THE AICN-DOWNUNDER ANNUAL 2006

It's been a truly great year for music. I've bought an awful lot of albums that came close to being considered the best of the year, and for me, 2006 was a year for discovering a lot of new music. I've also expanded my horizons a bit. Not too long ago, if I was telling a joke about music, chances are the punchline would have something to do with country rock or Australian hip-hop. For a long time, I considered both of these musical genres to be laughably bad, and all entries within them to be as far from music as you can get. Funny, then, that the two best albums I bought this year were a country rock album and an Australian hip-hop album. "Draw Blood" by Melbourne's Wagons doesn't quite capture the energy of their live performances, but the quality of the song writing and the strength of Henry Wagon's voice more than makes up for it. The Hilltop Hoods album "The Hard Road" has better lyrics and more complex melodic shifts than just about anything else I picked up all year. If you want to expand your horizons a bit, these are the albums I'd recommend.

I'd been planning to use that as a clever way to segue into discussing this year's selection of films, but I can't for the life of me remember what that clever way was, so instead I'm going to awkwardly jump immediately into the list.

AUSTRALIAN CINEMA

At the end of every year, I have to make excuses as to why I haven't seen so many Australian films, but I've truly outdone myself this year. I missed KENNY, JINDABYNE, SUBURBAN MAYHEM, 2:37, and most anything that was funded by the FFC. This wasn't out of any political stance or anything, I just had a hard time getting to movies unless the distributors book in the date weeks in advance. Of those four films, I was only invited to JINDABYNE, and I only missed that because my car broke down. Circumstance kept me from a lot of movies this year.

It was a pretty good year for Australian films, though. CANDY will be discussed below in the actual top ten, but between that and all the other releases, there seemed to be something for everyone, regardless of whether you like solemn, overwrought dramas, extremely low budget indie films, or light-hearted comedies. Everybody and his dog seemed to hate Geoffrey Wright's MACBETH, which I thought was excellent. I guess that makes me a revolutionary. No? Okay.

Unfortunately, very little fuss was made over the passing of Esme Melville, one of the stalwarts of the Australian film industry. You may not recognise the name, but you'd undoubtedly recognise her if you saw her. She begun acting in the 1930s, and passed away this year at the age of eighty-eight. She appeared in just about every TV show and movie made in this country, but to list even the highlights would keep us here for paragraphs upon paragraphs. Needless to say, she was great in everything she appeared in. Her last role was as Miss Collard in next year's ROMULUS, MY FATHER, and if the film is as good as I've heard, then it'll be a fitting final appearance for one of the most enduring figures of the local industry.

DOCUMENTARIES

Had to make a quick mention of documentaries. I don't have anything particularly groundbreaking to say, other than the art of the doco is coming back, as evidenced by the fact that many people are putting together Best Documentaries of 2006 lists, and not only have enough entries to fill their lists, but have enough to exclude those that weren't good enough! Documentaries have never been stronger, and whether you consider Al Gore's AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH to qualify as one or not, there's no denying that it's the most important film to come out this year and may actually (hopefully) change the world. It's also the only film that scared me more than THE DESCENT, so it has that going for it as well. (For the record, the other best doco I saw this year was the amazing SHAKESPEARE BEHIND BARS, which I reviewed at MIFF. Can't recommend it enough.)

CLOSE CALLS

I don't usually do the "almost made it" list, but I can't remember why I don't, so here are the ones that came close to making the list: CARS (Pixar, never stop being awesome), MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 3 (you'd better believe it), JARHEAD (superb stuff), V FOR VENDETTA (truly awesome), THE NEW WORLD (Malick can do no wrong), MUNICH (a perfect film marred only by a misjudged final shot), CHILDREN OF MEN ('fraid so, Sara!), THANK YOU FOR SMOKING (the apple fell far from the tree, thankfully), BUBBLE (Soderbergh rules), THE DESCENT (one of the best horror films I've ever seen), TRISTRAM SHANDY (the funniest film of the year), MATCH POINT (Woody rules), CASINO ROYALE (possible the best Bond ever), EDMOND (William H. Macy and David Mamet rule), THE AURA (one of the most beautifully understated films ever made), and A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION (it's more than a little touching that Altman's final film was also one of his best).

