Once said at the fires...

I can officially cross two of my 40 MIA DVDs for 2007 off the list, as Anchor Bay has announced an Alejandro Jodorowsky boxset, which will include El topo and The Holy Mountain, as well as a new disc of Fando y Lis. Granted this is a title that seems posed for numerous postponements, like the Kenneth Anger box-set, though I just ordered my copy today.

Other than that annoucement, I figured I'd just post a pull-quote from John Waters in This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Kirby Dick's wildly uneven assault against the MPAA.

John Waters (about felching): "No one has actually done it. I know a lot of perverts, and even they haven't."

And, as you know, I don't really get around to seeing every film that comes out, so here's a list of quotes my friends and non-friends have made in the past week or so, regarding the realm of cinema.

Chris B. (on In My Skin): "Vegetarian propaganda!"

David H. (on Freeway): "There's no such thing as a video store having too many copies of this film."

Katie P. (on her favorite quote from Six Feet Under): " 'I don't want him cruising me in the afterlife;' needless to say, I'm obsessed."

Random guy at bar (on Belle de jour): "Shit, it has everything -- sex, flogging, Catherine Deneuve, blasphemy, and horses."

Tom S. (on Hounddog): "Dakota Fanning getting raped is the best thing to hit cinemas this year!"

Tom B. (on Letters from Iwo Jima): "I think he's really pulled the wool over the critics' eyes, cloaking what really amounts to a lack of imagination with the label ''classicism.'"
Tom B. (on The Departed): "Jack Nicholson + strap-on dildo = summit of human cultural achievement."
Tom B.: "I recently had a dream where Godard, after delivering some obnoxious lecture, returns to his dressing room, hits the stereo and rocks out to 'Back in Black'. I awoke with a hard-on."
Tom B. (on Shortbus): "Damn Hedwig and his porno actors and their sublime sorrow!"

Josh W. (on Time to Leave): "Hot French guys should never have to die."

Nathan H. (on my blasting of his five-star rating for Life Is Beautiful): "Your antisemitism is cute."
Nathan H. (on Hedwig and the Angry Inch): "So fucking beautiful & hilarious it makes me wanna stomp a lightbulb."

Mike H. (on Show Me Love): "Shit, this made Foreigner sound touching!"

Cindy L. (on Prairie Home Companion): Blah-blah-blah boring."

Mike M. (on The Covenant): It's like The Craft, only for thirteen-year-old gay boys."

Me (in response to Mike M.): "Isn't The Craft like The Craft for thirteen-year-old gay boys?"

A douche bag who works at a video store (on The Guardian): "On an Ashton Kutcher scale, it's somewhere between The Butterfly Effect and Just Married."

Chris M. (not in response to him): "The Butterfly Effect is Donnie Darko for morons."

Me: "Fuck Donnie Darko."

The Oscars love Mexicans, just like Paul Haggis!

Thank goodness they had Salma Hayek around for the announcement of this year's Academy Award nominations, 'cos even Naomi Watts can't pronounce Alejandro González Iñárritu's name (and she worked with him!). Like Michael Peña in Crash, the Mexicans could do no wrong as the nominations came around this past morning, with Alfonso Cuarón getting a Best Adapted Screenplay nod for Children of Men (he did not, however, receive a much-deserved Best Director nod) and Guillermo del Toro picked up a bunch, including Best Foreign-Language Film, for Pan's Labyrinth. Missing in action was that conquistador Pedro Almodóvar in a sizable mistake by the Academy. No nomination for Volver further supports the theory I discussed in by Best of the Year list. Penélope Cruz did indeed get a nod for her work on the film, but let's just clap for her now, because Mirren has it in the bag. And, no Best Picture nomination for Dreamgirls!? The Academy is racist!!... where was Beyoncé's nod? Expect her father to make some bull-headed, moronic comment about this publicly soon (if he hasn't already). With no real guarantees, except Mirren and Pan's Labyrinth for Best Foreign Language film, this could be one of the more exciting years for the Oscars. And, as my friend Mike said, after this morning, we can officially refer to Click, Poseidon, and The Black Dahlia as "Academy Award Nominees." The complete list is here, if you're interested.

Take to the sky...

Broken Sky (El cielo dividido) - dir. Julián Hernández - 2006 - Mexico

The nauseating task of watching a filmmaker jerk off in his hand and feed it to the public is not one I would normally indulge, but you never know. A critic (or two) mentioned Broken Sky on Indiewire.com's Best of 2006 poll, so I gave in and plan to regurgitate everything the director gave me in harsh words. The last time I checked, there wasn't a handbook on how to make a film as pretentious as possible, but director Hernández could have easily penned one. Taking cue from the French (Claire Denis, Sébastian Lifshitz), the Scottish (Lynne Ramsay), the Koreans (Kim Ki-duk), and Taiwanese (Tsai Ming-liang), Hernández has successfully made his text-book example of how not to make a film. Though I admired (and became distracted) by Almodóvar's use of cinematic references in Kika, Broken Sky's breed of homage is merely self-serving narcissism. I'd imagine the check-list to look something like this:

- Make your film over two hours (check, 140 minutes to be exact)
- Minimal dialogue (check, in fact the two main leads only speak one word to one another)
- Plenty of graphic sex and nudity (check, though it's tamer than Hernández's influences would have been)
- Open with a quote, preferably as snobby as possible (check, Marguerite Duras from Hiroshima mon amour)
- Include some sort of mythological or anthropological metaphor by unrelated characters (check, the film actually uses the exact same myth that John Cameron Mitchell adopted so beautifully in the song "The Origin of Love" in Hedwig and the Angry Inch)
- Fancy cinematography (check, though its panning motifs prove obnoxious by about the twenty-minute mark)
- Cast non-actors (check, one can imagine the directorial cues to range from "look pensive" to "now look sad")
- Classical music score, plus ironic pop music (check)
- Put the title card half-way into the film (check, though I like this idea, Pen-ek Ratanaruang did it so much better in Last Life in the Universe)
- Insert unrelated narrator to throw around even more metaphors of love (check, on top of a white screen, no less)

