BEST FILMS OF 2000
by Mike Lorefice

Aberdeen
Hans Petter Moland

***

Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets
Nabil Ayouch

***

Almost Famous
Cameron Crowe

***1/2

American Psycho
Mary Harron

***1/2

Amores Perros
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

***

Battle Royale
Kinji Fukasaku

***1/2

Before Night Falls
Julian Schnabel

***

Blackboards
Samira Makhmalbaf

***

Bread and Roses
Ken Loach

A gleefully subversive film about standing up for basic human rights. Loach journeys to the US for the first time, though it doesn't much matter because his subject - the hard life of the poor - is universal. This time he deals with non-union Mexican janitors working for poverty rages in a flourishing high rise of important businesses, lawyers, and agents. The particular focus is on two sisters, the older one Elpidia Carrillo having lived in America and sent home money for a while, resulting in the younger one Pilar Padilla just being snuck across the border. Padilla meets union activist Adrien Brody trying to escape from the security men at her job, helping him out in an excellent scene of Chaplinesque mischief. The film brims with youthful enthusiasm, with Brody risking his job to embarrass the powerful tenants at every chance so they'll pressure the cleaning company to pay the janitors living wages. Loach refreshingly still believes in the power and importance of humans banding together. He doesn't make the union out to be perfect by any means, noting things like all they money they waste on the Democrats, but he employs the simple logic that if they weren't beneficial to labor the owners wouldn't bother to use scare and strong arm tactics to prevent them. The film doesn't ignore the negative of the workers unionizing, also dealing with the friction it creates between the two sisters. Their drama is incredibly moving and their performances are top notch. If Hollywood was liberal rather than dollaral Carrillo would have been nominated for a bogus award. Loach has always been for labor, but his films are anything but polemics in their favor. The choices are complex and the risks great. The "heroes" have positive and dubious characteristics, and even the squealer gets to tell her life story to fully justify her actions. Brody's character isn't looked down on like the usual anglo who fights for minorities. He's simply someone who believes he can make a difference, and unimaginable as that is to Hollyplastic, that's not only more than enough reason to act but also more important than gluing his hair down. He has no real equipment or backing, but his enthusiasm and passion are contagious. Brody is not a glorified superhero; he is simply a guide who in a sense is at the mercy of those standing with him as much as those who oppose him. This is an important and inspirational film, though one of the weakest Loach has made since his resurgence in the '90's. The main problem is the ending, which is feeble to the point it feels like Loach ran out of money so he just shot a couple of scenes to wrap up the whole labor vs. management bit. [4/22/06] ***

Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey
Bruce Lee & John Little

***1/2

Chunhyang
Kwon-taek Im

***

The Circle
Jafar Panahi

***

The Claim
Michael Winterbottom

***

Code Unknown
Michael Haneke

****

La Comunidad
Alex de la Iglesia

***

The Corner
Charles S. Dutton

***1/2

Dario Argento - An Eye for Horror
Leon Furguson

***

Dark Days
Marc Singer

****

Faithless
Liv Ullmann

***

George Washington
David Gordon Green

Amidst languid Malickesque lingerings of decaying machinery, Green creates a very honest yet allusive visual poem centered on the boredom of life in small town America and the feelings and emotions, frustrations and bewilderment of various types of relationships. The Days of Heaven style voiceover is notable because Nasia (Candace Evanofski) is thinking to herself, and like the film bouncing randomly between the significant and insignificant. Much of the realism of this documentary like work comes from its willingness to present life in its directionless and haphazard form. There is no plot; Green simply presents an aimless summer in a small poverty stricken town inhabited largely by African Americans. Major and minor events happen that will change the course of the characters lives, but the film is about the search and the longing, often for things we can't quite describe that may technically be unattainable. I often wonder if we'd have even one tenth of the misunderstandings if we could simply view all relationships through the lens of everyone being bored and just wanting to find some way to amuse themselves? One kid wishes there were 200 more of himself because they'd be the only 200 people who wouldn't let him down. Green seems to share Malick's uncertainty of message, so the film works better in bits and pieces than as a whole. The characters are mainly adolescents and stay within their limitations, but possess an emotional range and vulnerability that's rarely expressed credibly in movies because it's not something that can be measured or solved. There's so much desire and uncertainty here, questions rather than answers, and in every case they are those of an entire country rather than its solitary inhabitants. The audience knows more than the characters in almost every film, but this film is so much more moving for it because the subject matter is the mysteries of life as much as anything else. We see the gratitude of the boy George (Donald Holden) saved from drowning, but George may never know because the kid's mother doesn't invite him in. Like life, the majority is guesswork and it's up to George to know he did a good thing even if no one seems willing to show or tell him. But George wants to be a superhero, and he needs that reassuring so his actions don't seem to be taking place in a vacuum causing him to feel a frustrating pointlessness to it all. Despite the shoestring budget and its dilapidated scrap metal settings, this is one of the most beautifully photographed films you'll ever see, Green's warmth and sympathy shines through in every frame of Tim Orr's photography. [11/22/06] ***1/2

