Films: 2006
It was books yesterday and today it is films. Every film I watched for the first time in 2006:
1) Two For The Money - Very talky Al Pacino flick. Interesting Oedipus love triangle beset by typical sports story cliches and McConaughey's smarminess.
2) Thumbsucker - Another film about being young and fucked up but a worthwhile addition to the canon. Its main point is that there is no magic bullet for the human condition. All well and good but it treats this realisation as something of a magic bullet itself.
3) Me You And Everyone We Know - Too artifical and heavily stylised for my taste. Lots of interesting (and often very funny) scenes but they are tempered by the scenes that strive to be significant and all in all its rather aimless.
4) Welcome To The Dollhouse - Black comedy (I guess) that seeks to constantly unsettle the viewer but never comes to germination. I seem to say this about all American indie films.
5) Bad Guy - My first Kim Ki-duk film. A grotesque magical realist "love" story. Amusingly the cover boasts a quote saying "Perverse, politically incorrect." as if that was enough. It isn't.
6) Brokeback Mountain - Period romance. Well enough done.
7) The Ladykillers - The original. Enjoyable enough but a little old school for my tastes.
8) Hidden - French film that goes beyond ambiguity to outright obtuseness. At the end bafflement was coming off the audience in waves. Very well made though.
9) Moulin Rouge! - So OTT it made my head hurt. Undoubtably it makes exuberance a virtue but still.
10) The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Messy, rather dreadful adaptation that bears only passing resemblance to the book and looks like it was shot on the quick. I did like the rendering of the Guide though.
11) A Cock And Bull Story - Uproariously funny. This is how you do meta. An early contender for film of the year.
12) 9 Songs - Another Winterbottom film. Clearly anticipated by Code 46 but nowhere near as good as Cock And Bull.
13) The Jacket - Odd.
14) Final Destination 2 - Enjoyably preposterous shocker.
15) The Wickerman - Macabre and cleverly put together film (apart from the slightly duff Ekland/Woodward seduction scene) that hids its dagger ingeniously. A marvellous, career best performance from Christopher Lee.
16) Syriana - Perhaps understandably this is very similar to Traffic. The tag line is "Everything Is Connected" but everything was a bit too connected with each narrative thread neatly dovetailing and each character getting a nice resolution. Good to see a well made, honest and stridently political drama getting a major release.
17) The Pianist - Well, that was a barrel of laughs, wasn't it? There is a great scene where Adrien Brody, as the titular pianist, plays silently. Bafflingly Thomas Kretschmann - in the film for ten minutes at the end - gets co-billing.
18) V For Vendetta - Rather odd. Not an easily filmable story so it was substantially changed in ways that didn't necessarily make sense. I liked Stephen Rea and Roger Allam but Hugo Weaving's V just seemed silly.
19) School Of Rock - Fun.
20) The Island - Enjoyable tosh that squanders a lot of good will. Ridiculously long.
21) The Descent - Remarkably grim caving horror. Effective, even slightly clever but gruesome as hell.
22) Buffalo 66 - If you'd told me yesterday I would ever watch a Vincent Gallo film I would have laughed in your face. It's not straightforwardly bad, just proceeds from a completely fucked predicate.
23) Corpse Bride - Short, endearing romance. As with Burton's previous film the sound mix made the songs almost unintelligble.
24) Super Size Me - Fucking gross.
25) Hulk - Clever editing but a bit ponderous.
26) Night Watch - Lots of visual panache but brainhurtingly confusing.
27) That Darn Cat - Actually quite enjoyable.
28) Kiss Of The Dragon - Deeply stupid kickfest.
29) Every Day's A Holiday - Endearingly bonkers cross between Summer Holiday and Carry On with a movie stealing performance by Freddie And The Dreamers as the hotel chefs.
30) A History Of Violence - Handsomely made but to what purpose?
31) Stir Of Echoes - Actually quite creepy, with unusually mature performances but let down by the trite ending.
32) Brick - Deliciously artificial.
33) Alien Versus Predator - Cobblers.
34) The Swimmer - They don't make 'em like this any more. What starts out as a kitsch curiosity piece becomes the story of Burt Lancaster's life unravelling before his uncomprehending eyes.
