(and some year end disappointments )

Any one of these excellent films could fill the bill for my last two choices in the my Top Ten but for one reason or another they didn’t have the same impact that my original picks had when I first saw them.

BRIDGET JONES’ DIARY - Rene Zellweger plumped up to capture the lead role in this adaptation of the best seller. Bridget wears her insecurity on her sleeve in her clumsy attempts to bed and wed her boss. Hugh Grant is her ideal man and all too willing lover. Colin Firth is Darcy (as in Jane Austen’s "Pride and Prejudice"), the reluctant suitor who always manages to be around at Bridget’s most embarrassing moments. Rene begins to cast Bridget’s spell from the moment she begins confessing her innermost thoughts to her diary. She’s sincere, funny, incurably romantic and impossible not to fall in love with.

FROM HELL - Johnny Depp once again proves why he is one of our consummate actors as a moody detective addicted to heroin whose psychic visions of violence invade the twilight of his dreams. He’s on the trail of Jack the Ripper in this surprisingly spooky evocation of London’s gaslight district. A secret society, an unfeeling aristocracy, and a believable hooker (Heather Graham) with a heart of gold are just a few of the flavorful ingredients that bring this historical blend of the fantastic and factual to life. This one is from the gifted Hughes Brothers - Allen and Albert Hughes - who gave us "Menace II Society" (1993).

GHOST WORLD - Based on a comic book of the same name, director Terry Zwigoff ("Crumb") goes behind closed doors to find out what teenage girls talk about when the adults aren’t around. Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson are a couple of high school grads having trouble making the transition to adulthood. Thora’s Enid is a talented artist whose portfolio of caricatures is a visual diary that expresses her attitudes towards the people in her world. When a practical joke backfires, she finds a soul mate in a sympathetic middle aged man (Steve Buscemi) who is obsessed with jazz and American pop culture. "Ghost World" explores the development of their friendship with humor and insight.

HARRY POTTER & The Sorcerer’s Stone - It may not live up to the hype, but it is one of the best kid flicks to come out this or any other year. It doesn’t have the wonder of "The Wizard of Oz" (1939) or the majesty of "The Thief of Bagdad" (1940) but it does have the flavor of MGM gems like "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm" (1962) and "Tom Thumb" (1958). More importantly, it has the same spirit of childhood adventure. I won’t belabor anyone with the plot points since I’d hate to go head to head with any Harry Potter fans who know every page of the Potter books down to the cover notes. Suffice it to say, the movie succeeds on its own terms.

I AM SAM - Sean Penn gives a colorful performance as a mentally retarded man who embraces fatherhood when his girlfriend runs off after giving birth to their daughter. Michele Pfeiffer is the lawyer with a bruised ego who is swayed by his unrelenting tenacity and genuine sincerity to represent him in a custody battle with the authorities. Dakota Fanning is the kid who gives each star a run for their money in a performance that is never cloying or cute. It ranks with the best of Shirley Temple and Margaret O’Brien (does anybody remember her?) combined.

IRIS - Famous, free loving, freethinking British novelist Iris Murdoch gets the full blown screen bio treatment with not one but two stars to play her. Kate Winslet is Iris in the flush of youth trying to carve out a place for herself in the literary world. Judi Dench is the Grand Dame of letters at the end of her life when Alzheimer’s disease erodes her memory bit by bit until simple word recognition becomes an insurmountable task. Hugh Bonneville is effective as the youthful John Bayley, a lover of language who can’t seem to find the right words to tell Iris he loves her. Jim Broadbent gives a heartbreaking performance as the elder Bayley who can’t imagine living without the woman who gave his life meaning. Get out the handkerchiefs!

LANTANA - A murder investigation unveils the raw emotions of a group of people with ties to a missing psychologist in modern Australia. Flashbacks reveal the human frailties in a couple (Barbara Hershey & Geoffrey Rush) whose grief over the eighteen year old murder of their daughter has driven them apart, a philandering cop in the midst of a midlife crisis whose neglected wife still yearns for his touch, and a cheating wife with an unsuspecting husband. Neighbors watch each other’s kids and stick their noses in other people’s business. The scenes represent a roundelay of mixed emotions that become a catalyst for change. It’s about ordinary people going through life’s pain and trying to hold on to their humanity. (Did I say something about a murder?) Based on the play "Speaking in Tongues" by Andrew Bovell and adapted by the author. This is human drama at its best.

