Marc Savlov’s Top 10
1. Babel – Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film gives no quarter to, and precious little hope for, the future of mankind. Still, beneath the globalized dread beats a cinematic heart of righteous, unsullied honesty.
2. Pan’s Labyrinth – Guillermo del Toro’s masterpiece recognizes that the grandest and grimmest of childhood fairy tales are never further away than here, now. Thankfully, so are hope, courage, and GdT.
3. The Science of Sleep – Love, actually, and with Charlotte Gainsbourg, to boot.
4. The Departed – A quartet of actors working at the peaks of their powers, this is viciously entertaining Scorsese loping wolflike down mean streets we’d almost thought he’d forgotten.
5. The Devil and Daniel Johnston – Heartbreaking, rapturous, sublime, Austin. The year’s best documentary, bar none.
6. Brick – Rian Johnson’s directorial debut fused classic film noir existentialism to the hell called high school and did it with enough hipster sangfroid to make even Ross MacDonald do the six-under spin.
7. Half Nelson – Ryan Gosling’s crackhead high school teacher with a heart of gold was a double whammy, upending entrenched Hollywoodisms and leaving you wondering: What can’t this guy do?
8. United 93 – I’ll not watch it twice, but director Paul Greengrass’ stoic recounting of when the impossible engulfed – but never fully overwhelmed – a handful of ordinary human beings is everything I hoped and feared it might be.
9. V for Vendetta – Why call it “the perfect comic book adaptation” when it’s so obviously a new generation’s 1984? Exhilarating in every sense of the word.
10. Borat: CLAMBGNK – With so many troubled scenarios – both in and out of the cineplex – it was downright wonderful to have Cohen’s alter ego bust my jaw with this sneaky, outrageous, and very, very smart roundhouse punch.
NEAR MISSES
Lady Vengeance, Room, Cavite, The Puffy Chair, Little Miss Sunshine
MOST OVERRATED
MOST UNDERRATED
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story, Brothers of the Head
ACTING KUDOS (MALE)
Harry Treadaway & Luke Treadaway (Brothers of the Head), Gael García Bernal (The Science of Sleep), Daniel Craig (Casino Royale)
ACTING KUDOS (FEMALE)
Asia Argento (The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things), Cyndi Williams (Room), Alice Braga (Lower City)
BEST DIRECTOR
Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel), Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth), Paul Greengrass (United 93)
BEST SCREENPLAY (ORIGINAL & ADAPTED)
V for Vendetta (Andy and Larry Wachowski), Brick (Rian Johnson), The Departed (William Monahan)
WORST FILM
Basic Instinct 2 – Kinda like a slo-mo car crash on a blood-slick highway, with Sharon Stone impaled on the steering column and no clown-car ambulance-disco in sight. Exactly like that, actually.
WILD CARD – SUGGEST YOUR OWN CATEGORY
As If There’s Not Enough Random Despair in the World Already? Department: NYC’s sui generis indie-film icon Adrienne Shelly is murdered over a noise dispute. Sigh.This article appears in 2006.