RICK’S PICKS FOR 2006

I’ve decided to do what all the awards organizations do and create a separate category for documentary features, rather than try to integrate them with story-based films with actors, which may or may not be based on actual events. Following my “dazzling dozen” story-based films will be my “dazzling demi-dozen” documentaries. And so, I’ve selected 18 “must-see” films from the total of 80 (a new record) I saw in 2006.

THE DAZZLING DOZEN


1. UNITED 93

Director Paul Greenglass, who also wrote the screenplay for this searing docudrama, hired relatively unknown actors and some real-life participants in the surreal events of 9/11 so as not to risk having celebrity and star power dilute the grave authenticity and traumatic intensity of what likely went on aboard the only hijacked plane that did not reach its targeted destination. Even though everyone knows the outcome, Greenglass has created an emotionally exhausting tale of uncommon valor rising above terror and chaos. Prepare to be wrung dry as you’ve seldom if ever been before.

2. MRS. PALFREY AT THE CLAREMONT

Irresistibly uplifting and gratifying -- without being cloying, condescending, or gratuitous in any way -- is this radiant British import about intergenerational bonding and the myths, ironies, and truths appurtenant to growing old. Joan Plowright as the title character is as gracious and self-possessed a senior citizen as you’ll ever meet. And she has the good fortune to meet an eminently kindred soul a half-century her junior in the person of Ludovic Meyer (newcomer Rupert Friend).

3. THE HISTORY BOYS

Alan Bennett has adapted for the screen his Tony award-winning play about an irrepressible band of preppy Yorkshire schoolboys interacting and acting out with their temperamentally and philosophically diverse trio of instructors -- featuring key members from the National Theater production staged in London and New York, with no falloff whatsoever in wit, piquancy, passion, and self-realization. I can only guess that this film has been grossly overlooked because it is a boldly literate, sharp-tongued, quirky, and unsparingly candid talkfest. It demands and deserves attention to every spoken word and every unspoken expression and mannerism.

4. THE QUEEN

Helen Mirren, one of Britain’s most respected and honored actors, has crowned her career with an astutely imagined characterization of Queen Elizabeth II in the days after the death of ex-daugher-in-law and nemesis Princess Diana, during which the stoic, self-possessed monarch initially misreads the mood of a grieving public looking to their queen for words of solace and support, and misapplies the tenets of royal propriety and reserve. Only when newbie Prime Minister Tony Blair intervenes is the queen persuaded that the natives are growing hostile toward the monarchy and she must bridge distances and share openly in their sorrow. Peter Morgan has written a highly credible, compelling screenplay and Stephen Frears, up to now associated with grittier themes, proves yet again that he’s a keenly observant and resourceful director.

5. THE DEPARTED

It’s almost impossible to tell the good guys from the bad guys in this ripping good crime yarn about sociopaths on both sides of the law from Martin Scorsese, Hollywood’s maestro of malice. The pungent, provocative, testosterone-drenched screenplay, by Boston native William Monahan, is as much a seething commentary on the pervasive amorality of American society as it is a stylish cat-and-mouse cliffhanger. And there’s no more fitting environment for this nasty tale than the City of Boston, where the vestiges of Puritanism merge with collective Catholic guilt to create a peculiar matriarchal culture of repression, insularity, and bigotry in which mothers and wives buttress the family while their sons and husbands are off making malicious mischief in the bars and streets. Leonardo di Caprio, Mark Wahlberg, and Vera Farmiga are particularly high achievers among a formidable cast of “who’s who” actors. This is one of Scorsese’s three or four best films, and he’ll likely get his long overdue Oscar from the Motion Picture Academy, though I would rate two other helmsmen ahead of him this year.

6. QUINCEANERA

Best described by critic Ella Taylor (The Village Voice) as “a winning tale of sex, real estate, and more or less immaculate conception,” this multi-themed film explores, with honesty, compassion, and humor, transitioning cross-cultural life in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. It captured both the jury prize and audience award at the 2006 Sundance Festival, but has gone largely unrecognized by the community of critics and awards organizations. At the center of the film is the eagerly anticipated quinceanera -- the Mexican Catholic celebratory rite of passage into womanhood -- of Magdalena and her simultaneous and ignominious pregnancy. But the film also deals with sexual exploitation, homophobia, and speculative gentrification that displaces working class families, all the while allowing its audiences to make their own judgments about villains and victims.

7. BABEL

An errant shot fired off in boyish impulsiveness by the son of a Moroccan goat herder sets off a far-ranging and interlocking series of very unfortunate events involving well-meaning citizens of four countries on three continents, several of whom happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Our world has shrunk in terms of our ability to get around in it, but we’re sometimes ill-prepared to cope with unfamiliar cultures and customs under circumstances that cause bad things to happen to good people. Add to this a world jittery about terrorism and drug trafficking, and you have a steaming cauldron of paranoia that can play havoc with political relationships among nations. Visionary Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (21 Grams, Amores Perros) is a master at telling tales of disparate lives on a collision course. Mexican actors Adriana Barraza and Gael Garcia Bernal, Japanese actor Rinko Kikuchi, and Brad Pitt give memorable ensemble performances.

