Hollywood made its money back. This summer has been well-documented, but let it be said ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest’, ‘Cars’, ‘The Da Vinci Code’, ‘X-3’, and ‘Superman Returns’ all topped $200 mil; pricey as they may be (looking at your, Kent), that’s not bad but it goes so much beyond that. The spring saw ‘Ice Age: The Meltdown’ dick-slap Harrison Ford and Bruce Willis, Spike Lee’s biggest hit to date, Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker hit their stride anew, and that hideous looking fare like ‘RV’ and ‘The Pink Panther’ confounding expectations into profit. The fall was Penguins vs. Bond, ‘Saw’ vs. ‘Jackass’, and (a lewd-out for the ages) Jack vs. Borat. All I’ll say for the winter is “Who saw ‘Night at the Museum’ grossing more than ‘Rocky Balboa’ and ‘Charlotte’s Web’ combined?”

There were failures, as always (more on Warner Bros. later), but the big shock for me at least was the abundance of big budget studio fare that reared its head. Before the fall, my top ten was peppered by movies of budget barely recognizable; though let it be said, word up to Spike Lee for ‘Inside Man’, that daffy heist movie with a fashion sense. Right now, I feel grateful that movies like ‘Children of Men’, ‘The Departed’, Eastwood’s WWII double-whammy, and ‘The Prestige’ got greenlit in the first place, let alone the unmitigated gall of a Bond movie with balls on display. More than that, we were treated in equal measures to vacuous failures and interesting ones. Despite their limitations (of which there were several) and whether they worked or not, ‘Cars’, ‘Miami Vice’, or ‘Superman Returns’, had more on their mind than any number of X-Men team ups.

The best I can say about 2006 is that it offered something for everybody in seemingly every categorical placement of entertainment.

STUDIO OF THE YEAR: WARNER BROS.

Keep in mind that this is the studio that could not push ‘L.A. Confidential’ to a gross of over $40 million theatrically. Unheralded. Unprecedented. Unbelievable.

The spring was rough, yielding the year’s first out-and-out disaster in ‘Firewall’, the most disposable Harrison Ford film to date. Summer looked better: a Wolfgang Peterson movie, a CGI-animated film with stars like Nicolas Cage and Julia Roberts, a romantic work of counter-programming, and the year’s most anticipated superhero movie and possible summer tentpole. And look! M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie needs a home. Come on over!

Save for the unremarkable success of ‘The Lake House’, all failures. Every one. ‘The Ant Bully’, ‘Lady in the Water’, ‘Poseidon’, and ‘Superman Returns’. Their indie divison failed to pull through as well. Yet the failure of Warner Bros.’ summer is nothing compared to the rollercoaster ride of the fall. Ups and downs, lefts and rights, the best show of the year, and all the while clearly not entirely understanding what they had until it was too late. Going halfsies on ‘Happy Feet’ certainly paid off, but contrast that opening ‘The Fountain’ the week after Thanksgiving. More on that later.

And contrast that with ‘Flags of Our Fathers’, a very well-received, big-budget war movie that flopped fairly substantially and rather than simply re-releasing the film in the hopes of eventual financial rejuvenation and Oscar nominations, they opted to push up the release of ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’. While admittedly a superior picture, it’s one they could have easily bided their time with until next year, instead opting for a dangerous game of double dutch between the two.

The good news of the fall was ‘The Departed’, the little Scorsese movie that could and very possibly will. A feather in the cap of any studio, and one made without little to any Oscar intentions, a comedown from baiting that feels like a comeback to the podium. The bad was garishly Oscar-hungry ‘Blood Diamond’ which will fail to recoup its $100 mil budget resulting in rival DiCaprio performances up for the same award; one, the actor’s best work and a contender for Best Actor, the other, only giving the appearance of such, with a phony accent and action figure-status.

As I write this, Warner Bros. is the production leader for Oscar nominations, co-producing ‘Flags’ and ‘Letters’ (a Best Picture nominee) with Dreamworks, five for ‘The Departed’ (another Best Picture nominee) and ‘Blood Diamond’, and pick ups for ‘The Good German’, ‘Happy Feet’, ‘Poseidon’, and ‘Superman Returns’. A hard-won finish of half-won victories. All studios should put their cock out on the table like this.

