So I’ve seen two movies since I made my list and decided to reconfigure it:

1. Little Miss Sunshine
2. Children of Men
3. Little Children
4. V for Vendetta
5. Brick
6. The Departed
7. Hard Candy
8. Pan’s Labyrinth
9. The Queen
10. The Devil and Daniel Johnston

Bounced are the Science of Sleep and Thank You for Smoking, though both are still highly recommended. Added are Little Children and Pan’s Labyrinth because both of those movies rocked my world. Especially Little Children. Dysfunctional suburbia is my movie kryptonite.

Also, while we’re here, I found Kevin Smith’s 2006 movie list a fun read.

Tags: 2006, film, list

[UPDATE: I’ve modified the list a bit.]

For some reason I saw a whole heck of a lot more movies in 2006 than I have most years. I get a kick out of making my top ten list, so here it is for 2006.

1. Little Miss Sunshine
2. Children of Men
3. V for Vendetta
4. Brick
5. The Departed
6. Hard Candy
7. Thank You for Smoking
8. The Devil and Daniel Johnston
9. The Queen
10. The Science of Sleep

I could flip the top two and feel just as good about this list. In some ways it felt like a weak year because I had to dig through my saved ticket stubs to remember some of these films.

Wasn’t a good year for action movies.

Here’s the list of movies I definitely did not like this year. It also happens to be most of the big budget movies I saw.

Superman Returns
X-Men 3
Mission Impossible 3
The Da Vinci Code

The big action movie I did like was Miami Vice. Definitely a flawed movie but there was just something about it that I really dug. Maybe it was because of it’s rough edges and not despite them. I’m not sure. There were enough moments when the movie Mann wanted to make peaked through that I just got it.

Honorable Mentions

Here are some honorable mentions of movies that I enjoyed quite a bit and would definitely recommend:

Pan’s Labyrinth The Prestige
Stranger Than Fiction
Marie Antoinette
Borat
God Grew Tired of Us
Miami Vice

Best Movie Moments of 2006

Meaning, moments that surprised me. Period. And I don’t mean in a “I can’t believe he was the killer!” type of surprise. I mean, surprised me as a filmgoer. Showed me something I had never seen before. Or reinvented a moment. Or just simply stunned me. Or delighted me. (I’ll try to be as vague as possible but these are potential spoilers.)

Children of Men - The birth.
Little Miss Sunshine - That final scene on the stage.
Miami Vice - The shot.
Hard Candy - That Scene, You know which one.
The Departed - Every scene with Mark Wahlberg.
V for Vendetta - At the end, everyone marching with Fawkes masks.
Little Miss Sunshine - Smuggling grandpa from the hospital.
Brick - “Throw one at me if you want, hash head. I’ve got all five senses and I slept last night, that puts me six up on the lot of you.”
Borat - Yes, that scene, you know which one. (how could I not?)

Missed ‘Em

It’s amazing, despite how many movies I saw there’s always so many I didn’t. Here are some 2006 movies I’m still eager to see:

Babel
The Good Shepherd
The Last King of Scotland
Little Children
The Pursuit of Happiness
The Fountain

Tags: 2006, film, list

Last night I accidentally caught the last 10 minutes of Studio 60. Some thoughts:

• Did anyone tell these actors that this wasn’t the West Wing? When the exact extremely somber (yet difussingly flip) tone of Washington politics is used for the politics of a comedy show it smacks of inflated self-importance.

• Did they hire the cinematographer from “The More You Know” segments?

• Did they hire the AutoSteadyCamBot5000 that directs every episode of ER?

• Was I the only one who kept catching Amanda Peet looking off camera wondering if it was time yet to take off her clothes? (I give it 3 episodes, max)

• Using the song Under Pressure is basically saying “We have run out of ideas.”

• I am so sick of TV shows about TV shows that I want to vomit. NBC has two shows about itself. Two shows! And they both have numbers in their title! This is insanity!

• We all know that NBS = NBC and Studio 60 = Saturday Night Live, so why can’t we just cut the crap and call them that? I think the Uncanny Valley Effect applies to naming as well.

• If I had actually seen the entire episode of Studio 60 would I have liked it?

• On a separate note, I saw a preview for the season premiere of The Office. It was this overly sentimental, completely genuine clip about two of the characters falling in love or something. This is a comedy show for Christ’s sake! Why does everything on NBC have to be so saccharine and touching! They might as well just play that Enya song under every show and commercial.

Tags: 30fps, list, rants

Have you ever returned a Netflix movie and forgotten to manage your queue? You automatically end up with the next movie in your queue but it’s not necessarily the exact one you were in the mood for. The cool thing is that if for some reason you absolutely positively must have that movie tomorrow, or else, you can e-mail Netflix and they’ll give you a bonus movie. You’ll still get the movie you didn’t want but you’ll also get your next queued movie. You won’t get a new movie after that until you no longer possess more movies than your account allows.

This just happened to me but I’m going to accept the movie I’ve gotten which is Chinatown. This movie is on my list of shame. That being “Best Movie of All Time” caliber films that I’ve never seen. The kind of movies I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve never seen. The kind of movies that inspire the “OMFG! You’ve never seen that movie! OMFG!” reactions. I got yelled at in film school for never having seen The Godfather trilogy. I’ve since remedied that one but a few big ones remain.

