputechture [more prog guitar heroics]
Scissor Sisters - Ta-dah! [you can look them up under "infectious"]
Danielson - Ships [a bit hit or miss, but some great stuff]
Raconteurs - Broken Toy Soldiers [not as good as the best White Stripes records, but full of fine songs, played with gusto]
Miho Hatori - Ecdysis [mellower than her Cibo Matto days, but very nice]
And finally - an inline video. Has to be the best band of the year. Live clip of Dirtywhirl - not great video, but pretty good sound....
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