8. AURORA BOREALIS

Inexplicably, this richly textured independent film, a bittersweet tale of deferred coming of age and coming to terms, did not make its way much beyond a few film festivals and a New York art house, and more’s the pity. “Aurora Borealis,” from first-time director James C. E. Burke and set in Minneapolis, is ultimately an ode to loyalties, the ties that bind, and a support system that gives people a firm footing on which to thrive. Joshua Jackson stars as an amiable twentysomething jock named Duncan who can’t seem to find his niche and get some respect in a society that defines status and worth on the basis of “what it is you do” for a living. To make matters worse, he lives in the shadow of a high-profile older brother and the unresolved circumstances of his father’s premature death. But a mutually affirming alliance with his ailing grandfather and a chance at romance with the older man’s physical therapist puts spark and purpose in Duncan’s life. Perspective runs strong in this film, in which the Twin Cities are far more than a chance locale, for quality of life, a prevailing congeniality, a vigorous sense of community pride, and a harsh climate that huddles people together in twos, tens, and thousands.


9. HALF NELSON

Dan Dunne teaches American history in a ghetto middle school -- a position which, from all accounts, can strike fear and loathing in the hearts of most serious educators. But Dan doesn’t have to worry about imposing martial law in the classroom. He’s a facile communicator, in love with his subject matter, and a hit with his students -- as chill a dude as he can be and still stay under the radar of a didactic administration. There’s just one hitch -- just barely outside of the classroom, Dan Dunne is a big-time crack addict about to make a crash landing. One of his students -- a sullen, streetwise 13-year-old named Drey, already on the periphery of the drug scene, helps Dan face his demons with nurturing doses of tough love. Director Ryan Fleck avoids cliché, moralizing, and violent contrivances, while Ryan Gosling gives an intuitive, eloquent, unmannered performance, his eyes the windows to an intrinsically gentle, but anguished and disillusioned soul.


10. BLOOD DIAMOND

The essence of this exigent, passionate, and unsparingly savage film is that the gem industry profits handsomely from the black market purchase of so-called “conflict diamonds,” stones that are mined illegally in African countries engulfed in civil war and take a serpentine route to European traders who sell them to unknowing customers. Historically, these clandestine transactions have funded the purchase of weaponry used by marauding rebels to slaughter their own countrymen on an endemic scale. “Blood Diamond,” set in Sierra Leone and neighboring African countries, is the story of strange bedfellows -- a peaceful fisherman and devoted family man who is separated from his wife and children during a rebel raid on their village, and the South African mercenary, diamond smuggler, and opportunist with whom he strikes a deal he hopes will reunite him with his family. Deeply felt, fully inhabited performances by Leonardo di Caprio and Djimon Hounsou, and inspired direction from Edward Zwick.

11. CASINO ROYALE

Oh yes, all the elements of a typical James Bond film are here -- exotic locales and glitzy pleasure spas; frenetic pursuits on foot, in specially rigged vehicles, and in the unlikeliest of other conveyances; bodacious babes -- double-dealing seductresses who infiltrate and seduce for a living; a creepy male adversary who poses a grave threat to the fragile equilibrium of the universe; and, of course, explosions and other scientific forces that rip asunder and pulverize strategic targets. What distinguishes “Casino Royale” from all the other 007 iterations is not the pinnacle-reaching stunts, awesome special effects, villainy, tyranny, bitchery, and butchery -- it’s the ennobling presence of Daniel Craig, an actor several talent levels above all four of his Bond predecessors. Craig’s 007 has a chink in his bon vivant armor; he’s a sensitive bloke whose metallic blue eyes can well up in a moment of unguarded vulnerability -- a gritty, blue collar, manual labor Bond, but one who cleans up and fits in everywhere.


12. THE PAINTED VEIL (not previously reviewed)

This is the third movie go-around, and, by leaps and bounds, the magical one, for W. Somerset Maugham’s novel set in a remote China village during a cholera epidemic in the mid-1920’s. It was shepherded to the screen by its star, Edward Norton, after years of financial negotiations; costar Naomi Watts was one of Norton’s co-producers. The first version, in 1934, was a vehicle for its celebrity star Greta Garbo, who was teamed with Herbert Marshall and George Brent. The second, in 1957, wrong-headedly renamed “The Seventh Sin” presumably to entice prurient curiosity, was a dreary potboiler abandoned by first-choice director Vincente Minnelli, despite the presence of Eleanor Parker, Bill Travers, Jean-Pierre Aumont, and George Sanders.

Simply told, it’s the story of an altruistic, socially and sexually reticent middle-class bacteriologist named Walter Fane, who falls hopelessly in love with a beguiling upper class woman of limited intellect named Kitty, who, in turn, is looking for an escape hatch from impending spinsterhood and the clutches of her domineering mother. The two run off to Shanghai where she has a fling with a British vice consul named Charlie, practically under the nose of her seemingly diffident husband. But it turns out he’s not so timorous after all. He exacts his revenge with icy matter-of-factness by signing them on to a tour of duty in the midst of the cholera plague, and he will set his wife free only if Charlie agrees to divorce his own wife and marry Kitty. Charlie turns out to be the cad Walter assumes he is, and Kitty has no choice but to accompany her husband on his dicey mission of mercy.