THE WUNERKIND IS DEAD!

LONG LIVE THE WUNDERKIND!

Ten years ago, studio execs couldn’t wait to get into bed with Quentin Tarantino and play with his penis. And Robert Rodriguez’s penis, and Bryan Singer’s penis, and Steven Soderbergh’s penis, Wes and Paul Thomas Anderson’s penis, and Alison Anders’ penis, and to a lesser extent Richard Linklater’s penis. I think studios just have an aversion to neo-Marxist penises (penii? Whatever.). From their respectively auspicious roots came amazing cinema, pieces of work one wouldn’t think necessarily congruent with the studio system.

This year saw the new batch of wünkerkinds with a slew of tantalizing productions on the move. And they biffed, each and every one.

I’m talking about Darren Aronofsky, Sofia Coppola, two by Michel Gondry, Paul Greengrass, Richard Kelly, John Cameron Mitchell, Christopher Nolan, Terry Zwigoff, and the year’s most endearing whipping boy, M. Night Shyamalan. Call them the Post New Wave: post-quirky, post-blockbuster, post-‘Pulp’. And they just didn’t work out this year. Some of their failures are due to studio mismanagement, some are due to indulgent truffle-filmmaking, but either way they amounted to the most hushed tides made this year.

I have discussed Warner Bros. fan-horrible-tastic year, and the goodwill offered to M. Night Shyamalan is doubtlessly more political a move than of genuine respect for the man’s art, it should be immediately suspect when any parent studio issues their Golden Boy memo of toxic screenplay inadequacies. Bottom line is that if ‘The Village’ could make enough money for everybody to go around, something had to be really wrong with ‘Lady in the Water’, didn’t it? And rather than abide their requests, M. Night was offered sanctuary from Warner Bros., and released ‘Lady in the Water’ to the year’s most wretched reviews.

I want to live in a world where filmmakers can maintain their artistic integrity and continue to produce the quality, challenging films of their dreams. I do not condemn M. Night for making the year’s most understandable failure – falling in love with a central idea so much that the failings all around it seem phantom – but the Buena Vista memo is online and you can read it. And you should read it.

On the other end of the spectrum, I would love to have seen what film Darren Aronofsky could have done with $85 million, Brad Pitt, and Cate Blanchett. As is, his truncated release of ‘The Fountain’ remains a powerful, immensely personal piece of filmmaking that confirms Aronofsky as an artist with more than a one-note requiem to his legacy. Warner Bros.’s concerns were legitimate, and “The Story of the $85 Million Aronofsky Movie” has become every bit the unfinished legacy as the film’s titular novel.

I don’t know anybody who didn’t want to see ‘The Fountain’, and I don’t know anybody who in the months leading up to its release didn’t want to see ‘The Science of Sleep either. With such a tantalizing premise (both in story, a man who cannot differentiate dreams from reality; and in the promise that this be the first “real” Michel Gondry film), advance hype was fever pitched turned fizzle. Critics bemoaned a substantial lack of cohesion and audiences mostly stayed away. On the flip side, Gondry’s ‘Dave Chappelle’s Block Party’ was one of the most ecstatically reviewed films of the Spring and with a red hot comedian and a nation thirsty for new material, I remain more baffled by the latter’s failure to pull in audiences.

How ‘The Prestige’ managed to close out under $50 million is beyond me for such an entertaining pipe dream of a conceit. The fault cannot be Christopher Nolan’s. Yet Paul Greengrass (‘United 93’) has nobody to blame but himself for making such a thoroughly competent, uncompromising piece of work that the Marquis de Sade himself would pass up. John Cameron Mitchell of ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’ following was working under the most limited of audiences available with an unrated hetero/homosexual extravaganza of a love letter to real sex in post-9/11. Whiny as it may be at times, the powerful film needed a different time and place, a world of midnight showings and months of linger to break even. And without Blockbuster as a possibility, a very solid little film will need a lot more cult following than it is exhibiting.