I don't think Hernández missed a single cliché in making Broken Sky, except for the necessary shot of a character looking blank while smoking a cigarette. I'd be sure to let him know that smoking is necessary for a film of this sort. This check-list of pretensions have worked beautifully in other films, specifically Lifshitz's Wild Side and Ramsay's Morvern Callar, but both rank as exceedingly more gifted filmmakers than Hernández, whose talent seems to be limited to the undergraduate film school liking. I can see a round-table discussion of well-versed freshman film students eating up every last morsel of shit in Broken Sky. I can also probably envision a terrorist bomb located beneath that table. What's most shocking about Broken Sky isn't how dreadful it is, but that it's a vast improvement over Hernández's last film, Mil nubes de paz cercan el cielo, amor, jamás acabarás de ser amor (translated as A Thousand Clouds of Peace Fence the Sky, Love; Your Being, Love, Will Never End). Somewhere, Fiona Apple is smiling. Elsewhere, those clouds of peace are brewing a shitstorm.

On the Verge

Kika - dir. Pedro Almodóvar - 1993 - Spain/France

The 1990s weren’t a remarkable period for Pedro Almodóvar. The decade was bookended with two notable works, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and All About My Mother, but was unfortunately littered with some of his weakest efforts (The Flower of My Secret, Live Flesh, High Heels). This may be hard to imagine for those used to his astonishing quartet of nearly flawless motion pictures in his third decade of filmmaking. Kika is probably the best of his middle time period and easily the “naughtiest.” This is not to say Kika is a great film, by any means, but it’s the last time you can see Almodóvar’s youthful outrageousness as he moved onto more serious work afterward. The film contains what you’ll probably regard as the funniest rape sequence since Divine got fucked by a giant lobster in Multiple Maniacs, and, other than Peter Coyote as an American crime novelist, the cast is exquisite.

Anyone who’s read about Almodóvar will note that his assumption of the role of filmmaker came directly from his love of film. The film history references pop up frequently in his films, though most of these nods come from the genre of melodrama lately. You mustn’t forget his delightful homage to Rear Window in Women on the Verge where Carmen Maura sits outside an apartment building, peeping her own version of Miss Torso and Miss Lonely Hearts while looking for her lover. Moments like this are cute, little treats for you cinephiles that really amount to little more. Kika, on the other hand, seems entirely composed of these moments, loose references to films that had a lasting effect on Almodóvar during his formative cinematic years. The allusions aren’t always as concise as the Rear Window bit in Women on the Verge (though it is worth noting that Kika also features apartment window spying), but they’re hardly mistakable. Both an over-the-top comedy and crime mystery, Kika jumps all over the place, one minute taking cue from Peeping Tom (a movie poster for the film can be seen on one of the walls), the next John Waters doing his best Harold Lloyd. Kika is fortunately spunky enough to dismiss these faults, thanks mostly to his crop of ladies. As the title character, Verónica Forqué balances obnoxiously dim-witted with undeniably charming. Rossy de Palma, one of my personal favorites, plays Kika’s lesbian maid whose psychotic nymphomaniac porn star brother (Santiago Lajusticia) has escaped from prison. And most lovely is Victoria Abril as Andrea Caracortada, a.k.a. Scarface, a ratings-hungry television “journalist” with an obsession with crime and serial killers (and impeccably dressed by Jean-Paul Gaultier). Riding a motorcycle and wearing a giant camera atop her head, Abril has the best moments of Kika, getting ejaculated on her face in the shape of a tear, wearing plastic breasts that would have made Madonna jealous, and interviewing a woman getting gunned down. The appeal of his women here, like many other of his films, blind the audience to the inconsistencies of the film itself.

Kika exists as the final boisterous, “zany” work of Almodóvar before he moved onto more “respectable” films. Unfortunately, his style for dramatics was hardly fleshed out at this period, leaving much to be desired. The film loses its cheeky sensibilities near the end, when Almodóvar decides that he wants to say something about the unethical dealings of the media and the relationship between art and the artist. Thankfully, he’s savvy enough to have left clues to the final twist throughout the course of the film; Abril carefully points out that no woman, not even a lesbian, ignores personal grooming, which ends up being a big, juicy clue in the end. For all of its convolutions, Kika is still a joyous film, wonderfully portrayed by his cast of lovely ladies and equipped with that admirable raucousness that inhabited his earliest features.

In related news, you can pick up your Pedro box-set on the 30th of January, which includes Matador, Law of Desire, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, The Flower of My Secret, Live Flesh, All About My Mother, Talk to Her, Bad Education, and a bonus disc.

Coming in April

Criterion will be releasing the long MIA La haine, one of the finest French films of the 90s, on DVD in April. The film stars Vincent Cassel and Saïd Taghmaoui and was directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. The DVD will include an introduction by Jodie Foster, likely about the race issues of the film. God, she really doesn't have a sense of humor, does she?

Considerations

The Oscar nominations are coming soon, so I thought I'd run down a few of my dark horses -- likely none of which will get nominated. I'm not mentioning some of the more probable nominations that would please me, like Abigail Breslin and Steve Carell for Little Miss Sunshine, Mark Wahlberg for The Departed, Jackie Earle Haley for Little Children, Penélope Cruz for Volver, Sergi López for Pan's Labyrinth, etc.

Best Picture & Director
Alfonso Cuarón - Children of MenPaul Greengrass - United 93Best Actor
Nick Nolte - CleanMelvil Poupaud - Time to Leave (Le temps qui reste)Nolte reminded us that he was a good actor and perfectly complimented Maggie Cheung's instability with a surprising tenderness. Clean wouldn't have worked without him or Cheung. Le Temps qui reste also owes its success to Poupaud, who wonderfully expresses the confusion and denial of a man diagnosed with terminal cancer. It would have been easy for Ozon to cast someone just as attractive, but likely with lesser results.

