Best of 2006
The 79th Academy Awards telecast is around the corner, but who cares? We've got picks from our crack team of critics and editors. It was a great year for comedy, with Borat scoring high points from everyone and their mother—don't tell us all those people suing for a cut of the box-office weren't laughing their heinies off too!—and Little Miss Sunshine charming its way into people's hearts with its broken-down characters and their broken-down VW bus. It should be called The Little Ensemble Picture That Could. It was an interesting year for horror, too, with the all-female horror flick The Descent. In the crime department, there's Spike Lee's great, tense Inside Man. And The Proposition, from Down Unda, stole our hearts and stole the show at the year's big fests. There are a lot more great picks on our list, and some duds too, so give it a look-see; next time you're standing there with a blank mind in front of the new-release wall, it might give you some ideas for what to rent.
HV's Top Ten List
Director: Larry Charles
Actors: Sacha Baron-Cohen, Ken Davitien
In it's first weekend, this comedy proved to be box-office gold—and had everyone and their mother gravy-training with lawsuits. Hey, niiice peoples, please to be giving Borat some break.
Director: Stephen Frears
Actors: Helen Mirren, Michael Sheen
Stephen Frears' movie about the week following the death of Princess Di is a marvel of filmmaking and acting. The supporting cast in this usual hybrid picture is uniformly great, but star Helen Mirren is not even acting, she's doing something completely different. Is she channeling the Queen Mum? We don't even know, but it blows our bloody socks off, whatever it is.
Director: Dominik Moll
Actors: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Charlotte Rampling
Just thinking back on this unsettling film can give you a case of the chills (and make you want to put any kind of pet rodent up for adoption pronto). Everyone seems to have different theories about just what the heck is really going on in this movie about infidelity. It could all be a dream, but one of those freaky ones that stays with you for a long, long time.
Directors: Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton
Actors: Abigail Breslin, Steve Carell
This funny and touching ensemble picture is busting at the seams with talent, from the terrific acting to the great script. Watching this whacked-out fam take a road trip to a kids' beauty pageant, you feel like you're riding along with them in their broken-down VW bus.
Director: Martin Campbell
Actors: Daniel Craig, Mads Mikkelsen
Poo-poo to all you complainers who said Daniel Craig wouldn't make a good Bond. Right out of the gate, he's carrying the best 007 movie to come out in years. (But you're probably the same people trying to make a buck in court off the Borat movie.)
Director: Neil Marshall
Actors: Shauna MacDonald, Saskia Mulder
As if we normal people needed any further reasons to be afraid of caves! This fright-show from the U.K. will have spelunkers and claustrophobics alike squirming in their seats in the best horror-movie sense. But what's scarier, the slimy cave-dwellers or the members of the expedition party, who turn on each other in most unnatural ways?
Director: Spike Lee
Actors: Clive Owen, Denzel Washington
Say what you want about
Spike Lee—better yet, stow it; people have been nitpicking at him for years—the guy can direct circles around most Hollywood helmers, even when he makes a bad picture. Inside Man, however, is anything but bad. In fact, this bank-heist picture starring Clive Owen and Denzel Washington is truly great. And, bonus, it costars fave-things Christopher Plummer and Jodie Foster, in her meatiest, most mommy-less role in years.
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Actors: Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse
This adaptation of Joseph Kessel's 1943 novel about the French Resistance may be from 1969, but it was just released in the U.S. There was no good reason for this Jean-Pierre Melville masterpiece to sit on any shelf that long, but at least it's out now, and, late or not, it's one of the best films of 2006.
Director: Chan-wook Park
Actors: Yeong-ae Lee, Min-sik Choi
Part Three in Chan-wook Park's great revenge trilogy follows a woman bent on making a big bloody payback on the child murdering piece-of-you-know-what who framed her. Can you blame the lady? Like the other two in the trilogy, this movie is thrillingly great.