The 10 Best Films Of 2006

3. “Old Joy”
“…Transformative, amazing, I’m at a whole new place now,” says indie-rocker Will Oldham‘s arrested development Kurt, a delusional, disheveled thirty-something man-child still clinging to youthful, unrealistic idealism. The other, Daniel London, is silently grappling with impending fatherhood under a stressed household. Introspective, idyllic and melancholy, Kelly Reichardt’s quietly potent travelogue about bygone eras and friendship, driven by a serene, atmospherically folksy score by Yo La Tengo, is a tranquil, yet penetrating masterwork. A two-hander, the story follows a pair of erstwhile best friends who take a road trip to a Portland hot spring and discover that they’re distinctly out of tune with each other’s life rhythms. Minimalist and low on narrative, the reflective picture — the bucolic scenery also hinting at the decay and uncertainty of America, which is also echoed on the subtle, but constant talk radio reports — is an acute expression of strained amity, but with bonds that are hard to break.

2. “The Proposition”
“Australia. What fresh hell is this?” Considering the absolute brutality of the Australian outback, it’s surprising that there haven’t been more great takes on the Western genre from down under. But, boy, was the wait worth it for director John Hillcoat’s “The Proposition.” Re-teaming with Nick Cave, who was also behind the script for Hillcoat’s debut “Ghosts…of the Civil Dead,” the story takes on the mythic qualities of some of Cave’s best work, helped in no small part by his score with fellow Bad Seed Warren Ellis — probably our favorite of the musician’s film work. It’s a nasty, grimy little movie, reminiscent of the best of Peckinpah, with a fantastic cast (John Hurt and Danny Huston being the stand-outs) buried under layers of blood, dirt and sweat — these are people battling against an endless, godless landscape, and they’re losing. Plus, it has the best exploding head scene of the ’00s…

1. “Volver”
Set in a windy, superstitious Spanish village, Pedro Almodóvar’s tremendously rich melodrama shimmers with vibrant, colorful passion and familial melancholy. The combination of Almodóvar regulars is inspired; voluptuary Penélope Cruz reminds us how amazing she is when acting in her native tongue (she was nominated for an Oscar and tied for a Cannes actress award), plus Blanca Portillo and Lola Dueñas make perfect complementary accents. The film’s title (“Return” in English) is echoed by the return/resurrection of the protagonist sisters’ mother thought to be a ghost (and played by former Almodóvar muse Carmen Maura, returning to work with the auteur after a falling-out that lasted a decade). Enhanced by Alberto Iglesias‘ score, the intricate, and at times comical, Hitchcockian thriller is ultimately a deeply felt consideration of death, family and forgiveness. One of the decade’s best and a deeply affecting work.

Special Honorable Mention:
“The Death of Mr. Lazarescu”
In this mordant satire, a dying man finds himself at the mercy of the Romanian healthcare system as he slowly dies in front of everyone, powerless to stop his burial from occurring under a sea of red tape and bureaucracy. Cristi Puiu‘s black comedy started the buzz on what everyone considers the Romanian New Wave, and echoes of this film are still felt in its bleak, oppressive worldview, comically overwhelmed protagonist, and exceedingly flawed mortality.

For Your Mild Consideration
“Babel”
There’s no denying that “Babel” is a partly manipulative, pile-on tragedy porn with a hackneyed conceit — yet another one of Guillermo Arriaga’s the-world-is-all-interconnected contrivances. However the screenwriter would forever divorce himself from director Alejandro González Iñárritu after this film, and we’d love to believe that the filmmaker’s deviation from the text is the reason the picture is not a total waste (Arriaga’s tepid debut directorial effort, “The Burning Plain” suggested the man was running on creative fumes). The manufactured multi-narrative charts how one seemingly meaningless act — a Japanese hunter gives a rifle to a Moroccan goat farmer whose children inadvertently shoot an American tourist while their children are stuck in Mexico — can have rippling consequences across the planet. Yet on their own, the stories are completely absorbing and deeply moving (Cate Blanchett, Brad Pitt, Gael Garcia Bernal are remarkable, and Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi would earn Oscar nominations for their emotionally naked and harrowing performances). For all its crude, set-up machinations — the most pedestrian concept posing that the world’s languages lead to miscommunication — when the story is in full-swing, there’s also no refuting that some scenes are a tremendously trenchant depiction of the universal suffering of humankind.

Honorable Mentions:
As usual, some good films have to fall just outside the top 10 list including: Tommy Lee Jones‘ feature-length directorial debut, “The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada“; Christopher Nolan‘s excellent, in-between-Batman-movies cum rival magician film, “The Prestige,” starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale; Guillermo del Toro‘s fantastical fairy tale, “Pan’s Labyrinth“; Sofia Coppola‘s anachronistic teen alienation set in the 16th century, “Marie Antoinette“; Martin Campbell‘s superb rebooting of the Bond franchise with “Casino Royale“; Martin Scorsese‘s “Infernal Affairs” remake “The Departed” (which has been on TV so many bloody times, its power has worn off); Oliver Assayas‘ “Clean” which featured a Cannes-winning performance by Maggie Cheung as a struggling addict; and Park Chan-Wook‘s final installment of his vengeance trilogy, the beautifully haunting, “Lady Vengeance.” Also worth noting, we forgot to give love to David Lynch‘s beyond-weird “Inland Empire.”

Other films meriting mention include Robert Altman‘s final picture, “A Prairie Home Companion“; Mel Gibson‘s Aztec-thriller, “Apocalypto“; Tom Tykwer‘s kinetic (perhaps too kinetic) “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer“; John Cameron Mitchell‘s low-budget erotica,”Shortbus“; Richard Linklater’s live-action rotoscoped Philip K. Dick adaptation “A Scanner Darkly“; Spike Lee‘s biggest commercial hit, the entertaining heist film, “Inside Man“; Michael Mann‘s flawed, but interesting “Miami Vice“; Bryan Singer‘s unfairly maligned “Superman Returns;“ Nicole Holofcener‘s wryly observational “Friends with Money,” the over-estimated, but enlivening horror “The Descent,” and “13 Tzameti.”

— Kevin Jagernauth, Rodrigo Perez, Drew Taylor, Sam Mac, Oli Lyttelton &