2006 Top Ten: Matt Singer

My list hasn't really changed from the one I posted at indieWIRE. Though I've seen quite a few movies in the last two weeks (Stick It!) the list remains essentially untouched:

1. L'Enfant
2. Children of Men
3. Flags of Our Fathers
4. Half Nelson
5. The Departed
6. Inside Man
7. Old Joy
8. The Queen
9. Letters From Iwo Jima
10. Art School Confidential

I'm sorta talked out about these movies — you can read my year-end essay on IFC.com or my comments on the indieWIRE poll — but I will add this: my comment on indieWIRE about ranking Art School Confidential lower than it deserved was written in jest; that is, until I got the film on DVD as a birthday present, watched it again, and realized that even though I loved it the first time around it's even better than I initially thought. Now I'd probably rank it #6, just ahead of Inside Man (which I just rewatched again last night).

(PS -- Two movies would have made my list but they didn't qualify for indieWIRE because they won't receive U.S. theatrical releases, and so I'll simply assume to include them -- or at least consider them -- in 2007: Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes and a Century and particularly Bong Joon-ho's The Host)

Speaking of Inside Man, I regret not finding a space on my indieWIRE ballot for Clive Owen's performance as bank robber extraordinaire Dalton Russell, or, for that matter, as humanity's reluctant savior in Children of Men. As Sweeney notes in his top ten, this was The Year of Clive Owen. Two great performances in two superb movies. He doesn't know it yet, but he and I are having a bit of a bromance right now.

Instead of more meaningless prattle on my top ten, how about new meaningless prattle about my second ten:

11)Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

Come for the hilarity, stay for the excessive, borderline-dangerous hilarity during the outtakes over the closing credits. On a totally biased note, I'm a sucker for making-movie movies, especially if they play making-movies as a dopey folly. Tristram Shandy is two for two in those departments.

12)Jackass Number Two

Funnier than Borat. You're disagreeing with me, I know. But guess what — I saw both movies and you didn't.

13)Dave Chappelle's Block Party

My favorite documentary of the year. The tunes are great, but the movie is more notable for its somewhat distanced and somewhat melancholy portrait of Dave Chappelle just at the point where he had obtained everything he thought he wanted and realized it wasn't all that desirable after all. Just below the surface of everything he does in the movie is an undercurrent of depression and suspicion, with fame, and money, and power, and really the whole movie comes out of his desire to do something with his celebrity than celebrate himself.

14)Wordplay

I'm also a sucker for documentaries about obsessives (Spellbound, etc.), and they don't get much more obsessive than professional crossword puzzle designers and solvers. The character profiles are stimulating but the movie really shines at the National Crossword Tournament where the natural drama was more tense than pretty much every fiction movie of 2006. There's a moment that actually made me gasp — gasp! — out loud. And afterwards I couldn't stop doing crossword puzzles.

15) & 16)The Illusionist and The Prestige

If you'd have told me at the beginning of the year that there were going to be two movies about unsavory Victorian-era magicians and both would actually be worth your time, I'd have laughed. The Prestige had the edge in performances and plot trickery but The Illusionist's cinematography had that certain I-don't-know-what, and a really exotic, romantic air about it.

17)Volver

As Penelope Cruz said on IFC News, in an interview I saw 35 times this year: "There is only one Pedro!"

18)A Prairie Home Companion

I thought this was a very good, not great, movie when I saw it, and I still think so, even if Altman's passing has made it a particularly fitting final work.

19)Fast Food Nation

Greg Kinnear in particular elevated this ficto-eco-liberal-survey into something more: distinctly human, steeped in the drudgery of the everyday working world. I could take or leave most of the other elements of the film, but I absolutely adored Kinnear's performance as fast food marketing exec who realizes the caliber of the product he's selling. His scene with Bruce Willis is one of those Pacino-De Niro in Heat acting classes.