LEGALLY BLONDE - Reese Witherspoon is a riot as the bouncy, perky blond whose personality and tresses hide the brilliant mind waiting to conquer the world with her ideas about beauty, love, and justice. When her boyfriend dumps her and goes off to Law School, she decides to win him back with brainpower by winning a scholarship to be near him at Harvard. When she actually develops a taste for law, the fun begins.

THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE - The story is a. masterpiece of understatement that uses the wry comments of an innocuous master barber named Ed Crane to editorial his life as he drifts through one surreal moment after another. He is busily eking out an existence from one clip of hair to the next when he concocts an ill conceived blackmail scheme that sets the tone for all that follows. People pay for the vile misdeeds of others but not before committing a few felonies themselves. This is, after all, the world of the producing, writing, and directing team of Joel and Ethan Coen. They know how to take a genre, hold it up to a mirror to reflect some twisted logic, and then turn it into something that is uniquely their own. The seeds for "The Man Who Wasn’t There" can be found in the film noir classic "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946) with John Garfield and Lana Turner. (see review for more details)

OCEAN’S ELEVEN - Steven Soderbergh hasn’t so much as remade the famous Rat Pack movie with Sinatra and his cronies as reconfigured the plot to resonate with today’s audience. In doing so, he has done the old chestnut one better with more interesting characters and enough pizazz to hold your interest from the moment Danny Ocean delivers his patter to the parole board. The bottom line is you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Danny goes straight - straight to Las Vegas to win back his wife and rob a few casinos in the bargain. George Clooney and Brad Pitt collect a pit crew that includes an outstanding Elliot Gould and Carl Reiner as two old timers recruited for some seed money and style.

THE OTHERS - Nicole Kidman looks like she’s about to implode as a distraught wife on the brink of insanity waiting for her husband to come back from the trenches of WWI She shelters her family from the outside world by shuttering them in the house away from sunlight and the neighbors. Some ghostly looking caretakers take an interest in her welfare - or her house - and things begin to go bump in the night in this atmospheric thriller inspired by "The Innocents" (1961), an adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw). Builds slowly and deliberately until the chilling finale.

SHREK - Shrek (Mike Myers) is a big green ogre in the land of fairy tales where the evil Lord Farquand (John Lithgow) steals the land out from under the likes of Pinocchio and the Seven Dwarfs before descending on Shrek’s swamp. He and Farquand strike a deal that could let him keep his turf and turn Farquand into a king. Dreamworks’ animated feature spoofs the classics while remaining true to the tradition that spawned them. Shrek has to deal with a wisecracking Donkey (Eddie Murphy) , a dragon, magic spells, a Princess (Gwyneth Paltrow) trained in martial arts, and Farquand himself. A few double entendres meant to be hip that could be deemed inappropriate for younger ears are the only drawbacks.

SEXY BEAST - There’s enough style for two movies in this top notch British gangster film about a retired thief forced out of retirement by the menacing Ben Kingsley. Ray Winstone is the tough guy living the good life in Spain who has the talent and the guts to help pull off a one-of-a-kind bank robbery back in England. The dialogue is crisp, the situations are tense, and the climax is thrilling.

SPY GAME - A terrific spy film that pulls no punches and tells it like it is from C.I.A. interference in foreign affairs to the life and death struggle of individuals trying to make a difference in the Third World. Robert Redford is the seasoned agent who has twenty four hours to help free one of his former operatives (Brad Pitt) from a Chinese prison. The growth of their relationship and his underling’s romantic involvement with an Arab kingpin’s trusted relief worker are told in flashback. The premise may be flimsy but the story is well told. A rushed ending flaws an otherwise entertaining movie.

TRAINING DAY - . Ethan Hawke underplays his role as a novice recruit put to the test by a fast talking, sharp tongued, street wise, narco-cop played by Denzel Washington in an explosive performance. They are the yin and yang of the L.A.P.D. - the new recruit and the seasoned veteran - the idealist and the realist - the good cop and the bad cop. One - white, the other - black: a racial divide that one uses to push a hidden agenda. This one is tough, gritty, and memorable. (see review for more details)

WITH A FRIEND LIKE HARRY (Fr. with Eng. subtitles) - This genuinely creepy thriller sneaks up on you like the buzz from three downed Long Island Ice Teas. Once it chills the spine, you can’t shake it. A chance meeting between Harry and an old school chum with his family becomes a cat and mouse tale about love, art and murder. Harry is so obsessed with his long lost friend’s forsaken talent as a writer, he is willing to go to any lengths to help him put pen to page.

