We're a third of the way into 2007 and I'm still not comfortable enough with the number of 2006 films I've seen to say that this, definitively and forever, is my final top list for 2006. I've come to really appreciate those critics who include films that they saw during a calendar year as opposed to those released in that year. Those lists still annoy me, though. So here it is. My trivial little listing of what I think the best films of 2006 were (I'm going off the dates of theatrical release in each film's native country).

1. Election 2 (Johnnie To, Hong Kong)

Genre stylist laureate Johnnie To's gangster epic comprised of this and last year's Election are the best thing he's done. In a career that also includes such films as The Mission and Running on Karma, that's saying something. Blasphemy though it may be, I found the combination of these two films more powerful and potent than The Godfather. It does what few sequels do and what more sequels should do: it builds on the already strong, articulate themes of the first film, imbuing everything with more meaning. To's utter emasculation of his characters despite all their triad posturing stands in stark contrast to such good-times glorification as A Hero Never Dies and Full-Time Killer.

2. Memories of Matsuko (Nakashima Tetsuya, Japan)

Over-the-top doesn't begin to describe the breathless, ornate style of Memories of Matsuko, one of the most visually gorgeous and heartrendingly tragic films I've seen. A musical, it is the story of Matsuko, a woman who pursues her happiness in the arms of men who treat her like shit through the decades. The visuals, calling on everything from teeth shining in the dark to animated birds right out of Snow White, serve to underscore the film's celebration of Matsuko's life and her perseverance in light of the awful tragedy of her reality.

3. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron, USA)

An immaculately crafted film, from its unflinching violence to its imaginative (but not cloying) picture of the future, Children of Men works on a number of levels. It's an intense thriller of the highest class. It's a damning, precautionary political fable for our time. And it has Clive Owen and Michael Caine in it.

4. The Host (Bong Joon-Ho, South Korea)

Apparently mad genius Bong Joon-Ho deftly does just about everything in The Host. As Spielberg is often wont to do, he gives us a politically charged story of a catastrophic event (this time, a man-eating mutant from the Han River) from the viewpoint of an unspectacular family. Unlike the laughable War of the Worlds, though, there are no supermen here. And when someone dies, they stay dead. There are scenes that are funny as hell, scary as hell, and poignant as hell, and all these scenes are right next to each other, if not the same.

5. Half Nelson (Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden, USA)

Honestly, I avoided this one for a while. I'm wary of the white-teacher-redeems-a-bunch-of-black-kids subgenre of American film. It's been done. To death. And it usually isn't worth the trouble. However, Fleck and Boden's film is pretty much the refutation of the too-pat trappings of these films, and a wonderful, complex, an important allegory about race and class in today's society.

6. Inland Empire (David Lynch, USA)

David Lynch's ability to capture the hellish nightmare that is everyday living resonates in every second of the 10,800 seconds (approx.) in this film. It's thrilling, moving, disquieting stuff. And I don't know if I'll ever know exactly what it all means. Not every three-hour film can make me want to revisit it almost instantly. This one did.

7. Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, Mexico)

Del Toro's fairy tale was lighter on the fantasy than I'd anticipated. But that was no matter. Ofelia's real world surroundings and the brutal fascism of Franco's Spain was substantive, compelling stuff. Furthermore, it's open to a multitude of interpretations. I've heard a number of theories, most of which compliment the film a nuanced and deep film worth a good deal of consideration. Also? It kicks ass.

8. Volver (Pedro Almodovar, Spain)

A fabulous story about strongly drawn characters that allows the viewer to know what's going to happen yet still is fascinating to watch as it unfolds these events. Also, Penelope Cruz is almost distractingly beautiful in this movie. She's superhuman.

9. Brick (Rian Johnson, USA)

Juxtaposing the too-serious hallmarks of noir with the too-serious reality that is high school works so well under Johnson's sure hand that it seems perfectly logical.

10. Letters from Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood, USA)

The film isn't flawless (some of its digressing backstories and barely-there frame story seem a little unnecessary), but by presenting us with the horrors of war in grotesque, unblinking detail from a consistent perspective of soldiers on the ground, Eastwood's admittedly obvious anti-war message is supremely effective.

The Next Seven

11. A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman, USA)
12. Stranger Than Fiction (Marc Forster, USA)
13. Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story (Michael Winterbottom, UK)
14. Happy Feet (George Miller, USA)
15. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (Adam McKay, USA)
16. Exiled (Johnnie To, Hong Kong)
17. The Queen (Stephen Frears, UK)

Miscellaneous Notes

• I can pretty much guarantee that Kon Satoshi's Paprika would be near the top of this list if it weren't for the fact that I won't see it for another two months. Seriously, I haven't been this excited for a film since Kill Bill, Volume 2.
  
• The Departed was inferior to Infernal Affairs, which did not receive enough credit. And was also from Hong Kong. Not Japan.
  
• While An Inconvenient Truth may be an important movie, it's really not much of a film. If the Academy Awards wanted to award quality, the masterful Iraq in Fragments was much more deserving (though "Oscar-winner Al Gore" brings me some joy).
  
• I haven't seen United 93, The Fountain, and several other likely contenders. And that's not counting the stuff that I haven't even heard of yet. As I said, the requirements for a comprehensive best list will never be fully satisfied.

Labels: babbling about films