2001 Year-End Round-Up
The Oscar race is wide open!! Well, actually, it's not. As I write this, in the third week of January, the shortlist has been narrowed down to maybe six or seven per category. The real surprise for me is that there aren't very many films in the running for this past year that I can truly get behind. The Two Towers is one, to be sure, but that's not considered to have much of a chance this year, being the middle installment of a trilogy and all. Chicago? Eh. The Pianist? Feh. Gangs of New York? All right, but Scorcese can do and has done better. Adaptation? Good stuff, but if Being John Malkovich couldn't score a nomination, Jonze's inferior follow-up certainly doesn't deserve one. I'll give them Far From Heaven, and it's a damn shame that Catch Me If You Can is losing momentum as fast as it is.
It hasn't been a bad year, really. It's just that my faves don't happen to coincide with the critics' organizations' and the Academy's. The list down yonder consists of three big blockbusters, two movies that should have been blockbusters but didn't find their audience, then a couple of acclaimed indies and a few delightful obscurities. Variety's editor-in-chief Peter Bart thoughtlessly and idiotically accused all critics of making up top ten lists entirely of films that "were shown only at Ouagadougou Film Festival". Well, nothing from Ouagadougou here. Check some of these out if you haven't already.
But first...
These are the "A-"es, and one "A" that got edged out of the final ten. Well worth seeing, one and all.
Y Tu Mama Tambien
Nine Queens
The Believer
K-19: The Widowmaker
Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams
Signs
Bowling for Columbine
The Grey Zone
8 Mile
Far From Heaven
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Catch Me If You Can
Underrated
Every year, I wind up defending what everyone else considers unspeakable atrocities. As you can see below, this year's no different.
Solaris
Femme Fatale
The Truth About Charlie
The Banger Sisters
Simone
Undisputed
Sorority Boys (yes, really)
The Time Machine
Queen of the Damned
Birthday Girl
Enough
Overrated
We Were Soldiers
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner
Lilo & Stitch
Barbershop
Secretary
The Ring
Auto Focus
Antwone Fisher
Chicago
The Pianist
I vowed to keep it to five, and so I shall, but it took a feat of willpower to leave off some worthy contenders.
5. The Four Feathers: Blech... Yech... The most boring war movie not made by Terrence Malick. Boring and incoherent, this debacle from Elizabeth director Shekhar Kapur at one point has our hero lead the charge of an enemy army without explaining why or how. Why? How?
4. Mr. Deeds: I don't know if there will ever be another year in which an Adam Sandler movie makes both my best and my worst lists, so I guess we'd better savor this. Seriously, this is just awful, unbelievably schmaltzy and almost laugh-free. The only entertainment comes from John Turturro, who plays a butler with a shoe fetish. Hopefully the last of Sandler's affable idiot movies.
3. Big Fat Liar: This looked pretty inoffensive in the previews, didn't it? Yeah, I thought so too. This was maybe the year's longest sit, a movie that not even Paul Giamatti (!) could rescue from the throes of awfulness. Also, a film in which a pre-teen earns his dad's trust by running away from home and stalking a movie producer. Riiiight...
2. Scooby-Doo: Apparently there were people who actually LIKED this. Jesus. Not only is this live-action adaptation of the popular animated series helplessly unfunny and inept, but it betrays its savvy, skeptical source material by creating REAL ghosts for the gang to chase around. What the hell?
1. Extreme Ops: I will reiterate what I said in my review: this is an hour's worth of inane set-up for a twenty-minute chase scene down a mountain. Not really offensive in any way, but... Who wrote this?
Here we are then, to the list proper...
10. Panic Room: So who's the new master of suspense: David Fincher of M. Night Shyamalan. I don't know, but for sheer fingernails-in-your-stomach terror, not even the latter's alien invasion thriller could top this home invasion thriller. (Though I guess Signs was a home invasion thriller too... ah, never mind.)
9. The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys: This disappeared from theaters in about two weeks, which is wrong in so many ways: one of the few movies about teenagers that actually gives a damn about its characters, it's by turns exciting and powerfully moving. Like Ghost World last year, it gave us bright kids we could recognize and care about. Catch it on video.
8. Thirteen Conversations About One Thing: I'm a sucker for these elaborate, winding ensemble sagas a la Magnolia, but this one, with Alan Arkin giving the performance of his career, really got to me. Happiness, I guess, is the "One Thing," but what's interesting is how they find it.
7. Punch-Drunk Love: Here's that other Sandler. P.T. Anderson, I must say, is playing right up my alley, making incredibly bizarre dramedies, unafraid of pissing people off as he has done with his last two movies. Sandler fans may have been disappointed that he didn't talk like he had a permanent enema, but the rest of us were delighted to see a star toying with his image.
6. Spider-Man: Was this better than anyone's wildest dreams, or what? Raimi is a genius, weaving a rich tapestry of metaphors and subtext under a delightful, rollicking exterior; casting Maguire was another brilliant move. Amazing score by Danny Elfman, but then what else is new.
5. Lovely & Amazing: This opened to terrific reviews, and then vanished. Why? Movies that set out do deal with stereotypical "women's issues" tend to piss me off, but this is the real thing, not content with making women into "themes" as is the condescending Personal Velocity. Features a great, completely unheralded performance by Catherine Keener.
4. Spirited Away: Disney completely and utterly botched the US marketing of this Japanese masterpiece which made like five million but could and should have been one of the year's top grossers. Weird and wonderful, Miyazaki creates a complete, convincing universe, filled with gods and monsters scary, funny, cruel and sweet. A non-stop joy to behold.
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: Jackson's trilogy has spent two years at #3, and with any luck, next year's finale will top the list. A brilliant follow-up, darker, faster, more visceral, with an absolutely incredible CGI creation in Gollum, who turns out to be maybe the most sympathetic character of the year. George Lucas needs to watch and learn.
2. 8 Women: A movie for movie lovers, Francois Ozon's mistery/melodrama/musical evokes just about every emotion that cinema is capable of evoking. That last shot is the year's best, but everything that comes before it is terrific in its own right: suspenseful, engaging and absolutely hysterical.
1. Rabbit-Proof Fence: I've yet to go back for a second viewing, but I can tell you that this story about three aboriginal girls who must travel 1500 miles to get home after being kidnapped by the government is the most intense emotional experience I've had all year. Spare and trim at 90 minutes, Philip Noyce's movie is no less crushing for it. There was Oscar buzz around it early, but it has dissipated entirely; it would be an unspeakable shame if it went unseen.
©2003 Eugene Novikov