More Bests and some Worsts
“Time” magazine’s Richard Corliss’s item “Do Film
Critics Know Anything?” is
the latest in whines from critics about how critics don’t know anything about
what people really like (ie: movies with promotion budgets above $50 million
opening in 5,000 theaters). One might well wonder if “Time” knows anything,
having named Vladimir Putin their “Man of the Year” for restoring “stability,”
presumably by removing such rowdy elements as the right to dissent and a free
press. Be that as it may, I think every respectable film critic should at least
know what he or she likes, doesn’t like and the reasons why and should be able
to communicate that knowledge to a reader. As such we at the Phoenix have some of the knowingest critics
around, and since we don’t have space in the paper to print their ten best (and
some worst) lists here are some:
Michael Atkinson
1. Syndromes and a Century
Thailand’s
great, mysterious, life-affirming, diptych-entranced, meta-meta-man Apichatpong
Weerasethakul does it again, twice, or maybe more, while seeming to do nearly
nothing at all. A dream had by us all, and just as maddening and gorgeous.
2. Once
Who knows how long the heart-kneaded buzz from this beloved
greatest-musical-since-Demy may last, but in my seat it was an all-viscera
epiphany, and it’s made moviegoing since a little bloodless.
3. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
The greatest of the Romanians so far, Christian Mungiu’s
patient knuckle-biter is at least 50% off-screen space and trauma; the
mercilessly suspense birthday dinner scene alone is more concisely conceived
and effective than any ten American films this year.
4. Half Moon
Northern Iran has supplanted the American West and the
Australian Outback as the globe’s most expressive road-movie topos, and Bahman
Ghobadi’s mythic Kurdish bus trip is simultaneously hilarious, magical-realist
and tragic.
5. There Will Be Blood
Didn’t see it coming – P.T. Anderson sheds his pretentious
snark-generation-ism for Upton Sinclair’s period saga of catapulting
capitalism, scene for prickly, crazy scene the most fascinating new American
film of the year.
6. Regular Lovers
May ‘68 awaited its definitive film portrait until the
arrival of Philippe Garrel’s impressionistic personal meditation, which
manifests the cataclysmic, liberating, and finally tragically disillusioned
emotional thrust of *resistance*, coupled with the electric sense of being 19,
sexually alive, responsibility-free, and ready to dope up and drop out, all of
it seeping out of this neglected three-hour epic like fragrance from a valley
of lilacs.
7. Killer of Sheep
Charles Burnett’s legended, much-hailed, rarely seen 1977
classic about being black and poor and spiritually unmoored in ‘70s L.A.
finally saw theaters, a full 17 years after it’d been an early choice for
national Film Registry canonization. It’s a ghost movie, returned to haunt us.
8. 12:08 East of Bucharest
Another Romanian, Corneliu Porumboiu’s deadpan comedy picks
at the scab of the 1989 revolution, revolviong around what must be the eloquent
and entertaining three-shot in recent cinema.
9. Los Muertos
Lisandro Alonso’s lovely, remarkably eloquent naturalist
odyssey tracks an aging convict as he is released in rural Argentina, and
heads upriver to find his daughter and grandson. Exposition is all but absent;
the focus is on the moment, the soothing re-establishment of intimacy with
nature, performed and captured in astonishing single takes.
10. Michael Clayton
Semi-hack screenwriter Tony Gilroy steps definitively into
the men’s club with this ethical torture device, thought-through and written
and acted with a startling concern for the sickening quotidian of power
culture.
Runners-Up, in order: The Host, No Country for Old Men, Lars
and the Real Girl, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Brand Upon the Brain!,
Czech Dream, 3:10 to Yuma, The Boss of It All, Zodiac, Lust, Caution, I Don’t
Want to Sleep Alone, Into Great Silence, The Lives of Others, Tears of the
Black Tiger, We Own the Night, Dans Paris, Broken English
Candidates for Bests and Runners-Up, Had They Been Released
Theatrically Instead of Going to DVD, which Should Qualify Them for Full
Consideration in Any Case, by This Point: Vibrator (Ryuichi Hiroki, 2003),
Pitfall (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1962), Five (Abbas Kiarostami, 2003), Green Chair
(Park Cheol-su, 2005), The Way I Spent the End of the World (Catalin Miltescu,
2006), The Castle (Michael Haneke, 1997), Quiet Flows the Don (Sergei
Gerasimov, 1957), Moscow Elegy (Alexander Sokurov, 1987), Black Test Car (Yasuo
Masumura, 1962), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (David Lee Fisher, 2005), Able
Edwards (Graham Robertson, 2004), The Call of Cthulhu (Andrew Leman, 2005),
Isolation (Billy O’Brien, 2005), Horrors of Malformed Men (Teruo Ishii, 1969),
Casshern (Kasuaki Kiriya, 2004), The District (Aron Gauder, 2004), I Am a S+M
Writer (Ryuichi Hiroki, 2000)
Tom Meek
Best
10. There Will Be Blood
9. Sweeney Todd
8. Zodiac
7. Atonement
6. 28 Weeks Later
5. Assassination of Jessie James
4. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
3. Away From Her
2. Diving Bell and the Butterfly
1. No Country for Old Men
Worst
5. Good Luck Chuck
4. P2
3. Revolver
2. Blood and Chocolate
1. Kickin’ It Old School
Chris Braiotta
Nearly mentioned: Ratatouille
If computer animation wasn't unavoidably ugly this could
have made the cut somewhere.
10: Superbad
9: The Host
8: Woman is the Future of Man
7: Grbavica
6: Blame it on Fidel
5: Hotel Harabati
4: Wristcutters
3: King of Kong
Two way tie for 1st
Iron
Island, and Monkey Warfare
Rob Nelson
1. Killer of Sheep
2. There Will Be Blood
3. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
4. Bamako
5. Zodiac
6. Southland Tales
7. Paprika
8. Exterminating Angels
9. Beowulf (IMAX 3-D)
10. Away From Her
Peg Aloi
1. The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach's most
ambitious and stunning film to date)
2. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (A sensual, disturbing, epic story, based
on the acclaimed German novel, in grand style by Tom Tykwer)
3. Atonement (First rate performances and jaw-dropping cinematography bring to
life Ian McEwan's smoldering love story torn by the surreal horrors of war)
4. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel uses half-formed
visionscapes of color and light to tell the story of Elle editor Jean-Dominique
Bauby's stroke and loss of language)
5. Lady Chatterley (A French adaptation with refreshingly erotic love scenes
and appropriately rustic sensibility)
6. La Vie en Rose (Marion Cotillard is astonishing as the hard-living singing
sensation Edith Piaf)
7. I'm Not There (Todd Haynes' five-doored fantasy is huge, lush and eminently
watchable: my favorite Dylan is the Richard Gere Dylan)
8. Glastonbury
(Thirty years in the life of a constantly-changing music festival in the
English countryside)
9. Factory Girl (Siena Miller is luminous as Edie Sedgwick in this cock-eyed
biopic, but the real standout is Guy Pearce as the best Andy Warhol ever)
10. Hot Fuzz (Every corny cop movie ever made is referenced in Edgar
Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost's hilarious, brilliant action-horror
flick)
Honorable Mentions: The Case of the Grinning Cat, After the Wedding, Lynch(one)
more to come…