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High five! After a box-office slump, movies made money again in 2006. Kill-me-now depression sets in only when I list the big winners (Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man's Chest; X-Men: The Last Stand; The Da Vinci Code). Luckily, it wasn't just Borat that hit pay dirt without getting slimed by formula pap. Martin Scorsese had his biggest hit with The Departed. And Dreamgirls proved a musical could have grit as well as glitz. And what of terrific movies that barely made a dime? They, too, have pride of place on my list of movies that mattered this year.
1 The Departed
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Crime in the streets. A Martin Scorsese specialty, from Mean
Streets to GoodFellas. So what's so special about
The Departed that I'm calling it the best movie of 2006?
For starters, it's a new high in a historic career. The Boston
crime milieu scrupulously laid out in William Monahan's screenplay
sparks something fresh in Scorsese about how moral corruption
begins in childhood and festers in adult life. The acting, from
Jack Nicholson's Irish mobster to Mark Wahlberg's hothead sergeant,
is top of the line. And Leonardo DiCaprio, as an undercover cop,
and Matt Damon, as an undercover criminal, give the performances of
their lives. Scorsese orchestrates acting, writing, editing,
production design and camera placement into a model of what
directing is when craft rises to the level of art.
2
Dreamgirls
Directed by Bill Condon
Despite, or maybe because of, the smartasses who rag on this
galvanizing musical as "the gay man's Lord of the Rings,"
Dreamgirls is a movie you take to heart. I sure did.
Fictionalizing the story of Diana Ross and the Supremes into a
cautionary tale of how 1960s R&B was ground into white pop,
director-writer Bill Condon turns Michael Bennett's Broadway
landmark into a movie powered by the unique magic of cinema. Give a
shout-out to Condon -- he's got the goods. Beyonce excels as the
lead singer of the Dreams, as does Jamie Foxx in the role of the
manager who sells her out. But the roof of the multiplex is blown
off by trumpet-tonsilled newcomer Jennifer Hudson as the diva who
gets replaced for singing large and eating larger. And Eddie Murphy
totally kills as a James Brown wild man buckling under the pressure
of cultural assimilation. It's an all-black cast, which so-called
experts insist will hurt at the box office. My guess is that
audiences will have the savvy to know Dreamgirls is a
story of America.
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3 Letters From Iwo Jima/ Flags of Our Fathers
Directed by Clint Eastwood
With his customary daring and assurance, Clint Eastwood followed
Flags -- which tells the bloody story of this 1945 battle
through the prism of three American soldiers who survived, only to
be exploited by their government -- with Letters, a tale
of the same World War II battle, told from the Japanese side. The
film is in Japanese with English subtitles, hardly a sop to draw
the Saw crowd. But what Eastwood has done is
extraordinary, uniting two films into a single, stinging portrait
of war that honors the men who fought while nailing government for
fobbing off hypocrisy in the name of patriotism.
4
Volver
Directed by Pedro Almodovar
Yes, it's in Spanish with English subtitles, but no one rivals
Pedro Almodovar for speaking the language of love in all its
permutations, from filial to sexual to lethal. Penelope Cruz, never
more ravishing, claims the screen by divine right as a daughter
whose problems with her mother (the superb Carmen Maura) only start
with the fact that Mom is dead and may be out for revenge. Cheers
to cinematographer Jose Luis Alcaine for the film's shimmering
beauty and to Almodovar for showing that love has no intention of
stopping with death.
5
Babel
Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Don't buy the rap on this movie. Some people call it
pretentious, when the intent of Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez
Inarritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga is to reach high by
taking on a world divided by terrorism, race, money, religion and
language. I guess unpretentious would be taking on Big Momma's
House 3. Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Adriana Barraza and Rinko
Kikuchi shine in the ensemble cast. But as the film builds to a
shattering climax, you'll be in an emotional grip that won't let
go. Gonzalez Inarritu is a world-class filmmaker.
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6 United 93
Directed by Paul Greengrass
Many people dodged this movie for being too painful a topic -- a
9/11 re-enactment of what might have happened among the passengers
on United Airlines Flight 93 when four hijackers took control of
the plane. It's their right, and their loss. The gifted director
Paul Greengrass has crafted a humane tribute to the power of
resistance.
