Since we are approaching the end of awards season (thank god!!!), I looked and couldnt find a thread on best movies of last year and opinions on awards and potential Oscar winners. If there is a thread on this already, sorry and please merge this one in. But if not...then here's the place to discuss what we saw and liked and hated from 2006.
My favorites and why...(in no order)
Pan's Labyrinth-I can't get it out of my head-how sad it was, how disturbing the monsters were, how classic it all felt. The thriller aspect of it was incredible, how the tension racheted up. And the Pale Man had to be the most disturbing monster ever. The stories behind the filming are really interesting as well. I know that this is a movie that I will be watching for years to come.
Children of Men-totally different from the book, but so powerful. And so depressingly plausible. The way that they just barely extrapolated what is going on today into a nightmare future was just too much. And the movie was so intense that I didnt even notice a couple of those 10+ minute unbroken shots. I also loved how abrupt, ambigous and hopeful the ending was.
Dreamgirls (shut up)-yeah it has flaws and the second half is so much weaker than the first half, but Jennifer Hudson's big song was the most powerful single scene of the year for my money.
The Queen-just way more engaging and thought provoking than I expected it to be. Another one that I will probably see again and again.
Inside Man-very entertaining, liked the way it depicted New York. And I loved that I couldnt figure out how they pulled it all off until the very end.
Movie I hated: Little Miss Sunshine-I didnt like it when it first came out and now that all the critics, audience and Oscar voters are smoking crack and considering it the best of the year, I hate it even more. So contrived, insincere, and shallow, but somehow claiming to be realistic. And cute movies just get on my nerves in general.
whay can I say to you..DREAMGIRLS (and i am NOT a Beyoncee fan)has been a revelation for me too, and I truly agree with all of your statements on this matter.. the same for little miss sunshine... just hated it and my sister liked it so much that she didn't stop babbling about it back an forth.. Horrifying!! I did not like Children of men. I find it too depressing, although i am aware that it portaies a plausible perspective. And I don't like Clive Owen since Closer..so that was the end of the movie for me. but i wanted to mention my biggest disappointment - Marie Antoinette.. it was simply boring, not even a hint of a plot. in my opinion no movie to match last years Crash.
P.S. This was what I recalled just now.. there may be more :)
I liked Little Miss Sunshine a lot. One of the few movies where I had no idea where this plot was going. I'm hoping it wins because it is a small film going against the typical major studio darlings.
Did anyone see the Science of Sleep? Michel Gondry is always genius. Too wierd for the mainstream.
I have yet to see Pan's Labyrinth and Last King of Scotland.
For a sheer "god my head hurts" movie experience, I really liked The Fountain, and there is a good probablity half the people who see this thread will want to bash my skull in for that while another half will agree with me wholeheartedly, and i like movies that polarize.
Saw Children of Men, thought it was awesome, although calling it a "Blade Runner for the new decade/generation/century" i think is giving it a bit much. I think it should take the "Most Depressing Film Catagory", kinda like Crash last year.
"Caché" ("Hidden") was an absolute high point for me, and it was good to see Haneke back in shape after the slightly disappointing "Le temps du loup". Biggest surprise was the japanese yakuza-thriller-comedy-lovestory-noir "A stranger of mine" which is a little masterpiece of clever scriptwriting and highly entertaining. Similarly the japanese/chinese "Operetta Tanuki Goten" was the most confusing movie of the year, and I still don't know if I love it or hate it.
These are all films from 2005, but since foreign movies have slower distribution, I only got to see them in 2006.
Oh, I forgot "Cache"-I only saw that in 2006 too but it was the only movie I saw twice in the theater this year. *Loved* it. And I loved seeing it in the theater because of the mass audience reaction to a certain scene-you know what I am talking about. I cant remember the last time I saw an audience all rear up together in fright like that.
I saw one called 'Primer: What if it really Works' that was about - maybe - time travel. It was a great movie for science nerds, as they went into details about how the thing they invented was an accident, and then how, as a scientist, do you deal with what you've created. Very confusing too and I'm still not quite certain I know what happened at the end.
Murderball was incredibly moving and real.
I loved Little Miss Sunshine, perhaps because it was the only movie I've seen in a theater this year. I did think the end dance was overly contrived.
Otherwise I've pretty much only seen run of the mill videos - nothing that rocked my world.
