Interesting as always, gang.

When you put your personal opinion out there, there are a certain percentage of people who will automatically, simply for the sport of it, be assholes to you in response.

May I remind you that I am not trying to establish an objective list of the best films of 2006. I think anyone who tells you what the “best” films of the year were is arrogant. All I can tell you is what my personal favorite films of the year were. This is a personal list, as all lists are, and so I have no doubt it is different than your own would be. I can respect that difference.

Can you?

For now, let’s jump right back into it and count down my ten favorite films of the year, starting with...

NUMBER TEN: THE GOOD SHEPHERD (dir. Robert De Niro; scr. Eric Roth)

You can read my original review of this film right here.

Yep. I liked it this much.

I love it when movies engage me on several levels at once. Here, the first level is just as a sweeping family drama, the way one man’s dedication to an idea eventually undoes every good thing he’s ever touched. Matt Damon’s made a sort of study out of playing emotionally crippled blanks, men who barely exist. It’s not easy, and I find it especially interesting to see how he manages to play variations on the type without repeating himself. But beyond the surface level, which I found engrossing enough, there’s a game here being played by Eric Roth that I think goes above and beyond. Roth obviously couldn’t write about the actual men who were part of the early days of the CIA without stepping into a legal morass, so he had to create composite characters and blend events together. I watched the film twice, and the second time through, I tried to pick out who was supposed to be who, and which events have been combined or slightly rewritten. Roth won’t get the credit he deserves because he’s writing about such a specific and largely invisible part of American history, but it’s impressive and intelligent work.

NUMBER NINE: UNITED 93 (dir./scr. Paul Greengrass)

You can read my original review of this film right here.

There are two real documentaries on my list this year, but UNITED 93 manages to capture an event in a way that is as immediate as a great documentary, but as penetrating as only fiction can be. Paul Greengrass is one of those guys who I think is still just warming up. We haven’t seen his best work yet. Even this film, good as it is, still just hints at the gifts he has as a filmmaker.

There’s a recurrent quality in the films that affect me most each year, a sense that the films I like most are the ones that have the most humanity, the most unfiltered life. I love it when a filmmaker figures out how to make me invest, when a situation and a cast and a style all come together to create something persuasive. I don’t feel like I could single out any one cast member for recognition because this is truly an ensemble effort. There are no movie star roles in this because of the way Greengrass avoids what would typically pass as drama in a film like this. There is little in the way of conventional drama here, and that approach is what makes the film so compelling.

In the end, I’m not putting this on list because of importance or because of politics or for any reason other than the sheer visceral impact that the film had on me. After seeing Oliver Stone’s well-intentioned but utterly Hollywood WORLD TRADE CENTER, this film’s merits seemed even clearer to me. Someday, once we’re on the far side of current events, we will hopefully be able to look back at the events of 9/11 with clear eyes and a greater understanding of all the forces in play that day. But for now, I can’t imagine a film that could better encapsulate the way that day felt. WORLD TRADE CENTER is about survival and victory and small triumphs in the face of adversity, and maybe someday, that’ll be how we think about 9/11. But UNITED 93 better captures the powerlessness of that morning, the confusion, and the numbing horror, and from where I sit, that’s the more honest way of processing what happened.

NUMBER EIGHT: A SCANNER DARKLY (dir./scr. Richard Linklater)

You can read my original review of this film right here.

I’m not really sure what genre this film is. Yes, it appears to be set in a future where tech is slightly beyond where it is now, so I guess you could ostensibly call it “science-fiction.” Only this really isn’t about tech or the future at all. You could call it a mystery, since there is a puzzle that is at the heart of the story, but it’s a mystery that the audience is given the answer to long before the main character is, so I’m not really sure that’s right either.

Philip K. Dick is equally difficult to categorize, and that’s why I’ve always been so fascinated by his work. Like many people my age, my introduction to his work was after I saw BLADE RUNNER in the theater. I picked up a copy of DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? and realized as I read it that it bore almost no resemblance to the film. I also realized that it was rich and dense in a way no film could hope to do justice. It’s been twenty-five years now that I’ve been a fan of this prickly, difficult author, and I’d given up hope of ever seeing an adaptation of his work that was faithful both in tone and text.

