A little late, but here goes
My Favorite movies of 2006.
10) Clerks II - Maybe the funniest View Askew movie, and it’s nice to see some non-cynical closure for Randal and Dante. Now that the arc has been completed, let’s see Kevin do something completely different.
09) V for Vendetta - Would love to read the book, but the movie had the best visual sense of any other movie I saw this year. Plus, it takes an ego-less actor to take a role like V, and it takes a talented one to make it work. Bravo, Hugo Weaving. Also, this totally makes up for Matrix Revolutions.
08) The Prestige - Christopher Nolan doesn’t make bad movies. He is awesome. This one was so different from Memento and Insomnia and Batman that I really think he is my favorite contemporary director. It was well-constructed, it was mysterious and it was really old-fashioned (in a good way). He cast David Bowie!
07) Borat - Bar none, the funniest movie of the year. I was not initially interested until Borat started popping up on talk shows and I gradually became entranced until I could wait no longer. Funny for so many reasons.
06) Superman Returns - A misunderstood movie. Routh is good. Spacey is good. Watching Superman struggle with his non-Kryptonite weaknesses is really great. Also, I would like to nominate Superman getting beaten and stabbed with Kryptonite as the Hardest-to-Watch scene of the year. Superman Returns really makes me aware of everything Fantastic Four, Daredevil and so many others (check out the Shames) do wrong in this genre.
05) Casino Royale - In the same vein as Superman comes the best Bond movie in at least thirty years starring (blasphemy?) the best Bond ever. Daniel Craig is so good as Bond, and the movie itself is so much better than the Brosnan, Dalton and Moore movies (which I still love anyway) that it really does breath new life into the series. Also, the action was awesome. It’s been a long time since Bond killed someone with his barehands.
04) Dreamgirls - I’m kind of over Jamie Foxx. I mean, I like him in Ray and Collateral, but I share my mother’s opinion of him that he just comes off as annoying in most anything else (particularly public appearances). Luckily, he and Beyonce have the show stolen from them completely by Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy. I remember watching Hudson on Idol the year that no-talent illiterate Fantasia Barrino won. I hope Fox is kicking itself for letting soon-to-be-Oscar winner Hudson slip right through their fingers. I saw it twice and both times the audience clapped after her big show-stopper. Not like a standing ovation or anything, but more applause than is usually granted to a projection on a screen.
03) Children of Men - I just saw it a few days ago and I haven’t stopped thinking about it. It was just so good, and Clive Owen is still the reigning champion Coolest Guy on Earth (in my mind).
02) Little Miss Sunshine - I’ve prasied this movie a lot since I first saw it. Between the SLB and the DVD, I’ve seen it about four times and it never gets old. It’s just a good movie with a very talented ensemble. Everyone in the cast does a stellar job. In fact, only one cast did better all year…
01) The Departed - Having just seen this again the other night, I stand by my early assessment that it is the best movie of the year. The Departed is incredible. Really, what else can be said about it? It’s suspenseful, it’s chock full of fantastic performances from DiCaprio to Nicholson to Wahlberg. If Martin Scorsese doesn’t finally win, I don’t know. I just don’t. See this movie if you haven’t already.
Hon. Mentions - The Fountain - Hugh Jackman is awesome in this movie. I need to see it again because I’m not sure I really understood what was going on with the whole space bubble thing, but I was completely drawn in the whole time anyway.
The Last Kiss - Blake and Jon made me watch this and I was skeptical because I didn’t like Garden State, but this one had the substance and suspense (and Casey Affleck) that Garden State was sorely missing. My official “Pleasant Surprise of the Year.”
Rocky Balboa - So much better than the sixth Rocky movie, made almost two decades after the fifth Rocky movie, had any right to be. It was fun and it offered a neat look into an iconic character’s head and how he deals with old age. It’s sad, but it’s uplifting. It’s a good movie because it’s not just about the fight… oh, and “Eye of the Tiger” is not in the movie. Good.
Pan’s Labyrinth - Didn’t make my top ten for two reasons. 1) I saw it after the bulk of this list was already written out. 2) I closed my eyes for a good chunk of it. Squeamish, needles, stitches and gross. Otherwise awesome, though.
Shames: Lady in the Water - It’s like Shyamalan is having a competition with himself to see who can make the shittier Shyamalan movie. He certainly proved me wrong when I said, “Well, it can’t be any stupider than The Village.” Paul Giamatti (whom I love) was awful in this movie. Porky Pig’s stuttering sounded more realistic. The plot was so insane that I actually thought my head was going to explode the first time the word “scrunt” was uttered and the ending was ripped straight out of E.T… minus the emotional weight. I love Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. Signs was cool too. Shyamalan needs to get his shit together and fast.
X-Men: The Last Stand - Not terrible, per se, but a significant back-pedal from Singer’s X-films (particularly X2). Fox thought they could make a big X-Men movie without Singer, and they were right… at the expense of character and story. The bitch-treatment of Cyclops comes full circle here when all he does is cry for a few minutes and then gets vaporized. What!? I mean, I love Wolverine as much as the next guy, but Cyclops deserved better.
Pirates: Dead Man’s Chest - I don’t care how much money it made or how funny Depp is or how much “good old fashioned fun” there was. This movie was stupid. There was no story, the villain wasn’t interesting, the heroes weren’t interesting and it was about a half-hour too long (a problem it shares with its vastly superior predecessor.) I know everything will all be wrapped up in the third one, but I paid eight bucks for a movie, not a two and a half hour-long trailer for another one. Anyone remember the Matrix sequels and what went wrong there? The action set-pieces were neat, but so were the ones in Superman (catching an airplane) and Bond (freerunning through a construction site), and those movies went out of their ways to do something new and different with their iconic characters. They also balanced out the action with quiet moments (“I hear everything”, Bond and Vesper in the shower) that Dead Man’s Chest never had. Jack Sparrow is a cool character and Depp does a great job playing him, but he is not James Bond or Superman and Disney needs to stop treating him like he is. He’s only been around for three years. Will he be around in another sixty?
And that dice game was absolutely asinine. Would it really have been that difficult to get them to play a game that made a little bit more sense? Christ, Quidditch made more sense than that stupid high-stakes “randomly lifting cups and revealing numbers to dramatic music while Orlando Bloom has a look of determination” game. Another thing, Bloom’s face did not change expressions once the whole movie.
I just realized that I went through that entire review without mentioning Monkey Island! Voodoo Priestess, anyone? Coffin boats? Jeez Louise. At Worlds End better be fucking fantastic, but I have a feeling we’re going to get more Matrix Revolutions than we are The Return of the King here.