Best Actress
Maggie Cheung - CleanAbbie Cornish - SomersaultBryce Dallas Howard - ManderlayCheung already won the Best Actress prize at Cannes two years ago (yes, that's how long it took Clean to come stateside), so an Academy Award nomination would probably mean less. Cornish is dazzling as a runaway teenage girl, and Howard made the difficult decision to fill Nicole Kidman's shoes as Grace in Lars von Trier's sequel to Dogville.

Best Supporting Actor
William Hurt - The KingDanny Huston - The PropositionHurt's performance in The King is probably his finest to date, a direct counter to last year's Oscar nomination for his tongue-in-cheek role in A History of Violence. When the plot of The King takes a turn from expectations, it's really Hurt that allows you to stick with the film. Huston, as Guy Pearce's outlaw brother, gives one of the more haunting performances I've seen this year.

Best Supporting Actress
Vera Farmiga - The DepartedGong Li - Miami ViceFarmiga, also wonderful in Down to the Bone, somehow emerges as the most fascinating character in The Departed. As the sole female in the main cast, she's fully believable as a professional woman on the exterior with a taste for bad boys outside of the office. Gong Li, despite not knowing how to speak English or Spanish, is both sexy as hell and genuinely effective. Both Farmiga and Li redeem their unnecessary love interest characters by proving more interesting than their male counterparts.

I ain't no trickbaby

Reese Witherspoon has only looked better one other time... and if you know me well enough, you can figure out when.


Do you really care about the rest?

And without further adieu...

...the best films of 2006. Still MIA for my viewing: The Queen, Half Nelson, Old Joy, Inland Empire, Venus, and The Lives of Others.

1. Children of Men - dir. Alfonso Cuarón - UK/USA - Universal

In an apocalyptic future where women are no longer fertile, Clive Owen must take a young immigrant woman (Claire-Hope Ashitey), miraculously and curiously pregnant, to the promise of safety. For a long time, I’d never truly been converted to the love for Cuarón, though I’ve enjoyed all of his films, save Great Expectations. Children of Men is not only the convincing factor in a newly formed love affair with the director, but the film could have been half as good as it is, and I still would have fallen. Children of Men has a strange force, one that really can’t be denied by film geeks, sci-fi nerds, or your average movie-goer. Like few films I can think of, Children of Men is absolutely riveting. Using a number of single-takes, the film feels like the antithesis of a Jerry Bruckheimer film. In the single take, Cuarón brings the audience into the action and never lets go. The level of desperation is immeasurable. As I just saw it, I’m still reeling through the experience at hand, piecing things together into a greater whole. Unfortunately, that conclusion hasn’t been solidified yet, so I can only describe and explain. Though one could see Children of Men’s placement as a knee-jerk decision, the only thing I can soundly state is that Children of Men is the finest film of 2006. So, yeah…

2. Volver - dir. Pedro Almodóvar - Spain - Sony Pictures Classics

For most of the 90s, Pedro Almodóvar was a cult figure of international cinema in the United States. Beginning with the surprise hit of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, he earned a small, but fervent following among those with a taste for the humorously perverse. He (and likely also Madonna, as a result of her sexual fantasies in Truth or Dare) made Antonio Banderas an international star and appeared to gain fans with each new film (though I really doubt he acquired any new ones with his lousy Flower of My Secret). Then in 2000, he won the best foreign-language Oscar that no one ever expected he’d win with All About My Mother. From there, he’s become probably the most famous foreign director in the United States with Talk to Her and Bad Education. Volver is the fourth of his critical successes, but for reasons beyond me, probably ranks as the lowest showing of support from his audiences. I find it troubling to rank his films in terms of quality or personal preference. Volver has made a number of critics’ list and won a few end-of-the-year prizes, but the enthusiasm just doesn’t seem to be there. Almodóvar is hardly the victim of an inability to broaden or advance with each film, so where’s the love? I’m certainly not criticizing my friends, but it seems as if each one who’s seen the film has resorted to the “Yeah, it was pretty good” response, a reply I cannot mirror. I left the screening of Volver glowing, reeling with pure enthusiasm. I was a bit hesitant at first to blow my wad over Volver to my friends, as it felt a bit less ambitious than Bad Education or Talk to Her, but I’ve ardently changed my tone. Out of all of his films, Volver has elicited the strongest emotional response from me. Enriched by Penélope Cruz’s radiant performance as the conflicted Raimunda, Almodóvar crafted an uncompromising world of broken, but pious women, each of them with unsatisfied void and despair. Seeing Almodóvar mature is a personal pleasure of mine. A friend of mine and I discussed the most telling moment of maturation in Volver when Almodóvar slides past a potential romance between Raimunda and a young production assistant. In his earlier films, he would have given us a wild, lusty sex scene between the two, but at this point in his career, his vision is more clear. Getting excited about a new Almodóvar film is the closest thing I can experience in relation to the hey-day of international cinema in the 1960s and 1970s. I hope I never become a person whose duty as an intellectual is to merely attend a film I’m supposed to see without any sort of passion. Though 2006 was a strange year for cinema, it provided me with at least a dozen films that served as reminders of why I do what I do.

3. United 93 - dir. Paul Greengrass - UK/France/USA - Universal

Of course you didn’t want to see this. I didn’t either. I still can’t make a proper defense for the film’s necessity, but a number of great things, especially in cinema, have come from a real lack of such. We all know World Trade Center was Oliver Stone’s Inside Man, a way to get back fans after the abysmal Alexander (Spike Lee should still be sorry about She Hate Me). But for Greengrass, United 93 is his solidification as one of the finest new directors of the past five years. What’s not here is revolting sentimentality; what is here is nail-biting tension and exactitude.