Girlfight
Karyn Kusama

***

Girls Can't Swim
Anne-Sophie Birot

The kind of sexually astute and frank film only the French seem willing to deliver, depicting the difficult sexual awakening period of teenagers. The film focuses on two 15-year old girls who look forward to seeing each other each summer when one vacations in Breton. It begins with the newly promiscuous one who lives there, Isild Le Besco, a rebellious drama queen who has decided she calls the shots and the world revolves around her. One third of the way through there's a radical narrative shift to the other friend, Karen Alyx, during the same time frame. She is only concerned with spending the summer swimming, but the death of her estranged father, who she's never seen, results in the cancellation of their vacation. She escapes to Le Besco's on her own for the final segment, but finds that while her interests are largely the same as they've been, Le Besco's are completely different. To make things worse, once this fact becomes obvious she's of little interest to Le Besco. To me the film is mainly about the peer pressure friendship applies, Alyx is somewhat curious about sexuality but not at all ready for it. Her main concern is maintaining her friendship because, among other reasons without it she has nothing in Breton and her home life wasn't exactly too promising. The similarity between the girls is both are reacting to familial discord by searching elsewhere in a bull rush manner for the love and affection they aren't getting at home; they are lost and alone once they get matadored the first time. The film also deals with the influence of father's. Lacking one of her own Alyx is drawn to Le Besco's alcoholic pop, who is the only one in Breton that takes any interest in her. However, he's tempted to look at her as a woman even though he still considers his own daughter a child. [5/2/06] ***

The Gleaners & I
Agnes Varda

****

High Fidelity
Stephen Frears

***

Innocence
Paul Cox

***

The Isle
Ki-duk Kim

***

Joe Gould's Secret
Stanley Tucci

***

Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale
David Shapiro & Laurie Gwen Shapiro

***

The King Is Alive
Kristian Levring

***

Little Otik
Jan Svankmajer

One of the most imaginative directors currently working, Jan Svankmajer applies his formidable animation skills to this satirical largely live action folktale of a tree stump baby who eats everything he can get his whispy branches on, including humans! In Svankmajer's surrealist world babies can be born in such unique ways as cutting a watermelon open because humans materialize their desires. Alzbetka (Kristina Adamcova), a lonely little girl with no playmates in her complex, is obsessed with someone giving birth to one for her. Her best hope are the Horavakas, but the wife Bozena (Veronika Zilkova) loses her mind when she finds out they are infertile, stuffing her shirt and claiming to be several months pregnant. Despite his familiarity with the deadly Otesanek tale, her husband Karel (Jan Hartl) carves a tree from their yard into a baby as a consolation prize. Bozena loves it so much she insists they nurture the stump - which soon comes to life - as their own. The wife protects the "baby" even after they see what it's capable of, showing motherly love is irrational and supplants all logic and morality. Otik is a monster that must be destroyed, but he finds two selfish surrogate mothers to feed and protect him, as the girl picks up where the wife left of. One interesting aspect of the film is the layering device. Svankmajer presents two versions of the same story, the "real" film and the cut out animation storybook version. The latter acts as a structuring precursor to the events to come and is constantly ignored by the little girl. Even though she believes it and sees it's coming true, it's simply inevitable, maternal nature causes her to be too caught up in her desire to have a playmate to care. The "experts" all debunk the Otesanek myth without even investigating the possibility. The characters are all clueless, most of all the Alzbetka's parents who scold her for her fascination with the evils of literature on sex and violence but are oblivious to the fact it's going on next door, and practically serve her up to the local pedophile. You'd think the animation would be the strength giving who we are talking about, but the stop motion claymation stump, while creepy in small doses, reduces the film's credibility because it's so overexposed. The film winds up working best as a comic sendup of the ways we try to protect ourselves from the truth and tame nature. An absurd, hilarious, and malicious visual experience with some of the best sight gags of recent times. [11/27/06] ***1/2

Murderous Maids
Jean-Pierre Denis

***

Full Movie Review

Malena
Giuseppe Tornatore

***

Merci pour le chocolat
Claude Chabrol

***

Nico and Dani
Cesc Gay

***

Nora
Pat Murphy

***

Nurse Betty
Neil LaBute

***

One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevitch
Chris Marker

****

Our Lady of the Assassins
Barbet Schroeder

***

Panic
Henry Bromell

***

Paradise Lost 2: Revelations
Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky

***1/2

Pollock
Ed Harris

***

Quills
Philip Kaufman

***

Requiem for a Dream
Darren Aronofsky

****

Full Movie Review

Shadow of the Vampire
E. Elias Merhige

***

Full Movie Review

Signs & Wonders
Jonathan Nossiter

***

State and Main
David Mamet

***

Suzhou River
Ye Lou

***

A Time for Drunken Horses
Bahman Ghobadi

***

Under the Sand
Francois Ozon

***

The Vertical Ray of the Sun
Anh Hung Tran

***

Waking the Dead
Keith Gordon

****

The Widow of Saint-Pierre
Patrice Leconte

***

With a Friend Like Harry...
Dominik Moll

***

Wonder Boys
Curtis Hanson

***

Yi Yi
Edward Yang

***

You Can Count on Me
Kenneth Lonergan

***