ten best list Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Everyone's a critic, so the old saying goes. And now filmmaker Kevin Smith -- after a 2006 appearance on the "Roeper" show -- has decided to add his name to the hat by drawing up his own version of the ten best films of 2006. Although Smith gave Ryan Fleck's Half Nelson a breathless review on television, calling it the best movie he'd seen in a decade, it only placed at #3 on his list. (I guess this must have been a pretty good year for Kevin.)

Coming it at number two was Todd Field's Little Children. His pick for the year's best film was Martin Scorsese's The Departed ("The one everybody else liked too.") Already Smith seems to understand the way that critics put themselves on the line over certain movies, certain to arouse the ire of readers who are not tuned into the same wavelength. For some of his listings, he includes the caveat: "the one I'll take shit for." One of these picks was his own film, Clerks II, which ranked at #4. You've gotta give the guy a hand for making films that he actually likes to watch, which is more than you can say for 75% of Hollywood directors.

Smith's #5 film was Spike Lee's Inside Man, which he dubs: "the one nobody else seems to remember." Smith admits to seeing only 85 movies of the potential 500 released during the year (most critics see upwards of 300). The rest of Smith's picks aren't all that surprising, representing a cross-section of films that more or less placed on most other critics' lists. It'll be interesting to see if Catch and Release makes his 2007 list.

Between the hoards of self-conscious message movies and piles of garbage that didn't screen for the press, I saw, about two dozen films in 2006 that showed any kind of cinematic artistry. The movies that made my top ten list are movies that don't hand over any easy answers and have thus largely gone ignored this year. Moreover, these were films that used the form in a visual way, rather than simply unfolding a story on film like a big book-on-tape. The cinema isn't dead; it's just hiding...

I should note that my two favorite movies this year, Terrence Malick's The New World and Claire Denis' The Intruder officially count as 2005 movies, even though they opened in most theaters in 2006. So, with a broken heart, I leave them off the list. I also want to include a caveat that the year's most anticipated movie, David Lynch's Inland Empire, has only opened in New York and Los Angeles. No press screenings or screener DVDs have been available in any other city, so I have not been able to see it.

1. Three Times (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
One of the world's greatest filmmakers has been working for over twenty years. Yet only two of his films have received U.S. distribution. Each starred the beautiful Shu Qi (known in this country for her role in The Transporter) and each lasted about a week in theaters. Three Times, a triptych about two lovers in the 1960s, the 1920s and the present day, isn't one of Hou's very best films, but the first segment alone -- set in the Vietnam era -- is arguably his most heartbreakingly lovely achievement. It towers over everything else released this year.