Or at least failed to enthrall me very seriously. Am I losing touch, or are movies lagging? Let's say both, mostly the second one. What happened? If/until the same situation goes down again this year, I'll keep on assuming it's just an unfortunate coincidence. Nothing is perfectly reliable, so the odds of each year always providing a healthy balance of both good and bad films are unlikely. Therefore, eventually there has to be a crappy run (and, perhaps, a glorious winning streak at some point? Yeah right), so there we had it, 2006. Not purely bad, but definitely a step down from previous years, and not just in the scarcity of greatness, but in that of even good popcorn flicks. Even those took a nose dive - witness the incredibly boring summer season (with painfully weak comic book leftovers like "Superman" and "X-Men 3") and absolutely uneventful holiday line-up (did anyone go ape over "Charlotte's Web" or "Dreamgirls"?), and predictably filler-loaded spring and autumn bunches (with the usual sleeper indie flick in the spring - "Thank You for Smoking" - and sterling blockbuster powerhouse in the fall - "The Departed"). In other words, not only dull but formulaic (just like most of the movies themselves!).
Naturally this doesn't mean the movie theaters were like ghost towns. They still managed to innovate now and then, and keep various, seemingly interesting indie flicks and mainstream curiosities amidst the generic garbage. It's just that the payoff seemed so much smaller every month. By the end of the year, I couldn't even bring myself to go to the movies during the whole month of December, which is normally supposed to be a fun, busy time to do so for me. All I saw was "Apocalypto" and only because my best friend wanted to - I would rather have watched a Rob Schneider marathon. It just didn't seem like there were any big, sparkling EVENT movies or appealing films of any kind, really, to bother checking out. I could've stuck with my usual routine of seeing any and every movie regardless of whether they look good, but I've been focusing more on my writing and music lately, and the slate of movies just haven't been able to compete for my time. "Deja Vu"? "Blood Diamond"? "Happy Feet"? "Rocky"? "The Holiday"? "We are Marshall?" What in the fuck is this? It might be worse than my worst nightmare, because instead of horrid films, all these and more just look boring as hell. Maybe they'll have a decent aspect or two (good production values, nice acting) but there's simply nothing specific to draw me in. Who cares about Rocky? Yet another football movie? Apartheid? Annoyingly wacky penguins? Is using the idea of deja vu the actually lowest form of storytelling man can achieve? And so on. The abundance of lameness is exhausting. It's not even like I have high-brow tastes. I like junk movies too, cartoons and sequels and high-concept stupidity and romantic comedies and all that. Which may mean that this is primarily my problem, not the industry's, because it's just that these specific examples that Hollywood has rolled out all year (and especially now) have magically lacked either the spark or specific crew members necessary to catch my eye. It's a sad state of affairs (on the plus side, at least I was able to catch up on much of my older movie viewing throughout the year).
The main counterargument here is that I haven't seen all the movies from 2006 - maybe I missed the really special ones. Because of the measely offerings, I became far too lazy to even go see the elite contenders, like "The Queen", "Babel", "Volver", "Flags of Our Fathers", "The Science of Sleep" (which I've been hoping all year might be my favorite movie of 2006, but I didn't take advantage of the very small window of opportunity I had several months ago), "World Trade Center", "Hollywoodland", various foreign films and documentaries). I still plan to see the majority of "prestigious" year-end Oscar baits, like "The Good Shepherd", "Dreamgirls", "Letters from Iwo Jima", "The Good German", "Pan's Labyrinth", but half of them look like chores and the other half aren't yet available in my area as of this writing. So...yeah, it was just an "eh" kind of year. As always, I sincerely hope that 2007 will turn things around and just dazzle me silly. Without having really cataloged what I do and don't want to see, I can already tell just by perusing the list of upcoming movies that there are at least plenty of 'em that look engaging, plenty that I'll be happy to go see. But then, movies often seem more tasty in foresight - the closer you get, the clearer the reality and hence smaller the possibilities that you've imagined. But with any luck it won't all burn down to tedium again.
Now, with all that out of the way, let's take a look at my usual lists
FAVORITE FILMS
1) The Departed
2) Brick
3) Children of Men
4) Babel
5) Monster House
6) Thank You for Smoking
7) Little Miss Sunshine
8) Stranger Than Fiction
9) The Fountain
10) Marie Antoinette
For the first time in a long time, I barely even have 10 that cracked the "A-" barrier! Like I said, though, that could change when I see the last handful of "important" movies over the next few months [ed. note - it did]. On a side note, one of the most depressing trends of the year isn't that there were so few outstanding pictures, but rather that there were even fewer solidly good ones. Usually my runners-up list is pretty big (I don't even have one this time!), and there's a generous mid-section there of movies in the 7-8, B-grade range, movies that were good even if they weren't exceptional. This year there were seriously hardly any - 90% of the 7s and 8s I gave were extremely generous, and deserved probably a point less if you want to get technical, but I was so hard-up for quality that I lowered my standards. "Beerfest", "Lucky Number Slevin", "The Black Dahlia", "An Inconvenient Truth", "Clerks 2", "A Scanner Darkly", "The Lake House", "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Fast and the Furious 3", "Ask the Dust", "Friends with Money", "Art School Confidential", "Winter Passing", "V for Vendetta", "M:I:III", "Nanny McPhee", "Slither", "Inside Man", "Crank", "Accepted", "Curious George", "Talladega Nights", "The Illusionist", "Jackass 2", "A Prairie Home Companion", "Casino Royale", "The Groomsmen", and "The Ant Bully" are pretty the only movies I have in this range, and none of them deserve as high a rating as I originally gave them. In fact, I'm not even sure I like some of them anymore.
