Movies in 2006

My consumption of movies really dropped in 2006, and I've gotten nowhere near any prestige pictures, but I did stumble into some worthwhile films.

There were some popcorn movies I thought were seriously great, most of which made no money. Casino Royale and Pirates of the Caribbean both made money with plots that actually required people to pay attention to keep up, which was somewhat inspiring. I got excited about a theme park ride movie sequel of all things, and after 40 years, finally a movie worth mentioning in the same breath as Thunderball. Then there was Slither, an absolutely hilarious horror film seen by eight people. I found the long-awaited Miami Vice to be very engrossing in its recreation of the good and the bad of the original show, and I was just recently raving about District B13.

Then there was Borat and Jackass, both of which were hilarious and significant achievements for the respective creators. I didn't think the Jackass franchise could ever build on the first movie, but they really did a fantastic job of finding new, stupid ways of exploiting the human capacity for Schadenfreude. Borat is something I never thought could support a 90 minute narrative, but it's amazing how much I bought into Cohen's performance. And going back to his roots in Clerks II sounded like a desperate, career ending move for Kevin Smith, but that movie was the funniest thing I've seen in ages.

There was some slightly more sophisticated material mixed in there, such as Kinky Boots, the true story of one man's dream of creating stiletto heels for men, and the supremely suspenseful Hard Candy in which a teenage girl sets a castrating trap for a pederast, and the black comedy Thank You for Smoking. And I still think the jokes aimed at keeping the parents awake in Hoodwinked were funnier than did the whiners who came out saying, "Hey, this isn't Shrek!" Inside Man was a fascinating heist movie, and I found The Prestige absolutely gripping.

Some of the failures were interesting in their own right, where the plot of The Illusionist left me a little underwhelmed, the recreation of a long since vanished Vienna and the whole style of the production were worth seeing. Similarly, the production design and use of color in Ultraviolet was visually a whole lot of fun, even if the movie barely distinguishes itself from your average video game movie. V for Vendetta really takes the prize though as a movie worth seeing just so you can imagine it done better, or just to study in detail everything surrounding the
main characters, like Stephen Rea and Stephen Fry, or the extremely moving conclusion when all of London takes off their masks.

The crown jewel so far is without a doubt The Depahted, which is the sort of film so great that it automatically lifts everyone in it to another level. It's like Ray Liotta in Goodfellas, Anthony Anderson or Vera Farmiga can do anything now and still point to this film on their resume... I'm just saying, when they put together the Oscar dead people montage, Anthony Anderson's clip will be from this movie and not Romeo Must Die. Leonardo Di Caprio finally has the film that finally lets him joke about Titanic, because he's finally out of its shadow, and it's good enough to win him an Oscar. Martin Scorsese may finally win a best director Oscar, although history suggests he'll lose to an actor turned director for a movie nobody will remember in ten years, so De Niro will probably win for The Good Shepherd, a far more Important Film, or Clint Eastwood will get yet another lifetime achievement award for Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, so the Greatest Generation can be honored some more before the last of them die out. Anyways, The Depahted is still the best film I've seen since Brokeback Mountain, which I gather certain people living in Near North are still afraid to see, lest it provoke long-buried feelings in them, and they might find their fingers wandering towards the closet door...