My list of favorites
1. No Direction Home
Martin Scorcese's documentary No Direction Home brings it all back home and allows us to relive those days when the world seemed ready to embrace a new morning. No Direction Home follows the career of Bob Dylan from his childhood in Hibbing, Minnesota to his motorcycle accident in 1966, highlighting the most creative years in his life and offering previously unseen footage of Dylan as a young man. It brings to life the promise of that period featuring concert performances by Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger Dave van Ronk, including scenes from the Newport Folk Festivals of 1963, 64, and 65 when Pete Seeger almost cut the chords on an electric Dylan. There is great music in the entire film and it is uplifting and wonderful but may be remembered only for its opening act, the act in which Dylan called us to greatness but denied his own.
2. Nobody Knows
Hirokazu Kore'eda's Nobody Knows is a film of deep compassion about four young children abandoned by their mother in a small apartment in Tokyo. Based on a real incident in 1988, the film was written, directed, produced, and edited by Kore'eda whose earlier films were introspective meditations on life and death. Though his latest film is primarily a coming-of-age film about the transformation of a pre-adolescent boy, no film I've seen in recent memory has filled me with as much sadness for the failure of modern society to provide a coherent set of values for people. While there have been other films about the alienation of big city life, they tend to be cold and impersonal and convey an emotional deadness. Such is not the case here where the children's natural vivacity and warmth make their closeness to each other more real and ultimately all the more heartbreaking.
3. Mysterious Skin
In Gregg Araki's powerful drama, Mysterious Skin, eight-year old Brian (George Webster) accounts for missing time by confabulating it with stories of alien abductions and sets out on a path to uncover long suppressed memories. This is not a film about alien abductions, however, but about inappropriate sexual seduction of children and its deleterious effect on their development. While it is often graphic and difficult to watch, it is a sensitive film, held together by authentic and heartfelt performances by Joseph-Gordon Levitt as Neil and Brady Corbet as Brian that allow us to connect with their open wounds. Mysterious Skin is an honest and compelling film in which there are no good guys and bad guys, just flawed people who act out their deep-seated needs in a harmful way.
4. The Holy Girl
The Holy Girl is a film in which the combination of budding adolescent sexuality and Catholic Sunday School sermonizing leads to confusion and trouble. Similar in style to Alain Cavalier's masterful Thérése, another film about religious fervor, The Holy Girl is an extremely intimate series of minimalist vignettes in which the story unfolds in glimpses and whispered conversations, in "a slow reverie of quick moments". There is no approval or disapproval of behavior, only a snapshot of events that the viewer is left to interpret. The Holy Girl is elusive and somewhat disorienting, yet it remains an extraordinary achievement, full of intensity and crackling tension, true to the way people act when they are dealing with feelings bubbling beneath the surface.
5. Caché
Austrian director Michael Haneke's spine-tingling Hitchcock-like thriller, Cache is a metaphor for the denial of French responsibility for the treatment of Algerians in its colonial past and its current treatment of immigrants. It is not until several minutes into the film, however, that we realize we are watching videotape sent by unknown persons to the family of Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil). Haneke is masterful in showing the murk that is hidden beneath the outward calm of our comfortable middle-class lives, a recurring theme in many of his films. The mystery of who sent the tapes increases as Haneke builds an unrelenting atmosphere of imminent danger in a low-key manner without the use of foreboding music or special effects. Caché is a superbly crafted, entertaining, and challenging film that makes us painfully aware of the consequences of the lack of individual responsibility and creepy paranoia of modern life and of Western arrogance toward people considered inferior.
6. Turtles Can Fly
Kurdish director Bohman Ghobadi's Turtles Can Fly, is a view of war from the inside of a Kurdish refugee camp close to the Iraq-Turkish border just prior to and during the U.S. invasion. There is no overt political message, yet the hundreds of parentless children in the film, many with broken limbs from exploding landmines, tell a story of war that transcends politics. The children live in a world that has no electricity and no schools and where watching television with a satellite dish is a luxury, especially when many of the channels are forbidden. Ghobadi's film is both a celebration of the innocence of children and a warning about the dangers they face from dictators, fascists, and over-zealous democrats. Far better than any CNN or El Jazeera news account possibly could relate, the story of the war is written in their soulful faces.
