Chris Knipp's Best Movie Lists For 2006

[Chris Knipp]

CHRIS KNIPP'S BEST MOVIE LISTS FOR 2006

(Alphabetical within category)

AMERICAN AND ENGLISH DIRECTORS

Blood Diamond (Edward Zwick 2006)
The Departed (Martin Scorsese 2006)
Eastwood’s Iwo Jima Diptych (Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima 2006)
The Good Shepherd (Robert De Niro 2006)
The History Boys (Nicholas Hytner 2006)
Inland Empire (David Lynch 2006)
Little Children (Todd Field 2006)
The Queen (Stephen Frears 2006)
A Scanner, Darkly (Richard Linklater 2006)

BEST FOREIGN

The Aura (El Aura, Fabián Bielinsky 2005) DVD (April)
Babel (Alejandro González Iñárritu 2006) DVD (Feb.)
The Child (L’Enfant, Dardennes brothers 2005) DVD
Clean (Oliver Assayas 2005) DVD
Days of Glory (Indigènes, Raschid Boucharib 2005)
Fateless (László Koltai 2005) DVD
Gabrielle (Patrice Chéreau 2005) DVD
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu 2005) DVD
Le Petit Lieutenant (Xavier Beauvois 2005) DVD (April)
Volver (Pedro Almóvar 2006)

SHORTLISTED

Brothers of the Head (Keith Fulton, Louis Pepe 2006) DVD
The Devil Wears Prada (David Frankel 2006) DVD
Duck Season (Temporada de patos, Fernando Eimbecke 2006) DVD
Half Nelson (Ryan Fleck 2006) DVD (Feb.)
Heading South (Vers le sud, Laurent Cantet 2006) DVD (Feb.)
Mutual Appreciation (Andrew Bujalski 2005) DVD (Feb.)
The Prestige (Christopher Nolan 2006) DVD (Feb.)
Three Times (Hou Hsiau-hsien 2005) (DVD Mar.)
United 93 (Paul Greengrass 2006) DVD
Venus (Roger Mitchell 2006)
Wassup Rockers (Larry Clark 2006) DVD

BEST 2006 FILMS YET UNRELEASED IN THE US

Bug (William Friedkin 2006)
Dans Paris (Christophe Honoré 2006)
Flanders (Bruno Dumont 2006)
Lights in the Dusk (Aki Kaurasmaki 2006)
Singer, The (Quand j'étais chanteur, Xavier Giannoli 2006)
News from Afar (Ricardo Benet 2004)
Play (Alicia Scherson 2005)
The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach 2006)
Zim & Co. (Pierre Jolivet 2005)

BEST LONG-DELAYED U.S. FOREIGN RELEASE

Army of Shadows (L’Armée des ombres, Jean-Pierre Melville 1969)

BEST DOCUMENTARIES

An Inconvenient Truth (Davis Guggenheim 2006) DVD
Who Killed the Electric Car? (Chris Paine 2006) DVD
Iraq in Fragments (James Longley 2005)
The Road to Guantanamo (Michael Winterbottom 2006) DVD

MOST OVERRATED

Borat (Larry Charles) DVD (Mar.)
Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón 2006)
Half Nelson (Ryan Fleck 2006) DVD (Feb.)
Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno, Guillermo del Toro 2006

WISH I'D SEEN BEFORE I MADE THESE LISTS

Battle in Heaven (Batalla en el cielo, Carlos Reygadas 2006)[/b]

Also on Knipp website. (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?t=730)

[oscar jubis]

I'd like to clarify that, in the US, The Aura and Le Petit Lieutenant are still not available on dvd. The latter will be available on April 10th.
Since I read your comments and reviews throughout the year, I'm not surprised by the films you list. I just didn't think you liked Clean and The Departed enough to make it into your Top 10s.
Looks like this year we're posting our lists in different threads. I'll post mine in three weeks.

[Chris Knipp]

We could still put all our 2006 Best Lists on one thread -- a good idea. I just put mine separate because mouton did his separate. I coiuldn't very well post my lists on "his" list thread.

I have gone back and tweaked my DVD listings. My Documentaries list is my weakest because I did not see some of the most praised ones. However, I am convinced of the importance of the ones I listed. As recent discussion has shown I hope, I don't list things just because I "like" them, hence my listing of Clean, whose merits I have had plenty of time to think about. I can't say I didn't "like" The Departed. It's a rip-snorter. I just was surprised Scorsese would do a conventional remake. For what it is, it's great.

I am pleased to say that Garrel's Regular Lovers is now showing at Cinema Village in NYC. So I can list it for 2007. I hope a lot of my "best unreleased" listings are released eventually. The Wind That Shakes the Barley is going to open in the US in "limited release" in March, IFC. Friedkin's Bug is listed as to be released in the USA in 2007 but no month is given.

I hope Days of Glory (Indigènes) comes out on a US DVD. (it is on a French one of course, since it's a prizewinner). This is a Weinstein item. It is not getting the promotion it should have, not so far anyway.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
My Documentaries list is my weakest because I did not see some of the most praised ones. However, I am convinced of the importance of the ones I listed.
I'm watching Iraq in Fragments next week. My favorite Iraq doc remains The War Tapes. I was surprised you didn't include The Devil's Miner, which will definitely be on my list of favorite documentaries. I think you'd enjoy Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke. Netflix has it.