My may all be 2005 too - I'm late to these things.
06' was a crazy good year for movies. My faves in no particular order..
The Last King of Scotland
The Sience of Sleep
The Fountain
Babel
Brick
The Departed
The Prestige
Volver
Children of Men
Little Miss Sunshine
The Heart is Decietful above all Things.
Apocalypto
A Scanner Darkly
Pans Labyrinth
I saw The Last King of Scotland 2 weeks ago. It was very well made, and very compelling. It's hard to say it was "good" but it was, in the way that difficult movies are. Forest Whitaker is scary good, isn't he?
Children of Men was outstanding, too. Was it even nominated for anything?
I also liked Little Miss Sunshine. Until this thread I didn't realize that anyone didn't like that movie.
CoM was nominated for Cinematography, Film Editing, and Adapted Screenplay. It should win at least two of those three. I'm convinced after watching a behind-the-scenes feature about those two or three single-shot sequences.
can anyone explain to me why 'the departed' is considered
good? seemed to me that the plot was fairly obvious...
all the characters seemed to overreact to everything...do the
police really fight that much with each other? nicholson's
crew is about four people..they add leo and can't figure out who
the rat is? the envelope that is obviously on damon's desk?
you're an informer inside the police and you don't get rid of the
only evidence that can tie you to a mob boss?
plus the romances were contrived...people fell in and out of bad
boston accents...music played through every scene to an
uncomfortable level...
but maybe it's because i grew up in boston and i found some of
the locations where things happened to be a bit laughable...damon
would obviously be the rat living where he did..no way he could
afford it on a cop's salary, for instance. can anyone help me out
here?
I had no problem with the gore. It seemed apt, I mean the Maya werent fucking buddhist folks. I go back and forth questioning the historical accuracy, [*SPOILER*] werent most of the maya cities abandoned by the time the spanish arrived? I also had some problem with the subtle moral take, pitting the spanish as some kind of devine justice?[/*SPOILER*] but over all you just had to give it to them for the authenticity.
Although not nominated for foreign film I would have to say the best Architectural film.....was "House of Sand." It is important to note it was a family film. There were two generations of women from the family and it was directed by the father.
I can't claim to know what was the best because I generally wait for things to come out on video now, but I have to put in a good word for Little Miss Sunshine. I rented this over Christmas and laughed my ass off. Spent the whole movie just thinking, "uh, how is this girl in beauty pagents?", and my patience was well rewarded. I'm also really glad they didn't give it your typical happy ending.
I was just thinking all of this years really good movies display a really different attitude toward life. Is it doubt? ambiguity? So movies have taken liberties with reality before, but few have done it in the way Science of Sleep and The Fountain have. Brazil and Being John Malcovich, genius movies, but after watching them, you say "ok, thats fantasy" and go on with your day. I think Memento and Eternal Sunshine were a bit more challenging, but they both used this extreme device to upset your perception. I think Pulp Fiction and Bringing out the Dead had a different kind of distortion, weaving this spiritual substrate and fiction into really raw personal images. But several movies this year were much harder on us than in the past, in that youre forced to relinquish your preconceived notions about reality to even understand the plot. There is no longer a distinction between dream, childhood fantasy, delusion and myth and real life. They have become inseparable, even equivocal. The only film I can think of that has pulled this off in the past is Mulholland Drive. But Little Miss Sunshine, Apocalypto, Children of Men, each challenge this objectivist faith in civilization. Brick and Volver had thier own warped take on things. If movies are a any indication of the collective mood, there has been a huge shift in the last year.
Well, I'm kinda out of the loop on movies as I don't go out much, but I did see Pan's Labyrinth this weekend. Now I'm sure some people are going to strongly disagree with me on this, but I wasn't overly impressed. The visuals were impressive, without a doubt, but the overall storyline itself was predictable.
Yeah, I liked it, but I personally didn't think it was as amazing as people were making it out to be. Perhaps the little hype I heard I took to heart too quickly...
My vote for worst movie is "The Breakup" which i rented for free from the library and still couldn't watch all the way through. in fact, i only made it through maybe twenty minutes before hitting the eject button.
Match Point
V for Vendetta
Thank You For Smoking
Sketches of Frank Gehry
An Inconvenient Truth
Who Killed The Electric Car?
