Friday, January 12, 2007

Movies: Best of 2006

I've always wanted to do a "Best of Year" list like this. Unfortunately, I didn't really get organized about keeping track of which movies I saw until November, so all the earlier months of the year were what I could glean from poring over my Yahoo movie ratings. Some may be missing, I am not sure.

In any case, here are my top movies for the year 2006 (in alphabetical order):
  • Blood Diamond
  • Cars
  • Casino Royale
  • Clerks II
  • The Departed
  • The Devil Wears Prada
  • The Fountain
  • The Illusionist
  • Little Miss Sunshine
  • V for Vendetta
I was just barely able to come up with ten movies for this list, which I guess proves that 2006 wasn't exactly a bumper year at the multiplex. As for which one ranks the highest....heh. Good question on that one--most of these are solid contenders, and there are such radical differences among them all (try objectively ranking The Departed and Clerks II, for instance) that I find it quite difficult to say. If pressed, I'd probably go with Casino Royale, believe it or not. My reason? I saw it three times, and enjoyed it each time more than the last. That's very, very rare in a movie. The Departed would be a close second, though, and The Fountain most likely in third place.

Honorable mentions: Art School Confidential, Imagine Me and You, Marie Antoinette, The Matador, The Quiet and Thank You for Smoking.

I did also want to mention a few others, in various categories:

In the "So Close, and Yet So Far" category, signifying films that could have been great if they hadn't fucked themselves over in some significant way, I put The Black Dahlia, Lady in the Water, and The Descent. I also have a special "Domino" category (in honor of Kiera Knightly's 2005 movie of the same name, which was itself a trip and a half down weirdness lane), in which Crank is the clearly insane winner, with Slither and Snakes on a Plane in the runner up positions. These movies are always fun to watch, whether they're any good or not--and Slither was actually a pretty damn good representative of it's own particular sub-genre. Then there's the "Worst of the Year" category, which is unfortunately fairly crammed full this year, featuring Beerfest as the all around loser, but also including Mission Impossible III, Pulse, Superman Returns, The Covenant, Ultraviolet, and Underworld: Evolution. And those are just the ones I saw. Then, some movies that I enjoyed probably more than I should have: School for Scoundrels, Flyboys, John Tucker Must Die, Take the Lead, Deja Vu and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.

Well, that was fun.

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