2006 in Film
I’m going to come right out and say it. I’m really enjoying LA, as my 2006 in Music post yesterday hopefully made clear. But when it comes to film, I miss New York. Sure, just about everything screens in LA too…but New York had a few clear advantages over LA for me personally:
- David Fear — one of my best friends in the world happens to be one of the primary film reviewers for Time Out NY and MSN Movies. Not only do I dearly miss seeing him personally — he lived about 5 minutes from me in Brooklyn’s Park Slope — I miss hearing and reading his film recommendations. From time to time I go to the Time Out NY site and read his reviews, but it just isn’t the same…I can’t argue back over a triple espresso at Gorilla. Here’s his 2006 top 10 list. I can’t wait to see Dave when I go to Sundance in a few weeks. It’s been far too long.
- Film Forum — the best art house theater in the US. Period.
- BAM Rose Cinemas — my second favorite place in NY to see shows. It was about a 10 minute walk from my apartment.
- Public transportation.
- Weather.
And there are many other reasons to love movie-going in NYC — Tribeca Film Festival, NY Film Festival, and just look at this list of art house theaters. Even the Times Square megaplexes were a bit of a guilty pleasure. But I’m not LA-bashing. LA is probably the second best city in the US for filmgoing. And it has plenty of it’s own highlights too, for sure. The problem is (see reason #4 above) it just takes a long time to get to any of them, making them only truly accessible on the weekends (see my experience trying to get to midweek screenings at the LA Film Festival earlier this year). And there’s the weather "problem", too. New York in February or in August is perfect for sitting in a two-and-a-half hour lost French masterpiece. But in LA, well, it’s still 70 degrees and sunny outside!
So the reason I’m saying all of this is that I feel insecure with my filmgoing this year. I’ve seen a frighteningly small number of foreign films and documentaries. And there are a number of films showing up in other people’s top ten lists that I’ve been wanting to see but just haven’t yet: Volver, The Queen, Babel, L’Enfant, Jonestown: The Life & Death of People’s Temple, Old Joy, Children of Men, United 93, Letters from Iwo Jima, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, and Man Push Cart are but a few. Looks like it might be time to reactivate my on-again/off-again relationship with Netflix. So with these "handicaps" going against me, here are my favorite films from 2006, and to throw a bone to my NYC nostalgia, I’ll link to the Time Out NY review for each of these where it exists:
1. Half Nelson
I saw "Chalk" at the LA Film Fest this summer. It was a mockumentary about teaching. It was great to see a couple of teachers go out and make a film. But it sagged a bit in the middle and didn’t quite have that Christopher Guest mockumentary vibe. I guess I expected the same thing with Half Nelson going in. Boy was I wrong. I’m going to echo my friend Dave’s assessment. The year’s best film is a punch-you-in-the-gut story about one of the most complicated mentor-mentee relationships I’ve ever witnessed. And it’s set in Brooklyn, which is just somehow appropriate given the meme of this article.
2. Forgiven
#2 and I’m already cheating. This film didn’t come out widely this year. In fact, it hasn’t come out yet at all. But it was the best thing I saw at Sundance in 2006, so I’m listing it here. As I noted in my post-Sundance wrap-up, the 10 minute scene that transpired about 2/3 of the way through the film is the most tense 10 minutes of film I think I’ve ever seen. A collision of race, class and politics, Forgiven is a near-perfect modern day Greek tragedy.
3. Our Daily Bread
Ok, yes, another cheat. Our Daily Bread did not see a release in 2006 either. I saw it at the LA Film Festival. This 92-minute Austrian documentary did not have one word of dialogue the entire time. It simply captured, with all of the sanitized horror, the process of industrial food production. I never got around to blogging a review about it. I think it was too chilling. I will never look at a plate of beef, chicken, bacon, salmon or red peppers the same way again. And I love bacon.
4. Brick
I actually saw Brick at Sundance in 2005. It was the best feature I saw at the festival that year (the best overall film I saw at Sundance in 2005 was David LaChapelle’s Rize). I’m a huge fan of vintage noir novels and films. First-time director Rian Johnson’s film sucks in the language and feel of a vintage private dick pic and mainlines it into a California high school setting. The schtick could have easily become annoying. But it didn’t at all. Brick is a highly entertaining high-school whodunnit with a nostalgic nod to Sam Spade and the gang. And Joseph Gordon-Levitt is wonderful as the cool-headed private eye.
5. The Departed
I would be shocked if you are reading this blog and haven’t yet seen The Departed. It is, after all, the "big picture" of the year…and will likely finally land Scorsese in Oscar-land for best picture and best director. The big question is, can Leo win for best actor?
6. 13 Tzameti
This Georgian (the former Soviet country, not the southern US state) thriller is one of three films I saw at the 2006 Sundance festival to make my 2006 top 10 list. Here’s my original post-Sundance review. Don’t see this one if you have a weak stomach. And as I noted in my Sundance review, the less you know about this one going in, the better.
7. Inside Man
Clive Owen had quite a year. He’s the star of Children of Men, which I haven’t seen but many critics are listing as the year’s best film. And he was great in Inside Man. Director Spike Lee changed his style and subject matter considerably with this film, going for a well-constructed classic bank heist story rather than a heavy-handed social commentary. But he still did what he does best. He absolutely channeled New York City. For those of us wanting a little Big Apple fix, it was a perfect one-two punch.
8. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Yes, it is probably film-critic blasphemy to list Borat above the classically chilling WWII French Resistance masterpiece Army of Shadows, but I believe that the success of Sasha Baron-Cohen’s film is itself a cultural resistance of no small kind. His outright cultural critiques aside — obvious commentaries on the Southern establishment, frat-boy misogyny, and over-the-top patriotism — his crowning achievement surely must be that he got millions of Americans to watch and laugh at a scene that basically amounts to a fully nude male sex scene. "Very nice!"
9. Army of Shadows
This 1969 classic French masterpiece had never screened in the USA until this year. To me, it seemed to be the French equivalent of The Godfather (with a sprinkling of Heat), albeit with a political bent more biting than anything in the contemporary American experience. They don’t make films like this anymore. Truly.
10. The Proposition
The Proposition is my third Sundance film to make the list (actually, it is my fifth as Half Nelson was at Sundance though I didn’t see it, and Brick was at Sundance 2005). Mr Dark himself, rocker Nick Cave, wrote the screenplay for The Proposition. And as I noted in my post-Sundance review, his Australian Outback "western" out-McCarthied Cormac McCarthy himself.
Honorable mention
11. An Inconvenient Truth — Less a film and more a piecing together of Al Gore’s lectures on global warming, this documentary deserves mention in equal part for significantly raising awareness of a dire issue and for resurrecting a very passionate man that most had left for political dead.
12. Casino Royale — The best Bond film in years…maybe ever?
Oh, and just to throw this out there, since I wasn’t blogging in 2005…my favorite film of 2005 was The Squid and the Whale (which was another Sundance entry but I didn’t catch it there).
If you’ll be at Sundance 2007, let me know! Hopefully I’ll get an early jumpstart on my 2007 list.