20)The Fountain

The movie I hated like few others, and thought and wrote and spoke about more than any other. In my mind, that's worth something.

And there you have it. I should have 1 more year-end type post totalling up exactly how many movies I've seen in 2006 (yes I count every one) and giving a month-by-month account of my favorite old movies I've seen this year.

Related awesomeness: We've reached 1 year and just about 250 posts. Plus: Termite Art is now the #1 result on google when you search for "termite art." Rock on.

Also: a Grindhouse trailer is up!! And the news that it will actually be two 90 minute features married together instead of a pair of two-reelers is an amazing gift to fans, a grand artistic experiment, and a dangerous risk from a business perspective: why would two successful filmmakers split their box office in half? I have no idea, but I'm already counting down the days to April 6th.

2006 Top Ten: Alberto Zambenedetti

Alberto Zambenedetti
Ph.D. Candidate in Italian Studies, NYU



1. Arrivederci Amore Ciao


Italian cinema is dead. This is a well-known fact. Which makes this Hitchcockian, bleak, gritty, blood soaked, dark, claustrophobic, anguishing thriller all the more relevant. Suspended between Notorious and Ichi the Killer, Arrivederci Amore Ciao is the story of the homecoming of a former terrorist who spent twenty years in exile working as mercenary hitman for foreign governments. With the complicity of a corrupt detective – played by a splendid Michele Placido, who drives a BMW, sports a “Just For Men” dyed handlebar moustache, and speaks with a hilarious Sardinian accent – the man travels back to Italy and becomes a bouncer in a strip club, a police informer, a thief, and finally opens up a high-class restaurant and goes (almost) legal. All of which through lying, scamming, torturing, stealing, killing, and fucking his way up in society. In the context of a national cinema that still worships the auteur and looks down upon mainstream products, this film breaks all the frames, and recuperates the idea of genre, which in the Italian tradition is always hybrid. With its totally nihilistic portrayal of mankind and its wonderfully pornographic display of ultraviolence, Arrivederci Amore Ciao is absolutely delightful…




2. The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes


The plot of this utterly unconventional film is quite simple: a deranged inventor summons to his private island the best piano tuner in the world and challenges him to prove his skills in tuning a series of sound-making automata. The machines are to accompany the beautiful soprano the inventor had killed and resuscitated in a concert for his guests. Utilizing a mixture of live action and stop-motion they had perfected in The Institute Benjamenta, the Brothers Quay deliver one of their finest films to date. Delicate yet disturbing, poetic yet nightmarish, The Piano Tuner subsumes the obsessions and idiosyncrasies of the filmmakers and combines them with uncommon cinematography, framing, and mise-en-scène. The result is an uncompromising art film (or film about art) that discloses its treasures slowly, quietly, and with exquisite taste.




3. Miami Vice


Michael Mann recuperates the series he had created in the eighties and plants a new seed in the twenty-first century. Do shantung suits, fast-boats, Ferraris, gunfights and beautiful women stand the test of time? Absolutely. Are über-wealthy villains, undercover fast-mouthed cops, bizarre homoerotic breaks and loud soundtracks still enticing? Yes, indeed. At least to me. Especially when Mann himself directs, and further develops the aesthetics of the previous Collateral, which in my opinion had a few rough edges that needed some smoothing. In this respect, Miami Vice is a wonderful step forward and makes me yearn for a sequel, if not even for a whole trilogy. Few other films this year have given me such sheer thrill and excitement, despite the long running time, the open ending, and the fucking overpriced popcorn.



4. The Departed


Although I have to admit that I have not seen the original, I am pretty damn sure this was the best remake of the year. Shamefully, I also need to admit that at the time of writing I have not yet seen any of the Clint Eastwood Iwo Jima films. Which leads me to argue on previous convictions that Scorsese is the finest contemporary American director, especially when he devotes himself to mafia stories. His Bostonian cops and mean-streeters are simply wonderful, in all their unrepentant misogyny, their luscious profanities, and their blind phallocentrism. If it is true that psychological complexity seems to be bestowed on some characters only, the effect of this apparent shortcoming is hysterical, especially in the interaction between flat and deep, between protagonists and sideshows, at least until the final coup de théâtre.