I am pleased to say that Garrel's Regular Lovers is now showing at Cinema Village in NYC. So I can list it for 2007. I hope a lot of my "best unreleased" listings are released eventually.
I was surprised Hoberman didn't like Regular Lovers. He introduced me to Garrel about a decade ago, but I didn't have a chance to watch films by Garrel until '05.
I watched Play at two separate film festivals because I didn't think I'd have another chance. Now it looks like there will be a dvd release of it in the UK. I hope you remember Benet's film well because I doubt we'll get a chance to watch it again, ever.

I hope Days of Glory (Indigènes) comes out on a US DVD.
It will. I will post dates when they're announced.

[Chris Knipp]

I hope you remember Benet's film well because I doubt we'll get a chance to watch it again, ever.
You're showing your fatalistic side there! How about if somebody gets the film and shows it again? Surely that can happen. I hope it can come out on DVD. It impressed me more than Play though I loved Play.

I'd forgotten about The Devil's Miner. My Documentary list just isn't very good. On the main English language and foreign fiction items I feel well covered.

I wouldn't be surprised at anyone's not liking Regular Lovers. It's extremely long and rather boring. But it grows on you. The black and white is fine. And I cannot resist Louis Garrel. He's the perfect young French poet. Oh yes.

I gues you're assuming INDIGÈNES will come out on DVD and not too far off and I guess you're right given the US distributor.

[cinemabon]

I wanted to just add a word or two on Pan's Labyrinth, which my son and I just saw at the local cinema. (I could not locate the review)

While the some of the images I would have to say are unique, I found the two storylines disturbing. I'm afraid I did not see the rating before taking my son with me. I thought it was a fairy tale. In the first ten minutes, the captain is beating a young man's face in with the bottom of a bottle, then turns and shoots his father through the throat. Then he shoots both men repeatedly in the head. Cut to a cute little innocent girl having fairyland delusions when she encounters an old labyrinth on the grounds of the farm(?) headquarters of the Franco Fascists. But wait, the strange cutting between the two does not end there! We are subjected to one brutal scene after another while also being taken for a ride that somehow this little girl's imaginary world is supposed to mean something (as the ending made the rest of her involvment meaningless). When I read the majority of critical reviews, I was astonished at how many critics spoke of 'dream imagery' and this is Del Toro's masterpiece. But he's only made just a handful of movies, and films like Blade II can hardly be called 'art!'

Therefore, I was extremely pleased to see you label it as one of the most overrated films of the year... as I would have to whole heartedly agree.

[oscar jubis]

I let my 13 year-old watch several R-rated films, which I think are appropriate for young teens. But Pan's Labyrinth deserves its R-rating and I'm glad I didn't take him. I'm also glad the film doesn't shy away from presenting the hideous violence prevalent in Spain during the Civil War and thereafter, when the defeated Republicans were hiding in mountainous and rural areas while hopelessly waiting for assistance from the Allies. I would have felt uncomfortable watching this with my son. The alternate fantasy world conjured up by Ofelia is a child's way of processing the real life horrors, and it's quite richly imagined and visualized by del Toro and his crew. The film won the British Academy Award for Best Foreign Film of 2006 today. I think the honor is quite deserved.

[Chris Knipp]

The film won the British Academy Award for Best Foreign Film of 2006 today. I think the honor is quite deserved.Obviously cinemabon and I completely disagree and consider del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth overrated. That in my case doeen't mean I don't recognize del Toro's skills and energy as a filmmaker or the quality of the team he put together to work on his latest film. My "overrated" list is not meant to indicate bad films. On the contrary my "overrated" this year are quite accomplished and in some cases rather unique. Not at all to be confused with a "Year's Worst" list which I don't make because I try to stay away from the truly bad. As for the "Overrated" ones, this list only indcates films of note that have been given more attention than they deserve at the expense of others equally good or better. I would agree with Jonathan Rosenbaum http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/moviereviews/2007/070105/ in his comparison of Pan's Labyrinth and Cuaron's Children of Men: del Toro's film for better or for worse is impressively original, while Cuaron's is a story full of holes ("creativity by committee," as Rosenbaum puts it), and a film that "steadily devolves as he moves from thoughtfully suggestive dystopian science fiction to relatively thoughtless and childish action-adventure to even more mindless war movie." Where I don't agree with Rosenbaum in this review is on his evaluation of Babel, even though he's probably right that Innaritu's interpretion of the "art movie" "genre" (of course not a genre, as R. notes, but treated as one by the studios), is"like Christopher Nolan's Memento," as being "characterized by misanthropic plots that are little more than puzzles to be solved." Exception: Babel is not "misanthropic." It has a deeply humanistic core, and that's why despite the pretention of its grand scheme, given the beauty of its mise-en-scene and the excellence of its acting, I like it. I'm not sure there was a profound interrelationship between the segments of Amores Perros either, but as with the present case the segments were so richly comosed (some always more than others) that I loved the film. 21 Grams was Innaritu's worst effort, weighed down by its pretentions and its over-tricky inter-cutting of sequences.

I don't know why we should keep comparing Cuaron and Innaritu and del Toro all the time, just because they're all Mexican, but their sudden ascndency is remarkable and fortunate and they're all three hugely accomplished.

Please check your email, Oscar.