THE AFFAIR OF THE NECKLACE - I’m a sucker for costume dramas. Period! A father loses the family estate in 18^th century France because of his libertarian ideals and years later his daughter, a countess by marriage, plots to win it back through some skullduggery. A priceless necklace becomes the prime weapon of choice in a her con game. Hilary Swank is sometimes too serious in comparison to the light touch the supporting cast brings to their parts. They are simply delightful. Brian Cox is a confidante of the King and the story’s narrator. Johnathan Pryce is the randy cardinal who yearns to ascend to a position of power in the court. Joely Richardson is a perfectly bitchy Marie Antoinette. Adrienne Brody is her perfect cad of a husband and Simon Baker proves to be a fine rakish romantic lead.

AMELIE (Fr. with Eng. subtitles) - Like director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s earlier films, "Delicatessen" (1991) and "City of Lost Children" (1995), "Amelie" is a triumph of style over substance. The death of Princess Diana prompts Amelie (Audrey Tautou) to come out of her shell. She dreams up ways to help people while musing about sex, love, and happiness amidst set pieces of people locked in conjugal bliss bouncing to the jaunty rhythms of Jeunet’s own imagining. Her obsession over the minute details of pictures taken at a photo booth puts her on the trail of a mysterious young man with some oddball jobs who might turn out to be the man of her dreams. The movie goes on a bit too long but Jeunet’s eye for detail in a city awash in bright saturated colors and brimming with life compensates for much of the repetitive pacing.

BANDITS - This is a modern day "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" right down to the big shootout. But will they escape and ride off into legend? Bruce Willis has the Redford part, all cool, calm, and collected while and Billy Bob Thornton tops Paul Newman with his motor mouth antics and acute hypochondria. The two men each have an attribute that Kate Blanchett - who they pick up along the way to fill in for the Katharine Ross part in the aforementioned western - needs in a man. Bruce has manliness and Billy Bob has sensitivity. She’ll take both. The non-violent trio escape from jail and get the loot to have some fun and hopefully make it to Mexico but they have some trouble along the way, naturally. But not before Billy Bob steals the movie. He has more phobias than there are grains of sand in the desert and complains about everyone of them while spouting scientific claims to back up every one of them. The guy’s a riot!

BEHIND THE SUN (Brazilian with Eng. subtitles) - In a desolate area of Brazil where land and honor are more valuable than life itself, two families are engaged in an ageless blood feud. The victims are the oldest sons who must carry out a rite of passage that involves the dried stains on a blood soaked shirt and assassination. The barbaric code of existence is challenged by one son who falls in love with a travelling circus performer, but time and distance are not enough to eradicate hate. The overriding sense of doom in a primitive landscape is courtesy of Walter Salle who showered Brazil with signs of a hopeful future in "Central Station" (1998).

DARK BLUE WORLD (Czech with Eng. subtitles) - The Nazis invade Czechoslovakia and two pilots escape to England to fly for the Royal Air Corps. There are a few cliches too many about two guys falling in love with the same girl but it’s not enough to kill the feeling of camaraderie and brotherhood of combat pilots in action. There are political overtones about the Cold War that more or less bookends the movie when the Russians free their country only to enslave it in the cloak of Communism.

KATE & LEOPOLD - The narrative starts off promising with a modern day time traveler (Liev Schreiber) tailing his paternal ancestor (Hugh Jackman) back in the mid 1800’s. He comes back to the present with his great, great….grandfather behind him and the picture drags its feet to set up the inevitable romantic entanglement. Surprisingly it begins to work its charm once its flimsy foundation is established. Meg Ryan is the main asset as a kooky modern day lady too busy making a name for herself to have a life. Hugh Jackman is debonair as the romantic lead. Still, with all the movie’s grace notes, the writer/director James Mangold never addresses the question of incest that is so cleverly never brought up. Meg is/was Liev’s girlfriend and if she marries his great, great, …. grandfather back in time…? Hmmmm. Maybe Liev is the descendent of a mistress.