A Scanner Darkly
The Black Dahlia
Jackass 2
The Science of Sleep
Borat
Chili- have you read 'A Scanner Darkly'? I really liked it, and can't decide whether I want to see the movie or not, since I've gotten used to being disappointed in movies based on books (White Oleander, Memoirs of a Geisha, the last two Lord of the Rings, countless others).
Babel. The Departed. Little Miss Sunshine. Volver. Memoirs of a Geisha (i like the art direction in that). Blood Diamond. I'll name many more when I think of them.
Worst film by far...Sketches of Frank Gehry. I was baffled to why they thought this was a good idea. It just felt like this was not a good time (meaning interesting) to make it. Where is the conflict that usually makes a plot? BORING!
I have yet to see The Departed but it is directed by Scorcese. He is a legend and could poop out bunnies and people would love it.
I dont think either The Departed or Pans Labyrinth were great films, but they were good. In labyrinth's case, its weird how quick under-hype can go to over-hype. Scorsese has done better too. Im a huge Bringing out the Dead fan but everyone in the world disagrees with me. At least it was better than fucking Gangs of New York.
Best Movies of 2006
Since we are approaching the end of awards season (thank god!!!), I looked and couldnt find a thread on best movies of last year and opinions on awards and potential Oscar winners. If there is a thread on this already, sorry and please merge this one in. But if not...then here's the place to discuss what we saw and liked and hated from 2006.
My favorites and why...(in no order)
Pan's Labyrinth-I can't get it out of my head-how sad it was, how disturbing the monsters were, how classic it all felt. The thriller aspect of it was incredible, how the tension racheted up. And the Pale Man had to be the most disturbing monster ever. The stories behind the filming are really interesting as well. I know that this is a movie that I will be watching for years to come.
Children of Men-totally different from the book, but so powerful. And so depressingly plausible. The way that they just barely extrapolated what is going on today into a nightmare future was just too much. And the movie was so intense that I didnt even notice a couple of those 10+ minute unbroken shots. I also loved how abrupt, ambigous and hopeful the ending was.
Dreamgirls (shut up)-yeah it has flaws and the second half is so much weaker than the first half, but Jennifer Hudson's big song was the most powerful single scene of the year for my money.
The Queen-just way more engaging and thought provoking than I expected it to be. Another one that I will probably see again and again.
Inside Man-very entertaining, liked the way it depicted New York. And I loved that I couldnt figure out how they pulled it all off until the very end.
Movie I hated: Little Miss Sunshine-I didnt like it when it first came out and now that all the critics, audience and Oscar voters are smoking crack and considering it the best of the year, I hate it even more. So contrived, insincere, and shallow, but somehow claiming to be realistic. And cute movies just get on my nerves in general.
whay can I say to you..DREAMGIRLS (and i am NOT a Beyoncee fan)has been a revelation for me too, and I truly agree with all of your statements on this matter.. the same for little miss sunshine... just hated it and my sister liked it so much that she didn't stop babbling about it back an forth.. Horrifying!! I did not like Children of men. I find it too depressing, although i am aware that it portaies a plausible perspective. And I don't like Clive Owen since Closer..so that was the end of the movie for me. but i wanted to mention my biggest disappointment - Marie Antoinette.. it was simply boring, not even a hint of a plot. in my opinion no movie to match last years Crash.
P.S. This was what I recalled just now.. there may be more :)
I liked Little Miss Sunshine a lot. One of the few movies where I had no idea where this plot was going. I'm hoping it wins because it is a small film going against the typical major studio darlings.
Did anyone see the Science of Sleep? Michel Gondry is always genius. Too wierd for the mainstream.
I have yet to see Pan's Labyrinth and Last King of Scotland.
sorry, posted to wrong thead...:)
For a sheer "god my head hurts" movie experience, I really liked The Fountain, and there is a good probablity half the people who see this thread will want to bash my skull in for that while another half will agree with me wholeheartedly, and i like movies that polarize.
Saw Children of Men, thought it was awesome, although calling it a "Blade Runner for the new decade/generation/century" i think is giving it a bit much. I think it should take the "Most Depressing Film Catagory", kinda like Crash last year.
