The Best and Worst of 2006

Here are my personal top and bottom six of 2006:

1. The Hidden Blade: A hauntingly beautiful meditation on honor, duty, and love, this film made me feel like I was witnessing something very special. I loved it, loved it, loved it.

2. United 93: The most terrifying movie of 2006, this picture eschews cheap melodrama in favor of a (relatively) clear-eyed portrayal of events as they unfolded on that day. Paul Greengrass took the time to make United 93 technically accurate as well as heart-wrenching, giving the film value as a record as much as a cinematic experience.

3. Borat: The biggest, most pleasant surprise of 2006, Borat combines sharp satire with broad humor and serves it with a disarming smile. I laughed, I thought, I laughed some more, I thought some more. Wow.

4. Running Scared: Another surprise. Running Scared is pulp film done right: fast, twisting, creative, and with a sense of the joy of filmmaking. Running Scared is violent, gentle, and scary; sometimes all at the same time. I watched it, then watched it again with the commentary track. What a treat.

5. A Prairie Home Companion: This film reflects the sardonic gentleness of its namesake radio program, combining humor and pathos in a moving and affirming package. It serves as a fitting bookend to the career of the great Robert Altman.

6. Slither: What a fun movie! Slither combines hilarious dialogue with scare monsters, leaving audiences shaking with laughter one moment and jumping with fright the next. Nathan Fillion, an actor still looking for his breakthrough role, anchors a cast doing great comic work and creating a fun time at the movies. I don’t know how well this will do in the home market, but I loved seeing it in the theater.


6. Apocalypto: Like ‘The Running Man’ and ‘Hard Target,’ this hunted-man picture keeps the pace up and the surprises coming. The movie hews so closely to the formula, however, that it bore no surprises. Apocalypto benefits from its exotic setting, but its setting is all that recommends it.

5. Superman Returns: A story in which the protagonist remains unchanged is not a story. It’s a vignette. Superman Returns gives us a two-hour long vignette trying to trick us into thinking its more through visual wizardry. The Spider-Man series taught that character comes first. Superman Returns skipped that class.

4. Little Miss Sunshine: This film made me feel sad and depressed. OK, so did The Bicycle Thief, but LMS lacked the technical virtuosity of that classic. This film garnered critical acclaim in 2006, but I guess I missed the bus.

3. Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story: I respect this film’s attempt to do something unique in its adaptation of an unadaptable novel. Unfortunately, it failed. Tristram Shandy felt so clearly like an experiment that I couldn’t lose myself in it, and a film that holds its viewers at arm’s distance does not make for a good time at the movies.

2. Bubble: This slice-of-life drama tried to create art out of dull people doing uninteresting things. While there are art forms that can surely accomplish this, film is not among them. Ebert called Bubbler a classic, a masterpiece. I guess I missed the bus on this one, too.

1. Poseidon: Poseidon struck me as a movie for people who never go to movies. For those of us who do see the occasional film, it felt calculated and hackneyed, with obvious themes and an easily predictable mortality roster. I think of some of the movies on my Bottom Six as honorable misfires: at least their creators tried to stretch. Poseidon’s aggressive mediocrity seems doesn’t even let it take credit for trying. Additionally, Poseidon felt painful. In a movie about one bad thing happening after another, it was hard to feel anything other than dread. Boredom and dread: not a recipe for a good time at the movies.

The Hidden Blade

Maybe you can’t trust my comments on THE HIDDEN BLADE, Yoji Yamada’s follow-up to THE TWILIGHT SAMURAI. You see, I’m a sucker for samurai movies – I have been since THE SEVEN SAMURAI. Feudal Japan captures my imagination: the code of Bushido, the architecture, the stark aesthetic of Kendo. The last time I was in Japan, I must have logged 500 miles on the local trains in the greater Tokyo-Yokohama megalopolitan area. A guy can burn out on Europe’s gothic cathedrals pretty quickly, but there’s no such thing as one too many Zen shrines.

THE HIDDEN BLADE tells the tale of Katagiri, a samurai living at the end of the Edo period. It’s less than a decade before the fall of the Shogun and Meiji restoration, and Edo’s long traditions of honor and duty have become more a tool for controlling the samurai class than the living code of the Shogunate. Katagiri believes in these traditions to the core of his being: he takes pride in the fact that his father had committed seppuku for an error that was the man’s responsibility, but not his fault. As Katagiri comes to realize that he serves a system that is unworthy of him, his life becomes increasingly complicated. One of his boyhood comrades and fellow samurai has been convicted of treason, casting the shadow of suspicion on all the samurai of his rural village. Additionally, Katagiri find himself at the center of a local scandal involving himself and an angelic servant girl he rescues from an abusive household.

As audience members, we come to care for Katagiri and his circle. These are honorable people in dishonorable times, making the best decisions of which they are able. The film takes the time to fully invest us in its world and its people, and it moves at a deliberate (though not dull) pace that both evokes its era and adds impact to the swift decisions that can mean the difference between life and death. Yamada films THE HIDDEN BLADE in a graceful, formal manner, calling attention to himself only through the deftness of his touch and the grace of his choices.

Sometimes, a movie seeks only to pass the time. Sometimes, a movie seeks only to entertain. Sometimes, a movie aspires to art. THE HIDDEN BLADE is the latter, and it succeeds.

That is, if you can trust me.