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS - Gene Hackman heads an all star cast (Gwyneth Paltrow, Bill Murray, Ben Stiller, Owen & Luke Wilson, Anjelica Huston, Danny Glover) as the divorced patriarch of a dysfunctional family of misfits who are always feeling sorry for themselves. They’re all self centered geniuses unable to cope with the world despite their individual successes. The dark low key humor is aided by a narrator (Alec Baldwin) who fills in the blanks between the chapters of their lives that unfold on the screen from a book. While not exactly funny, the situations are absurd enough to invite laughter, but I never felt any compassion for any of the Tenebaums like I did for director Wes Anderson’s other creations, Max Fisher in "Rushmore," and Dignan and Anthony from "Bottle Rocket." The great soundtrack enhances the proceedings but its saving graces are not sustained from beginning to end. .

SHALLOW HAL - Hal (Jack Black) is a loser whose idea of womanhood is bequeathed to him on his father’s deathbed. His sorry love life is improved with the help of the inspirational guru, Tony Roberts, when they are thrown together by fate in a troublesome elevator. Hal meets Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow) and falls in love. He sees, before him, a beautiful girl full of compassion and possessed with a zest for life. His friends and everyone around him, however, see something completely different. There are a few fat jokes and sight gags that get the guffaws one might expect from a Farrelly Brothers movie, but they are never at the expense of Rosemary’s good character. On the contrary, they reinforce the notion that powers "Shallow Hal," that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The beauty of "Shallow Hal" is that it carries its premise beyond Hal’s relationship with Rosemary. You’re never sure if you’re looking at the rest of the world through Hal’s eyes or not. The end of "Shallow Hal" may be predictable, but the gimmicks and the sweetness revealed by Hal on the road to the inevitable is not. There is one heart stopping scene at Rosemary’s job place that makes the movie. Enough said. See it for yourself.

SHIPPING NEWS - Quoyle’s (Kevin Spacey) choices in life are ruled by his experiences as an abused child. A chance meeting with a grifter (Kate Blanchett) leads him to marriage, fatherhood and a chance to make something of himself in the land of his pirate ancestors in a bleak coastal area in Newfoundland. He finds a job at the local newspaper and falls in love with Julianne Moore as another one of the walking wounded. Along the way the sins of his forefathers are exposed with the help of a long lost Aunt (Judi Dench) and he helps his daughter overcome her inherited sense of guilt. Pete Postlethwaite , Scott Glenn and others fill out a cast of characters who help Quoyle find his wings. "Shipping News" goes adrift like a lost ship about three quarters of the way through before arriving at its final destination where everyone comes to terms with their past before getting on with their lives.

GOSFORD PARK - Yes! The direction is superlative. Yes! The acting is top notch. Yes! The production design is sumptuous.. But! Can so much perfection become tiresome? After being dazzled by the initial rush of sights and sounds of this period piece that is equal parts Upstairs! Downstairs!, Agatha Christie, and bits and pieces of other drawing room dramas, its supposed originality begins to wan. All I could think of were the movies that may have inspired it, particularly "Rules of the Game" (1939) by Jean Renoir. Many of the motifs are similar yet less inventive. A fox hunt replaces a rabbit hunt and the reception and departure of the guests hark back to the subtle lighting design Renoir used to subliminally plant the idea that there are family secrets hidden in the shadows that will be illuminated by the end of the story. If you’re not familiar with this masterpiece, then you’ll probably find Gosford Park more to your liking. But once you do see it, I encourage you to seek out "Rules of the Game" to see where it all came from.

MONSTER’S BALL - The themes are similar to "Shipping News" but the style and pacing are as different as Venus and Mars. The plot moves at a snail’s pace with moments of God-like silence that explode into emotional fireballs. Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry bring a sense of realism to the screen that is often painful to watch as two people who come together in their common grief. He’s a Georgia prison guard who tires of his existence on death row and she’s a widow eking out an existence as a waitress at the local diner. An accident and an act of kindness leads to a cleansing of souls and a union of hearts. Ample support is provided by Heath Ledger as a neglected son and Peter Boyle as Thornton’s domineering father (a character that harks back to Boyle’s breakthrough role as the hard hat bigot - "Joe" - from 1970).