4. L'enfant - dir. Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne - Belgium/France - Sony Pictures Classics

For a long time, I doubted the appeal of the Dardenne brothers. Their style of filmmaking is sparse, and their subjects morose. I always thought of them as the Belgian answer to the grimy British Mike Leigh or Ken Loach, both of which hardly tickle my fancy. L’enfant, winner of the Palme d’Or in 2005 but not released in the States until a year later, wholly changed my opinion. Yes, the style is sparse, and, yes, the subject is morose, but simple this film isn’t. L’Enfant is an utterly nerve-racking depiction of two lost youths (Jérémie Renier and Déborah François) and their conflicting relationship with their newborn baby. Though the haunting sequence where Renier sells the baby is absolutely pulsating, the finer moments of L’enfant occur when the Dardennes counter the reality that these two people are parents with the characters’ playful jeunesse. It’s the first film I can think of that actually filled me with fear at the idea of kids having kids even if that wasn’t what they were trying to accomplish. Above all, L’enfant is realism without schmaltz or God-like dictation; it’s an unsettling window into poverty, dissatisfaction, and unfortunate aimlessness.

5. Shortbus - dir. John Cameron Mitchell - USA - ThinkFilm

I’ve written plenty and discussed extensively this film, so instead of writing something new, here is what I wrote for Playback’s best of the year. Both emotionally profound and curiously meta, Mitchell and his non-actors designed the characters together for Shortbus, breathing an air of authenticity and, at the same time, subversive theories on the nature of acting and filmmaking. The actors, especially Sook-Yin Lee as a "pre-orgasmic" relationship counselor, resonate with undeniable genuineness that you not only sympathize with these people, but you wish you were friends with them. It's hard to separate the characters from the actors, as they all appear to be playing themselves or, at least, extensions of their personalities, and partaking in unsimulated sex acts with one another. This strange contradiction is always in balance in Mitchell's hands, in a film that succeeds at coexisting emotional and theoretical levels. Shortbus is thoroughly resonant, blissfully triumphant, and admirably hopeful in its depiction of the anxieties and struggles of a generation.

6. The Proposition - dir. John Hillcoat - Australia - First Look

Nick Cave’s songs always suggested a capacity for the realm of film, particularly his album Murder Ballads. What better setting for a Nick Cave-penned feature than the western? In the western, he reduces man to his instinctual beast-like quality, a godless uncivilized world of beautifully filmed ugliness. As one-third of a trio of lawless outlaw brothers, Guy Pearce is given clemency by a town’s captain (the excellent Ray Winstone, who also turned in a fine performance in The Departed) if he can turn in his elder sibling (Danny Huston). There’s a surprising humanity buried within the grimness, a fine companion to both Children of Men and Pan’s Labyrinth. Who knew that 2006 would be the year that humanity in film (especially genre-bound films) would actually feel… human?

7. Time to Leave (Le temps qui reste) - dir. François Ozon - France - Strand Releasing

What happens when beautiful people die young? Le temps qui reste shows us in a likely more fascinating approach than, say, Factory Girl. As a thematic sequel to Ozon’s finest film, Sous le sable (Under the Sand), the film examines the grief and closure of the life of a young fashion photographer, diagnosed with terminal cancer. Ozon allows Romain (Melvil Poupaud) a single opportunity to finalize his existence and relationships with the people in his life that mean the most, including his aging grandmother (Jeanne Moreau) and younger boyfriend (Christian Sengewald). Le temps qui reste is undeniably French in its approach to melodrama; it’s aesthetically beautiful, inconclusive, and wonderfully fragmented. It’s not so much a three-hanky endeavor as it is a poem or mood piece, and an exceptionally affecting one at that.

8. The Descent - dir. Neil Marshall - UK - Lionsgate

When a horror film actually scares me, it’s certainly worth noting. But when a horror film instills extreme panic and terror within me, it’s a remarkable feat. The Descent is a rare horror film that’s carved from precision and skill instead of sloppy gore and cheap spooks. See if you want to go spelunking afterward.

9. Brothers of the Head - dir. Keith Fulton, Louis Pepe - UK - IFC Films

Ever hear that really awesome song that totally fucks itself with the vocals or lyrics? Ever want to mute the singing and just listen to the instrumentation? That may be a lousy comparison, but Brothers of the Head is the cinematic equivalent. I want to take the film, cut out all of the talking-head interviews of this faux documentary (yes, even the Ken Russell one), and piece together the rest into a wholly satisfying, mystifying film. The archival footage of the conjoined twin rockers (Harry and Luke Treadaway) is astounding as the film becomes much more of a thoughtful meditation on identity and stardom than you might assume. Unlike the atrocity of For Your Consideration, Fulton and Pepe’s refusal to step away from their documentary roots (or mockumentary in the case of Consideration) becomes a mere blemish in the long run, as the delicacy and poignancy of the rest of the film wins out in the end.

10. Pan's Labyrinth (El laberinto del Fauno) - dir. Guillermo del Toro - Mexico/Spain/USA - Picturehouse

I never would have guessed a film with head-smashing, monsters feasting on fairies, torture, and a minotaur would be so touching. Well, maybe I did, as Pan’s Labyrinth was definitely one of the films I didn’t need to see to know I liked it. Either way, Pan’s Labyrinth is Guillermo del Toro’s finest film, twelve steps better than his acclaimed Devil’s Backbone. The film is a grim fantasy about a young girl (Ivana Baquero) who escapes the torments of her tyrannical step-father (Sergi López) in a labyrinth where a giant creature tells her of her lineage as the reincarnation of a lost underworld princess. Set during the early years of Franco’s rule over Spain, del Toro uses his setting not in a political way (though with this and The Devil’s Backbone one could see a fascination with the time period), but as a literal, effective manifestation of the fantastical battle between good and evil. Pan’s Labyrinth is a real marvel.

So, of course, I somehow left out two other films that deserve a mention for the year... so here, they are. I don't know where they'd fit exactly, but oh well...