The real marvel of the film for me isn’t just that the adaptation honors the author being adapted, although that is rare enough in Hollywood these days. For me, the thing that makes this a film I’ll return to, a film that deserves mention at the end of the year, is the persuasive way Linklater’s work with animator Bob Sabiston convincingly makes the viewer feel like they’re as strung out and disconnected as Bob Arctor is in the film.

A SCANNER DARKLY, more than any drug casualty film I’ve seen, etches both the siren song and the eventual ruin with an even hand. I greatly respect Aronofsky’s REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, but that movie is so focused on the negative ruin of drug use that it misses the day-to-day spikes of bliss that keep the users using. Dick’s book and the film both have a huge undercurrent of sadness, but shot through with moments of humor and even hope. Anyone who thinks this is just “a bunch of losers using drugs and having stoned conversations” missed one of the most movingly human films of the year.

NUMBER SEVEN: BLACK BOOK (dir. Paul Verhoeven; scr. Gerard Soeteman & Paul Verhoeven)

You can read my original review of this film right here.

Man, I’d given up on Verhoeven.

That’s absurd, of course. He’s been making fascinating, challenging adult entertainment as long as I’ve been alive. TURKISH DELIGHT, his first great film, was 1973, and SOLDIER OF ORANGE was 1977. It was a full decade later that he made his last film that really worked for me, the classic ROBOCOP. Since then, I’ve found myself frustrated by the material that Hollywood has offered him, and frustrated to see his prodigiously perverse wit turned towards increasingly witless material. Harry and I spent some time on the set of HOLLOW MAN watching him work, and as much of a kick as it was to meet the mad Dutchman, I found myself depressed to see him working on such a formulaic piece of genre trash.

It’s hard to believe that was just over six years ago. That was his last film, and since then, we’ve heard vague rumbles about what he was working on. When he started production on ZWARTBOEK, his first film in Dutch since the great, insane THE FOURTH MAN, it was almost a non-event in terms of coverage. And I feel retroactively bad about that. I guess I just didn’t want to get my hopes up. But when this film unspooled halfway through BNAT this year, it pretty much knocked me flat. Everything I’ve ever liked about Verhoeven is on display in the film, but more than that... he’s grown, marrying his action-movie acumen with his original sensibilities to remarkable effect.

If this movie just marked the triumphant return of Verhoeven to form, that might be enough to vaunt it onto this list, but it gets pushed over the top for me due to the fact that it also seems to be the arrival of a major new face in international film. Carice van Houten may have been working for almost a decade in the Netherlands, but she’s never had a breakout role in a film that was exported before, and she arrive here as a fully-formed movie star. She’s in pretty much every moment of this film, and the role calls for some pretty dramatic shifts in tone and character, and she handles them all with aplomb. She’s stunning, but there are a lot of beautiful women in film who I find utterly blank onscreen. Van Houten has an earthy quality, a weight to her, that is arresting. This is a woman who has lived, who has experience on her side, and who is not to be underestimated. Her character survives WWII by means of some genuinely shaky moral choices, but it’s impossible to judge her for it. She makes you understand just what those choices cost her character, and she makes you understand that Rachel Ellis may survive, but she does not get away unscathed. It’s devastating work, and I’m hoping that other people will discover her and embrace her work with the same fervor I have when the film is rolled out later this spring by Sony Pictures Classics.

In the meantime, let’s just say I’ve learned my lesson about Verhoeven, and I’m eagerly anticipating his adaptation of the first Erast Fandorin mystery, THE WINTER QUEEN, when it is released later this year, and I’ll do my best to never count him out again.

NUMBER SIX: DREAMGIRLS (dir./scr. Bill Condon)

You can read my original review of this film right here.

