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Top Ten
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Clive Owen's Future is Now
Many were aghast when Clive Owen turned down the role of 007. But just a few months after pal Daniel Craig’s debut, the actor stands tall as star of the best film of ’06.
Wednesday, January 3, 2007 at 10:45 AM
By Brett Buckalew
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File
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Author Brett Buckalew
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In Children of Men, my choice for the best film of 2006, the Human Project refers to a group of scientists dedicated to curing the massive infertility wave that has turned mankind into an endangered species. Though the film is clearly not of as much life-or-death importance as the plague depicted in Children’s near-future world, the best of this past year’s movies demonstrated that cinema can be considered a Human Project in its own right.
One primary example of film’s vital humanity is its ability to generate viewer compassion for those who society is quick to judge. The most remarkable movies of the past twelve months accomplished this feat quite audaciously, asking us to understand and sympathize with an army that fought viciously against the U.S. in World War II; an officer of an oppressive secret police force known for turning citizens against each other; a crafty bank robber; culturally insensitive Western tourists adrift in the Third World; and even a creepy pedophile, struggling to re-enter society.
And as daringly as these movies promoted the medium’s Human Project, it was also noteworthy that so many of them did so while taking the deceptive form of escapist popcorn flicks: a cops-‘n-criminals shoot-‘em-up; a cat-and-mouse heist thriller headlined by marquee names; a lavish re-boot of a decades-old spy-movie franchise. Heck, there are even two Will Ferrell comedies in my top twenty.
So without further ado, here are those highlights of 2006 that entertained and enlightened in equally brilliant fashion:
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Universal Pictures
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Licensed to save the world
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1. Children of Men: With a hair-raising, nightmarish intensity, director Alfonso Cuarón brings to life a 2027 that’s a logical extension of historic and present-day horrors. There are no flying cars or garish skyscrapers in this future, only unceasing combat and government-sanctioned prejudice against immigrants. But the impending arrival of the first baby born in 18 years means that there’s hope for this crazy world yet. Scary, provocative, and inspiring all at once, Children is a sublime visionary achievement that not only outdoes Cuarón’s previous high-water mark, Y Tu Mamá También, but also manages to rank with dystopian masterworks A Clockwork Orange and Brazil.
2. Letters From Iwo Jima: Director Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers showed the U.S. perspective of a key World War II battle in an ambitious but emotionally hollow way. There is no such detachment in Eastwood’s devastating companion film, Letters From Iwo Jima, which has the great wisdom and maturity to realize that the Japanese forces, the “enemy” of the battle, were made up of humans just as frightened and conflicted as the American soldiers were. Composed in beautiful near-black-and-white darkness, the movie explores the tough gray areas of warfare, in which questions of right and wrong transcend national differences. It’s a beacon of moral ambiguity, and, 14 years after the classic revisionist Western Unforgiven, another courageous step forward for the septuagenarian Eastwood.
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Warner Bros.
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Informer with a cause
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3. The Departed: There was no more sheer fun to be had at the movies this year than in watching maestro Martin Scorsese’s deliriously cinematic and profane epic of Beantown crime and punishment. With ingenious plotting, high-octane action, crackling dialogue and a to-die-for ensemble cast, The Departed is the kind of top-tier entertainment you want to see again the second it’s over. And as a cop whose undercover mission as right-hand to a crazed Boston-underworld kingpin (a deliciously demented Jack Nicholson) eats away at his soul, Leonardo DiCaprio channels James Dean and delivers the year’s most searing lead-male performance.
4. A Prairie Home Companion: Even before director Robert Altman’s tragic passing in November, his adaptation of Garrison Keillor’s beloved radio show already resonated as an entirely unique, unusually vinegary take on the specter of mortality. Portraying the final performance of a troupe of radio performers, Prairie Home stares in the face of death and asserts, “Screw you! We’re goin’ out singing!” Every scene is a marvel of delicate tragicomic observation, and the actors (Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and L.Q. Jones are standouts) pinball off of each other with an organic grace that’s, well, Altman-esque.
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MGM
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A Parkour de force
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5. Casino Royale: Proving that the time-tested three-act structure still has new tricks up its sleeve, this origin-story script (presided over by three writers, including Crash scribe Paul Haggis in what easily registers as career-best work) showed legendary secret agent James Bond’s evolution from lethal thug to tuxedo-clad, sophisticated smoothie to a cold professional left emotionless by a tragically cut-short romance. In addition, there’s awe-inspiring action (especially the opening Parkour-inflected foot chase), witty banter, and in the form of the magnetic Daniel Craig, the best Bond since Sean Connery.
6. The Lives of Others: When the Berlin Wall divided Germany, the East German secret police, or Stasi for short, went to cruel, invasive ends to maintain loyalty. Writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s astonishingly auspicious debut examines, via a Stasi operative’s (Ulrich Mühe, subtly heartbreaking) increasing allegiance to the couple he’s ostensibly spying on, the way such organizations and divisions can thankfully crumble. The story can also be seen as a metaphor for the necessity of engagement with artistic narrative, but that’s just the way this incredibly layered work, which is also profoundly moving and suspenseful, operates.
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Universal Pictures
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Their slickest collaboration yet
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7. Inside Man: Spike Lee is so lively and energetic a filmmaking voice that he even fooled some viewers into thinking this genre effort was actually a lighthearted break from his career-long investigation into American injustice and inequality. But in making an intricate, unexpectedly funny heist movie wherein the object being stolen is evidence that will right historical wrongs, Lee has instead found a fresh new template with which to tackle his pet themes. In the three central roles, Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster and Clive Owen (having a banner year with this and Children of Men) exude the shifty intelligence of pro chess players.
8. Babel: Some misguided detractors, still feeling the burn from Crash’s Best Picture Oscar win (and, hey, I can relate), unjustly pegged director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s global mosaic as a similar burst pimple of overheated hysteria. But the film Babel most closely resembles is Michael Haneke’s great Code Unknown. Whereas Haneke appealed to the intellect in his study of a collision that appears political only to be much more personal in origin, González Iñárritu takes a similar set-up and makes a stirring, sincere play for the heart. To that end, he conjures up some breathtakingly gorgeous imagery, and elicits raw, deeply felt performances from Cate Blanchett, Adriana Barraza, Rinko Kikuchi, and a surprisingly vulnerable Brad Pitt.
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20th Century Fox
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From Moocher to McGorvey
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9. Little Children: The trap of American suburbia has been a ripe subject for many films, but nevertheless, director Todd Field and co-writer Tom Perrotta’s take on the subject is utterly distinctive in its balance between mockingly anthropological distance and touchingly sympathetic closeness. Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson, great as they’ve ever been before, nail the commingled desire and desperation of fumbling adultery, and former Bad News Bear child star Jackie Earle Haley makes the comeback of the year as a pitiable pedophile.
10. Stranger Than Fiction: The hype swirling around writer Zach Helm as the next Charlie Kaufman may have caused this beguiling literary fantasy to be underrated. In actuality, the tale of an IRS stooge (Will Ferrell, perfectly underplaying) who learns to loosen up once an omniscient narrator foretells his coming death, succeeds as a more sweetly mainstream pleasure than Kaufman’s cerebral head trips. And as big-studio entertainments go, they don’t come any more intelligent or blissfully romantic than this one. Director Marc Forster adds touches of grin-inducing whimsy, and Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal round out the delightful cast.
Runners-Up (in preferential order): Dave Chappelle’s Block Party; Down in the Valley; Shortbus; An Inconvenient Truth; Thank You for Smoking; The Devil and Daniel Johnston; Dreamgirls; Clean; Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby; Apocalypto.
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