Combat - dir. Patrick Carpentier - Belgium - Water Bearer Films

If James Broughton had directed Tropical Malady, it might have looked something like Combat. Two lovers (Tomas Matauko and Léo Joris) escape civilization to a remote forest where they proceed to kick the shit out of each other as a game. Fight Club comparisons aside, Carpentier crafts a grand poem of visual and audio, as the scenes between the lovers are cut with frightening images of clouds and the director reciting the poetic thoughts of one of the men. The appeal of Combat isn’t simply in Carpentier’s dwellings of the relationship between brutality and intimacy as much as it is in his dexterity. The two characters speak only a few sentences to one another throughout the course of the film, and this is to its benefit. As the conclusion to a trilogy called L’irrégulaité de la Déchirure (The Irregularity of the Tearing), you must not forget that one man’s “pretentious” is another man’s “glorious.”

Little Miss Sunshine - dir. Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris - USA - Fox Searchlight

I said earlier that Little Miss Sunshine could have easily been the forgotten “indie” of 2006 that exploded à la My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It certainly could have been, but there’s a greater allure to the film that gives it legs on which to stand. One critic called the film “as calculated as a fourteen-year-old’s Myspace profile,” and to that I can’t necessarily argue, but Little Miss Sunshine’s humor is intelligent and its charm contagious. How can one not appreciate the idea of Steve Carell as the self-loathing homosexual “number one Proust scholar” whose grad student boyfriend left him for the number two Proust scholar? The cast is exceptional (though Greg Kinear would probably be the weakest link), and the score by Devotchka is wonderful. Little Miss Sunshine may not have been one of the ten best films of the year, but it still deserves to be mentioned.

Presque... encore...

After much hesitation, I have finally completed my best of the year list, even without seeing The Queen. Sorry, Helen Mirren. I have crammed 20 films into the list, though of course all you care about is the 10, so I'll refrain from commenting on the latter 20 and focus on the tops. Even though I've compiled a list of 20, I still am feeling the need to mention a few other films (making this list really surprised me with the number of exceptional films I saw this year). Those other films include Jean-Marc Vallée's C.R.A.Z.Y., Caveh Zahedi's I Am a Sex Addict, Todd Field's Little Children, Asia Argento's The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, James Marsh's The King, Lars von Trier's Manderlay, and Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly. Just to get you prepared: here are the eleventh through twentieth best films of 2006.

11. Heading South (Vers le sud) - dir. Laurent Cantet - France/Canada - Shadow Distribution

12. Shadowboxer - dir. Lee Daniels - USA - Code Black Entertainment

13. Jackass Number Two - dir. Jeff Tremaine - USA - Paramount

14. Clean - dir. Olivier Assayas - France/Canada/UK - Palm Pictures

15. Dave Chappelle's Block Party - dir. Michel Gondry - USA - Rogue Pictures

16. 20 Centimeters (20 centímetros) - dir. Ramón Salazar - Spain/France - TLA Releasing

17. The Intruder (L'intrus) - dir. Claire Denis - France - Wellspring

18. Miami Vice - dir. Michael Mann - USA - Universal

19. Somersault - dir. Cate Shortland - Australia - Magnolia

20. Next Door (Naboer) - dir. Pål Sletaunen - Norway/Denmark/Sweden - TLA Releasing

Reinvention always needs singing and dancing

Jeanne and the Perfect Guy (Jeanne et le garçon formidable) - dir. Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau - 1998 - France

Though cinema found its birth in France, the true glory of early sound film undoubtedly occurred in the United States. With the emergence of the Nouvelle Vague, France became the ultimate imitator of such glory, naturally with a more cautious eye. The cinematic musical was a completely American concoction, the perfect visual escapism. Surrounding nearly frivolous love stories, the screen was an utter spectacle of movement, color (in the later years), and sound. The Hollywood musical was an example of visual, technical form in its highest fashion. The French took notice and started a tradition of their own, as half an homage, half a response to those films. Most famously, Jacques Demy crafted The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les parapluies de Cherbourg) in 1964 (not to mention Godard‘s take on the Hollywood musical with A Woman Is a Woman (Une femme est une femme), starting a tradition of their own addressing resonate, harsher issues. Many would consider the musical a dead genre, sort of like the western, but some of the finest musicals in cinema history have came out in second half of the past century. Directors Ducastel and Martineau kept the wonderful tradition alive with Jeanne and the Perfect Guy, a deceptively buoyant tale of a young Parisian girl looking for love. It’s probably also worth noting that the directors concluded their lovely Cote d’Azur with a rousing musical cast call. Cynical viewers might scoff at the idea of a musical about a girl who falls for an HIV-positive man, but in its cautionary form, Jeanne and the Perfect Guy becomes one of the finest examples of the postmodern musical.

Jeanne (Virginie Ledoyen) fits the perfect image of a musical heroine. She’s bubbly, humble, yet beautiful. She’s looking for love (of course) in the form of numerous young men, including a coworker and a motorcycle courier. Her character flaw that makes her relatable and the film hurried is that she’s constantly late for her appointments, providing us with stunning tracking shots of rushed razzle dazzle between destinations. She’s constantly drawn to the boys she meets in a never-ending search for “the perfect guy.” At the beginning of the film, she’s test-driving her two lovers while still on the look-out for that one. On the subway, she falls into the lap of Olivier (Mathieu Demy, son of Jacques and Agnès Varda), a young man who happens to fit the bill. Things progress lovingly until he reveals his HIV-positive status to her. The knowledge doesn’t pose as hindering on Jeanne’s feelings, but unconsciously adds a sense of immediacy and importance upon her feelings. Naturally, Olivier has a different perspective, as he doesn’t want Jeanne to suffer alongside him.

