Mike's top ten films of 2001
I think it's a rule that you can't review films and not have a top ten
list each year. For a huge collection of top ten lists from real film critics,
click here.
Here is my list of the top ten films of 2001 (where appropriate, the
text of these reviews come from my recently seen
films page):
-
In
the Bedroom (,
seen 9/9/2001 and 12/31/2001, 2:10, rated R):
Tom Wilkinson
and Sissy Spacek play
Matt and Ruth Fowler, a fifty-something couple in a small fishing town
in Maine. He's a doctor and she teaches music at the local high school.
Their only son, Frank (Nick
Stahl), is home from college and is involved with Natalie Strout (Marisa
Tomei), an older woman and the mother of two boys. William
Mapother plays her estranged, abusive husband, Richard. Too many reviews
of this film go into the plot and give away too much in the process, so
I'll leave it at that. But what I will say that first-time director Todd
Field has done amazing work here. Perhaps directors who come from acting,
as he has done, know better how to get the best performances out of their
actors, for the acting in this film is Oscar-caliber across the board (especially
from Spacek). The directing and cinematography touches are also excellent,
as is the writing, at least through the first two-thirds of the film. I've
now seen this film twice, the first time at the Toronto International Film
Festival on 9/9/2001,
when it was apparently 6 minutes longer (I can't say I noticed the cuts,
and it still has a fairly deliberate pace). At the time I ranked it the top film
of the 43 I saw there, and my opinion has not diminished with time or a second
viewing. The second time I also figured out the meaning
of the title: the "bedroom" is a chamber in a lobster trap with room for
two but not three.
-
Lantana
(, seen 1/16/2002,
2:01, rated R):
The title of this drama refers to an Australian plant with dense, thorny
branches, which describes the film well as it concerns four Australian
couples with densely interconnected, thorny lives. Leon and Sonja, played
by Anthony LaPaglia
and Kerry Armstrong,
are having marital problems. He's having an affair with Jane, who in turn
is separated from Pete. Sonja is seeing a therapist (played by Barbara
Hershey), who is married to John (Geoffrey
Rush)--their marriage is also struggling under a numbness caused by
the loss of their only child. Jane lives next door to Nik and Paula, who
are struggling to get by financially. As the film opens, a woman's dead
body is seen in the lantana. Eventually we find out whose body it probably
is, and the film takes on the outward form of a murder mystery. But that
is just the surface, with the struggles of everyday life visible beneath
and forming the real reason for this film to exist. I found several things
amazing about this film. First, the script painted each of these major
characters as a whole person rather than the mere cartoon character they
would have been in lesser hands, and created this wonderful interconnectedness
to help illustrate the relationships and to marvel at on its own as a thing
of beauty. Second, the performances are uniformly excellent, although perhaps
a notch below those of In the
Bedroom. This film basically swept the Australian Film Institute awards
(acting times four, directing, screenplay, and best film), and for good
reason. It should not be missed.
-
Memento
(, seen 5/26/2001,
1:53, rated R):
This film stars Guy Pearce
as a man whose wife was murdered, and since that time cannot form any long-term
memories. By the end of a short conversation he has forgotten the beginning,
and he is forced to tell most everyone he meets about this problem even
if he has told them many times before. He keeps track of important facts
using notes, Polaroid photos, and even tattoos. This all works fairly well,
but the real star of the film is the narrative structure, in which the
scenes are played in reverse chronological order, which serves to confuse
the viewer into a mental state not too dissimilar from the protagonist's.
This film dares to assume that the audience can think and even concentrate,
and by the time it ended I knew it was one I wanted to own on DVD.
-
Hedwig
and the Angry Inch (,
seen 7/15/2001, 1:35, rated R):
Hedwig is the victim of a botched sex change operation and an escapee
from East Germany, touring the United States and playing with his rock
band in second-rate Red Lobster-like restaurants. This film is directed
by and stars John
Cameron Mitchell, who created the story and starred in the stage version.
It's hard to say exactly why I have it so high on the list, but it has
an energy and a genuineness that I find very hard to resist. The animated
sequence is low budget but fits perfectly and helps to move the story along.
And the musical numbers are quite good and not monotonous, seeing as how
each song has it's own unique style.
-
Dish, The
(, 1:41, rated PG-13):
In 1969, the video from the Apollo 11 moon walk was received via a
radio telescope (a dish) in Australia before being rebroadcast to the world.
This dish was located in the middle of a sheep paddock. This film tells
this story, and in a delightfully humorous Australian way. The lead character
is played by Sam Neill,
and Patrick Warburton
plays the man sent from NASA to keep an eye on the eccentric locals. After
seeing this in the theater, we played it on DVD for the people who came
to our house to see the Leonid meteor shower on 11/17/2001, and it was
just as sweet and charming the second time around.
-
No
Man's Land (,
seen 1/15/2002, 1:38, rated R, in Bosnian/etc. with subtitles):
This film takes place in Bosnia in 1993. It opens with a group of Croatian
soldiers lost in the fog at night while trying to find their front line
position. In the morning they find that they are in "no man's land," between
the front lines of the two sides of the conflict. Being deliberately vague,
since I find that most reviews give away too much, the Croatian(s) from
this group who survive end up in a trench with one or more Serbians from
the other side. Other characters include soldiers from the United Nations,
who have a difficult time finding a common language in which to communicate,
and members of the news media, who seem to affect the news as much as they
cover it. The film has many comic moments, but is at its heart a drama.