Shifting gears a bit, I think this is the film I saw the most times in a theater this year. Four total. And there’s a reason for that. I found this film to be joyous. Cleansing, in a way. This is an audience movie, and when it plays to the right audience, there’s a communal thing that happens that is one of the main reasons I go to the movies. If I didn’t need that particular part of the fix, then DVD would have rendered moviegoing obsolete for me long ago. I love being in a crowd when they get caught up in a film and they start to react as a group. And I give Bill Condon a lot of credit... watching the film four times, you start to figure out the magic trick, but it’s slick. Because every time I saw it, it did the exact same thing to the crowd in the exact same places. Condon uses the edge of his frame and the audience in the movie as a sort of visual laugh track. He builds in applause in a natural way, and it helps to build and sustain energy in the movie. He has people jumping up, right at the edge of the frame like human punctuation marks. It’s clever, almost subliminal stuff, and it’s just part of the canny construction of the piece. I did a Q&A with Condon at BNAT this year, and I’ve spoken with him about the film after two of the other times I saw it, and in talking to him about the film, he always talks about the influence that the original Michael Bennett staging had on him. That was evidently a minimal set and just a wall of swinging mirrors that all spun to suggest the passage of time or a shift in location, constantly moving, and the effect was evidently very cinematic. It’s funny, because Condon transforms the cinema into a live theater, and in doing so, he encourages the audience to make some noise.

In my original review, I said Give Eddie The Oscar. And I still feel that way. I don’t know if he’ll be nominated on Tuesday, but if he is, then it pleases me enormously on his behalf. I absolutely think he deserves it, and for me, it all comes down to the first number he does in the film. It’s the moment where the movie hooks me every time, and I’m not exaggerating... the first time I saw it, it moved me to tears of joy. It starts with Eddie putting out his cigarette in the sandwich before he turns around to face Danny Glover. It’s a movie star entrance.

Condon gets iconography. He knows that this sort of movie needs the cast to be bigger than real. This is not a gritty realistic look at the way Motown was built, which seems to be what most of the film’s detractors were hoping to see. Condon is making a movie about... dreams. This isn’t meant to be a one-to-one correlation, a roman a clef retelling of the lives of Berry Gordy and Diana Ross. Of course it’s evocative. But as with THE GOOD SHEPHERD, this is art that uses fiction to get at something like the truth. And in this case, that means painting on a grand scale. When Eddie makes that movie star entrance, and then heads upstairs to meet the three girls, he has to be larger than life. He has to carry the right sort of movie star weight to kick the film into high gear. And he does. I love the way he starts the number on the piano, then moves away as another player sits down so he can sing with the girls. And right away, singing with them, Eddie Murphy is sexual in a way that he almost never plays on film. He’s predatory. He’s the Big Bad Wolf, and all three of the girls swoon a little bit as they sing back to him. But at the same time, they prove themselves right away to Jimmy, and he’s impressed. He may be thinking about doing terrible things to them, but he’s also pushing to see what they have as performers. And then just like that, just as they pick up the song and start to follow him, the whole stage swings around into “Round and Around” with the full band and a huge audience, and the audacity of the way Condon stages it and plays it... that’s what got me. Like I said at the start of this... joyous.

I like the fact that Jennifer Hudson is fetishized by Condon in the film just as much as Beyonce is, and it’s the same for Anika Noni Rose. They are all treated as beautiful women, sexual beings. Hudson’s a sassy thing at the start of the film, and she’s the most forward of the three girls. It shouldn’t be a big deal that a film could treat her as a viable romantic lead in a film, but it is. I also like the fact that the film calls Effie on her bullshit. When the film reaches the “And I Am Telling You” number, Effie has a breakdown, and it’s humiliating. I know people see it as an anthem of sorts, but I also think it’s an admission of hubris. Effie really does think she should be the center of things from day one, and when she doesn’t get her way, it sours her. She wants what she is owed, and she grows increasingly pissy about her work.

The film humbles her before it finally gives her back her life, and it seems to me that it’s not just a rags to riches story, but also a story about integrity. Every one of the girls has to find their integrity, even at the cost of things they want, and in doing so, they’re finally able to be the friends they were in the start again. I may not be completely satisfied with Jamie Foxx in the film; his character frustrated me more in repeat viewings. But even so, that’s a small thing in a movie that may be the most purely entertaining of my top ten.

NUMBER FIVE: LAKE OF FIRE (dir. Tony Kaye)

Most of the films on this list are movies that I reviewed over the course of the year, but there are a few that I have not had the chance to write about yet. Only one of those is a review that I’ve been actively avoiding, though, and it’s because the material is so difficult, so intensely personal in terms of the way it will play for each audience, that I haven’t been able to figure out where to start a review.