Perhaps easy to miss at first, but each of the musical sequences directly mirror most of the social problems in France (and most developed countries). The first number finds Jeanne, a receptionist, dancing with the African janitors as they sing about the false sense of salvation they’ve found as immigrants in France. Other numbers include Jeanne’s friend François (Jacques Bonnaffé) singing about his lover who died of AIDS, Jeanne’s sister (Valérie Bonneton) and her boyfriend naïvely dancing about bank loans, and Jeanne’s brother serenading her on the appeal of the military as an alternative to unemployment. All of this sounds a bit heavy-handed and possibly ridiculous, and it may have been if the film weren’t handled so beautifully. The musical sequences are nearly flawless, and it’s this perfect faithfulness to its genre that makes Jeanne and the Perfect Guy so exceedingly relevant. Jeanne and the Perfect Guy is a harsh portrait of contemporary France under the alluring and deceptive guise of splendor.

One truly understands the film in its final moments where the grand omission of the musical finale digs a giant, haunting void in the film. It’s in these final moments that the severity of Jeanne and the Perfect Guy becomes apparent. There is no happy ending, and really how could there be? In the shadow of the Hollywood musical, things appear to be much more clear. Most contemporary musicals (specifically Dancer in the Dark, 8 Women, The Happiness of the Katakuris, and even South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut) exist in a separate category than Oklahoma, Singin’ in the Rain, or Carousel. They have simply adopted the shell of the musical and replaced its hollow core with both a critical eye and relevance. Social relevance isn’t always a good thing (you can probably think of many examples), but quality comes in the method. As a musical, Jeanne and the Perfect Guy is one of the best examples of false escapism, void of unnecessary irony and adorned in the grandeur that we expect and cherish.

I can't find myself...: Shortcuts 4 january 2007

Just a few thoughts on my unintentionally gay movie marathon the past few days. I'm feeling rather blocked, so excuse the shotty nature of my writing this afternoon.

Skin & Bone - dir. Everett Lewis - 1996 - USA

Though on the bottom tier of New Queer Cinema, Skin & Bone is probably one of Everett Lewis’ better attempts. As an obnoxious imitator of countless better filmmakers, Lewis has made a career out of focusing on the lovelorn, punky young boys of Los Angeles. In Skin & Bone, three street hustlers (B. Wyatt, Alan Boyce, Garret Scullin), each merely examples of prostitutes than characters, face the realities of their situations in varying ways. One has fallen into the abyss of being a failing actor, the other falls for his john, and the third must learn the tricks of the trade. Lives and dreams are squashed in typical NQC fashion with little to no insight we haven’t seen before. I may just be a nihilist, but even the forced unhappy ending of Skin & Bone feels a lot more valid than the schmaltzy happy ones of his later FAQs and Luster.

Cannibal - dir. Marian Dora - 2005 - Germany

More of an amateur video art project than an actual film, Cannibal exposes the woes of a man with the desire to eat flesh. The film’s based on the actual story of the man in Germany who placed a personal ad to eat somebody, got a response, and then was charged for the murder. The dreamlike structure and visual spectrum of the film really lend to the apolitical, voiceless appeal of Cannibal, even if it feels like an excuse for gore. Little explanation is given for the man’s carnal desires except for a bizarre childhood reading of Hansel and Gretel. The result is unfortunately thoughtless and overall nauseating.

The Longing (Saudade - Sehnsucht) - dir. Jürgen Brüning - 2003 - Germany

In a deceptively simple tale of interracial relations, Brüning, a longtime producer for Bruce La Bruce, tackles issues of race and class in the form of a telenovela. A trio of German hunks, Erik (Hendrik Scheider), Cyrus (Tarik Qazi), and Tim (Daniel Bätscher), vacation on a Brazilian island, filming themselves make out and take off their shirts for an Internet site to fund their trip. Erik eventually meets Miguel (Aldri Anunciação), a black soap opera star and, unbeknownst to him, the brother of a man whom Erik had accidentally murdered in an act of self-defense. The situations in the film are rather ludicrous, but effectively so. There’s no build-up to the relationship between Erik and Miguel, nor any depth to Cyrus’ search for his long-lost mother, but this is all well constituted under the reflexive nature of the film. The Longing is purposefully sudsy and nonsensical as it moves along, yet it’s remarkably pensive and thoughtful about race and sadness just beneath the surface.

A Bigger Splash - dir. Jack Hazan - 1974 - UK

A mess like this should be utterly forgettable if it weren’t so weirdly perplexing. In a strange fusion of documentary and fiction, Hazan has his subjects playing themselves in a fictitious tale of a pop artist’s internal struggle to continue painting after being dumped. David Hockney plays himself up like Andy Warhol as the film jumps through time and through the artist’s mental visualizations of his paintings. It’s not nearly as wonderful imaginative and fun as Akira Kurosawa’s Van Gogh short in the film Dreams, but A Bigger Splash is certainly fascinating on a strictly theoretical level. A reviewer on Netflix used the term “laborious” to describe the film, and I can’t think of a better word to describe the experience of watching A Bigger Splash. Yet, like some of the more famous Warhol films, the film would make for excellent conversation, even if it feels like a chore to get through it.

Shitstorm, USA

Without further adieu... the worst films of 2006. And a big congratulations to Parker Posey, who had a double showing of crappy movies this year!

10. The Hills Have Eyes - dir. Alexandre Aja - USA - 20th Century Fox

With the promise he showed in High Tension (Haute tension), Alexandre Aja could have been one of the finest of the contemporary horror directors, as long as he wasn’t allowed to write the screenplays. The Hills Have Eyes may be a faithful remake, and it might have earned necessity if it actually had anything to say about the American nuclear family and social outsiders, instead of just having the American flag used as a tool for gore. Regrettably, it becomes another forgettable failure by Hollywood to reclaim the horror glory of the 70s.

9. Nathalie... - dir. Anne Fontaine - France - Koch Lorber Films

Filmmakers that want you to applaud them for their supposed cleverness make me ill. Essentially a lame excuse to get three respected French actors (Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Béart, Gérard Depardieu) together onscreen, Nathalie… screams deception from its earliest moments. The director may pass off her stupid surprise ending that she uncomfortably hints toward throughout the entire film as a way to explore the inner workings of bored, middle-aged Ardant’s sexual and personal reawakening through her relationship with stripper Béart, but the irony of that statement would be that this exploration is just as false as her cinematic trickery.