It is often difficult to watch, both because of tense situations and because
the inhumanity of war is difficult to watch when it is brought down to
the level of individual humans. The film is lovely to watch, however, as
the Slovenian countryside in which the filming took place is very pretty
and the film's cinematography is excellent, which in turn makes the war
seem even more insane. The acting by the principal characters is very natural,
although some of the other characters are less well developed. If you are
willing to be involved rather than merely entertained, this film is highly
recommended.
-
Black
Hawk Down (,
seen 2/17/2002, 2:23, rated R):
This film tells the story of an American mission in Somalia in 1993.
It starts with a too-brief history of the situation, proceeds rapidly though
introducing the characters, and then dives into the action for the bulk
of the running time. At the moment I'm still shell-shocked. To my eyes, Black
Hawk Down is as good an anti-war film as I've ever seen, yet I'm sure
that for the right people it would be seen as a pro-military film. Similarly
in this country we root for the Americans in the film, while I have read
that bootlegged copies of this film shown in Somalia drew cheers whenever
an American was killed. Perhaps this is a sign of a balanced approach.
My opinion of Saving Private
Ryan has grown over the years since I first saw it because the images
have stuck with me, and I find myself wondering if this film will be similar.
For the moment I will rate it assuming that is the case.
-
Sous
le sable (, English
title: Under the Sand, seen 4/30/2001, 1:36, not rated, in French
with subtitles):
As this film opens, Marie, played by Charlotte
Rampling, and her husband are getting away to a vacation house at the
beach. He disappears in the surf, and the assumption is that he has died.
Marie, however, keeps referring to him in the present tense, which is awkward
for all of her friends. The film is about this process of letting go of
a lost loved one, and what makes it so special is Ms. Rampling's astonishing
performance. I saw it as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival,
where she appeared briefly to introduce the film.
-
Focus
(, seen 9/9/2001,
1:46, rated PG-13):
This film got almost no time in the theaters, which is too bad because
more people should have seen it. It takes place during World War II. William
H. Macy plays a man who gets glasses and is suddenly discriminated
against because he looks Jewish. In an effort to do what his bosses
tell him to do, he in turn discriminates against Laura
Dern, but he feels guilty about it. The film, based on a novel by Arthur
Miller, is an excellent, if somewhat simplistic look at the mob mentality
behind discrimination and fear. I saw this in Toronto on 9/9/2001, and some of
the discrimination that has occurred since the events of September 11 makes this
film seem extremely timely. Besides the acting (especially
from Mr. Macy), the cinematography is also very good.
-
Monsters,
Inc. (, seen
11/2/2001, 1:32, rated G):
This is just a wonderful movie. You probably know all about it already
so I won't bore you with a plot rehash. The story is great, and Pixar's
computer animation just keeps getting better. They are four for four (Toy
Story (1995), A
Bug's Life
(1998), Toy Story
2 (1999),
and now this one). Before the film there was a short, For
the Birds (2000), which was also very good—hopefully it will be on
the DVD.
And here are a few honorable mentions. Most of these are here by virtue
of having been on my top ten list and then getting knocked off as
I saw more films:
-
Tape (,
seen 11/25/2001, 1:26, rated R)
-
Innocence (,
seen 10/21/2001, 1:34, not rated)
-
Beautiful Mind, A (,
seen 2/19/2002, 2:14, rated PG-13)
-
Ghost World (,
1:51, rated R)
As a side note, one of the problems in coming up with a top ten list is
knowing which films belong to which year. I've decided to keep it simple
and use the list from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the
Oscar®
people), which can be found
here
for 2001. Of those, the ones I've seen are:
-
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
-
Ali
-
Amélie
-
American Astronaut, The
-
Anniversary Party, The
-
Baby Boy
-
Bandits
-
Baran
-
Beautiful Mind, A
-
Black Hawk Down
-
Blow
-
Bridget Jones's Diary
-
Bully
-
Circle, The
-
Day I Became a Woman, The
-
Dish, The
-
Focus
-
From Hell
-
Ghost World
-
Gosford Park
-
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's
Stone
-
Heartbreakers
-
Hearts in Atlantis
-
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
-
Heist
-
I Am Sam
-
In the Bedroom
-
Innocence
-
Iris
-
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
-
Jurassic Park III
-
Knight's Tale, A
-
K-PAX
-
Lantana
-
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
-
Last Orders
-
Lord of the Rings, The: The
Fellowship of the Ring
-
Man Who Wasn't There, The
-
Memento
-
Mexican, The
-
Monster's Ball
-
Monsters, Inc.
-
Moulin Rouge
-
Mulholland Drive
-
No Man's Land
-
Ocean's Eleven
-
Our Lady of the Assassins
-
Planet of the Apes
-
Pledge, The
-
Royal Tenenbaums, The
-
Sexy Beast
-
Shrek
-
Spy Kids
-
Tape
-
Training Day
-
Under the Sand
-
Vanilla Sky
-
Waking Life
-
With a Friend Like Harry
Filmography links courtesy of IMDb.
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Copyright © 2001-2003 by Michael S. Weston. All rights reserved.