The Best Films of 2006
Luke Rush discusses The Best Films of 2006
The top of the box office draws for 2006 would tell you that it was the year of the sequel (four of the top six earners, including top dog Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead’s Man Chest, which ran away from the rest of the field, were sequels of some variety), but do a little inspecting of your own and you’ll find that though it required a little more digging than usual, there was indeed good film to be had.
In no particular order…
Thank You For Smoking
Good cinematic satire has turned into an endangered species, but the debut effort from Jason Reitman (son of Ivan Reitman, of Ghostbusters and Stripes fame) does quite a bit more than just keep it on life support. Aaron Eckhart plays Nick Naylor, a grinning, wisecracking hired gun for Big Tobacco, a resilient SOB who not only stumps for the cigarette industry, but does it with whip-smart cunning and a remorseless smile. Buoyed sympathetically in his profession by his other “Merchants of Death,” or “MoD” Squad, (David Koechner and Maria Bello, keeping her clothes on here), Naylor balances life as a single father (a single father in the movies?! Get out…) as well as the moral quandary that comes with essentially advocating a person’s right to kill themselves slowly. It’s bleak and funny, but swings much wider towards the funny, thanks to Eckhart and entertaining guest shots by Rob Lowe, Sam Elliott, William H. Macy as the legislation-happy Senator, and the always-fantastic J.K. Simmons playing a close variant of his J. Jonah Jameson character from the Spider-Man movies.
United 93
Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center may have been the more populist of the year’s two 9/11 pictures, but Paul Greengrass’s United 93 is the one more likely to last as a direct and downright frightening historical document of the worst terror attack ever on the American mainland. Shooting almost entirely on the plane itself, and appropriately using a cast of unknowns, including a remarkable performance by actual FAA director Ben Sliney (who was actually at his first day on the job on 9/11/01), the film doesn’t flinch for an instant. Greengrass (who also directed The Bourne Supremacy as well as Bloody Sunday, a harrowing dramatization of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre) ramps up the intensity almost from the opening frame, and while it never lets up, it never feels artificial or sentimental in any way. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film more genuinely tense in which I already knew the ending. Everything here is as it should be. If it leaves you all the more jolted for it, then it has served its purpose.
A Prairie Home Companion
In the year’s most fitting nadir, what turned out to be Robert Altman’s final film had all the signposts of his classic work, and dropped in a beautifully-executed subtext about the prospects of facing death. Altman’s trademark long takes and overlapping dialogue fits the controlled chaos of Garrison Keillor’s live radio program flawlessly, the perfect partner to Keillor’s penchant for low-key Midwestern charm and understated wit. Kevin Kline steals the show as a tweaked version of Keillor’s fictional private detective Guy Noir, filling the role of the radio show’s offstage security manager and the film’s narrator. I’d imagine that Oscar will forget about Kevin once that time comes around, but he manages both the surface slapstick and deeper nuance with equal aplomb. The ensemble cast, with names galore, is clearly having too much fun here, and it’s only right that things wind up as warm and reassuring as they are. Even as it is still a movie about sadness and death.
The Lake House
The Lake House is not a perfect movie. In fact, it’s far from it. Some will be so bothered by the lack of explanation regarding the main plot mechanism that they won’t be able to partake in everything else without a grain of salt. Some others might be utterly consumed with the fact that Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock are back on screen together. What it loses in exposition and other peripheral distractions, however, it more than makes up for in charm, a grounded spirit and some tremendously gorgeous visuals. It’s also not often that you find a realistically-framed theme of urban alienation and detachment tacked onto a revivalist romance with an old-school spirit, but The Lake House pulls it off nicely. It’s engrossing, attractive, and oddly convincing, even if it gets there in a very circuitous manner. It’s all proof that artistic achievement and imperfection need not be mutually exclusive.
Scoop
After casting her as the femme fatale in his big “comeback” picture, Match Point, Woody Allen stumbled upon his most effective muse in decades. Scarlett Johansson, takes what would at first glance appear to be standard later-era Allen fare and elevates it to a film that’s about fourteen times funnier than it has any right to be. Woody himself even seems to be taking a cue from his unlikely protégé, as she one-ups the master of neuroses with a performance that stays safely stowed away on this side of parody. She may be slightly, say, “unbelievable” to some, cast as a bumbling, nerdish foil, but there are those of us who are willing to overlook such a taken liberty and use the same adjective in another context. With an able-bodied apprentice at his side, Woody’s set-’em-up-and-knock-’em-down punchlines are also much more focused and sharp. The result? Something that is closer to classic Woody than we’ve seen in quite a while.