If this backstory, which runs lickety-split through the first 20 minutes, sounds a little like banal soap opera, let me assure you that once the couple reaches their remote destination, “The Painted Veil” becomes a texturally complex tale of medical calamity, culture clash, rising nationalism and crumbling colonialism, self-realization, and interpersonal discovery and redemption. Edward Norton, despite his character’s lack of macho vigor, his steadfast self-containment and emotional minimalism, arguably gives his most authoritative performance (authentically British, as well) to date, making the most of eyes, facial muscles, body language, and vocal intonation to convey internalized but slowly evolving and emerging feelings -- this from an actor who, for a time in his career, specialized in in-your-face sociopathic roles (The Fight Club, American History X, Rounders, The 25th Hour). But Naomi Watts, as Kitty, Liev Schreiber, as Charlie, Toby Jones, as deputy commissioner Waddington, and Diana Rigg, as a Mother Superior, all give credible, often inspiring performances. Sumptuous cinematography and and a gorgeous musical score, Oscar-nominated, by Alexandre Desplat. A romantic drama that harkens back to the golden age of Hollywood.


Also very worth your while: Little Miss Sunshine, The Prestige, Dreamgirls, Russian Dolls, The Last King of Scotland, The Great New Wonderful, Heading South, and The Pursuit of Happyness.


THE DEMI-DOZEN DOCUMENTARIES


1. UNKNOWN WHITE MALE

Absolutely fascinating account of lost and found identity. One rainy summer morning in 2003, 37-year-old Douglas Bruce “awakens” on a subway train headed for Coney Island and has no idea who he is or any memory of his life up to that point. We witness his reinvention over the next two years, as he is reintroduced to his family and friends and emerges as a more grounded, sensitive, and creative human being.

2. WHY WE FIGHT

Those of us old enough to have listened to “Ike” Eisenhower’s outgoing address to the nation in the last week of his presidency didn’t give much weight to his warning about the burgeoning influence of the military-industrial complex on the affairs and decisions of government. But Vermont filmmaker Eugene Jarecki’s blistering documentary exposes the cynicism, deceit, greed, and corruption that underpin a prevailing philosophy in corporate boardrooms and at the Pentagon that war is good for business.

3. AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Al Gore makes the most compelling case yet that greenhouse gas emissions and global warming have the world on the brink of an environmental calamity.

4. WRESTLING WITH ANGELS: TONY KUSHNER

Whirlwinding through the life of a creative genius and passionate activist.


5. THE WAR TAPES

Images of the Iraq war that the nightly news TV cameras never capture. This footage was shot by three National Guard servicemen in the heat of battle, with commentary that is almost as horrifying as the images themselves.


6. JESUS CAMP

To put it mildly, a disturbing documentary about a woman, all geniality and forthrightness on the surface but a socially disconnected soul lurking beneath, who runs a summer camp in North Dakota for young Evangelical recruits. Look for an appearance near the end by Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, who “disgraced” himself and resigned his post as the result of a drugs-and-gay sex scandal.


Nominees in the acting and directing categories are listed in order of merit.

MY “BEST ACTOR” NOMINEES

LEONARDO DI CAPRIO (The Departed, Blood Diamond)
RYAN GOSLING (Half Nelson)
FOREST WHITTAKER (The Last King of Scotland)
EDWARD NORTON (The Painted Veil)
SACHA BARON COHEN (Borat)

MY “BEST ACTRESS” NOMINEES

HELEN MIRREN (The Queen)
JUDI DENCH (Notes on a Scandal)
KATE WINSLET (Little Children)
JOAN PLOWRIGHT (Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont)
NAOMI WATTS (The Painted Veil)

MY “BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR” NOMINEES

DJIMON HOUNSOU (Blood Diamond)
JACKIE EARLE HALEY (Little Children)
MARK WAHLBERG (The Departed)
JAMES McAVOY (The Last King of Scotland)
TOBY JONES (The Painted Veil)

MY “BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS” NOMINEES

ADRIANA BARRAZA (Babel)
VERA FARMIGA (The Departed)
JENNIFER HUDSON (Dreamgirls)
RINKO KIKUCHI (Babel)
EMILY BLUNT (The Devil Wears Prada)


BEST DIRECTOR

PAUL GREENGLASS (United 93)
ALEJANDRO GONZALEZ INARRITU (Babel)
MARTIN SCORSESE (The Departed)
STEPHEN FREARS (The Queen)
EDWARD ZWICK (Blood Diamond)


THE WORST OF THE LOT -- TURKEYS AND TRAVESTIES


THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU

THE DA VINCI CODE

CHANGING TIMES

TRUST THE MAN

HOLLYWOODLAND