35) Superman Returns - Brandon Routh is excellent as both Kent and Superman. In fact good turns all round. The film didn't actually need the Lex Luthor plot - which, especially at the begining was a bit poorly integrated - and could have worked entirely as a family drama (with added plane crashes.)
36) Princess - Half animated/ half live action Danish revenge movie. Highly twisted in the way of these things.
37) Beyond Hatred - Documentary following the family of a young Frenchman two years after his murder. As harrowing as you would expect.
38) Capote - Classy, mannered biopic. Philip Seymour Hoffman's mimicry may be excellent but it doesn't half grate after a while.
39) Godsend - Never bring your son back from the dead. Whatever.
40) Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind - Too much hippy nonsense. I always get the feeling Miyazaki's imagination outstrips his storytelling ability too comprehensively.
41) Delicatessen - Wonderful black comedy.
42) City Of God - I put off watching this for ages but I'm not sure why. Excellent.
43) Laurel Canyon - Sexy, good looking but pretty standard tale of sexual and family dysfunction. Lots of accent swapping.
44) Bad Education - Somehow this is the first Almodovar I have seen. Very good but perhaps the tone could have been more consistant between drama, melodrama and noir.
45) Kiki's Delivery Service - Sweet but long, flimsy and aimless.
46) A Scanner Darkly - Best Dick yet.
47) A Bug's Life - A bit of a warm up for later works.
48) Volver - Vivid, funny and colourful but all tied up rather too glibly at the end.
49) Wrong Turn - Generic hillbilly horror half watched with my mind on something else.
50) Little Miss Sunshine - Received mixed reviews which is understandable because although it is very funny it is all over the place.
51) Rollerball - The remake. Somewhere between dumb and interesting.
52) This Is England - Autobiographical film from Shane Meadows which is a complex study of identity, nationality and belonging set during the Falklands War.
53) Cronos - Mexican art pulp take on the Dracula myth. Federico Luppi makes a good double for Christopher Lee.
54) The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit - Great.
55) The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Not as dire as has been made out but could have been so much better.
56) The Departed - Sometimes masterful, sometimes cliched. Fine acting all round.
57) Gangs Of New York - Clearly anticipating The Departed and perhaps overly concerned with its visual identity.
58) Dawn Of The Dead - The new one. Surprisingly well put together mix of OTT shocks and humour.
59) Amelie - Ridiculously lovely but with just enough bite.
60) The Prestige - Perhaps too similar to Memento in theme and execution (particularly the editing and sound.)
61) Hell Boy - Done with panache but lacking substance.
62) Constantine - The same themes as Hell Boy but with totally different execution. Rather good.
63) Date Movie - Crass and stupid obviously but kind of fun.
64) Man On Fire - As glib and flashy as you would expect from Tony Scott. Revenge is not an edifying spectacle.
65) Spun - Tedious drug film that has no idea what it wants to be.
66) Inside Man - Satisfyingly twisty but slightly spoiled by the need to make everyone a good guy.
67) The Proposition - Spare, harsh Western about love, duty and the madness of colonialism.
68) Bad Santa - Awesome.
69) South West 9 - Boring Brixton "counter-culture" flick.
70) Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - Awesome metaboiled thriller. Robert Downey Jr could be my man of the year and it even made me think well of Val Kilmer.
71) K19: The Widowmaker - Harrison Ford on a submarine; you know this ends badly. Starts off my the numbers, ends up a weirdly offensive American hymn to the inflexibility of Sovietism.
72) Van Helsing - It's no The Mummy but highly enjoyable tosh nonetheless.
73) Thunderpants - He does the high bit with his arse.
74) Jurasic Park 3 - Like the first two but worser.
75) Pom Poko - By turns tongue in cheek and po faced. Yet another overly long and ecologically bludgeoning film from Studio Ghibli but with added raccoon testicles.
So an increase from last year but still nowhere near talavlin. All these brief impressions were originally posted on 52filmchallenge if you want to play along at home. And now, new for this year, my top ten (in reverse order):
10) Syriana
9) Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
8) The Proposition
7) This Is England
6) Brick
5) A Scanner Darkly
4) The Wickerman
3) Delicatessen
2) City Of God
1) A Cock And Bull Story
And there were several more that deserved a place on that list. A good year of viewing.