7
The Queen
Directed by Stephen Frears
There's this dumb theory that the potency of this film totally
hangs on the magisterial performance of Helen Mirren as Queen
Elizabeth II in the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana.
Bollocks, as the Brits might say. Director Stephen Frears, working
with an incisive script by Peter Morgan, is devilishly good at
springing surprises, political, personal and profound.
8
Borat
Directed by Larry Charles
Maybe you live on planet mars and don't hear how Sacha Baron
Cohen make fun about glorious nation of Kazakhstan and make big
trouble with politically correct persons. Maybe you make benefit
yourself and see cultural learnings of killer satire of year then
laugh ass off.
9
Little Miss Sunshine
Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
This bracingly unsappy family comedy is 2006's best movie from
first-timers. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris drop their terrific
cast (Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Alan Arkin, Steve Carell, Paul
Dano and little Abigail Breslin) into a VW bus and ship them off to
a beauty pageant that exposes the ugly side of America and the
dysfunction bubbling inside their own wack-job heads. It's
hilarious, heartbreaking and achingly true.
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10 Prairie Home Companion
Directed by Robert Altman
The last film from the legendary Robert Altman, who died in November, used Garrison Keillor's long-running radio show to salute the joy of creative life and the art of laughing in the face of death. Other movies this year are bigger, showier and more ambitious, but there are none lovelier. The cast, led by the incomparable Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin, glows under Altman's playful watch. Keillor speaks of having had the "great privilege of seeing an eighty-one-year-old guy doing what he loved to do." The rest of us have the privilege of seeing Altman's movies. Godspeed, maestro.
BEST OF THE REST
10 MORE BESTS David Lynch's Inland Empire twists your mind into scary shapes; Todd Field's Little Children is a model of literary adaptation; Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth is a surreal study of war; Michael Mann's Miami Vice sees the crime genre with laser-eyed freshness; Jason Reitman's Thank You for Smoking blows satiric smoke up Big Tobacco's ass; Christopher Guest's For Your Consideration blows satiric smoke up Oscar's ass; Christopher Nolan's The Prestige makes magic out of magic; Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy digs deep into the nature of friendship; John Hillcoat's The Proposition, an Aussie Western, is criminally underrated; and Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, despite a taste for gore that's near pathological, brings a poet's eye and fierce energy to a Mayan civilization that mirrors our own.
Best Animated film John Lasseter's Cars is a visual miracle, sweet as hell and mischievously funny. Oscar, take note. Runners-up: Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly and George Miller's Happy Feet.
Best Foreign Film Volver. Runners-up: Rachid Bouchareb's Days of Glory, Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, Deepa Mehta's Water and Jean-Pierre Melville's 1969 Army of Shadows in its U.S. debut at last.
Best Documentary Davis Guggenheim's An Inconvenient Truth cuts Al Gore loose on global warming. Runners-up: James Longley's Iraq in Fragments, Deborah Scranton's The War Tapes, Doug Block's 51 Birch Street and Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck's Shut Up and Sing.
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THE YEAR'S TEN WORST
1 Bobby
Emilio Estevez tacks on RFK's assassination to a series of soapy star cameos and calls it humanism. Wrong, pal, it's risible exploitation.
2 The Da Vinci Code
Blockbuster book becomes a blockheaded movie.
3 Snakes on a Plane
The Internet hyped it, but audiences rightly spit venom.
4 x-Men: The Last Stand
Let's hope so.
5 Basic Instinct 2
So bad, you wanted Sharon Stone's legs to stay crossed.
6 The Nativity Story
The Virgin birth staged like a stuffy Christmas pageant.
7 Lady in the Water
M. Night Shyamalan loses his sixth sense for scary.
8 Click
Adam Sandler in a sentimental mood; it's like drowning in drool.
9 Death of a President
A fake doc that imagines Bush dead, and it's still boring.
10 All The King's Men
Southern-fried politics, and even with Sean Penn it's duller than dog shit.
>> Hate our picks? Love these flicks? Talk our ear off here