8. The Black Dahlia - dir. Brian de Palma - USA - Universal Studios

If you needed the definitive proof that Brian de Palma has lost it, see The Black Dahlia, his epic misfire about one of the most notorious unsolved murder cases in California. Though Hilary Swank, as the femme fatale, adds a certain spunk to the otherwise limp film, the rest of the cast, especially Aaron Eckhart as Josh Hartnett’s partner and the horrible Scarlett Johansson, whose good looks seem to have blinded Hollywood execs to her lack of talent, as Eckhart’s goody-two-shoe wife, seems like they have no idea what they’re doing here. There’s a scene or two that recall some of the best moments in The Untouchables or Dressed to Kill, but within the lousy film, they just frustrate and become sad reminders of what a fine American director has become late in his career.

7. The OH in Ohio - dir. Billy Kent - USA - HBO

Though her performance in Adam & Steve might have suggested that Parker Posey was back at what she does best, The OH in Ohio is a frightening counterexample, placing her in one of her most rotten, least interesting roles as a stuck-up ad exec who can’t orgasm. Sex & the City is likely to blame for paving the way for a film that’s premise follows a woman searching for clitoral stimulation and then becoming addicted to her vibrator, but it’s writer/director Billy Kent who should be slapped for not only placing the vibrant Posey in such a crummy role, but for thinking we care about any dramatic conclusions she might come to throughout the course of the film.

6. Art School Confidential - dir. Terry Zwigoff - USA - Sony Pictures

It’s one thing to be a flat satire as Art School Confidential is, but it’s quite another to be a confusing mess of a film that has little idea of what it’s trying to say or do. Art School Confidential is a such a mystifying muddle that it’s almost difficult to put into words how bad the film is. I wanted to just plainly state, “this movie totally sucks,” but that wouldn‘t successfully explain my hatred for the film. Art School Confidential’s breed of satire reduces characters to the most inane variety of pretentious art school snob from characters who function as a talking thesaurus to oversensitive social rejects whose mommies told them their paintings of kittens were beautiful. All of this was better portrayed and examined in the later seasons of Six Feet Under, so to see a dumbing down of these criticisms feels unnecessary. Yet if Art School Confidential were simply lacking necessity, it would have been forgettable instead of awful. Instead, Daniel Clowes (who worked prior with Zwigoff on the overrated Ghost World) adapted his own comic, stretching it into a colossal disaster of superfluous side-characters that rivals Peter Jackson’s King Kong and a shockingly miscalculated murder subplot. Basically, in a year where mediocre films flourished at the box office, Art School Confidential would have been refreshingly bad if it weren’t such an unsatisfactory pile of shit.

5. The Puffy Chair - dir. Jay Duplass - USA - Roadside Attractions

Though it didn’t make my official ten best of the year, I Am a Sex Addict is the direct counter of a film like The Puffy Chair. Using the digital technology as a way to expertly combine documentary and fiction in a stunning examination of the self, I Am a Sex Addict was the best use of this media this year. The Puffy Chair, on the other hand, does precisely what worried film purists when the technology became consumer-level. Though maybe better than a bunch of overweight kids with black-eyeliner making their own backyard horror flicks, The Puffy Chair takes us on an annoying road-trip with Josh (Mark Duplass, screenwriter and brother of the director), his girlfriend (Kathryn Aselton), and brother (Rhett Wilkins) as they pick up and deliver an ugly reclining chair to his father on his birthday. Personal revelations and conflicts ensue, predictably, in a film that mistakes awkward moments where characters speak in silly, cutesy voices to one another as intimate drama. As the film is entirely surface-level, it’s hard to tag along with the brothers’ road-trip when you can’t stand the people with whom you’re traveling. Josh’s girlfriend accomplishes the feat of being the most irritating character committed to video since Fran Drescher became the nanny of a lame white gentile‘s three children. The Puffy Chair falls apart as a result of its good intentions, a film that’s exposure of characters’ flaws alienates instead of reaching the greater truth it hoped to achieve.

4. The Wicker Man - dir. Neil LaBute - USA - Warner Bros.

One of the perks of working at a video store is the sigh of relief you can make when you've rented a movie that certainly wasn't worth the four bucks you would have wasted otherwise. Unfortunately, it also permits you to rent movies that are guaranteed to suck because you don't have to pay for them. Neil LaBute's remake of The Wicker Man is a fine example of a "well, we don't have to pay for it" waste of time. In all honesty, I ended up fast-forwarding most of the film, as I found Nicolas Cage and his fear of bees too much to handle. But what I did see was one of the most undeniably laughable shitstorms ever. In watching any of LaBute's other films, specifically the ones based on his own plays, you can gather that he has little flare as a cinema director, but this prior knowledge wouldn't be sufficient warning for the atrocity of The Wicker Man. With a bizarre supporting cast that includes Frances Conroy as a creepier version of Ruth from Six Feet Under, Ellen Burstyn wearing make-up leftover from Braveheart, and Helen Hun... I mean, Leelee Sobieski, Cage cluelessly wanders around a town of women trying to find a missing girl. There's potential for The Wicker Man to be resurrected as some sort of midnight movie, but you won't find me in the audience.

3. Another Gay Movie - dir. Todd Stephens - USA - TLA Releasing

I usually reserve a spot on my worst of the year list for whatever passes as queer cinema in a given year. Last year I chose another TLA Releasing turd, Slutty Summer, and this year, the prize goes to Another Gay Movie. Slutty Summer managed to be a vacant, Sex & the City for gay men vanity project, but this is far worse. Another Gay Movie is a thankless remake of American Pie, another shitfest, and this alone should be enough for inclusion. Instead, Another Gay Movie is offensive in ways it didn't try to be. It's hateful, thoroughly unpleasant, and simply ugly. As my friend Bradford put it, queer history beyond the first airing of Queer as Folk is presented as a graveyard for tired fags and old queens. Stephens, who wrote the screenplays for Edge of Seventeen and Gypsy 83 (which he also directed), masks what one might suspect as subversiveness with a celebration of filth and ignorant hatred.