Keep in mind that just as some of those films (like JARHEAD and MUNICH) were released in Australia in 2006, many films haven't been released here yet and may appear on my list next year. Films like ROCKY BALBOA, THE ILLUSIONIST, THE FOUNTAIN, THE GOOD GERMAN and THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

Of course, that doesn't explain why I missed so many potentially-great films like BABEL, A SCANNER DARKLY, UNITED 93 and the afore-mentioned Australian films. Hey, I'm a busy guy. A busy, lazy guy.

I also stopped doing the Worst Of list because of all the flaming I got after daring to suggest -- in my PASSION OF THE CHRIST review -- that Mel Gibson was anti-semitic. If anything, 2006 left me feeling more than a little vindicated. Still, I have to give honourable mentions to POSEIDON, THE LAKE HOUSE, THE DA VINCI CODE and THE SENTINEL, several films that transcended awful. Even worse was local film EM 4 JAY. It gives me no joy to say so, not only because it was directed by Alkinos Tsilimidos who made the excellent EVERYNIGHT... EVERYNIGHT, one of the best Australian films ever made. EM 4 JAY is like the worst student film you've ever seen. (Read my original review here.) And even worse than that was FANTASMA, the worst film I have ever seen in my life. Read my original review to discover just how bad cinema can get.

FINALLY... THE LIST

Here we go, in non-alphabetical reverse-meritous order, the ten best films seen by Latauro this year. Remember, to read my original (and more detailed) reviews of these films, click on the linked titles.

10. PAN'S LABYRINTH

It seems like a bit of a demotion, putting such a universally-loved film at spot number ten, but I flipped for it in a slightly different way to everyone else. Perhaps that's an arrogant thing to assume, but I think I need a second viewing before I speak about it too much more. PAN'S LABYRINTH is an extraordinary film that examines innocence more subtly and beautifully than I've seen before. Smarter people than I have been more eloquent about the film's genius, so I'll move on.

9. CANDY

I got a bit annoyed at the arrogance with which this film was so routinely dismissed: "Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish as drug addicts? Pfft! They're too pretty!" Apparently, this keeps with reality, where anyone remotely attractive never gets addicted to drugs. To dismiss the film on this basis to ignore the fact that both Ledger and Cornish looked and sounded completely natural in their roles, and had me, at any rate, completely invested in their characters. The best supporting performances of the year were Noni Hazlehurst and Tony Martin as Cornish's parents, Geoffrey Rush was extraordinary as their drug dealer Casper, and both Luke Davies and Neil Armfield crafted an intense yet oddly beautiful story that should be mandatory viewing in high schools everywhere.

8. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST

As sick as I was getting of action films, I was really missing adventure films. When I thought back to the good old swordfighting films I grew up on (the Errol Flynn ROBIN HOOD and THE COURT JESTER with Danny Kaye), I just figured that we'd never get another film like those ever again. How happy I was to be proved wrong. DEAD MAN'S CHEST stepped everything up from the first film, with two exceptions. 1) Loved Jack's entrance in this film, but it could never match his entrance in the first film, which is one of the greatest appearances in movie history. 2) Jack was written a bit too buffoonish in the second film, where the writers mistook Depp's "crazy" interpretation as something they would have to imitate in the text of the sequel. Other than those things, this was about as much fun as I've had at the movies in a long time, and one of the very few occasions where I actually paid to come back and see it again. The entire film is great, but the sequence in the middle is one of the most enjoyably elaborate and satisfying scenes I've ever witnessed (the giant wheel swordfight, and everything surrounding it), and I nearly blew the roof off the place when I first saw the ending. What a fantastic moment, and what a great reason to remind us why remaining spoiler-free only enhances the experience.

7. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE

Aside from the corpse-kidnapping scene, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE was surprisingly uncontrived. On paper, a comedy/drama about a dysfunctional family that has to take a road trip that ends with everyone dancing in the end sounds like the most horrible film imaginable, and yet the execution works. It's genuinely funny, genuinely dramatic, and breathes life into another genre I'd all but dismissed as tired and stale. There's a reason that everybody you know loves this film.