5. Inland Empire


Spooky, disturbing, unnerving and utterly idiosyncratic, Inland Empire is David Lynch at his finest. Little can be said about the plot, if not that Lynch seems to be ruminating on doublings and re-doublings, further exploring the road he had taken with Mulholland Drive. Freed by digital technology, Lynch drags the viewer into a serious audiovisual nightmare whose texture, sound, editing, lighting, cinematography, and loose plotlines seem to be designed with the clear intent to violate one’s consciousness. Or, at least that’s how I felt when I saw it.



6. Borat


One of the funniest movies ever made. And in many ways, one of the creepiest, considering the fact that Borat holds up a mirror not only to the United States, but also to the West as a whole. Sacha Baron Cohen crosses every line, establishing new standards for comedy based on political incorrectness in all its facets, constantly underlining the limited understanding we have of eastern countries while staging the situation in reverse. Already a classic, this film in all probability sentences the end of a character that Cohen had played on the Ali G show, but I am quite certain that everyone who saw Borat is looking forward to follow the adventures of Bruno on the big screen…




7. A Prairie Home Companion

Silky smooth, warm and fuzzy, A Prairie Home Companion is a great way to go for a filmmaker who delivered so many wonderful and controversial masterpieces. Superb acting, a light directorial touch, and a charming frame are the strengths of this film, which turned out to be Robert Altman’s last and perhaps least ambitious project. Certainly, my judgment is influenced by the departure of the great director, but I am sure that the film would have made this top ten in any case.



8. Private Fears in Public Places

Quietly, like the snow that falls over this studio-made Paris, Alain Resnais delivers a soft-spoken masterpiece about love, loneliness, and human relations. In his adaptation of the play by Alan Ayckburn the Nouvelle Vague master grapples with the tough questions in life with taste and a self-contained modesty that befit a director of his stature. Visually spellbinding and beautifully acted, Private Fears in Public Places is a nuanced jewel that exemplifies the creative genius of an artist who, with sixty years of cinema under his belt, still finds new ways to beguile the audience.



9. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Although I hate pretty much everything on horseback (apart from the attached example) Tommy Lee Jones’s border epic kept coming back to mind in the course of the year. At the same time new and old, modern and old-fashioned, this western/southern story of subaltern rancheros touches upon politically relevant issues but packages them in universal values like friendship and loyalty. Having underestimated it at the first viewing, I give it a spot in this top ten exactly because I feel the need to see it again. Despite the fact that it does not star Bo Derek.




10. Romàntico

Probably the best documentary of the year (at least according to me) – and in some way complementary to The Three Burials – Romàntico listens to the migrants, their plights, theirs stories, and their songs. Apparently, The Battle of Algiers was screened in the Pentagon to help fight the war on terror. I suggest that this film is screened for the head of every state who is currently dealing with waves of illegal mass im/e-migrations. Twice daily.

2006 Top Ten (Music): R. Emmet Sweeney

Mike Lyon over at Fourteen Seconds has just posted his top ten albums, and here, humbly, are mine.



1. Clipse: Hell Hath No Fury

I've been listening to "Ride Around Shining" constantly for weeks. It's the harp.


2. Alan Jackson: Red Like A Rose

It makes me want to drink scotch.


3. Jason Moran: Artist In Residence

His wife sings (operatically) for him to come home from the tour.