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7. The Merchant of Venice
William Shakespeare's controversial The Merchant of Venice is set in 16th century Venice and director Michael Radford relies on setting, mood, and realism to tell its story, rejecting lavish period costumes or a modern setting with rock music to appeal to a wider audience. Pacino's performance of Shylock, a Jewish moneylender and his bond to extract a pound of flesh from the wealthy merchant Antonio brings new vigor to the text and his often over-the-top persona is replaced with a gentler, more understated demeanor that brings understanding to his cause. Radford slices the play's three-hour length to a manageable two hours and eight minutes and also provides some historical background. Although the play is primarily a drama of hatred and revenge, there are touches of broad comedy as well. Shylock is definitely a caricature, but he is an ambiguous figure and there are many indications that Shakespeare views his flaws as human failings, not Jewish ones.
8. Crash
Urban society breeds fear, intolerance and lack of trust, especially of strangers of different ethnic backgrounds whom we see as potential threats rather than as people with problems similar to our own. In Crash, Paul Haggis has the vision to see the thread of common humanity that connects us beyond the socially conditioned fear. Crash is divided into several episodes and, as it unfolds, seemingly unrelated threads intersect to form a connection. Haggis has assembled an outstanding ensemble cast that includes Brendan Fraser, Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Ryan Phillipe and all are first rate. Though the film is gritty and confrontational, the music by Kathleen "Bird" York alleviates some of the shock and nastiness and reminds us that there is a divine melody always playing in the background of our lives. In his first directorial effort, Haggis has given us a crash course in confronting stereotypes and looking beyond outward appearances to see the humanity that people are capable of.
9. C.R.A.Z.Y.
Authentic and wildly inventive, Quebecois director Jean Marc-Vallée's C.R.A.Z.Y. covers a period of thirty years in the life of a suburban Catholic family and has a remarkable feeling for the era. Born on Christmas Day, 1960 Zachary Beaulieu is the second youngest of five sons. The adult Zac narrates the film and we see the world through his eyes as he learns to be true to himself the hard way. He tells us that the reason why he has always hated Christmas is because the holiday always overshadowed his birthday and because the presents he received were not those he really wanted. C.R.A.Z.Y. is more about being different in a conformist society and the struggle for self-awareness rather than just about being gay. As Vallée explains it, "the theme of the film is personal acceptance. It's about this struggle to express yourself and being honest in the moment".
10. Millions
In Millions, Danny Boyle and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce have produced a delightful fantasy about children, faith, money, and idealism that sharply contrasts with standard children's movie fare based on fear and simplistic notions of good and evil. Danny Boyle employs enough cinemagic to transport us completely into the world of seven-year old Damian (Alex Etel), a pint-size miracle worker and his older brother Anthony (Lewis McGibbon) as they cope with disposing of a huge sum of money found near their play area. Actually, no special effects are needed, just being around the children is enough to convince us that there is magic in the world. Alex Etel as Damian turns in one of the best child performances I've come across in a long time. He's got a lot to handle in this film and pulls it off with much aplomb, allowing us to appreciate his generosity and compassion and be captivated by his wide-eyed innocence and charm.
11. Darwin's Nightmare
Slavery, colonization, genocide and civil war have marked the history of Africa. In Hubert Sauper's powerful documentary Darwin's Nightmare, we witness the latest humiliation -- globalization, euphemistically called the New World Order. Darwin's Nightmare is about fish, specifically the Nile Perch in Tanzania's Lake Victoria, but the theme is the exploitation of the natural resources of one country for the benefit of others. In this case, 500 tons of white fillets are caught each day, then exported to Europe to feed two million people each day while the villagers who cannot afford the perch are forced to live on the heads and carcasses that the factories have discarded. Darwin's Nightmare takes a strong stand but does not preach even though its images are often painfully direct. One of the most memorable scenes is of an African woman standing in the sun among the rotting fish carcasses and maggots claiming that her life is better than others, even though one eye has been clearly destroyed by ammoniac gases. This isn't Darwin's nightmare, it's our own.
12. Ae Fond Kiss
After a fracas at school in which a young Muslim girl is being chased by bullies, Roisin Hanlon (Eva Birthisle), a spunky young Irish woman who teaches music meets and begins a relationship with Casim Khan (Atta Yaqub), a Pakistani disc jockey in Glasgow clubs. Ae Fond Kiss is the third in the Glasgow series by director Ken Loach and screenwriter Paul Lavery. It is much lighter in tone than his previous films and is basically a romantic drama, though it has a great deal to say about issues of class, race, and religion and does so in a very forthright manner. The parents will not acknowledge that their children are living in a different world or encourage them to make their own choices. Though the story of star-crossed lovers has been told before, it has rarely been related with as much honesty, insight, and beauty.
OTHERS: Moolaade, The Tracker, Walk on Water
"They must find it hard, those who have taken authority as truth, rather than truth as authority" Gerald Massey
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