LAKE OF FIRE is a passion project for Tony Kaye, who is best known for AMERICAN HISTORY X and his behind-the-scenes struggles with Ed Norton on that film. I saw several early cuts of that film, and I have to say... I never really clicked with any of them. Kaye’s been portrayed as a bit of a nutter in most of the press about him, and I had sort of written him off. Big mistake. LAKE OF FIRE proves that Kaye is a director of real vision, and he’s done something I didn’t think was possible: he made a movie about abortion in America that never chooses a side.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that by the end of the movie, I have no idea what Tony Kaye thinks, pro or con, and that’s a good thing. Kaye’s film is more about the way the entire abortion debate has stopped being a debate of any kind. Instead, it has become an entrenched recitation of position back and forth, with no attempt to change anyone’s mind. Indeed, there’s no chance since no one listens when the issue comes up. People just shout slogans at each other, and the result is an ideological fracture that I don’t believe can be healed through conversation or education at this point. It's a motherfucker to sit through. It is an incredibly difficult and painful film in places. It's almost impossible to watch at times. It's incredibly emotional. It's filled with people that terrify and sadden and upset me. And I sort of think everyone should be required to see it.

Visually, the film has little flourishes of style, like the way Tony Kaye uses black and white or the soundtrack. The film uses material from the last fourteen years, from the 20th anniversary of Roe V Wade to very recently, and he’s still doing a bit of tweaking on the picture even past the version I saw.

Doesn’t matter. I’m sure he’ll make some minor changes, but at three hours, the power of the film isn’t any one thing... it’s the cumulative impact of it all. It’s the interviews with talking heads like self-described "liberal atheist" Nat Hentoff and his fascinating discussion of “the seamless garment,” a standard used to determine how consistent someone’s philosophical stance is. It’s the way he illustrates the deterioration of discourse in America over the passage of time. It’s the interview with Norma McCorvey, the infamous “Roe” whose case inspired the landmark decision, and who has since become a born-again Christian who is staunchly anti-abortion. He introduces people on both sides of the issue. He introduces moderates. Extremists. Terrorists. Victims. Doctors.

And he builds the cacophany, going from the rational and the moderate to the more and more extreme and crazy and scary and sad. Paul Hill, a violent dangerous man who shot several people outside a clinic, is interviewed in the days before the incident, interviewed outside the clinic he eventually attacked, something that is terrifying to watch here because of what you know he does later. And then after all of that... after he almost drowns you in this debate... after it’s gotten to the point where you can’t hear one more person weigh in on it because you know they’re not going to bring anything new to the table...

... he stops the movie cold and walks you through an entire abortion. Start to finish. In the most explicit detail possible. So you can't say you don't know what it is. So you can't describe it in either monstrous or muted terms. It's just there. The whole process.

There's a step I never knew about. And it upset me deeply. Evidently, after the process is complete, the doctor takes the removed matter into another room and, in a sterile tray, he has to assemble all the matter in an approximate shape to make sure he got it all. Head. Arms. Legs. Body. And he does. On camera. It's not an abstract idea. It's not an argument about semantics. It's not people shooting other people. It's not picket signs. It’s not the same as getting your teeth cleaned. It just is what it is. And after you’ve seen this film, I guarantee that whatever your feelings are about it, they will be considered ones. Kaye’s movie puts whatever your beliefs are under a microscope.

One of the reasons I feel like this absolutely demands a place on my list this year is because it still doesn’t have a distributor. It was produced by Anonymous Content, but so far the only place to see the film was at the Toronto Film Festival. I want to see someone pick this film up and release it. I feel that an industry that fails to properly handle a picture as exceptional as this one is an industry that has failed at its basic responsibilities. This is genuinely important filmmaking, and people should have a chance to see it.

And look... I have very strong feelings about abortion personally. I was adopted as a baby by truly wonderful and loving parents. I lucked out. Faced with a presumably unwanted pregnancy, my birth mother carried me for nine months and then put me up for adoption. Roe V Wade was 1973. I was born in 1970. If Roe V Wade had happened a few years earlier, who knows what decision she might have made?