Edit: Somehow I missed off Renaissance which must have been around the 20s.
1) Two For The Money - Very talky Al Pacino flick. Interesting Oedipus love triangle beset by typical sports story cliches and McConaughey's smarminess.
2) Thumbsucker - Another film about being young and fucked up but a worthwhile addition to the canon. Its main point is that there is no magic bullet for the human condition. All well and good but it treats this realisation as something of a magic bullet itself.
3) Me You And Everyone We Know - Too artifical and heavily stylised for my taste. Lots of interesting (and often very funny) scenes but they are tempered by the scenes that strive to be significant and all in all its rather aimless.
4) Welcome To The Dollhouse - Black comedy (I guess) that seeks to constantly unsettle the viewer but never comes to germination. I seem to say this about all American indie films.
5) Bad Guy - My first Kim Ki-duk film. A grotesque magical realist "love" story. Amusingly the cover boasts a quote saying "Perverse, politically incorrect." as if that was enough. It isn't.
6) Brokeback Mountain - Period romance. Well enough done.
7) The Ladykillers - The original. Enjoyable enough but a little old school for my tastes.
8) Hidden - French film that goes beyond ambiguity to outright obtuseness. At the end bafflement was coming off the audience in waves. Very well made though.
9) Moulin Rouge! - So OTT it made my head hurt. Undoubtably it makes exuberance a virtue but still.
10) The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Messy, rather dreadful adaptation that bears only passing resemblance to the book and looks like it was shot on the quick. I did like the rendering of the Guide though.
11) A Cock And Bull Story - Uproariously funny. This is how you do meta. An early contender for film of the year.
12) 9 Songs - Another Winterbottom film. Clearly anticipated by Code 46 but nowhere near as good as Cock And Bull.
13) The Jacket - Odd.
14) Final Destination 2 - Enjoyably preposterous shocker.
15) The Wickerman - Macabre and cleverly put together film (apart from the slightly duff Ekland/Woodward seduction scene) that hids its dagger ingeniously. A marvellous, career best performance from Christopher Lee.
16) Syriana - Perhaps understandably this is very similar to Traffic. The tag line is "Everything Is Connected" but everything was a bit too connected with each narrative thread neatly dovetailing and each character getting a nice resolution. Good to see a well made, honest and stridently political drama getting a major release.
17) The Pianist - Well, that was a barrel of laughs, wasn't it? There is a great scene where Adrien Brody, as the titular pianist, plays silently. Bafflingly Thomas Kretschmann - in the film for ten minutes at the end - gets co-billing.
18) V For Vendetta - Rather odd. Not an easily filmable story so it was substantially changed in ways that didn't necessarily make sense. I liked Stephen Rea and Roger Allam but Hugo Weaving's V just seemed silly.
19) School Of Rock - Fun.
20) The Island - Enjoyable tosh that squanders a lot of good will. Ridiculously long.
21) The Descent - Remarkably grim caving horror. Effective, even slightly clever but gruesome as hell.
22) Buffalo 66 - If you'd told me yesterday I would ever watch a Vincent Gallo film I would have laughed in your face. It's not straightforwardly bad, just proceeds from a completely fucked predicate.
23) Corpse Bride - Short, endearing romance. As with Burton's previous film the sound mix made the songs almost unintelligble.
24) Super Size Me - Fucking gross.
25) Hulk - Clever editing but a bit ponderous.
26) Night Watch - Lots of visual panache but brainhurtingly confusing.
27) That Darn Cat - Actually quite enjoyable.
28) Kiss Of The Dragon - Deeply stupid kickfest.
29) Every Day's A Holiday - Endearingly bonkers cross between Summer Holiday and Carry On with a movie stealing performance by Freddie And The Dreamers as the hotel chefs.
30) A History Of Violence - Handsomely made but to what purpose?
31) Stir Of Echoes - Actually quite creepy, with unusually mature performances but let down by the trite ending.
32) Brick - Deliciously artificial.
33) Alien Versus Predator - Cobblers.
34) The Swimmer - They don't make 'em like this any more. What starts out as a kitsch curiosity piece becomes the story of Burt Lancaster's life unravelling before his uncomprehending eyes.