This past Cannes film festival saw two heads on the block; one belonged to Sofia Coppola, whose venomously reviewed ‘Marie Antoinette’ is due for some kind of revival, yet despite a very successful spin of hype that followed (It was only the French booing.” “You have to actually see New Order paired with the French Court to understand how it works.”), the film fizzled with critics and audiences, despite a few vocal proponents, who will doubtlessly restore the film’s honor in the coming years. None of that compares to the lashing received by Richard Kelly of ‘Donnie Darko’ fanaticism, whose ‘Southland Tales’ will never be seen by audiences in its current form. A 160 min sci-fi/comedy/musical featuring Sarah Michelle Geller and The Rock among others, the sheer vitriol of the film’s reception is tantamount to artistic impeachment. Whether we see the film at all remains in question, as there is currently no release date for the film at all.

Let this be a lesson to Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris, Ryan Fleck, Rian Johnson, and Kelly Reichardt – gather ye rosebuds while ye may…

THOUGHTS ON ‘UNITED 93’: or THE WORST AUTOCRITICISM OF THE YEAR

Owen Gleiberman on ‘United 93’ as the year’s second best movie: “…The bogus question turned into a mantra by the media – is it “too soon” for a movie like ‘United 93’ – really translates as: Do American audiences want to feel this close to this actual a tragedy when they go out to the movies? Maybe not. Maybe it’s about time they did.”

There’s no point in recapping the rest of the capsule save for my new favorite genre buzz word: “hair-trigger 9/11 vérité thriller”. I digress: there are so many wrongheaded things in the aforementioned passage that I don’t know where to begin. For one thing, I have no idea why he likes the film and I’ve yet to read a review of anybody convincing me why ‘United 93’ is a good film beyond the realm of aesthetic triumph, but the pomp and circumstance of this gilded lily review speaks to me as being somehow both rhetorical and auto-criticism, which is some kind of feat. For one thing, is it really a bogus question to ask: “Hey, um, the Towers are still down with nothing in their place. Can we wait until somebody puts something up before we get THREE MOVIES IN ONE YEAR” One would be wrong to ask this question, as it’s never really too soon if the finished product honors the fallen, but dismissing the question reeks of self-absorbed histrionics.

To answer his question: no. Why would they? It’s too fresh and there’s no joy or uplift to be found. Even ‘Schindler’s List’ had the good sense to manufacture a bullshit tribute ending. If Gleiberman is hailing the film for its triumph of unrelenting, ‘Clockwork Orange’-style eyes wide open look at tragedy, wake me up when his rave comes out for ‘Inquisitin’ 2: Please, I’ve Done Nothing to You People!!’

“[Is it] about time they did.” For one thing, take a moment to really savor the tone here. It’s something special ,even for somebody as self-absorbed as a film critic. I like ‘United 93’ but cannot entirely recommend the film to anybody. To me, it’s more in line with ‘The Passion of the Christ’, where audiences go in to weep for their savior dying on the screen, regardless of whether tears are legitimately earned. ‘United 93’ is a far stronger piece of filmmaking because the aesthetic isn’t dripping with “Martyrrific” saccharine and Lord knows Paul Greengrass deserves all the praise he’s been receiving for his accomplishment, but I digress. I ask The Gleen (and really, that must’ve been tough growing up. Y’know?): can you blame them? Really? Can you? Why would they? And is it about time NOW? Oh good to know. I’m too busy being astonished as to why audiences passed up the chance to see amazingly enjoyable movies we have no right to deserve like ‘L.A. Confidential’. ‘Out of Sight’, and ‘The Prestige’.

OVEREXPOSED INTROVERT OF THE YEAR

Sacha Baron CohenSacha Baron Cohen. I am finding it increasingly strange how Cohen is continuously regarded as an introverted intellectual, not in contrast to his outlandish creation Borat, but as a separate entity and almost respectfully so. Cohen is described as respectful, bright, and intellectual, whereas Borat is…Borat. Cohen reaps the praises for his invention, Borat gets the slack for casual anti-Semitism and antagonism. The Borat/Cohen schism was the most fascinating act of deification I saw all year.