Here’s the top 5 on my list of shame:

1. Apocalypse Now
2. Dr. Strangelove
3. Chinatown
4. The Seven Samurai
5. 8 1/2

I’m probably missing a ton but these 5 are a good goal. Sometimes I tell people I’m saving Apocalypse Now because I like knowing that at any moment I can freshly experience one of the best movies of all time. Sort of like how John Irving is saving Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend for his deathbed (Which is where they got the idea for Desmond on LOST). But truth be told, that’s not really why I haven’t watched it. To be honest, that movie feels daunting to me. It feels heavy. Like I can’t just watch it I have to watch it. It’s exactly like the passage I quoted last week about not feeling guilty about reading the classics of literature. But films are only a 2 hour investment. There’s really no excuse. Except that sometimes that two hours is three hours and sometimes that 3 hours feels heavy. Yeah, fuck all this movie guilt. It’s too much.

I’ll start with Chinatown.

Tags: 24fps, film, list, netflix

Kottke posted this list of essential films that supposedly one must have seen in order to be “somewhat ‘movie-literate.’ ” I find that attitude kinda snobby since there is a great difference between what most 20-year-olds have seen vs. what most 50-year-olds have seen. That said, this list looks pretty solid. Everything on the list that I haven’t seen is definitely on my “I’m embarassed to admit I’ve never seen” list. I’ve highlighted the one’s I’ve seen:

If we accept the premise behind this list, then my result of 34 out of 102 is extremely appalling. Though in baseball it’d be a great batting average…

2001: A Space Odyssey
The 400 Blows
8 1/2
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Alien
All About Eve
Annie Hall
Apocalypse Now
Bambi
The Battleship Potemkin
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Big Red One
The Bicycle Thief
The Big Sleep
Blade Runner
Blowup
Blue Velvet
Bonnie and Clyde
Breathless
Bringing Up Baby
Carrie
Casablanca
Un Chien Andalou
Children of Paradise / Les Enfants du Paradis
Chinatown
Citizen Kane
A Clockwork Orange
The Crying Game
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Days of Heaven
Dirty Harry
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Do the Right Thing
La Dolce Vita
Double Indemnity
Dr. Strangelove
Duck Soup
E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial
Easy Rider
The Empire Strikes Back
The Exorcist
Fargo
Fight Club
Frankenstein
The General
The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II
Gone With the Wind
GoodFellas
The Graduate
Halloween
A Hard Day’s Night
Intolerance
It’s a Gift
It’s a Wonderful Life
Jaws
The Lady Eve
Lawrence of Arabia
M
Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior
The Maltese Falcon
The Manchurian Candidate
Metropolis
Modern Times
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Nashville
The Night of the Hunter
Night of the Living Dead
North by Northwest
Nosferatu
On the Waterfront
Once Upon a Time in the West
Out of the Past
Persona
Pink Flamingos
Psycho
Pulp Fiction
Rashomon
Rear Window
Rebel Without a Cause
Red River
Repulsion
The Rules of the Game
Scarface
The Scarlet Empress
Schindler’s List
The Searchers
The Seven Samurai
Singin’ in the Rain
Some Like It Hot
A Star Is Born
A Streetcar Named Desire
Sunset Boulevard
Taxi Driver
The Third Man
Tokyo Story
Touch of Evil
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Trouble in Paradise
Vertigo
West Side Story
The Wild Bunch
The Wizard of Oz

( Italicized movies are ones I’ve seen parts of – in school probably)

Tags: 24fps, film, list

1. Brokeback Mountain
2. Batman Begins
3. Match Point
4. Me and You and Everyone We Know
5. Good Night, And Good Luck
6. King Kong
7. Serenity
8. Sin City
9. The Squid and the Whale
10. Oldboy

Stunk:
Star Wars Episode III
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Shame on me for not having seen (yet):
Munich
Syriana
The History of Violence
Walk The Line

Tags: list, topten

A tad late on this one but I was holding out until I saw Adaptation. Slightly less meaningful than a movie critic making a list, since I didn’t see 90% of the movies that came out last year. I get to be picky. But I think I chose well.

1. Adaptation
2. Panic Room
3. Minority Report
4. Signs
5. Punch-Drunk Love
6. The Bourne Identity
7. One Hour Photo
8. The Good Girl
9. Changing Lanes
10. Insomnia

Tied for 11th place: Solaris, Far From Heaven, Catch Me If You Can, Spider-man.

It was really a great year for movies. Other years I’d really have to have tapped my fingers on the keyboard for hours to scrounge up 10, let alone hem and haw about which ones to leave off the list. I’m sorta surprised that I put Adaptation on top. Right out of the theatre I didn’t feel that way at all, but it really grew on me with each day that passed. I was going to list a bunch of top ten lists, but I realized I only read Roger Ebert, so I’ll only link to his.

Also, here’s a pretty decent article about Adaptation (aside from the poor attempt at parodying Adaptation – much less successful than mine…).

Tags: 24fps, list, topten