10- Palindromes- Todd Solandz did it again with this look at abortion. The film takes on the point/counter-point structure of an essay as Solandz shows all the pros and cons of abortion, leading the viewer by the hand into the middle of a debate and then leaving them there on their own. The film is then also, by having the main character played by many actors of different size, race and gender, a meditation on whether people’s lives are the same from front to back no matter how much they try to change or if people really have it in themselves to become someone different.
9. Nowhere in Africa- The deeply absorbing tale of a young German girl who grows up in Africa after her family flees there. The film is pure storytelling as the viewer gets wrapped in the beauty of the landscape and the compassion of the narrative. More than simply a coming-of-age tale, this film is a true film lover's film: a reminder that the best films are not the ones with the most flashes and bangs, but the ones that wrap viewers up in deeply compelling human dramas, carrying their interest along by simply just wanting to know what happens next.
8. Wit- Emma Thompson gives one of her best performances in this honest and unflinching look at a woman as she deals with an incurable terminal disease. But the film is more than just a look at coping with cancer as it gets inside her head as she reflects back on her life and all the things she did wrong. This is powerful, brutal, honest, penetrating stuff.
7. Best of Youth- Roger Ebert said it best about this Italian masterpiece: it’s not just six hours long, it’s also six hours deep. This epic films spans the lives of an Italian family as they grow and change because of themselves and their environment. The film is long but there is not one wasted moment and results in the ultimate realization of how most films are simply abridged versions of greater stories. Every film shouldn't be six hours long, but it’s good this one isn’t a minute shorter.
6. Punch-Drunk Love/There Will Be Blood- Paul Thomas Anderson holds the rights to the throne of Lumet and Scrosese when they pass on. How could one man make two films so completely different from one another yet so completely satisfying and uniquely his own? The first is a love story that strips love down to its most basic, rawest, animalistic qualities and the second is the epic rise and fall of a man consumed by power and greed. What both films share is that Anderson uses them as an example of filmmaking as a state of mind: where the stylistic choices of the films match the minds of their main characters. There is not a more valuable young filmmaker working today than Paul Thomas Anderson.
5. No Country for Old Men- A perfect suspense film from the Coen Brothers. Here they take Cormac McCarthy’s spare, poetic dialogue and put it into a film whose style is so tightly wound that danger could lurk around any corner and jump out at any moment. The Coen’s build one perfectly directed, written, acted scene after another that leads up to an ending as meaningful as it is ambiguous.
4. Avatar- See Description
3. All the Real Girls/George Washington- David Gordon Green is another of the most valuable young filmmakers working today and his first two features were beautiful, haunting, poetic masterpieces about people wandering aimlessly through lives that have given them nothing but aimlessness to use. Both films are beautiful visual masterpieces but both are also stark and haunting in the way their detached characters walk through small towns that seem to be haunted with the failures of those who have gone before them. Green’s dialogue is strange and original, giving one the uncanny feeling that the films exist in a universe of their own until one realizes that it is so rare for films to look at the truth that it is easy not to recognize at first.
2. The Polar Express- One of the best family films of all time, The Polar Express is an instant classic: a film of unending thrills and adventures. Some found it too dark and scary when it was originally released, but scary in the way the Wizard of Oz was scary, as if the characters are faced with real danger on their way to a joyous happy ending that says more about the nature of Christmas spirit than any other that comes to mind. The film, made using motion capture animation, is a hauntingly beautiful visual feast but also a compelling story of real characters on a mission of self discovery.
1 Adaptation- Rumor has it that when Charlie Kaufman sat down to adapt Susan Orlean’s non-fiction book about orchid hunters in Florida that he found the story so uncinematic he suffered such severe writers block that he ended up writing himself into the screenplay. Then comes Adaptation, directed by Spike Jonze, about Charlie Kaufman having so much trouble adapting the Orchid Thief that he ends up writing himself into his screenplay. The film is a complex exploration of the lines between fiction and reality and where they converge as it cuts between scenes from the Orchid Thief, scenes of Susan Orlean writing it and scenes of Charlie Kaufman adapting it, until all three converge in a fictional ending that is, above all, a big middle finger to the conventions of Hollywood screenwriting. The film is dense and complex, with new things being discovered on every viewing and is ultimately the tale of why people need to care passionately about things, about love and loss and struggling to create meaningful art within a world that doesn't care for it. Adaptation is a staggeringly original work, so deeply meaningful that words cannot begin to describe it.
Mike Lippert - I am 22 years old and am currently living in the small town of Walkerton Ontario. I Spent fours years at Wilfed Laurier University in ...
Join the Conversation