THE BEST FILMS OF 2006

1.     CHILDREN OF MEN

In viewing ‘Children of Men’ at the River East theater a day before New Year’s, early on I fell silent, the harrumph-ing elders in the rafters of my mind hushed, as my body became guided by my eyes, eventually gravitating to the point where I sat on the edge of my seat with my chin in my hand as the credits began and I blinked in disbelief. This is the movie we will be talking about in the years to come. It’s this one, I am confident. ‘Children of Men’ is the movie of the year.

Against charges of shallow commentary and empty characterizations, I praise Cúaron’s masterpiece for simply laying down the foundation for commentary and throttling forward on the odyssey taken by Theo, the accidental savior of the human race. To wit: women have been infertile for 18 years, in 50 the human race is over. According to Theo, we were fucked long before that, and therein lays the erotically cynical complexity of ‘Children of Men’ – we will all be us fallen figures of noir, devoted only to ourselves in the wake of futility, as every single issue we keep postponing (media terrorism; illegal immigration in all of its benefits and detriments; population overkill via the alarming dearth of birth control, the very control over birth) will eventually bite us in the ass. This is true, ‘Children of Men’ spends little time dwelling on these issues because there’s little time to waste on the inevitable. ‘Children of Men’ begins with two deaths: one famous, the youngest man alive, and one mass, a horrific explosion, the aftermath both chilling and undercut by titles. There is a little time to waste when time is running out. And it runs without shoes.

‘Children of Men’ is the year’s great movie-going experience, the most surprising, the most innovative, the most technically adept; there is cinematography in this film (in this, the sixth legendary collaboration with great cinematographer Emmanuel Lubeszki) that utilizes tracking shots that continue for upwards of fifteen minutes of out-and-out warfare, through power shifts and essential plot details, only to emerge the other side, beaten and battered with newfound hope for humanity – in one shot. Cúaron’s triumph is that he finds ways to invest his stunningly innovative feats with an emotional palette one never sees coming. Against charges that ‘Children of Men’ has nothing to say about the world these characters live in, I can only call up that ‘Casablanca’ didn’t waste much time sermonizing in the wake of Nazi patrol, and merely contented itself with individual choice and stride towards a better future, albeit one at all.

2.     THE DEPARTED

You’ll have to excuse me while I get downright religious about Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Departed’.

To wit: the deaths in ‘The Departed’. They are sudden and finite, quick and ugly, an almost simultaneous BANG and THUD, and rarely seen coming. It is this boon of sensibility in which ‘The Departed’ transcends any other incarnation possible. For while the material is pulp more fitting John Woo (albeit William Monahan’s screenplay is perfectly structured and packed with macho poetry), in the hands of Scorsese, editor Thelma Schoonmaker, cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, and musician Howard Shore it comes closer to resembling an canonic remix of a legendary filmmaker’s former coups akin to a rush of blood to the head for two and a half hours. For the first time in his big budget studio triumvirate (preceded by ‘Gangs of New York’ and ‘The Aviator’), Scorsese has freed himself up enough to bring everything together to a satisfying whole: to find the right notes for each act, to use his filmic vocabulary to almost shamelessly throttle the movie forward, and to justify packing his cast full of A-listers. He uses Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlburg, and Ray Winstone to note-perfection, and is wise enough to reach out to the talents of Vera Farmiga to fortify an otherwise improbable love triangle.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s tragic mole Costigan and Matt Damon’s Sullivan effortlessly capable handler Sullivan orbit Jack Nicholson’s leeringly obnoxious mob boss Frank Costello creating a strange, almost uncomfortable dynamic of star-fucking, keeping our allegiances in queasy limbo. I don’t even know if I really like what Jack Nicholson does in ‘The Departed’, a lazy form of late-Brando “craft service” acting that pales in comparison to the truly dynamic persona subversions that Damon and DiCaprio achieve, but his sheer presence in the film may be what elevates it to classic stature and makes the All Fall Down finale all the more disarming. It’s never simply cat-and-mouse, but rather cat-and-cat-and-cat-and-cat and the empty promise of a harmonious stalemate is thrown in our face. Therein lies ‘The Departed’’s black joke, the one that Scorsese fought Warner Bros. tooth and nail to keep in, the metaphysical whammy of the dearly departed.