Hollywoodland
Allen Coulter’s biopic of sorts, about original TV Superman George Reeves (Ben Affleck) and his fall from grace, brings the goods in terms of setting and mood, but it’s what you don’t expect that sets it apart. Most refreshingly, it resists the trappings of the conventional murder mystery by keeping the emphasis squarely on the players, and using an unconventional and uncanny sense of order to spin the story around once it approaches standardist territory. Adrien Brody, after the inevitable post-Oscar lull, gets in a punchy turn as Louis Simo, a fictional private investigator whose moxie and determination clashes with a clear lack of initial instinct. He almost steals the film entirely out from under the likes of Bob Hoskins and Diane Lane, which is no small feat in itself. Don’t go expecting any answers, because you won’t get them. You will, however, find yourself hard-pressed to not get wrapped up in such a compelling group of characters.
Little Miss Sunshine
The year’s most genuinely likable film by a rather wide margin, Little Miss Sunshine was a refreshing breath of humanity in the midst of a year that found filmmakers running away in droves from pictures that weren’t meant to be mere distractions from our horrendously oppressive society. Boasting a weary, melancholic worldview and group of actors who have a wonderful chemistry together (the unlikeliest being Steve Carell in full-on depressive mope mode, and thoroughly convincing at it), Little Miss Sunshine coagulates into the ideal screwball road movie, a pitch-perfect portrayal of a family of deeply-flawed people fighting like hell against themselves and their circumstances just to give one of them a chance at success. Think of it as “The Pursuit of Happyness” for the ever-so-slightly-cynical crowd, a crowd who would never in good conscience bring themselves to go see that movie in the company of other folks who might actually see them.
Stranger Than Fiction
After a handful of halfhearted attempts to play Will Ferrell against his traditional school of generic frat-boy comedy, Stranger Than Fiction is the first film to catch that understated, off-kilter charm in a bottle. He plays it straight as Harold Crick, a mildly (that is to say, completely) reserved auditor for the IRS, who wakes up one day to find his life being narrated by author Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson). Call it Kaufman-lite if you want, but it is nonetheless observant and keen to the foibles of everyday modern life, as well as the plight of the struggling artist. It’s a decidedly grown-up comedy-drama in the best sense of both terms, mincing neither themes nor comedic opportunity, keeping the story fully in focus while dolloping out the quirk in fair enough measure. Ferrell’s normal audience will be left baffled (think Adam Sandler with Punch Drunk Love), but anyone who is willing to warm up to a Ferrell movie that features the likes of Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman will enjoy it to the hilt. [Read our review]
Casino Royale
It’s hard to say exactly when the Bond movies became irrelevant, but it’s not a stretch to say that the franchise needed a facelift after Pierce Brosnan winked his way through four of them in seven years. After hemming and hawing that seemed far too self-involved for a series seemingly on its deathbed, Daniel Craig was chosen as the new Bond, and boy, did they get it right. Craig (above), along with the best new Bond girl in a couple of eons, Eva Green (oy glaven!), and even a smashing variation on the theme by Chris Cornell represent a return to a more natural, effervescent, even gritty sensibility that had been lacking at least since Sean Connery left the first time. It revels in Bond’s arch Britishness, rather than pointlessly softening it for American audiences. The action setpieces are exquisite, and the icy, understated exchanges (they’re more staredowns, actually) between Bond and Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) have a lingering Cold War-ish flavor to them. It’s all more than enough to make one forget the first, “unofficial” version of Casino Royale from 1967 with David Niven and Peter Sellers. Wait, they already did.
The Queen
Speaking of arch Britishness, hiding inside what would otherwise be a starch-ridden, straight-faced docudrama of British government circa Princess Diana’s death lies a surprisingly funny and compelling portrayal of pride and history clashing with charisma and progress. You’ve heard enough about Helen Mirren’s performance to know that she was more or less born to play Queen Elizabeth, and everyone is right, but she gets inspired help from Michael Sheen as an earnest, newly-elected Tony Blair. Watching the political dynamic between the Queen’s staid, conservative Monarchy and Blair’s aggressively modernist administration is nothing short of fascinating, as is the surprising evolution of attitudes between the two. Forgive yourself the initial trepidation of seeing something that on the surface appears to be dry and humorless, because in the end it very convincingly proves itself to be very much the opposite on both counts.