"Caché" ("Hidden") was an absolute high point for me, and it was good to see Haneke back in shape after the slightly disappointing "Le temps du loup". Biggest surprise was the japanese yakuza-thriller-comedy-lovestory-noir "A stranger of mine" which is a little masterpiece of clever scriptwriting and highly entertaining. Similarly the japanese/chinese "Operetta Tanuki Goten" was the most confusing movie of the year, and I still don't know if I love it or hate it.
These are all films from 2005, but since foreign movies have slower distribution, I only got to see them in 2006.
Oh, I forgot "Cache"-I only saw that in 2006 too but it was the only movie I saw twice in the theater this year. *Loved* it. And I loved seeing it in the theater because of the mass audience reaction to a certain scene-you know what I am talking about. I cant remember the last time I saw an audience all rear up together in fright like that.
I saw one called 'Primer: What if it really Works' that was about - maybe - time travel. It was a great movie for science nerds, as they went into details about how the thing they invented was an accident, and then how, as a scientist, do you deal with what you've created. Very confusing too and I'm still not quite certain I know what happened at the end.
Murderball was incredibly moving and real.
I loved Little Miss Sunshine, perhaps because it was the only movie I've seen in a theater this year. I did think the end dance was overly contrived.
Otherwise I've pretty much only seen run of the mill videos - nothing that rocked my world.
My may all be 2005 too - I'm late to these things.
06' was a crazy good year for movies. My faves in no particular order..
The Last King of Scotland
The Sience of Sleep
The Fountain
Babel
Brick
The Departed
The Prestige
Volver
Children of Men
Little Miss Sunshine
The Heart is Decietful above all Things.
Apocalypto
A Scanner Darkly
Pans Labyrinth
I saw The Last King of Scotland 2 weeks ago. It was very well made, and very compelling. It's hard to say it was "good" but it was, in the way that difficult movies are. Forest Whitaker is scary good, isn't he?
Children of Men was outstanding, too. Was it even nominated for anything?
I also liked Little Miss Sunshine. Until this thread I didn't realize that anyone didn't like that movie.
CoM was nominated for Cinematography, Film Editing, and Adapted Screenplay. It should win at least two of those three. I'm convinced after watching a behind-the-scenes feature about those two or three single-shot sequences.
can anyone explain to me why 'the departed' is considered
good? seemed to me that the plot was fairly obvious...
all the characters seemed to overreact to everything...do the
police really fight that much with each other? nicholson's
crew is about four people..they add leo and can't figure out who
the rat is? the envelope that is obviously on damon's desk?
you're an informer inside the police and you don't get rid of the
only evidence that can tie you to a mob boss?
plus the romances were contrived...people fell in and out of bad
boston accents...music played through every scene to an
uncomfortable level...
but maybe it's because i grew up in boston and i found some of
the locations where things happened to be a bit laughable...damon
would obviously be the rat living where he did..no way he could
afford it on a cop's salary, for instance. can anyone help me out
here?
oldirty - i second cache
my top five of the year, because they were the only five new releases that i saw this year...
science of sleep
a prairie home campanion
the breakup
prada something-or-other
james bond casino
oe- my experience with Apocalypto: when the movie was over i turned around and everyone (besides my friends and i) had walked out during it.
was it too gruesome? am i too hardened by umm... 4 years of architecture school :)
how bout you?
I third cache
I had no problem with the gore. It seemed apt, I mean the Maya werent fucking buddhist folks. I go back and forth questioning the historical accuracy, [*SPOILER*] werent most of the maya cities abandoned by the time the spanish arrived? I also had some problem with the subtle moral take, pitting the spanish as some kind of devine justice?[/*SPOILER*] but over all you just had to give it to them for the authenticity.
Although not nominated for foreign film I would have to say the best Architectural film.....was "House of Sand." It is important to note it was a family film. There were two generations of women from the family and it was directed by the father.
I can't claim to know what was the best because I generally wait for things to come out on video now, but I have to put in a good word for Little Miss Sunshine. I rented this over Christmas and laughed my ass off. Spent the whole movie just thinking, "uh, how is this girl in beauty pagents?", and my patience was well rewarded. I'm also really glad they didn't give it your typical happy ending.