3.     THE LIVES OF OTHERS

A late addition to my list, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck ‘The Lives of Others’ brings to mind the oft-quoted line from Nicholas Ray’s ‘Johnny Guitar’: “I’m a stranger here myself.” In mid-80’s East Germany, beleaguered playwright Georg Dreyman, fresh of the success of his potentially subversive play, and his live-in actress girlfriend Christa are unknowingly placed under surveillance by Captain Weisler (Ulrich Mübe), the calculating operative who lives above them chronicling their lives, with sunken eyes and hair that seems to retreat from his judgmental glare. He bugs every inch of their home, lives in their attic, and delivers his dependably immaculate reports back to base, switching shifts with his less-capable perpetually tardy underling. All goes well until he finds himself swayed by the intimacy of their artist lives he has never known and can only hear.

The title could as easily refer to Weisler or the artists or the corpulent official who blackmails the actress into an affair for her protection, or any of them for that matter. The lives in von Donnersmarck’s tangling masterpiece are so close and so barely removed, it has the air of incest. There’s something to be said for knowing how to end a movie; von Donnersmarck does not, yet for all of his minor third act deficiencies (none of which deplete the enjoyment from his water-tight proceedings), ‘The Lives of Others’ is one of the few feats of writing I can adequately describe as truly riveting, where our allegiances are as perpetually at odds as are our main characters’. It’s such an awesome feeling watching a film wherein immediately one is confident that all the filmmaker’s textual preoccupations are your own, where one can lean back and watch a promising situation unfold with tragic grandeur. ‘The Lives of Others’ earns comparisons to ‘The Conversation’ as one of the great Watchmen movies of all time.

4.     LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA

In the wake of the financial failure (and for me, artistically) of ‘Flags of Our Fathers’ and the much-lauded given that Clint Eastwood has made a “faithfully Japanese” Japanese war movie in the United States, it has become easy to pigeonhole ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’ too easily for what it inherently is, and not what it does. ‘Flags of Our Fathers’ is overly contented to posit one question as rhetoric for two-and-a-half hours (“Who are these heroes, when those that have earned it are dead in battlefield sand?”), Clint Eastwood and writer Iris Yamashita (from a story by Paul Haggis) have successfully crafted a war movie that completely sets itself apart from any I know I’ve seen. ‘Flags of Our Fathers’ is contextual, whereas ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’ bursts to life with immediacy and lyricism, in a washed-out worldview that breathes in blacks and whites and grays.

Ken Watanabe plays Kuribayashi, a “Westernized” General, Japan’s last ditch attempt to preserve Iwo Jima from American forces, whose authority is incessantly overridden for the perceived good of the Emperor; and amazing newcomer Kazunari Ninomiya plays Saigo, a corporal drafted too young into servitude with an acidic wit masking the knowledge that he will never return to his wife and meet his child for the first time. Their lives intertwine as General Kuribayashi holes up at command post watching his plans wash away in moments of desperation, as Saigo embarks on an odyssey-like journey from post to post, recalling the perverse survival-for-survival’s sake of ‘The Pianist’’s Szpilman. I’ve read reviews that describe ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’ as a war movie taking place on an alien world, a simplification that’s indicative of a shallow worldview yet the comparison is apt; I’ve seen Japanese films old and new, but I know I haven’t seen this war story before, yet the characterizations are extremely rich, rarely compromised for Western audience-viewing, and always in the constant threat of annihilation. There are no sides save for one’s own survival, and while certain scenes feel contrived and, if I may, Haggis-ian, others are timelessly poignant, wrenching, and horrific, often in the same moment. For me, this is the apex of Clint Eastwood’s autumnal career rejuvenation, for while it may not possess the beatific genre footings of his own iconic performance of ‘Million Dollar Baby’ (a more Eastwood-ian latter day triumph), in ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’ – and contextually, ‘Flags of Our Fathers’ – he sees no difference between the struggles, survival and victory forever hand-in-hand.

5.     PAN’S LABYRINTH

Really, wouldn’t we all like a little more fantasy? I understand; trailers can lie, can’t they? I thought ‘The Prestige’ would be about magic, not “magic”. At the heart of ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ is the quandary: are we watching a little girl in a dark fairy tale or a dark fairy tale about a little girl in a dark fairy tale? The problem with ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ is not the absence of fantasy, but the brevity in which Guillermo Del Toro, sweaty fanboy that he is, thrusts us back and forth from promise to fulfillment of baroque, eye-popping imagery and back to fascist occupation. There is a sad absence of discovery that needs to be learned, yet it’s only a lesson thought about afterwards. In the moment, there are fewer films this year as enjoyable as ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’.