When I was still a young adult, I was involved in a relationship that resulted in a pregnancy. In that case, I wasn’t given a choice on how to handle it. The other person made that decision for themselves, and they had an abortion, something that devastated me at the time, and that I’ve never really recovered from or even spoken about, even to those who are closest to me.

Thankfully, now in my later life, I’m lucky enough to have married a beautiful woman I love, and we’ve had our first child, and I’m finally related to someone by blood, finally part of a family of my own making. Even after all the experiences in my life, I can’t presume to say that I have an opinion about how other people should deal with this incredibly difficult decision. Even knowing how easily I could have been a statistic instead of a person... even knowing the pain of a loss to this process... and even knowing the joy of holding my own child... I can only say how I would choose, or how my wife would choose. Tony Kaye’s film drives the point home in a way that I hope makes everyone contemplate the issue with fresh eyes, from any number of perspectives. Last year, Roger Ebert wrote about how he felt CRASH had the potential to genuinely affect change in audiences. With LAKE OF FIRE, I’m absolutely sure that no one who sees it will walk away without the film impacting them to some degree.

NUMBER FOUR: THE FOUNTAIN (dir. Darren Aronofsky; scr. Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handler)

You can read my original review of this film right here.

I’ve written a lot about this film this year. In fact, I’ve been writing about this film for so long now (since my first piece back in 2002) that it wouldn’t have surprised me if it had turned out to be a disappointment for me. That happens when you spend a lot of time covering a particular project... by the time it’s released, you’re tired of it.

With THE FOUNTAIN, though, I find that the more time I’ve spent with the finished film, the more rewarding it is. I’m fully prepared to concede that this is not a film for everyone. It’s ambitious. It’s willfully surreal at times. It is incredibly obtuse about making some very simple points, but that’s the fun of it for me. When I see people attacking the film for its underlying themes, I see a cynical rejection of a movie that is completely free of cynicism. Again... I get it. We live in a time where the ideas of devotion and faith and true love are devalued, even mocked. Darren Aronofsky is a filmmaker who had unlimited options after REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, and he could easily take his acclaimed visual style and apply it to some big studio action movie or some cookie-cutter blockbuster, and I’m sure he’d be very successful at it. Instead, he laid himself out there with the most personal thing he’s made so far, and for his efforts, he found himself roundly rejected or even ridiculed by the mainstream.

Fine. You don’t deserve it. It seems that increasingly, filmmakers who lay themselves emotionally bare are bitchslapped for doing so. I take great hope from the fact that a studio actually bankrolled this film, and from the fact that we still have filmmakers who are willing to gamble on such personal, heartfelt visions. Even if you think the film’s ambition outweighs what it actually delivers, I think its mere existence is cause for celebration.

NUMBER THREE: VOLVER (dir./scr. Pedro Almodovar)

I had CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER on my runners-up list this year, and one of the main reasons I was excited by it was the reunion of Zhang Yimou and Gong Li. They weren’t the only big reunion in the film world this year. For my money, it was even more thrilling to see Carmen Maura working with Almodovar for the first time since 1988’s WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN. It’s especially gratifying because the event is part of what may well be the warmest, most approachable film that the director has ever made. I’ve always enjoyed his work, but I’m very careful who I recommend something like TALK TO HER or BAD EDUCATION to. With VOLVER, he’s made a film that seems to be more affectionate, more playful, and more inviting than anything he’s done before, and the movie hit me like a ton of bricks as a result.

Which is not to say that the film shies away from the darker side of things. Death hangs like a shadow over the entire movie. The opening shot finds the widows of a small Spanish town tending to the headstones of their dearly departed. This is where we meet Raimunda (Penelope Cruz), her daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo), and Raimunda’s sister Sole (Lola Duenas). They’re in town so they can visit the graves of their mother and father, and so they can drop by and visit Agustina (Blanco Portillo), an old friend of the family, and Tia Paula (Chus Lampreave), their mother’s sister. They are struck by how frail Tia Paula seems, how she seems disoriented, but everything in her house is well cared for, and it looks like she’s been cooking for all of them. Agustina talks to them about how the ghost of their mother is the one who cares for Tia Paula, and they all try to laugh it off.

