Best films of 2000, er, 2001.
Jun 18 '02
The Bottom Line The category says I have to pick 10 movies, so I narrowed down my favorites from 2001, and what surprised me was how easy it was.
So this doesn't exactly go with the topic, but since there's no best-of-2001 category I had to improvise. Anyway, 2001 in retrospect was a very good year, at least in comparison to many other recent years. After the cinematic desert that was 2000 and the overhyped 1999, it was refreshing to see this many wonderful films all in a given year. Surprisingly enough, it was easy to come up with ten films for this list. I saw roughly twenty worthy of inclusion in this top 10, but the films listed below distinguished themselves from the rest, to the point where I couldn't NOT include any of them.
So, in descending order...
10. Under the Sand
French director François Ozon's enigmatic film about a fiftyish woman who has to cope with the sudden disappearance of her husband was one of many good films this year about the aftermath of tragedy (In the Bedroom and Monster's Ball are but two more notable examples). Charlotte Rampling gives the performance of her career in the lead role, and Ozon never lets her down nor gives her anywhere to hide.
9. Things Behind the Sun
OK, so I'm cheating here, since this film premiered not in theatres but on pay cable, but it was made to be seen in theatres, I saw it in a theatre, and if Ebert can pick WIT I can pick this. That aside, the film itself is a raw portrait of an up-and-coming singer struggling with the memory of rape. Allison Anders, who wrote and directed the film, is herself a survivor of rape, and she has made a film that is not only brutally frank but also emotionally naked and sticks with you for days.
8. Donnie Darko
The best first film I saw this past year was Richard Kelly's strange blessed mess of a movie about a troubled high schooler (Jake Gyllenhaal) who received apocalyptic messages from a giant rabbit. Yes, really. The film avoids easy pigeonholing, veering from fantasy to teenage romance to family drama, sometimes within the same scene, and Kelly peppers it all with hilarious 80s references, from Tears for Fears to self-help gurus. I'm excited to see what Kelly is up to next.
7. Va Savoir
Jacques Rivette has been a great and underappreciated filmmaker for years now, having made such works as CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING and LA BELLE NOISEUSE without getting much notice from American audiences. While VA SAVOIR, his latest, didn't make much of a splash here either, it was his most accessible film thusfar (at least, of those I've seen), as Rivette tells the story of a 6-cornered romantic roundelay with great style and wit. Jeanne Balibar and Sergio Castellitto are perfect as an actor-actress couple who are struggling with their latest stage production, and brainy beautiful Hélène de Fougerolles remains my latest cinematic dream-girl.
6. The Man Who Wasn't There
The Coen Brothers once again venture to the crime-story well, but this time they play it straighter than they have since BLOOD SIMPLE. A story that would've been at home in a James M. Cain novel, the Coens explore the troubles of one Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton), a 1940's California barber who becomes involved in blackmail and murder. Thornton is perfect as the Everyman sap, and we can't take our eyes off him- unless fast-talking scene-stealer Tony Shalhoub is onscreen. All this, and it's in beautiful black and white.
5. Gosford Park
A filmmaker as distinctive and as prolific as Robert Altman has a tendency to be inconsistent as far as the quality of his work is concerned. But when he gets it right, it's very, very right, and GOSFORD PARK is the most right he's been since SHORT CUTS. Taking on both "Upstairs, Downstairs"-style British social drama and Dame Agatha-style murder myself, Altman deftly juggles a large and accomplished cast of British acting heavyweights and puts them through a suitably complex storyline involving a killing, class struggles, and buried secrets. You won't pick it all up the first time around, but it's so good that the thought of multiple viewings is not at all objectionable.
4. Mulholland Drive
Speaking of multiple viewings, the latest film by dream-chronicler David Lynch practically demanded to be seen again, not so much for clarification's sake (like this year's other cinematic conversation piece, MEMENTO), but just to get clues as to how the pieces might fit together. Though nothing quite fits the way you want it to, the film is nothing short of hypnotic in the end. Scene after scene, twist after twist, holds our interest until we can't help but surrender to the film's spell. Kudos to Naomi Watts, a revelation in her star-making role.
3. The Royal Tenenbaums
While not as brazenly hilarious as his previous film RUSHMORE, Wes Anderson's latest work manages to be more poignant and original than that wonderful film. Gene Hackman leads a wonderful cast, playing the estranged father of a family of geniuses, but really, there's not a bum performance in the bunch. What's most amazing about the film, however, is how well it builds on his previous work, to the point where his distinctive visual style, which might at a glance look new, in the end feels like he's been working up to it all along. All in all, a gem that manages to delight me to this day.
2. Audition
My first exposure to Japanese director Takashi Miike came with this film, a mindbender which held me in its grasp so firmly when I saw it that I could hardly even move when it was over. The film tells the story of a widower, who in his job as a director sets up an audition for a movie, hoping to also find a suitable second wife among the actresses who audition. Even in the film's second hour, when the story piles complication after complication upon our hero, the film remains above all a meditation on loneliness, anxiety, and sexual guilt that is cannier than any film I've seen on these subjects in years. Not to mention that by the end of the film, just hearing the female lead's whispering of "deeper, deeper" will send shivers up your spine.
AND MY #1 FILM OF 2001 IS...
1. Waking Life
If the great problem of modern cinema is how to rectify film's status as a visual medium with the market-driven need for sound and dialogue, then WAKING LIFE is almost certainly the most important film of 2001. But that's not why it's here. Sure, this is one of the great movies to listen to, with characters expounding and pontificating and reflecting on their theories of philosophy and life and what-have-you. And its groundbreaking animation technique, with relatively inexpensive software designed to paint over digital video footage, certainly bears mentioning. But it's my #1 film of the year simply because no film of 2001 got to me on so many different levels. As the dialogue danced through my ears and the animation played over my eyes, my heart jumped up with a realization- I'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE. And every time I've seen the film since, I still get that feeling. For what is any true film lover truly searching for at the movies, but the promise of something new and exciting?
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hkoreeda
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Member: Paul Clark
Location: Ohio
Reviews written: 35
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About Me:
What's the polite term for "unemployed wannabe critic"?
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