35) Superman Returns - Brandon Routh is excellent as both Kent and Superman. In fact good turns all round. The film didn't actually need the Lex Luthor plot - which, especially at the begining was a bit poorly integrated - and could have worked entirely as a family drama (with added plane crashes.)
36) Princess - Half animated/ half live action Danish revenge movie. Highly twisted in the way of these things.
37) Beyond Hatred - Documentary following the family of a young Frenchman two years after his murder. As harrowing as you would expect.
38) Capote - Classy, mannered biopic. Philip Seymour Hoffman's mimicry may be excellent but it doesn't half grate after a while.
39) Godsend - Never bring your son back from the dead. Whatever.
40) Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind - Too much hippy nonsense. I always get the feeling Miyazaki's imagination outstrips his storytelling ability too comprehensively.
41) Delicatessen - Wonderful black comedy.
42) City Of God - I put off watching this for ages but I'm not sure why. Excellent.
43) Laurel Canyon - Sexy, good looking but pretty standard tale of sexual and family dysfunction. Lots of accent swapping.
44) Bad Education - Somehow this is the first Almodovar I have seen. Very good but perhaps the tone could have been more consistant between drama, melodrama and noir.
45) Kiki's Delivery Service - Sweet but long, flimsy and aimless.
46) A Scanner Darkly - Best Dick yet.
47) A Bug's Life - A bit of a warm up for later works.
48) Volver - Vivid, funny and colourful but all tied up rather too glibly at the end.
49) Wrong Turn - Generic hillbilly horror half watched with my mind on something else.
50) Little Miss Sunshine - Received mixed reviews which is understandable because although it is very funny it is all over the place.
51) Rollerball - The remake. Somewhere between dumb and interesting.
52) This Is England - Autobiographical film from Shane Meadows which is a complex study of identity, nationality and belonging set during the Falklands War.
53) Cronos - Mexican art pulp take on the Dracula myth. Federico Luppi makes a good double for Christopher Lee.
54) The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit - Great.
55) The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Not as dire as has been made out but could have been so much better.
56) The Departed - Sometimes masterful, sometimes cliched. Fine acting all round.
57) Gangs Of New York - Clearly anticipating The Departed and perhaps overly concerned with its visual identity.
58) Dawn Of The Dead - The new one. Surprisingly well put together mix of OTT shocks and humour.
59) Amelie - Ridiculously lovely but with just enough bite.
60) The Prestige - Perhaps too similar to Memento in theme and execution (particularly the editing and sound.)
61) Hell Boy - Done with panache but lacking substance.
62) Constantine - The same themes as Hell Boy but with totally different execution. Rather good.
63) Date Movie - Crass and stupid obviously but kind of fun.
64) Man On Fire - As glib and flashy as you would expect from Tony Scott. Revenge is not an edifying spectacle.
65) Spun - Tedious drug film that has no idea what it wants to be.
66) Inside Man - Satisfyingly twisty but slightly spoiled by the need to make everyone a good guy.
67) The Proposition - Spare, harsh Western about love, duty and the madness of colonialism.
68) Bad Santa - Awesome.
69) South West 9 - Boring Brixton "counter-culture" flick.
70) Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - Awesome metaboiled thriller. Robert Downey Jr could be my man of the year and it even made me think well of Val Kilmer.
71) K19: The Widowmaker - Harrison Ford on a submarine; you know this ends badly. Starts off my the numbers, ends up a weirdly offensive American hymn to the inflexibility of Sovietism.
72) Van Helsing - It's no The Mummy but highly enjoyable tosh nonetheless.
73) Thunderpants - He does the high bit with his arse.
74) Jurasic Park 3 - Like the first two but worser.
75) Pom Poko - By turns tongue in cheek and po faced. Yet another overly long and ecologically bludgeoning film from Studio Ghibli but with added raccoon testicles.
So an increase from last year but still nowhere near talavlin. All these brief impressions were originally posted on 52filmchallenge if you want to play along at home. And now, new for this year, my top ten (in reverse order):
10) Syriana
9) Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
8) The Proposition
7) This Is England
6) Brick
5) A Scanner Darkly
4) The Wickerman
3) Delicatessen
2) City Of God
1) A Cock And Bull Story
And there were several more that deserved a place on that list. A good year of viewing.
Edit: Somehow I missed off Renaissance which must have been around the 20s.