As Ofelia (blissfully natural newcomer, Ivana Baquero) believes herself to be Princess Moana, Daughter of the King of the Underworld and embarks on a fantastical journey of rules and quests, her fascist step-father lives his own, one of order, servitude, and lineage. Sergi Lopez invests Captain Vídal with a confidence and understated intensity that escapes one-noted entrapment, and ultimately the success of Guillermo Del Toro’s is the realization of their respective journeys, and in some ways the lack of finite cohesion is fitting to a little girl who cannot escape the fascist lack of imagination and an evil Captain who cannot maintain the order of such. Much has been written about the fantasy sequences, which hare amazing; yet I feel as though Del Toro’s success in recreating the fascist hold on Spain and the underground rebellion have been underappreciated, really just a hugely satisfying slice of revolution and one man’s monstrous devolution. Special mention must be made to Javier Navarrete’s lullaby of a score, which reduced me to a blubbering man-child on both occasions.

6.     BRICK

Have you seen it yet? Is it on your queue? Have you heard good things? What’s it gonna take?

For over a year now since I saw it at the Chicago Film Festival in the Fall of ‘05, I’ve been running my mouth about the best Glorified Student Film since ‘Reservoir Dogs’, and criticisms of such are nothing more than condescension. What is the French New Wave if not the greatest set of glorified student films of all time. Achieving a multi-million dollar feel on a budget of less than five hundred grand (!), Rian Johnson transfers Raymond Chandler to the high school milieu with such tongue-in-cheek ease that I’m inclined to chalk up his detractors to mere player-hating. Quite simply, ‘Brick’ has no right to be this good and it is, with its endlessly rewatchably meta-plot twists, perfectly stylized performances by Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s floater-cum-gumshoe (is this guy the best actor of his/my generation or what?), and smirkingly effective vernacular, a jangling gutter poetry that’s both organic and perfectly studied. But first and foremost, it’s the central joke, Johnson’s recognition that there is ultimately little difference between a world-weary private dick’s personal Sin City and the cliquish vapid bullshit of high school life after all. I fucking knew it.

7.     THE PROPOSITION

Where Nick Cave’s fantastic screenplay paced a little more for the pleasures of the relishing viewer, we’d be talking about the best Western since ‘Unforgiven’. In its current, semi-truncated form where Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) embarks on journey and reconciliation with his wanted poet-outlaw brother Arthur (Danny Huston), all we’re talking about is…the best Western since ‘Unforgiven’.

What ‘The Proposition’ does so well is fully realizing the old adage about possessing the best intentions. A good-natured sheriff (Ray Winstone, in a beautiful performance), out of place in his task of civilizing the Australian outback, sets Charlie free, following an ugly shoot out in a chicken coop wherein both he and his simple brother are captured; the quiet proposition is made – one brother for another – in the tacit knowledge that neither brother in possession are desecrators in the same vein as the absentee Burns. When knowledge of this shady yet perhaps necessary dealing is made public, the town’s outrage and thirst for vengeance usurps its recognition for justice, paving the way for a finale of societal comeuppance, where those with hearts thirsting and hands tied are against the wall. Yet for all the bloodshed and satisfying narrative thrust, what distinguishes this film is the impotence of Ray Winstone to shelter his wife (Emily Watson) from this alien world, or even see the buds of fruition of his proposition, a good man in an impatient world.

8.     OLD JOY

Kelly Reichardt’s long time-coming follow-up to ‘River of Grass’ (a well sought-out find) is immediately distinguishable as a major and welcome voice, and succeeds as an experience so subtlety pleasurable that it’s as easy to dismiss as Mark does. I’ve already been accused of overly rhapsodizing this gentle tour de force, so I’ll simply just say that it’s a quiet masterpiece about watching the spirit of revolution slide inexorably towards the futile bickering of a radio station, about the generous memento of a beautiful moment before the collapse of friendship. It exists as both nostalgia and harbinger, my irrationally joyous cup of tea with Yo La Tengo accompaniment.