NO MAN’S LAND (Bosnian with Eng. subtitles) - The futility of war is played out in the trenches of Eastern Europe where a wounded man lays frozen in fear on a booby trap. His comrade does all he can to help him but the slightest movement could kill him. With luck, he could be saved by an armed UN peace keeping force. Soldiers kill each other, look after each other, and sometimes have second thoughts about their actions. Then the neutrals arrive complete with lights, cameras, and reporters eager to exploit the situation. Life and death is treated as a matter of fact existence in this didactic microcosmic look at a war where there are no winners.

WAKING LIFE - Rotoscoping animation techniques make philosophy entertaining by freeing the script from the stuffy constraints of reality that dogged similar attempts in movies like "My Dinner with Andre" (1981) and "Mindwalk" (1990). The discussion(s) are presented as a series of adventures in writer/director Richard Linklater’s dream world.

MEMENTO - I know this may be hard to believe and I know this was a huge hit with a lot of people but I found it pretentious. A man is pursued by a host of shady characters for crimes he may or may not have committed that he can’t remember because he suffers from a chronic short term memory. He just knows he’s looking for his wife’s murderer. The script is made up of puzzle parts that are pieced together by inverting the narrative. . The script is intelligent - from scene to scene. Guy Pearce and Joe Pantoliano serve the machinations of the plot well, but, as a total entity, "Memento" was too much of a gimmick to keep me interested in a crazy man using his body like a notepad to figure out who he is and what he did.

ALI - This should have been Will Smith’s title shot as Muhammed Ali but the meandering documentary style employed by director Michael Mann never lets him get beyond the first round. Key historical moments like Ali’s conversion to Islam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and his fight with U.S. Government over his draft status during the Viet Nam War - to name a few - are more like spacers to bracket the highlights of Ali’s life. The story follows him from his early days when he was still known as Cassius Clay to his resurgence as a world figure when he defeated Joe Frazier in Zaire in the title bout that became known as The Rumble in the Jungle. You never get to know the man or feel his influence the way you did in the classic documentary "When We Were Kings." Still, there are some stellar performances in the supporting roles by Mario Van Peebles, Jamie Fox and Jon Voight among others.

BEHIND ENEMY LINES - This is another message movie about the atrocities of war. A spy plane is shot down in hostile territory while peace negotiations are taking place in the diplomatic halls of Eastern Europe. The surviving pilot must make his way across unknown terrain to various checkpoints to meet his rescuers while being pursued by a death squad who are afraid he may have pictures that would expose their war crimes. As long as he was running and the bad guys were shooting, the movie was exciting. Owen Wilson lived up to the physicality of his character, but too often he delivered his lines as if he were at a slacker’s convention.

THE BUSINESS OF STRANGERS - I thought the exposition detailing two women taking out their angst on an unsuspecting ego driven male while stranded at an airport hotel was in need of one of those TV talk show makeovers. However!… Stockard Channing has the uncanny ability to turn drivel into art. She’s magnificent as the aging CEO who is hard on her underlings and tired of playing by men’s rules in her struggle to stay at the top. Her performance alone is reason alone to seek this out. Julia Stiles is the sweet young thing who encourages her to join in the mind games.

CHARLOTTE GRAY - Slow moving WWII spy movie with the title character in search of her lover, a combat pilot shot down behind enemy lines in France. The pace kills any interest that may have been generated by all the hard work the actors put into their roles. There are a few chilling moments and a narrow escape but it’s a case of too little too late. Kate Blanchett is Charlotte and Billy Crudup is the Resistance fighter who becomes a part of her life. Michael Gambon steals the movie as the patriarch who risks his life to protect two Jewish kids discarded by the war.

VANILLA SKY - This one looks better the second time around. (Yeah! I saw it twice.) You have to be versed in sixties musical culture to get to the root of director Cameron Crowe’s obsessions which are scattered and splattered throughout the movie. Tom Cruise is a top ad honcho whose world comes unhinged when pleasant dreams turn to nightmares. He loses his pretty boy looks in a car accident and finds one of his ex bedmates dead. This is not so much a murder mystery as it is a brain teaser where memory dictates the outcome of one’s dreams and reality is a bummer. Good performances all around by Penelope Cruz, Jason Lee, Kurt Russell, and particularly Cameron Diaz make this seem better than it is.

Copyright 2001