Without giving away the various twists and turns in Almodovar’s script, let’s just say that Raimunda’s life is complicated, as is her relationship with pretty much everyone in her life. She has unresolved issues about her dead mother. She has a fairly severe problem with her husband. She’s got a rather unorthodox business plan. And her sister has a huge secret that’s going to change Raimunda’s life when it is revealed. Almodovar always seems adept at juggling soap opera elements, but here, he turns them into something more than just plot threads. I think this might be the most successful overall thematic piece by Almodovar. This is a film about secrets and the toll they take on those who carry them. It’s also a film that does a fantastic job of etching the way Latin women relate from generation to generation. Harry was telling me that one of the reasons THE HOST meant so much to him this year was because of the exposure he’s had to Korean family life thanks to his fiancée. I get it. VOLVER probably speaks to me directly because I live with not only my wife, but also her mother and her sister, so I pretty much get the live version of this film every day here in the house. There is a dynamic between mothers and daughters that is universal to every culture, but in the Latin culture, there are specific details that Almodovar captures perfectly here. It’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s maddening at times. And in that one perfect moment... Penelope singing in the restaurant... one of my favorite moments in anything this year... there was no film that broke my heart with such clarity this year.

NUMBER TWO: INLAND EMPIRE (dir./scr. David Lynch)

You can read my original review of this film right here.

When I included THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP in my runners-up list, I said it was the second-best film at capturing the feeling of dreaming this year. It should come as no surprise that David Lynch’s brilliant, difficult INLAND EMPIRE is the other film I was referring to. It is the most unconventional film on my entire list this year, and I find that it’s also the one that grows the most the more I think back on it.

Because it was shot on shitty DV instead of Lynch’s typical lush Technicolor look, it's more like some tape you just found and started watching, and it's not a movie, it's just a tape of things happening, and as the things happen, they get more and more fucked up, and you really aren't sure who made this or why, but it scares you that it even exists. And by the end of it, you’re debating whether you should just put the tape back where you found it or call the cops and report a crime.

Laura Dern has been an actor I’ve liked since the first time I can remember seeing her opposite Eric Stoltz in MASK. She’s always worked well with Lynch, and I like that her character in BLUE VELVET is totally different from her character in WILD AT HEART. She’s never played anything like her character here, though, and if the Oscars were about genuine excellence in performance and not just who spends the most ad money or campaigns the hardest, then Laura Dern’s name would be on the list of nominees on Tuesday morning. I’ve seen a lot of actors portray the descent into madness, the dissolution of personality, but I’ve never seen anyone crumble as completely as Dern does. This is horrifying work. Genuinely upsetting.

And then there’s the last scene of the film. The closing credits. For most filmmakers, this would be an afterthought, but in this film, Lynch uses his closing credits to stage an audacious sequence that feels to me like a sort of summation of his entire career, a last lap around the inside of his head. For a film to contain such unbridled glee in filmmaking and such absolute darkness in equal measure, it’s something truly special.

NUMBER ONE: STEP UP

Yes, it’s true.

Okay, no. It’s not. I’m kidding. I actually just wanted to warn you that I’m giving a three-way tie for first this year. Before you roll your eyes, allow me a moment to explain myself.

When we look back at 2006 to discuss the year in film later, there’s one story that we’ll be telling above any other. It is the story of the Three Amigos. Guillermo Del Toro, Alejandro Innaritu, and Alfonso Cuaron are all world-class filmmakers, and they all seem to have hit some sort of artistic stride this year. I’ve enjoyed watching the three of them work the publicity trail together, and what strikes me is how unusual it is to see three people who all have films in play during awards season so actively stumping for each other’s movies. Last week, for example, there was a screening of CHILDREN OF MEN on the Universal lot for Academy members, and Cuaron was out of the country, unable to attend. So Del Toro and Innaritu stepped in to host the screening and talk the film up.

Seriously... think about that. Do you think for a moment that if Clint Eastwood was unable to host a screening of LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, Martin Scorsese would show up to urge voters to consider the film? Or vice-versa? Has anyone heard of Stephen Frears hosting any screenings of THE DEPARTED this year?