I was just thinking all of this years really good movies display a really different attitude toward life. Is it doubt? ambiguity? So movies have taken liberties with reality before, but few have done it in the way Science of Sleep and The Fountain have. Brazil and Being John Malcovich, genius movies, but after watching them, you say "ok, thats fantasy" and go on with your day. I think Memento and Eternal Sunshine were a bit more challenging, but they both used this extreme device to upset your perception. I think Pulp Fiction and Bringing out the Dead had a different kind of distortion, weaving this spiritual substrate and fiction into really raw personal images. But several movies this year were much harder on us than in the past, in that youre forced to relinquish your preconceived notions about reality to even understand the plot. There is no longer a distinction between dream, childhood fantasy, delusion and myth and real life. They have become inseparable, even equivocal. The only film I can think of that has pulled this off in the past is Mulholland Drive. But Little Miss Sunshine, Apocalypto, Children of Men, each challenge this objectivist faith in civilization. Brick and Volver had thier own warped take on things. If movies are a any indication of the collective mood, there has been a huge shift in the last year.
Borat
NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Last King Of Scotland
The Good Shepard
The Science of Sleep
Little Miss Sunshine
Borat (for the pure hilarity)
Well, I'm kinda out of the loop on movies as I don't go out much, but I did see Pan's Labyrinth this weekend. Now I'm sure some people are going to strongly disagree with me on this, but I wasn't overly impressed. The visuals were impressive, without a doubt, but the overall storyline itself was predictable.
Yeah, I liked it, but I personally didn't think it was as amazing as people were making it out to be. Perhaps the little hype I heard I took to heart too quickly...
My vote for worst movie is "The Breakup" which i rented for free from the library and still couldn't watch all the way through. in fact, i only made it through maybe twenty minutes before hitting the eject button.
My top 11, in chronological order...
Match Point
V for Vendetta
Thank You For Smoking
Sketches of Frank Gehry
An Inconvenient Truth
Who Killed The Electric Car?
A Scanner Darkly
The Black Dahlia
Jackass 2
The Science of Sleep
Borat
The Black Dahlia was so incredibly bad.
It was a little over-the-top, yes.
it was miscast.and crime of crimes, it had the sexiest girl alive ms. scarlet being toatally unsexy...
Top movies 06
The Departed
Babel
Blood Diamond
Borat
Children of Men
The Illusionist
Thank you for smoking
Chili- have you read 'A Scanner Darkly'? I really liked it, and can't decide whether I want to see the movie or not, since I've gotten used to being disappointed in movies based on books (White Oleander, Memoirs of a Geisha, the last two Lord of the Rings, countless others).
Ladies and gentleman, it's all about Pedro Almoldovar.
I go with Volver. Second, Babel,
Wassup Rockers was really good
i went to see* Pursuit of Happieness...almost killed myself
*was not my idea
Wait, wait, I forgot a great one. SHORTBUS.
Anyone watch it?
Babel. The Departed. Little Miss Sunshine. Volver. Memoirs of a Geisha (i like the art direction in that). Blood Diamond. I'll name many more when I think of them.
1. cache
2. volver
3. borat
elvischyld, I confess that I actually wanted to see Shortbus. But I did not. It got a 65% on Rotten Tomatoes....
...but it was directed by john cameron mitchell, the genius behind hedwig...
Right. I didn't see that one either. Also 65% on RT is actually a good thing.
Worst film by far...Sketches of Frank Gehry. I was baffled to why they thought this was a good idea. It just felt like this was not a good time (meaning interesting) to make it. Where is the conflict that usually makes a plot? BORING!
I have yet to see The Departed but it is directed by Scorcese. He is a legend and could poop out bunnies and people would love it.
Black Dahlia sucked big time. Even the art snobs at the theater when I saw it stood up at the end and said "What the F@*& was that? That was s*$#."
Loved "The Painted Veil". Much better to see in the theatre, beautiful movie.
Sketches of Frank Gehry
NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ha ha theres the one.
My personal favorite was the pentacostal church.
I dont think either The Departed or Pans Labyrinth were great films, but they were good. In labyrinth's case, its weird how quick under-hype can go to over-hype. Scorsese has done better too. Im a huge Bringing out the Dead fan but everyone in the world disagrees with me. At least it was better than fucking Gangs of New York.
V for Vendetta for sure, A scanner Darkly, Pans Labyrinth.....began to like it just in the end when i got the metaphor of the 2 stories....
There was a metaphor in Pan's?
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