4. Ghostface Killah: Fishscale

"Whip You With a Strap"


5. Tom Waits: Orphans

"Altar Boy": Now I can order in Latin/Make em au gratin, Joe


6. Justin Timberlake: Futuresex/LoveSounds

"My Love": song of the year


7. Roy Nathanson: Sotto Voce

"By the Page": My father paid me to read


8. Nellie McKay: Pretty Little Head

Duet with Cyndi Lauper


9. The Coup: Pick a Bigger Weapon

"BabyLet'sHaveABabyBeforeBushDoSomethin'Crazy"


10: Julie Roberts: Men & Mascara

They both run.

2006 Top Ten: R. Emmet Sweeney

It's been a year since we started this heartfelt publication. Thanks for reading, but you should be reading Manny Farber instead. He's much better than us.

On to the goods. After some quick and dirty soul searching, I decided "Out 1" (1971)and "Army of Shadows" (1969) would be ineligible for my boffo year end list despite both premiering this year in the US, since, you know, they were made over 30 years ago. But rest assured, they hold a special place in my heart - "Out 1"'s slow descent into madness (post '68 style) and "Army of Darkness"'s unblinking violence (and flinty blue hues) are masterpieces of a high order. I don't think I'll ever shake the gooey remnants of "Out 1"'s conspiracy theories out of my head.

But yes, new stuff:

1. Inland Empire, directed by David Lynch
2. Children of Men, directed by Alfonso Cuaron
3. Private Fears in Public Places, directed by Alain Resnais
4. Climates, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan
5. L'Enfant, directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
6. Pan's Labyrinth, directed by Guillermo Del Toro
7. Letters From Iwo Jima, direced by Clint Eastwood
8. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, directed by Cristi Puiu
9. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, directed by Tommy Lee Jones
10. Brand Upon the Brain!, directed by Guy Maddin

Honorable Mentions: A Journey That Wasn't, Breaking News, Clean, Inside Man, La Moustache, Stick It, Three Times, Man Push Cart, The Proposition, The Hidden Blade, Syndromes and a Century, Running Scared, Dave Chappelle's Block Party, Miami Vice, Old Joy, Borat, Bamako, A Prairie Home Companion, Mutual Appreciation, 4, Battle in Heaven, The Matador, United 93, Art School Confidential, Gabrielle, The Bridesmaid, Half Nelson, Click, Strangers With Candy, Talladega Nights, Tenacious D: The Movie, Crossing the Bridge: The Music of Istanbul.

Film Event of the Year: "Out 1" at the Museum of the Moving Image
Male Performance of the Year: Pierce Brosnan, The Matador
Female Performance of the Year: Laura Dern, Inland Empire

Random Thoughts

1. No film affected me as viscerally as "Inland Empire." It scared me. It was the sound design that did it, those screeching, feedback laden squeals that accompanied Dern's descent into Hollywood's and her own unconscious. It all made perfect sense to me on a base emotional level - Dern suffers, frees herself from her suffering, and gains peace and a sort of redemption sitting on the couch next to Nastassja Kinski. It touches on the transformative power of performance, the destruction of actresses in the Hollywood system, and tells any number of riveting stories, none of which get resolved. It finds joy in the digression - from the homeless woman's bizzarely affecting tale of her model friend with the pet monkey to the Polish folk tale that sets everything in motion. Stories blur into stories - and they're all fascinating.

2. I am now convinced no one can play rumpled like Clive Owen. No one. Combine this with a fully realized vision of the near future and numerous delicious long takes and I'm sold. The movie's close to two hours and I thought it was halfway through when it ended. This thing moves. I don't know how since there's at least 5 credited screenwriters, but it expertly dispenses backstory in the middle of shots (like the rapid fire montage on the TV in the bus of every other city burning) while constantly advancing the plot. Not only that, but it trumps "Little Miss Sunshine" in the "pushing a stalled car" department. Not only is Children of Men's scene done in one (1!) take, but it's funnier and has Clive Owen running around in flip flops. Point to Children of Men and my new man crush Alfonso Cuaron and his cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki.

to be continued... (and be sure to check out Fourteen Seconds, Seen, and Tativille for their take on the year that was.)