2. Hard Candy - dir. David Slade - USA - Lionsgate

Seldom does a film so nauseatingly call attention to its craft as artlessly as Hard Candy does. As a thriller, it pretends to be socially viable, turning the tables on predatory child molesters having the young girl as the tormentor, without really saying anything. In every frame, you can’t help but notice that Hard Candy is an assembly of people “doing their job.” With the annoyingly flashy cinematography, simply passable acting and, especially, the by-the-numbers duplicity of the screenplay, the film’s ability to thrill, shock, or awe washes away to reveal the inner devices of a hammy, nasty movie, devoid of the passion that drives the more artfully-inclined to create cinema.

1. For Your Consideration - dir. Christopher Guest - USA - Warner Independent

It probably goes without saying that Phat Girlz is worse than Christopher Guest’s latest, but you’d already avoided seeing that one. Guest continues his downhill plunge with a film that makes his middling A Mighty Wind look as funny as the superb Waiting for Guffman. As a satire, it’s trite and obvious (do we really need someone to make fun of Entertainment Tonight?), but as a comedy, it’s dim-witted and unfunny (unless you think a joke about Hollywood exec not knowing of Internet is comedic brilliance: “that’s the one with e-mail, right?”). Guest never commits to the promise he made of stepping away from the mockumentary-style here, creating a film that consists almost entirely of characters being interviewed for television. Most of us can appreciate a good slap at Hollywood, especially the year after it awarded an Oscar to what will go down in history as the worst Best Picture winner ever, but when it’s delivered in such a self-congratulatory, witless package as For Your Consideration, I start to get angry. The great irony of it all is the award attention the usually wonderful Catherine O’Hara, as the lead actress Marilyn Hack (get it?), is getting for her clueless performance in a film that’s unknowingly as awful as Home for Purim, the hammy 1940s melodrama at the center of this picture.

Presque...

As I just found out Children of Men will be opening nearby on Friday, I've decided to make a deadline for my best of the year list. I won't be able to catch Pan's Labyrinth or Old Joy in time for their consideration, but I think I'll at least have a pretty rounded idea of what will and what will not make the list, so expect my list around the beginning of next week, as I'm going to be viewing The Departed, The Queen, and Half Nelson this weekend as well. Oh, and for excitement purposes, my list has drastically changed from my other one and will indeed be ordered instead of alphabetized. You can also expect the full worst of the year list in the next two days. Adios.

(Dis)honorable Mentions for a Worst of the Year List

I figured I won't be seeing any more shitty movies in the next coming weeks, so why not finalize a worst of the year list? Well, I'm still in the works of polishing up that bottom ten, but here are the runners-up:

Akeelah and the Bee - dir. Doug Atchison - USA - Lionsgate

Hey, gurl, how you spell shitty? Though Akeelah and her bee just missed my bottom ten list, it deserves mention for unsuccessfully trying to melt this cold, cold heart of mine.

Basic Instinct 2 - dir. Michael Caton-Jones - Germany/USA/UK - Sony Pictures

Poor Charlotte Rampling thought she was continuing her "edgy" streak with this botched abortion of a picture. Those stupid Germans put up most of the price tag for this D-grade show-pony. And, silly Sharon Stone thought we cared to see if Catherine Tramell (or, more specifically Stone's plastic surgeon) was still up to her leg-spreading, murder-fucking old ways. A little bit, way too late. The only smart thing about this fiasco was the dropping of the subtitle "Risk Addiction." Oh, did I mention that it's about as sexy as your shirtless grandfather in cut-off jean shorts eating an ice cream cone on a hot summer's day?

Cars - dir. John Lasseter, Joe Ranft - USA - Disney/Pixar

A severe blemish in Pixar's nearly untarnished reputation (though A Bug's Life is hardly one of their crowning achievements), Cars manages to not only be visually unexciting, but painfully middle-of-the-road. In a year that brought us Little Man and a sequel to Basic Instinct, Cars may not be one of the worst the year has to offer (or even Disney, for that matter, as The Wild proved to be anything but). Unquestionably though, it stands as one of the year's biggest disappointments.

Don't Tell (La bestia nel cuore) - dir. Cristina Comencini - Italy/UK/France/Spain - Lionsgate

This family-secrets pot-boiler is just another example of an Academy Award nomination for best foreign-language film not equally quality (The Crime of Padre Amaro is another good one).

Lower City (Cidade Baixa) - dir. Sérgio Machado - Brazil - Palm Pictures

When two best friends fall for the same girl, you can guess things get ugly. You may not have guessed that the conflict would be as tedious as it is in this Brazilian export. A trio of talented, attractive leads spend most of their screen time gazing blankly into the camera, having sloppy rough sex, and backstabbing one another. By about the third time the friends have come to a seemingly concrete decision about the ménage à trois only to give into their lust yet again, you'll find yourself wanting to run the characters over with a truck instead of gathering any insight about human weakness or emotions, but if hate-fucking and masochism is your thing, kindly ignore what I had to say.

Phat Girlz - dir. Nnegest Likké - USA - Fox Searchlight

Lesson learned: African men can appreciate reeeeal, full-bodied women like Miss Mo'Nique. Unfortunately, I'm not an African man. And I have something that resembles taste.

Sorry, Haters - dir. Jeff Stanzler - USA - IFC Films

Yeah, I'm sorry too. Um, why is this film nominated for a couple of Independent Spirit Awards? Did anyone actually see the film? You're better off if you haven't.

Stoned - dir. Stephen Woolley - UK - Screen Media Films

Fuck Stephen Woolley for thinking that making a shitty homage to Performance is acceptable enough for a biopic of Brian Jones.