9.     VOLVER

If Clint Eastwood has set something of an unprecedented autumnal winning streak, let us take a moment and thank God that Pedro Almodovar has done the same in the July of his career. Trading the screwball collision of sexuality for graceful archetypal explorations, ‘Volver’ sees the filmmaking slowing down in the best possible way. The virtues of ‘All About My Mother’, ‘Talk to Her’, and (especially) ‘Bad Education’ feel more alchemic, immediate, and both ex- and implosive, ‘Volver’ feels both like a spiritual and literal return to a place of immense comfort: back to the girls.

The eye-popping color palette of a Pedro movie feels now less like the promise of summer and now like the setting of the August sun, as Penelope Cruz’s Raimunda must clean up after the disposal of a husband recalling the repetition of history and Lola Nuñas’ spinster older sister has an otherworldly clean up of her own in the guise the return of her deceased mother (Almodovar staple Carmen Maura). Every character in ‘Volver’ is planning for a fall and imagine my surprise when Pedro is content to focus on the pleasures of such preparation alone, such as a film crew come to town and subsequently saving a restaurant or memories of mother returning at the fragrance of a fart. ‘Volver’ feels like one for the fans and it does not disappoint, least of all in the reunion of Pedro and Carmen Maura together again for the first time since ‘A Woman On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’.

10.   CASINO ROYALE

Following the unparalleled disaster of ‘Die Another Day’ and the studio’s failure to provide Pierce Brosnan with one fully satisfying outing as Bond, I would go so far as to say few were dreading yet another series-prolonging outing of the faceless special agent as me. Not only is ‘Casino Royale’ a glorious throwback to the simpler pleasures of the Bond franchise – the chase! the locale! the women! – but Campbell and screenwriter Paul Haggis (!) deign to subvert and rebuild the persona before our eyes to totally engrossing effect, creating perhaps the most James Bond-ian James Bond movie in decades. And in Daniel Craig, we finally have a protagonist who moves beyond the winking (though wonderful) star-fuckery of Sean Connery’s inglorious bastard, reaching past the mask of soullessness to find so much more of even less. We’ve no right to expect so much.

11.   Where to begin?

Any other year, any number of these films would land halfway up my list, probably the closest to missing out is Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne’s fourth feature, the Palme d’Or-winning L’Enfant, which depicts the short days after the arrival of the unwanted child to both misfit and girl who can’t help but love him until he cuts one corner too close. The Dardennes are among the best filmmakers today, and while I can’t say their ending is entirely deserved, their film is one of the strongest of the year. Far more joyous are two of the most ecstatic concert films of our time: Neil Young: Heart of Gold, Jonathan Demme’s tribute to a living legend’s country ballads new and old, juxtaposing his weathered face and his microphone like a sermon; and Michel Gondry’s true success of the year, Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, an of-the-moment, off-the-wall jubilation of a prankster’s gesture to his city, in which the audience feels just as much a part of the celebration. Lord knows, the messy successes of Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain and Terry Gilliam’s Tideland are due for cult status down the road, and remain far more interesting than anything in a rickety yellow van. In current rediscovery status as we speak, the year’s two most enjoyable creature features were downright frightening (The Descent) and joyously goofy (Slither); neither found the audience they deserved in theaters and both are currently looking up on video.

We said goodbye to Robert Altman this year, and though A Prairie Home Companion, isn’t the maestro’s strongest outing – neither Nashville nor Gosford Park nor even a Long Goodbye-level risk – it’s a spookily moving and sweet farewell to characters that run too far off the page. Ryan Gosling gives the best performance of the year in Ryan Fleck and co-creator Anna Bowden’s Half Nelson as a crack-addicted inner-city middle school teacher and one of the year’s juiciest Oscar justices was seeing him nominated, though in a just-er world, Shareeka Epps would be encroaching on Helen Mirren’s tail for the win. Fleck and Bowden’s screenplay smartly dodges easy convention and mines the film for stronger stuff, and matched every step of the way by Gosling, Epps, and Anthony Mackie. An even juicier justice would be seeing Judi Dench come out victorious for her scheming lonely lez grin in Richard Eyre’s Notes on a Scandal, which sees the Dame freed up for the first time in ages and prattling off Patrick Marber’s prose in voice over and matching it beat for beat with her Cheshire Cat’s grin; which is not to detract from the pleasures of Stephen Frears’ The Queen, blessed with Peter Morgan’s smart screenplay, Alexandre Desplat’s score, Michael Sheen’s fantastic turn as Tony Blair, and Mirren. I mentioned Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige earlier; I too easily dismissed the pleasures of the year’s 2nd Magician Movie, but it’s endlessly re-watchable, and a structural coup, in and of itself a magic trick of a screenplay, both linear and non, pledge, turn, and prestige all happening at once.

