Three directors made the best films of their careers in 2002 — Todd Haynes, Hayao Miyazaki and Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund. Well, that's four directors, but between them, they made three movies ...
In addition, Peter Jackson reached the midpoint in his mammoth Lord of the Rings trilogy. And some guy named Steven Spielberg made not one but two really good movies.
Lots to choose from.
I went with Miyazaki because the only person who plausibly rivals him for the title of history's greatest animator is Walt Disney. No Miyazaki, no Japanese anime, at least not on this side of the Pacific.
By the way, here's one of my favorite quotes from the late great Roger Ebert about animation generally and Miyazaki specifically:
"Already I have heard from a few people who don't want to see it "because it's Japanese." This is solid-gold ignorance. "Is it only dubbed?" I was asked. You dummy! All animated films are dubbed! Little Nemo can’t really speak!"
The man was a genius. Miss him every Friday ...
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
I recently took time to revisit the works of Wes Anderson, from his tentative first outing Bottle Rocket to last year's entertainingly peculiar paean to the early days of the space race, Asteroid City — and everything in between.
And I swear I wrote a lengthy post, ranking his films, etc. But I can't find it anywhere. Maybe it's in a mislabeled file someplace. Maybe I only thought I wrote it. Maybe I just laid it all out for the dog on one of our long morning walks (as I am wont to do) and then forgot to type it up.
Well, if I did, the dog's not giving it up and my brain has already dumped that part of my memory to make room for Thursday night trivia.
Suffice it to say, after initially dismissing it during its run twenty-plus years ago, I now feel that Anderson's 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums is worthy of nominations for picture, actor, director and supporting actress. Anderson is a quirky director — "twee" is the word most often associated with his work — and it takes time and the right frame of mind to get used to him.
I've acquired the taste.
The Royal Tenenbaums, a comedy that plays like a lost chapter from J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey, explores one of Anderson's favorite themes — family dysfunction. Gene Hackman is a charming con man who would like to reconnect with his brilliant but thoroughly screwed up kids (Luke Wilson, Ben Stiller and Gwyneth Paltrow) — because he's dying? Because he loves and misses them? Or because he's broke and just got thrown out of his apartment?
Well, as we've spent the last decade or so learning to our chagrin, truth is at best flexible and very much in the eye of the beholder.
The first time around, I found it all insufferably wacky but on second viewing, it felt more like one of those classic 1930s screwball comedies with an undercurrent of melancholy running through it — very much like My Man Godfrey, say, filmed in bright primary colors instead of glorious black-and-white.
In fact, I'll bet you could swap out William Powell for Gene Hackman and get just as big a kick out of both movies ... just thinking out loud here in the Monkey house.
Also stars Anjelica Huston, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Danny Glover and Seymour Cassel.
My favorite Wes Anderson film is still The Grand Budapest Hotel (read my review here) but I'd also recommend The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, Isle of Dogs, The French Dispatch (if you like old New Yorker magazine articles) and the aforementioned Asteroid City.
On the whole, whimsical, gentle, amusing.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
I've trashed the infamous Sight & Sound movie poll often enough (here and here) that it's only fair to mention when they get one right.
Directed by Wong Kar-wai, In the Mood for Love is a bittersweet romance between two lonely people (Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung) who realize their spouses are cheating on them, meet to commiserate and, inevitably, fall in love. But instead of a traditional rom-com, noir thriller or sweaty sex drama, the film is filled with longing, misunderstanding and fidelity to a moral code that serves no great purpose.
To quote film critic Peter Travers, "in the hands of a hack, In the Mood for Love could have been a snickering sex farce. In the hands of Wong Kar-wai ... the film is alive with delicacy and feeling." And Scott Tobias wrote, "Further complemented by the gentle lull of Nat King Cole songs, In The Mood For Love casts a dreamy and melancholic spell that remains unbroken long after the closing credits have rolled."
In the Mood for Love was an immediate hit with audiences and critics alike, and directly influenced such filmmakers as Sofia Coppola and Barry Jenkins.
Highly recommended.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Once again I've tinkered with the best picture and director categories to take into account two movies that are highly regarded for wildly different reasons.
One you've probably heard of — The Blair Witch Project, a horror movie with a tiny budget that minted a fortune at the box office. I thought it was good but it didn't occur to me that it would continue to have legs among film fans and critics twenty-five years later. Hence it's inclusion here.
The other, Beau Travail, is ostensibly an adaptation of Herman Melville's Billy Budd set in the modern day French Foreign Legion, but it's really pure cinematic revenge for one hundred years of the so-called "male gaze" (defined here) with director Claire Denis doing the gazing and a platoon of hot, sweaty soldiers serving as the object of her camera's lust.
It was voted one of the ten best movies of all-time in the most recent Sight & Sound poll. Personally, I'm not buying it — to me, it's ninety minutes of men ironing shirts — but a lot of people who think they know what they're talking about disagree with me and you should have the opportunity to vote for it.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Named for Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.
To see a list of nominees and winners by decade, as well as links to my essays about them, click the highlighted links:
Remember: There are no wrong answers, only movies you haven't seen yet.
The Silent Oscars
And don't forget to check out the Silent Oscars—my year-by-year choices for best picture, director and all four acting categories for the pre-Oscar years, 1902-1927.
Look at me—Joe College, with a touch of arthritis. Are my eyes really brown? Uh, no, they're green. Would we have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save a person from drowning? That's a key question. I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it. Say, haven't you anything better to do than to keep popping in here early every morning and asking a lot of fool questions?
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