I will provide a link to this post on the top of the Looking Closer blog soon. (Currently, there’s a link to the 2005 journal.) This is the post where I’ll catalog every film I see in 2006.
* = indicates first-time viewing
2006
December
The Last King of Scotland* (DVD screener)…..B
The Secret of Roan Innish (VHS) ….. A-
Marie Antoinette*……B+
The Holiday*…..C-
Children of Men (second viewing)…..A
Letters from Iwo Jima*…..A-
The Devil Wears Prada* (DVD screener)…..C+
Joyeux Noel (DVD)…..B+
Notes on a Scandal* (DVD screener)…..B
Water* (DVD)…..B+
49 Up* (DVD)…..A-
The Nativity Story*…..C
November
United 93* (DVD screener)…..A+
Catch a Fire* (DVD screener)…..B+
The Double Life of Veronique (Criterion Collection DVD)…..A+
Casino Royale*…..B+
Half Nelson*…..B+
Children of Men*…..A
Thank You for Smoking* (DVD)…..B
Stranger than Fiction*…..B+
Pan’s Labyrinth*…..A
The Prestige*…..B+
Akeelah and the Bee* (DVD)…..B+
The Proposition* (DVD)…..B+
October
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang* (DVD)…..C
A Prairie Home Companion (second viewing, DVD)…..B+
Little Children*…..A-
The Queen*…..A
The Fountain*…..B-
Flags of Our Fathers*……A-
The Departed*…..B+
September
Babel*…..B+
The Science of Sleep*…..B+
The Illusionist*…..B+
High Fidelity (DVD, second viewing)…..B+
August
Army of Shadows*…..A-
Lassie (2006)*…..B+
Promises* (DVD)……A
The Gospel According to St. Matthew* (dubbed) (DVD)…..B
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby…..C+
Brick* (DVD)…..B+
Nightwatch* (DVD)…..B-
Little Miss Sunshine*…..B
Hawaii, Oslo* (DVD)…..B+
July
Miami Vice*…..B
Monster House*…..C
Lady in the Water*…..B-
The Best of Youth, part 2* (DVD)…..A-
Touch the Sound* (DVD)…..A-
Three Times*…..(still considering… probably an A-)
Mission: Impossible 3*…..B
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (DVD)…..C+
2001: A Space Odyssey (DVD)…..A+
The King*…..C-
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (second viewing)…..A-
The most satisfying large-scale adventure film since The Fellowship of the Ring.
Nightwatch* (DVD) B
Shopgirl* (DVD)…..B
June
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest*…..A-
Superman Returns*…..C+
Extremely disappointing. It recycles so many elements from the first film, it’s like a re-make… but without actors that make me care or believe, and with a supervillain so foolish that he never inspires even a flicker of fear.
The Best of Youth, part 1 (DVD)….A-
A River Runs Through It (DVD)……A
A Scanner Darkly…..B
Cars*…..B+
May
X-Men: The Last Stand*…..C
Duma* (DVD)…..B
Ikiru (VHS)…..A+
The New World (fourth theatrical viewing)…..A+
Taxi Driver (DVD)…..A
Saved (DVD)…..B
Three Colors: Blue (DVD)…..A+
The Miracle Maker* (VHS)…..A-
April
A Prairie Home Companion*…..B
A Man for All Seasons (DVD)…..A+
One of the greatest scripts ever written, with profound, and profoundly quotable, dialogue.
Babette’s Feast (DVD) ….. A+
My feelings for this film only grow stronger over time. It’s one of the most beautiful and moving films I know.
March
L’Enfant*…..A
The Five Obstructions (DVD, second viewing)….B+
The Motorcycle Diaries (second viewing)…..A
I admire this film more all the time.
V for Vendetta*…..C+
Junebug (DVD) (second viewing)…..A
Man, I love this movie. It brought me to tears last night. I think it’d edging its way up toward the top spot on my Best of 2005.
Raiders of the Lost Ark (DVD) (umpteenth viewing)…..A+
Don’t Come Knocking*…..B+/A-
Mirrormask* (DVD)…..B+
February
T
ristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story*…..B
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (DVD, second viewing)…..B+
The New World (third viewing)….A+
Yes* (DVD)…..B+
The New World (second viewing)…..A+
Even better the second time. I believe this is one of the most profound works of art for the screen I’ve ever seen. Easily the best film of the last few years… perhaps my favorite since Three Colors: Blue. What a fantastic month at the movies I’m enjoying.
Elizabethtown* (DVD)…..C+
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days*….A-
Junebug* (DVD)….A
The 2005 film I most regret misisng during its theatrical run. It would have been in the Top 10 lists I submitted to various magazines, but alas, too late.
January
Mystery Men (DVD)….B-
It’s a guilty pleasure, but it sure is a lot of fun thanks to the enthusiasm of the actors. Geoffrey Rush alone is reason enough to see it.
Tsotsi*…..B+
The New World*…..A+
Another Malick masterpiece… perhaps my favorite of his films.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin* (DVD) (2005)…..D
Steve Carrell has proven in Anchorman and TV’s The Office that he’s one of America’s funniest actors. But here, the material is so relentlessly crass and adolescent, so dependent on cheap locker room antics, that it prevents him from doing the things he does best. I couldn’t make it past the 40-minute mark, I found the company of his neanderthal co-workers so overbearingly unpleasant. I’ve heard it has “a good message” in the end. But it doesn’t matter. It’s disingenuous to praise a film for the good message it has at the end when it spends almost two hours playing to our baser appetites. That’s like giving us a vitamin after shoving a bunch of trash down our throats. The movie will delight the sex-obsessed frat boys it tries to lampoon, and I doubt it will really engage their conscience at all.