6. BRICK

Speaking of concepts that don't work on paper, BRICK should have been a disaster. How did it turn out to be so brilliant? If I knew the answer to that, I'd be making a film like BRICK instead of just talking about it. Rian Johnson hits all the right notes and gets the tone of the piece just right, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt reminds us why he's one of the most underrated actors working today. Between this and MYSTERIOUS SKIN, we've seen him play characters with such versatility and such different physicality, and BRICK was always going to live and die with its lead performance. BRICK lives in a big way, and against my better judgment I'm hoping against hope for a sequel or two. This is a world I want to revisit as often as possible.

5. THE WORLD'S FASTEST INDIAN

This is very left-field, I know, but for the first six months of the year, it was the only contender on my list for best film of the year. I was expecting to like the film, to find it charming, but I wasn't expecting to love it. Anthony Hopkins gives the best performance of his career (yes, I said it; go back and read it again if you're not sure), and plays a character so charming that he inevitably wins over everyone he encounters. I know it doesn't seem like a great film, but that's exactly why I was taken by surprise. Trust me on this, and see it.

4. THE PRESTIGE

Holy crap, I love this film. Everything Christopher Nolan touches turns to essential viewing, and this high concept film actually delivers on its premise. Everything about it is great, and anything I write about it will just turn into hyperbole, so click on the title to see my original review and I'll move on.

3. TIDELAND

Well, I had to put something controversial in here, didn't I? It was all a bit too tame thus far. The film that divided everyone who saw it into polar camps, Terry Gilliam's TIDELAND is, in my opinion, a work of utter genius. This isn't a film about a girl going on a journey, because Jeliza-Rose doesn't change throughout the film. She has a very specific fantasy world set up to help her deal with an unkind world, and that fantasy world sustains her throughout. It's not her that needs to change; it's the world she lives in. And it does. The layers of meaning that Gilliam infuses into every shot, every bit of colour, every prop, and every moment of sound elevates this film, as it does every one of his films, and he brings with him a sense of extremely black comedy that saves this film from the despair that would have otherwise dragged it down. I've seen the film twice now, and it is truly a great work of art.

2. SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE

After OLDBOY, a part of me thought "Well, he can't get any better than this". And, as I still consider OLDBOY to be Park Chan-Wook's best film, I suppose that's still true, but it doesn't mean that LADY VENGEANCE doesn't come awfully close. Rather than capping off the vengeance trilogy with a "final word" on the cyclical nature of revenge and what effect it has, Park shows that this is a theme he could mine in perpetuity without it ever getting old. South Korea is creating some of the world's best cinema at the moment, and Park is making the best films.

1. THE DEPARTED

Here we go. Number one. In my opinion, a film every bit as great as GOODFELLAS, TAXI DRIVER, and my up-until-now favourite Scorsese film RAGING BULL. Yes, THE DEPARTED is my favourite, and it's not because it's slick or it features a cast full of pretty A-list actors. The underlying theme of the departed and the fact that all of these characters have their fates sealed within the opening moments means the film couldn't have ended any other way. Thelma Schoonmaker is sixty-six years old, and is far and away the most energetic, innovative editor working anywhere in the world today. She breaks nearly every rule of editing with reckless abandon, and yet it always works. She knows what she's doing, and her contribution is one of the standouts in a film where everybody is working at their best. Everybody wanted to see De Niro and Pacino face off in HEAT, but until I saw Nicholson and Martin Sheen standing face-to-face, I didn't realise how much I'd been jonesing to see these two guys go at it. Without taking anything away from the excellent INFERNAL AFFAIRS, I prefer DEPARTED. Partly because the psychiatrist plotline isn't as ridiculous as it was in the original, but mostly because the afore-mentioned themes are so much more intense and intriguing. The things I love about this film are a bit too overwhelming for me to articulately describe its greatness. Which kind-of sucks because my job is to describe why things are great, and I've copped-out at least once here. But you almost certainly saw the film, have your own opinion on it, and only really need to know that it's my number one of the year.

That's all for 2006. Have a happy and safe new year, and I'll see you all in 2007.

Peace out,

Latauro
AICNDownunder@hotmail.com