THE ONLY SOLID MIDDLE GROUND GOOD MOVIES THAT I'M STILL FOND OF
1) Running Scared
2) The Hills Have Eyes
3) Borat
4) Scoop
5) The Descent
6) The Break-Up
WORST MOVIES OF THE YEAR (that I saw, and not the obvious ones, these are the ones that made me angriest or let me down the most)
1) Lady in the Water
2) X-Men 3
3) Mini's First Time
4) Date Movie
5) Click
6) Apocalypto
7) Ice Age 2
8) Snakes on a Plane
9) Superman Returns
10) For Your Consideration
BEST ACTORS
1) Leonardo DiCaprio (The Departed)
2) Hugh Jackman (The Fountain)
3) Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Brick)
4) Clive Owen (Children of Men)
5) Aaron Eckhart (Thank You for Smoking)
6) Matt Damon (The Departed)
7) Will Ferrell (Stranger Than Fiction)
8) Sascha Baren Cohen (Borat)
9) Vince Vaughn (The Break-Up)
10) Daniel Craig (Casino Royale)
SUPPORTING ACTORS
1) Steve Carrell (Little Miss Sunshine)
2) Robert Downey, Jr. (A Scanner Darkly)
3) Mark Whalberg (The Departed
4) Dustin Hoffman (Stranger Than Fiction)
5) Lukas Haas (Brick)
BEST ACTRESSES
1) Maggie Gyllenhaal (Stranger Than Fiction)
2) Kirsten Dunst (Marie Antoinette)
3) Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine)
4) Jennifer Aniston (The Break-Up)
5) Zooey Deschanel (Winter Passing)
HOTTEST ACTRESS, IF TOO OFTEN WASTED AS AN ACTUAL ACTRESS
1) Scarlett Johansson (Scoop, The Black Dahlia, The Prestige)
DIRECTORS WHO LET ME DOWN
1) Christopher Guest (For Your Consideration)
2) M. Night Shyamalan (Lady in the Water)
3) Lucky McKee (The Woods)
4) Spike Lee (Inside Man)
5) Richard Linklater (A Scanner Darkly)
6) John Lasseter (Cars)
7) Terry Zwigoff (Art School Confidential)
8) Michael Mann (Miami Vice)
MOVIES THAT WERE BETTER THAN I EXPECTED
1) The Protector
2) Casino Royale
3) Clerks 2
4) Stranger Than Fiction
5) The Ant Bully
6) The Last Kiss
MOVIES THAT WERE WORSE THAN I EXPECTED
1) For Your Consideration
2) Dave Chappelle's Block Party
3) Final Destination 3
4) Lady in the Water
5) Snakes on a Plane
6) Slither
7) Inside Man
8) The Illusionist
9) The Proposition
And here are some of the movies I'm looking forward to in 2007, keeping in mind there are plenty I can't think of or don't know about yet
Grindhouse
Harry Potter 5
Black Snake Moan
Sunshine (Danny Boyle sci-fi)
Shrek 3 (could be lame)
Spider-Man 3 (could be disastrous)
The Messengers (creepy horror film)
Zodiac (David Fincher)
Reign Over Me (Mike Bender)
Fido (zombie comedy)
Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg)
Fast Track (quirky comedy)
Lucky You (Curtis Hanson poker film)
The Pleasure of Your Company (Michael Ian Black comedy)
The Last Mimzy (weird sci-fi/fantasy)
The Lookout (Scott Frank directing, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Isla Fisher)
Meet the Robinsons (appealingly animated Disney cartoon)
Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog)
Knocked Up (Judd Apatow)
Lust, Caution (Ang Lee)
The Heartbreak Kid (The Farrelly Bros.)
Trick 'r Treat (character film)
Beowulf (Robert Zemeckis)
Charlie Wilson's War (Mike Nichols, Tom Hanks)
His Dark Materials (pretentious fantasy)
And some less respectable guilty pleasures that I think I might enjoy:
300 (ridiculously cheesy but fun-looking "Sin City"-esque eye candy)
Full of it (comedy)
I Could Never Be Your Woman (comedy)
Enchanted (Amy Adams, James Marsden, fantasy)
Rogue (Michael Vartan fights a crocodile)
Ghost Rider (good times...)
Smokin' Aces (crazy action comedy, good cast)
Fanboys (loving geek fest, could be annoying or endearing)
Halloween (it's a "Halloween" movie so I'm excited, but it's Rob Zombie so I'm worried)
Blades of Glory (yet another Will Ferrell knowingly silly comedy)
The Reaping (horror film about the biblical plagues)
The Mist (Frank Darabont, horror)
30 Days of Night (vampires in Alaska? Josh Hartnett)
The Waterhorse (sea creatures)
How I Met My Boyfriend's Dead Fiancee (fantasy comedy, Paul Rudd)
The Nanny Diaries (good cast)
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