Millions (DVD) (third viewing) ….. A
Watching this film again and introducing it to some friends, I was moved even more deeply, and further impressed by the script, the editing, the music, and the performances. I stand by my decision — this is now, unquestionably, my favorite film of 2005.
Hoodwinked!* (2005) …..B+
The year’s first animated feature is fun, fast-paced, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, with another great voice performance by Patrick Warburton as the wolf. An impressive debut for writer/director Cory Edwards. Review coming soon.
Strings* (DVD) (2005)…..B
Phenomenal puppetry, among the best ever filmed… but it’s oppressively humorless and parades out a whole library of stale myth-cliches. See it for the astounding imagery.
The Beat My Heart Skipped* (DVD) (2005)….. B+
A great lead performance and a nerve-wracking sense of impending doom make this a memorable thriller, full of unconventionally thoughtful tangents, and elevated by an inventive use of classical music in its soundtrack.
You totally missed the boat on 40YO. Yes, it’s crude, and no I wouldn’t watch it with my wife. Ultimately, though— and not just due to its ending, but its resolution, and the status it ascribes to its main character —it has a more adult, healthy and honest attitude about sex than any mainstream film to date. What Apatow & Carrell have done is to give context, and depth, to what was previously a defacto archetype, the loser virgin… That fidelity, monogamy and commitment, and the mockery of ‘typical’ male attitudes about sex, should be the result, and that it should all be so funny as to go down the easier, makes it downright transcendent. (I’m so sure about it, I invited my pastor over and a group of us married guys watched it.) I love that, in conversation about marriage with a friend who’s not a believer, I can refer to the values portrayed in this crass movie. 40YO is like stealth propaganda— worth a dozen Brokeback Mountains —b/c it’s able to do what it does within a genre, the sex comedy. In fact, it explodes and elevates the genre entirely. Porky’s & co., you’ve been served.
—Campbell Andrews
Except that Inherit the Wind doesn’t purport or intend to tell the story of the Scopes trial. The printed edition of that play contains a note from the authors acknowledging the liberties they took. L.A. Theatre Works is currently touring a play that’s much more faithful to what actually happened in the Scopes trial — which is dramatic enough in its own way.
Word verification string for this comment: gzhad (Gad zooks! Having a denoument!)
Whatever rationalizations the authors of Inherit the Wind might have offered, the simple fact is that everyone associates that play (and the film and TV adaptations thereof) with the Scopes trial, and the public perception of the Scopes trial has been profoundly shaped by these dramatizations. The article Jeff links to here is, itself, ample evidence of that. And if I’m not mistaken, at least one of the TV adaptations even tried to incorporate bits of the real-life trial that were omitted from the play (but don’t quote me on that, as I’m going by an 18-year-old memory of an interview I read with co-star Kirk Douglas).
Oh, absolutely. For better or worse (worse, I suspect), what most people think they know about the Scopes trial comes from Inherit the Wind. I haven’t seen Inherit the Wind or read it, so I may be something of an exception to the rule. I don’t see, though, how Inherit the Wind could be more powerful than the L.A. Theatre Works play, which I have heard, and which also has the distinction of being more accurate, for whatever that’s worth.
But when Harwood hails Inherit the Wind as his benchmark, I wonder whether he envisions a tell-it-like-it-was screenplay, or a screenplay in which major facts are changed in order to serve an agenda.
Ah, the power of myth (or the danger of misplaced modifying phrases): “the famous Scopes trial, which allowed evolution into (Tennessee) classrooms in the first place.” The Scopes court actually convicted the defendant for the crime of teaching evolution.
Well… while we’re talking about myths from the Scopes trial.
I don’t think most people know that the prosecuting attorney, William Jennings Bryan, a man who was the Democratic nominee for President on, I think, three occasions, objected to the teaching of “evolution” because in those days evolution meant eugenics. In fact the textbook used by Scopes includes chapters on eugenics. Here’s an excerpt from the textbook so vigorously defended by Hollywood:
” Hundreds of families such as those described above exist today, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites.
” The Remedy. — If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with some success in this country.”
I like that, “The Remedy” kind of brings to mind, “The Final Solution” which of course was based on exactly the same kind of “science.” Forced sterilizations, logicaly following from these kinds of arguments were performed even in California up until 1945. Good thing Spencer Tracy came along to protect that sort of thinking.
The sad part is that “open minded” Christians so readily accept Hollywood’s propaganda about the event so as not to be confused for one of those evil fundamentalists. The Scopes propaganda should at least make you wonder if everything you’ve heard about the Pennsylvania trial and ID is accurate.
Here’s a link:
http://www.eugenics-watch.com/roots/chap08.html
Greg Marquez
goyomarquez@earthlink.net
IVChristianCenter.com
A couple of 2006 DVD suggestions for you, Jeffrey: Laurent Cantet’s Heading South & the holocaust film Fateless. A couple of the best, and most overlooked, films of the year.