There is a selflessness to the efforts of the Three Amigos that I find inspirational, and it makes me think of the stories we’ve all heard about the filmmakers of the ‘70s, all of them friends and peers, sitting in each other’s editing rooms and giving notes, contributing ideas for each other’s scripts. I think one of the reasons the ‘70s were such a special time in American film is because there was a sense of community. And now, with these three filmmakers, what we see is a potent reminder of just what happens when you support other artists. These three men have all made the best films of their careers, and in doing so, they’ve made the three best films of the year, films that are totally different from each other. I can’t choose one over the others, so I’m giving the three way tie to:

PAN’S LABYRINTH (dir./scr. Guillermo Del Toro)
BABEL (dir. Alejandro Innaritu; scr. Guillermo Arriaga)
CHILDREN OF MEN (dir. Alfonso Cuaron; scr. Alfonso Cuaron & Timothy J Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus & Hawk Otsby)

You can read my original review of BABEL right here.

You can read my original review of CHILDREN OF MEN right here.

PAN’S LABYRINTH has frustrated some viewers because of the way it was sold, and I understand that. It was sold almost entirely using the fantasy imagery from the film, but it’s not a fantasy film. The film is grounded very firmly in the real world, in the days after the Spanish Civil War as Franco’s fascist forces slowly crush the last rebel holdouts. Ivana Baquero stars as Ofelia, a young girl whose mother (Ariadna Gil) has married Capitan Vidal (Sergi Lopez), the cruel leader of a regiment dedicated to hunting down rebel forces. Ofelia understandably regresses into a fantasy world to escape the horrors of her real life, but even there, she doesn’t find the escape she seeks. As with the best fairy tales, there’s an arbitrary set of rules she is supposed to follow, rules that seem to make no sense. Go under the tree, find the frog. Draw a door on the wall, don’t eat anything. And every time she tries to rebel, every minor infraction of the rules, she is punished. What Del Toro does so well in this film is gradually, little by little, he cuts off any way for Ofelia to find relief. His film is a tragedy, and there’s a profound sorrow to it. Even so, there is beauty here and the most unorthodox happy ending since Gilliam’s BRAZIL.

I’ve admired the craft of Innaritu’s first two films, but I didn’t connect fully with either one of them. With BABEL, it felt to me like he finally put it all together. Arriaga’s script is a model of economy, and his character work here is both original and effortless. These individual storylines tie together with remarkable grace, and the way the film finally adds up laid me out on first viewing. We throw words like “globalization” these days, but one of the things film can do better than any other media is show us just how small our planet really is, and just how deeply we are all connected.

All three of the Amigos are strong visualists, but with CHILDREN OF MEN, Alfonso Cuaron has moved right to the top of his generation. He is an enormously talented filmmaker, and there are things he does here that I have watched over and over, and I’m still not quite sure how he did them. Even if his accomplishment was a purely technical one, it would earn him a place somewhere on the list. But it’s not. CHILDREN OF MEN is positively drenched in theme, every frame of it. My only complaint about the movie comes near the very end, when I think the symbology becomes too overt (a boat called Tomorrow? Really?), but even then, I think Cuaron nails the tone of those scenes. He has successfully created a future that feel real here. So often, when you see a Hollywood version of dystopia, it feels like the work of an art director, carefully calculated and too neatly thought-out. Here, Cuaron and his writers and his production designers have created a world that I find terrifying because it feels so plausible. I don’t think this vision of the future is inevitable. I have faith in people, faith in the world. But I think this does what the best science-fiction does... it serves as a cautionary tale.

All three of these films leave room for interpretation, room for you as a viewer to fill in your own ideas, your own feelings, your own interpretations. So often, film is pushed through a development machine that grinds out the rough edges, the loose ends, the personal details. But somehow, these three films were all released with all those things intact, and that gives me real hope. When I look back at a year of film, I believe that the film I choose as my favorite each year should be the one that most completely reaffirms my faith in the potential of cinema. And this year, for there to be three films that meet that criteria... well, that’s an unexpected gift.

I’ll have one more article for you this weekend, a look at the worst films I sat through this year as well as some individual accomplishments worth noting. And then it’s on to 2007.

Click here for a look at my list of the runners-up, the ten films that almost made my top ten!

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles