Lists That Aren't Yours (2004)

[arsaib4]

Season of lists is coming shortly so here are a couple for now to ponder. I'm sure there will be other threads for our personal top tens so in this thread feel free to add more lists that look interesting or if they're from writers and critics you admire. Also, don't hesitate to talk about a particular film if it interests you.

I get to read these critics quite often through various publications and although they aren't my favorite, I do admire their work.

JONATHAN ROMNEY writes for The Independent in the U.K along with Screen International. He also wrote a book on Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan.

1. Innocence (Lucile Hadzihalilovic) The debut discovery of the year—an eerie, hermetic world inhabited by prepubescent girls, with echoes of Buñuel, Balthus, Borowczyk, and Angela Carter, yet totally, audaciously original.

2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry) Who would have thought that Alain Resnais would be reincarnated in the byzantine convolutions of a Franco-American essay in romantic slapstick?

3. Goodbye Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang) A beautiful, tender, farcical farewell to cinema from a Taiwanese melancholic with a peerless eye for elegant perspectives and rain- dripping interiors.

4. 5 x 2 (François Ozon) French cinema's eternal enfant terrible turned compellingly adult with his anatomy of a marriage, as harrowing as any domestic drama outside Bergman.

5. The Consequences of Love (Paolo Sorrentino) A Mafia intrigue with a difference, as if shot by Antonioni and scripted by Pirandello. Lead actor Toni Servillo's glacial way with a lifted eyebrow could disconcert John Malkovich.

6. Five (Abbas Kiarostami) Five single-take essays in lyrical minimalism, of a sort that might seem routine in gallery video but that worked like a small, silent bomb in the context of Cannes.

7. Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette) Reality cinema as gruelling therapy, Caouette's "my crazy family" confessional is painful viewing but a moving, sometimes weirdly entertaining tour de force. You only pray that it doesn't start a trend.

8. Aaltra (Gustave Kervern and Benoît Delépine) The best fun I've had in the cinema all year? This gloriously malicious Belgian disability road comedy. See it to believe it.

9. The Incredibles (Brad Bird) Further proof that the only consistent aesthetic research in Hollywood comes from the Pixar studio. An exhilarating workout for the eyes.

10. Collateral (Michael Mann) A routine genre outing that leapt to another plane thanks to Mann's pioneering use of high-definition video, resulting in a luminous essay on Los Angeles.


AMY TAUBIN is a contributing editor of Film Comment and Sight & Sound. She also writes for Artforum among other publications.

1. Before Sunset (Richard Linklater) Fragile, passionate, exquisitely wrought, Linklater's modern epistemology of love is a perfect movie.

2. The Big Red One (Samuel Fuller) The posthumous restoration of Fuller's semiautobiographical World War II picture is "termite art," but on an epic scale.

3. Infernal Affairs trilogy (Andrew Lau and Alan Mak) An identity-blasted Hong Kong cops-and-gangsters saga that combines the glamour and moral conundrums of Jean-Pierre Melville's policiers with the tragic weight of The Godfather.

4. A Talking Picture (Manoel de Oliveira) Angry and despairing, it's one of those great late works in which the artist puts aside ego and aesthetic concerns because he has nothing left to lose.

5. Primer (Shane Carruth) The most exciting first feature by a US director since Richard Kelly's similarly time-warped Donnie Darko.

6. Cowards Bend the Knee (Guy Maddin) Hockey players and hairdressers, silent comedy and shadow-drenched '30s horror flicks collide in a deliriously creepy castration fantasy.

7. Café Lumière (Hou Hsiao-hsien) HHH pays tribute to Ozu in a wondrously radiant film that, rather than mimicking the master, finds the ways he might have been compelled by the face and pace of contemporary Tokyo.

8. Fahrenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore) Apparently it changed Hollywood's attitude toward documentaries more than it did voters' minds. Either way, it's one for the history books.

9. Arna's Children (Juliano Mer Khamis and Danniel Danniel) Khamis's mother, a former Zionist, organized a Palestinian children's theater troupe in Jenin. After her death, he seeks out her pupils. A despairing, completely partisan film.

10. Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky) Four angry metalheads in the equivalent of marriage counseling is a template for a generation recognizing that remaining an adolescent when you turn forty is a problem.

[arsaib4]

Ten Best Movies of 2004

1. Sideways
Top vintage goes to Alexander Payne's hilariously melancholy comedy of wine, women and male midlife crisis. As rich and subtle as a fine novel.

2. Before Sunset
Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke reunite in Richard Linklater's breathtaking romance. Great talk. Great ending.

3. Osama
A devastating Afghan drama about a girl caught in the Taliban's nightmare reign. Unforgettable.

4. Million Dollar Baby
A knockout blow from Clint Eastwood, this boxing saga leaves you reeling.

5. Bad Education
Nothing is what it seems in Almodovar's dark, devious film noir about desire, revenge and abusive priests. Gael Garcia Bernal shines.

6. The Aviator
The crown jewel in the Year of the Biopic, Scorsese's epic about eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes dazzles, delights and disturbs.

7. Friday Night Lights
A bone- and heart-crunching look at the glory, and the horror, of Texas high-school football.

8. The Manchurian Candidate
Jonathan Demme reworks a classic thriller into a taut paranoid parable for our times.

9. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Third time's the charm. Alfonso Cuaron finds real magic in his wizardly installment.

10. Kinsey
Bill Condon's smart, nuanced, surprisingly sweet tribute to the revolutionary sex researcher. Liam Neeson is touching as the troubled, tenacious scientist.

[arsaib4]

Top Ten Films of 2004:

1. Million Dollar Baby

Classical filmmaking by Clint Eastwood, pure, simple and true. Great because of what it puts in, and great because of what it leaves out: No flash, nothing much in the way of special effects, no pandering to the audience, but a story that gains in power with every scene, about characters we believe in and care for.

2. Kill Bill, Volume 2

The second half of Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" is not only better than Vol. 1, but makes the earlier movie better by providing it with a context; now we can see the entire story, and it has exuberance and passion, comedy and violence, bold self-satire and action scenes with the precision of ballet. Tarantino is the most idiosyncratic and influential director of the decade, taking the materials of pop art and transforming them into audacious epic fantasies.

3. Vera Drake

Along with Hilary Swank and Uma Thurman, here's another brilliant performance by a woman, in a role that could not be more different from the other two.

4. Spider-Man 2

Here's the best superhero movie ever made.

5. Moolaade

From Senegal, the story of a strong woman who stands up to the men in her tribe when four girls come to her for protection.

6. The Aviator

Martin Scorsese's hugely enjoyable biopic tells the story of a man whose risks, victories and losses were all outsize.

7. Baadasssss!

Not your usual movie about the making of a movie, but history remembered with humor, passion and a blunt regard for the truth.

8. Sideways

A joy from beginning to end, with occasional side trips into sadness, slapstick and truth.

9. Hotel Rwanda

In 1994 in Rwanda, a million members of the Tutsi tribe were massacred by members of the Hutus, in an insane upheaval of their ancient rivalry. Based on a true story, Terry George's film shows how the manager of a luxury hotel (Don Cheadle) saved the lives of his family and 1,200 guests, essentially by using all of his management skills, including bribery, flattery, apology, deception, blackmail, freebies and calling in favors. His character intuitively understands that only by continuing to act as a hotel manager can he achieve anything.

10. Undertow

The third film by David Gordon Green, at 29 the most poetically gifted director of his generation.

[arsaib4]

I don't think it gets better than this!

50 BEST FILMS OF 2004 (Released theatrically in the U.S.)

1. Sideways (Alexander Payne, U.S.) 684 points
2. Eternal Sunshine o t Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, U.S.) 602
3. Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, U.S.) 593
4. Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, U.S.) 471
5. Goodbye Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan) 462
6. Notre musique (Jean-Luc Godard, France) 460
7. Vera Drake (Mike Leigh, U.K.) 407
8. Kill Bill Vol. 2 (Quentin Tarantino, U.S.) 405
9. Dogville (Lars von Trier, Denmark) 388
10. Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembene, Senegal) 387
11. Bad Education (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain) 344
12. The Aviator (Martin Scorsese, U.S.) 336
13. The Incredibles (Brad Bird, U.S.) 310
14. Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi, Iran) 305
15. Fahrenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore, U.S.) 286
16. I Heart Huckabees (David O. Russell, U.S.) 283
17. Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen, U.S.) 275
18. Collateral (Michael Mann, U.S.) 255
19. House of Flying Daggers (Zhang Yimou, China) 228
20. Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette, U.S.) 223
21. Distant (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey) 203
22. Hero (Zhang Yimou, China) 200
23. The Five Obstructions (Lars von Trier, Denmark) 197
24. The Return (Andrei Zvyagintsev, Russia) 194
25. Cowards Bend the Knee (Guy Maddin, Canada) 188
26. The Big Red One: The Reconstruction (Samuel Fuller, U.S.) 184
27. The Saddest Music in the World (Guy Maddin, Canada) 176
28. Kinsey (Bill Condon, U.S.) 174
29. Blissfully Yours (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand) 163
30. Maria Full of Grace (Joshua Marston, U.S./Colombia) 163
31. Since Otar Left (Julie Bertucelli, France) 160.5
32. Time of the Wolf (Michael Haneke, Austria) 160
33. The Brown Bunny (Vincent Gallo, U.S.) 156
34. Infernal Affairs (Alan Mak & Andrew Lau, Hong Kong) 154
35. Springtime in a Small Town (Tian Zhuangzhuang, China) 150
36. Birth (Jonathan Glazer, U.S.) 147
37. Bright Leaves (Ross McElwee, U.S.) 132
38. Spring, S, F, W…and Spring (Kim Ki-duk, South Korea) 127
39. Primer (Shane Carruth, U.S.) 125
40. The Corporation (Jennifer Abbot & Mark Achbar,U.S.) 121
41. Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman (Takeshi Kitano, Japan) 121
42. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, U.S.) 119
43. The Motorcycle Diaries (Walter Salles, Brazil) 107
44. Osama (Siddiq Barmak, Afghanistan) 106
45. Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, U.K.) 105
46. S21: K R Killing Machine (Rithy Panh, Cambodia/France) 104.5
47. Metallica:S K of Monster (J. Berlinger & B. Sinofsky, U.S.) 104
48. Hotel Rwanda (Terry George, U.K.) 103 103
49. Napoleon Dynamite (Jared Hess, U.S.) 98
50. Team America: World Police (Trey Parker, U.S.) 90

Participants: Sam Adams, Thom Andersen, John Anderson, Melissa Anderson, David Ansen, Tim Appelo, Paul Arthur, Michael Atkinson, Joumane Chahine, Michael Chaiken, Chris Chang, Tom Charity, Godfrey Cheshire, David Chute, Travis Crawford, Edward Crouse, Gary Crowdus, Darren D’Addario, Mike D’Angelo, Manohla Dargis, Justine Elias, David Fear, Scott Foundas, Graham Fuller, Chris Fujiwara, Larry Gross, Molly Haskell, Elizabeth Helfgott, Grady Hendrix, J. Hoberman, Robert Horton, Harlan Jacobson, Kent Jones, Kristin Marriott Jones, Dave Kehr, Lisa Kennedy, Glenn Kenny, Laura Kern, Kyung Hyung Kim, Stuart Klawans, Robert Koehler, Michael Koresky, Bill Krohn, Nathan Lee, Dennis Lim, Phillip Lopate, Alice Lovejoy, Tim Lucas, Cynthia Lucia, Guy Maddin, Todd McCarthy, Maitland McDonagh, Wesley Morris, Rob Nelson, Chris Norris, Geoffrey O’Brien, Mark Olsen, Mark Peranson, Tony Pipolo, Richard Porton, James Quandt, Alissa Quart, Bérénice Reynaud, Rachel Rosen, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Joshua Rothkopf, Andrew Sarris, Paul Schrader, Lisa Schwarzbaum, Gavin Smith, Roger Smith, Chuck Stephens, David Sterritt, Bob Strauss, Amy Taubin, Anne Thompson, Desson Thomson, Michael Tolkin, Kenneth Turan, David Walsh, Armond White, Michael Wilmington

[HorseradishTree]

Whoo! Shaun of the Dead's on there. That one's going on my list too. Definitely the funniest film of the year.

I'm glad Team America got to inch its way in on number 50. Props to Parker and Stone.

[oscar jubis]

I listed this wonderful film #7 on my Top10 Foreign Language list for 2003. Had no idea it had an official release in the States this year. According to IMDb there was no official release. According to metacritic.com, the date of release is September 24, 2004. J. Hoberman reviewed it for the Voice in June. I'm wondering if I should remove it from my 2003 list and move it to this year's list, as I plan to do with Hero. Can't wait for Weerasethakul's Tropical Malady, the gay romance that played at the NYFF and should get a release in '05.
I guess we should treat The Big Red One as a new film. Hope I get a chance to watch it by late February when I post my end of the year comments and lists. As far as other films listed, I was only surprised by #36's inclusion.

[arsaib4]

To the best of my knowledge, Blissfully Yours wasn't "officially distributed" in the U.S. However, its sales agency organized a few local screenings here in NYC (and a few around the country perhaps) before NYFF where Weerasethakul's latest Tropical Malady was part of the lineup. Manohla Dargis reviewed Blissfully Yours on Sep 24th (its release date-as you mentioned) in NY Times. I had the opportunity to see this great film through an imported Thai dvd which thankfully had English subs.

J. Hoberman's method is what I'll try to follow as he only picks films with a certain # of public screenings in the U.S (I've never made an annual list before but I plan to starting with 2002.) Sometimes it's hard to find out about all of the screenings that take place so much research is required.

[oscar jubis]

I won an auction on Ebay for Blissfully Yours. The seller was the owner of a Thai shop located in Houston, TX. Tropical Malady has come out on PAL reg. 3 dvd. I will refrain for now because of my limited re$ources and Strand Releasing buying US distribution rights.

[arsaib4]

I didn't know that Malady is out but I'm also gonna wait for now. I've heard from a few who got a chance to see it at the NYFF that this film deserves to be seen in a theater.

[arsaib4]

Top Ten Films of 2004:

1 Star Spangled to Death - Incorporating audiovisual material ranging from political campaign films to animated cartoons to children's phonograph records, featuring Al Jolson, Mickey Mouse, the young Jack Smith, and a half-dozen American presidents, this vast, ironic pageant of 20th-century American history is a unique and mind-boggling contraption, the ultimate underground movie.

2 Dogville - Despite countless filmic, literary, and historical echoes, Lars von Trier's fierce jeremiad is immediately recognizable as something new. For sustained cinematic chutzpah, Dogville has no peers among the year's commercial releases; it lights up the sky the way its purposefully barren set is illuminated by Nicole Kidman's career performance.

3 Notre Musique - The latest and scarcely the least of Jean-Luc Godard's elegies for 20th-century Europe, the cinema, and himself is Olympian in its detachment and heartfelt in its desire to acknowledge the Other.

4 Cowards Bend the Knee - Given the layered, metaphoric combination of masochistic fantasy and blatant wish fulfillment—and a mise-en-scéne no less remarkable than the evocation of forbidden desire and monstrous repression—the movie strikes me as Maddin's masterpiece.

5 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Eternal Sunshine is playful and grueling, like love itself, with a terrific, superbly uningratiating comic ensemble and a sad shabbiness unlike anything in current American movies.

6 Before Sunset - Even more than its only rival, Eternal Sunshine, Richard Linklater's sweet, smart, wonderfully formalist and impossibly modest tour de force dramatizes love's tenacity and evanescence.

7 Springtime in a Small Town - Silenced for nearly a decade, Tian Zhuangzhuang returned with an exquisitely crafted remake of a 1948 Chinese classic. The periodization of the pre-Communist moment gives Springtime a double nostalgia, as well as an undercurrent of historical pathos.

8 Goodbye Dragon Inn - Deft even by Tsai's high standards, Goodbye Dragon Inn effectively brackets the history of Taiwanese cinema—with considerable formal intelligence, elegant understatement, and deadpan humor.

9 Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence - A work of graphic splendor, fluid action, surrealist attitudes, and self-aware cyber-philosophizing, Innocence is the best anime I've ever seen.

10 Anatomy of Hell - The most original thing about Breillat's poetic treatise on gynephobia is its juxtaposition of the cerebral and the visceral. This is the most radical exercise in erotic body horror since David Cronenberg's Crash.


Edit: [Comments added]

[oscar jubis]

Compiled by The Village Voice.

1. BEFORE SUNSET (Linklater)
2. ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SLEEPLESS MIND (Grody)
3. DOGVILLE (Trier)
4. SIDEWAYS (Payne)
5. GOODBYE DRAGON INN (Tsai)
6. NOTRE MUSIQUE (Godard)
7. CRIMSON GOLD (Panahi)
8. I HEART HUCKABEES (Russell)
9. VERA DRAKE (Leigh)
10.MOOLADE (Sembene)
11.MILLION DOLLAR BABY (Eastwood)
12.BLISSFULLY YOURS (Weerasethakul)
- BAD EDUCATION (Almodovar)
14.LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF (Andersen)
15.KILL BILL, VOL.2 (Tarantino)

BEST PERFORMANCE: Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake)

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE: Mark Wahlberg (Huckabees)

BEST DIRECTOR: Richard Linklater (Before Sunset)

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Christopher Doyle (Hero)

BEST SCREENPLAY: Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Sleepless Mind)

[JustaFied]

Quick comment, without formally submitting a "best of" list.

Some of my favorite films of this past year have really reinforced in my mind how much I enjoy the medium of film, particularly as seen on the big screen. I tend to be of the opinion that in the film versus written word comparison, film is the weaker medium in the areas of biography or documentary. That said, there remains a real beauty in the "language" of film, just as there can be in the written word. The "language" I'm referring to here is some combination of the storyline, the acting, the music, the editing, and of course the captured image itself.

Films from the past year that really stand out to me in this regard are:
Collateral
The Life Aquatic
Hero
The Incredibles
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

All of these films deserve to be seen on the big screen to be fully appreciated.

[arsaib4]

Originally posted by JustaFied
Quick comment, without formally submitting a "best of" list.

Some of my favorite films of this past year have really reinforced in my mind how much I enjoy the medium of film, particularly as seen on the big screen. I tend to be of the opinion that in the film versus written word comparison, film is the weaker medium in the areas of biography or documentary. That said, there remains a real beauty in the "language" of film, just as there can be in the written word. The "language" I'm referring to here is some combination of the storyline, the acting, the music, the editing, and of course the captured image itself.

Films from the past year that really stand out to me in this regard are:
Collateral
The Life Aquatic
Hero
The Incredibles
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

All of these films deserve to be seen on the big screen to be fully appreciated



Thanks for sharing your thoughts and films you liked because as I wrote originally, I was hoping that eventually specific films would be brought up in some regard.

You've certainly captured the essence of cinematic "language" with just a few words. What I'm afraid of is the growing dependency on technology by filmmakers to do their work. Beautiful images without any ideas behind them (whether visual or narrative) are winning over critics and audiences while no one notices the lack of the other aspects you mentioned of the "language" of film.

Not that the films you named fall into that category. Infact I couldn't agree more with your choices of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Incredibles.

The Incredibles may not have $20M actors voicing it (they instead chose the likes of Shark Tale and The Polar Express) but along with innovative rubber-like animation, the film has humor and heart--things you can't digitize through CGI. Eternal Sunshine totally does away with CGI and uses a laptop and a Cronenbergian headset to perform its medical procedure. French born Michel Gondry uses his past experiences to create "hip" visuals and the film at times resembles a music-video, albeit one written by Charlie Kaufman. But what keeps the film grounded are the brave performances of the two leads, especially Kate Winslet who deserves yet another Oscar nod.

I was more disappointed with Collateral than perhaps any other American film this year but only because it had the potential to be great. American films don't look like that and Mann employing Hi-Def DV expertly moved from one visual idea to the next beautifully setting up the film in the first half but when he needed to shift into a second gear for the second half, the film faltered due to it's weak script. Cruise and Foxx were thrown into one hackneyed situation after another and the film at the end ended up being reduced to just an above average thriller, no where near Mann's best films. I had less of a problem with Hero because it had an overlapping Rashomon-like narrative structure which Yamou worked well with his action set-pieces and when the film started to run out of gas, some good work from veteran actors like Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Maggie Cheung saved it (maybe it was by design to keep Jet Li away from these two).

I haven't seen The Life Aquatic yet, but from the look of things it seems to be suffering from the "we are quirky" syndrome plaguing much of Amer-Indie landscape (see Garden State) but if it deserves to be seen in a theater then I might give it a shot.

[JustaFied]

Originally posted by arsaib4
What I'm afraid of is the growing dependency on technology by filmmakers to do their work. Beautiful images without any ideas behind them (whether visual or narrative) are winning over critics and audiences while no one notices the lack of the other aspects you mentioned of the "language" of film.

Storyline is still #1 in my book (along with capable direction, of course). And I think that even with the increase in use of technology in film today, critics (and even some audience members) continue to value a good story above all. The two big animated films of this past year, A Shark's Tale and The Incredibles, received decidedly different types of reviews; The Incredibles had a much stronger story, and it resonated more with both critics and with audiences. So there's still hope out there that improvements in technological wizardy won't simply overwhelm everything else we're looking for in a film. The Lord of the Rings trilogy remains to me the quintessential example of the masterful blend of technology and story. Peter Jackson (or anyone else) couldn't have made those films 25 years ago.

The more I think I about, the more I agree with you on Collateral. With a better story, it could have been a really remarkable film. Mann seems so preoccupied with playing out his Cops & Robbers theme that he's not making it to the next level, story-wise. It's disappointing, because he's otherwise such a talented and entertaining filmmaker.

The Life Aquatic seems to me to be beyond simply being "quirky". Garden State was quirky in a cute sense; this film is in another world entirely. I just sit back and marvel at what Wes Anderson comes up with. No, this ain't Shakespeare; it's joyful filmmaking in a cotton candyish sort of way.

Million Dollar Baby may be the best film of the year. It's an absorbing story with powerful acting told with a deft directing touch. The music (composed by Eastwood himself) is wonderful as well. What more can you ask for? Sideways is a great story with great acting, but Payne's direction was average at best. I always notice in his films the clunky, annoying music that seems to get in the way of the story itself.

[arsaib4]

Originally posted by JustaFied
The Lord of the Rings trilogy remains to me the quintessential example of the masterful blend of technology and story. Peter Jackson (or anyone else) couldn't have made those films 25 years ago.

True, and we probably won't come across anything like it for quite some time.

The Life Aquatic seems to me to be beyond simply being "quirky". Garden State was quirky in a cute sense; this film is in another world entirely. I just sit back and marvel at what Wes Anderson comes up with. No, this ain't Shakespeare; it's joyful filmmaking in a cotton candyish sort of way.

I'll post my thoughts after watching the film this week.

Sideways is a great story with great acting, but Payne's direction was average at best. I always notice in his films the clunky, annoying music that seems to get in the way of the story itself.

I've made a post on Sideways in its thread. I guess we can continue there.

[arsaib4]

Editor-at-Large "Film Comment"/Contributer "Cahiers du cinéma"

Best of 2004

1. The Big Red One: The Reconstruction (Fuller)
The Holy Girl (Martel/Argentina)
Saraband (Bergman/Sweden)

2. The Avaiator (Scorcese)
Before Sunset (Linklater)
Clean (Assayas/France)

3. The Garden (Wiseman)
Kings and Queen (Desplechin/France)
Million Dollar Baby (Eastwood)
Pin Boy (Poliak/Argentina)
Sideways (Payne)
Spartan (Mamet)
Triple Agent (Rohmer/France)

[arsaib4]

Möller is Film Comments's European editor (and my favourite Euro critic). He has curated many festivals around Europe especially in Germany, his homeland.

1. Izo (Takashi Miike/Japan)

(rest alphabetical)

The Aviator
Before Sunset
Cantando Dietro I Paraventi/Singing Behind Screens (Ermanno Olmi/Italy)
Collateral
Frau fährt, Mann schläft (Rudolf Thome/Germany)
L'Intrus/The Intruder (Claire Denis/France)
Land der Vernichtung/Land of Annihilation (Romuald Karmakar/Germany)
Die Nacht singt ihre Lieder/Nighsongs (Romuald Karmakar/Germany)
9 Songs (Michael Winterbottom/U.K.)
Posledniy Poezd/The Last Train (Alexei German Jr./Russia)
Rois et Reine/Kings and Queen (Arnaud Desplechin/France)