And of course, United 93. I find critiquing this truly monumental film out of my league as of yet. Lord knows, your owe yourself to see it.

…and certainly not without their pleasures – Borat: Cultural Learnings for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Bubble, Down in the Valley, Inside Man, Little Children, Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto, Monster House, Mutual Appreciation, The Puffy Chair, A Scanner Darkly, The Science of Sleep, Shortbus, Snakes on a Plane (yes), Sherrybaby, Stranger than Fiction, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

Most Overrated – Babel, The Devil Wears Prada, Dreamgirls, Flags of Our Fathers, For Your Consideration, An Inconvenient Truth, Little Miss Sunshine, and Thank You for Smoking.

The Worst Film of 2006

Not as many contenders as I would have thought, as most of the year’s “failures” simply missed the mark. Lord knows, there were few films as blandly forgettable as Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, which essentially contents itself to be ‘Back to the Future II: Now With Pirates!’. At least there is nothing in that film as disheartening as the bludgeoned failure of Brett Ratner’s graceless handling of X-Men: The Last Stand, as the hopes and prayers of fanboys across the nation cried “Shenanigans!” to the screen in indignation at the ugly, chaotic, unsatisfying mess on the screen that you’re forced to endure, left like a dump in a urinal. And speaking of chaotic, unsatisfying messes: M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water, a minor disaster that must be taught at film school for how not to write a screenplay. I lost track of how many times Paul Giamatti’s stutterer was forced to find the “real” Guardian, Writer, and Guild (or something), but I’ll never forget the sight (or rank smell) of the filmmaker himself writing himself such a monologue for the actor (again: himself) to deliver monotonously to the titular Narf and the screen. But at least nothing in the film was as deathly boring as The Da Vinci Code, perhaps the most painfully boring experience I’ve had at the theaters in years. Adapted to the screen with Shakespearean reverence, Ron Howard’s anti-adventure was marketed as a thriller wherein Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou…walk kind of fast…while talking endlessly…as they’re chased by a dude with a single gun…and he’s got a cane…so getting away from him should really just be a lot quicker, ‘cause Lord knows – Okay, you got it.

Pauline Kael’s distinction between bad movies big and small is that the big ones will have an explosion to keep you awake. You don’t get much smaller than Woody Allen’s Scoop, an innocuous nap save for the nagging, constant assertion one has that it has a weightlessness that would seem made up on the spot. He’s too old too woo Scarlett Johansson (or really anybody anymore), so he’s forced to do the next best thing: solve mysteries with her, while feels even more creepy. There’s nothing innocuous going on in Michael Cuesta’s 12 and Holding, and ugly little movie about three parallel child lives following the death of a friend; alone, perhaps they’d find the time for the nuance each one demanded, but lumped together it has the feel of exploitation and badly-acted at that. Hard Candy was an empty endurance test I pray never to experience again; motivations aside, it’s an act of audience castration. And really, was anybody supposed to give a shit about Terry Zwigoff’s hugely disappointing Art School Confidential, his long awaited re-collaboration with Daniel Clowes gone fat, shrill, and ugly?

How do reconcile both worlds? One word: Bobby. I’ve spent too much energy already typing my disdain for this ugly little failure already. Rent it, bring your friends, and take a shot whenever: A) anybody makes a speech that goes longer than 20 seconds, B) another shot when the same speech goes to 40 seconds, C) one more for every empty confused reaction shot, and D) one more whenever anybody talks about what it means to live in the sixties.