Site Presented By
Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
Don't believe the naysayers: This was a great year in film, from the sexy-sweet "Secretary" to the nasty musical "Chicago."
Dec 23, 2002 | I often hear people complain that the state of movies is just getting worse and worse, that they're all about marketing and commerce (and car chases and explosions), that plots don't make any sense anymore (and they often don't), that there's barely any reason to shell out the $8, $9 or $10, depending on your part of the country, it costs to sit your butt in a theater seat. I always agree with them in theory, because even if you get paid, as I do, to look at stinkers like "Slackers" or "Dragonfly," you can sometimes feel as if your life is being drained away by stupid, bad, carelessly made art.
But by the end of the year -- especially by the end of this year -- I suddenly realize how little I agree with the naysayers. There are always going to be bad movies, and since there are so many more movies being made today than, say, 10 years ago, it only stands to reason that a larger proportion of them are going to be bad.
But what amazes me, at the end of 2002, is how many people manage to make good and even great movies (big or small, Hollywood or not), even though filmmaking is harder and more expensive than ever. (The digital-video revolution, such as it is, has yet to produce a picture that has blown me away -- although there's always hope.) If movies are so bad in general, and if the pressures of moviemaking, particularly in Hollywood, are so high, then how does anyone at all ever manage to do it well? The point is that, yes, it can be done, and the people who made the movies on the following list have proved as much. Whether you think the cup is half-empty or half-full, it's people like these who keep pouring out those precious drops.
1) "Y Tu Mamá También" For craftsmanship and for its outpouring of pure emotion, Alfonso Cuarón's road movie about two teenage boys (they're really more like randy little monkeys) and the "older" woman who sets out with them is my top movie of the year. Those who were familiar with Cuarón's previous work ("A Little Princess," "Great Expectations") already knew he couldn't make a movie without heart if he tried. Thank God he got a chance to prove it to the world.
2) "Far From Heaven" Todd Haynes gets Douglas Sirk -- particularly his notion that you can play the varying frequencies of grand melodrama like a theremin -- and then surpasses him. Not that "Far From Heaven" disparages Sirk; it's the most loving tribute a filmmaker could ask for. But Haynes feels much deeper empathy for his characters, particularly the eternally optimistic but yearning housewife played so wonderfully by Julianne Moore. His movie is pure romanticism with real blood coursing through its veins.
3) "About a Boy" Chris and Paul Weitz took Nick Hornby's fun, satisfying book and made it into an even better movie. They're good humanist filmmakers: They love people even at their most wretched, and they make us feel it, too. And Hugh Grant just gets better, especially when he's allowed to be sarcastic instead of stammering.
4) "Secretary" Steven Shainberg gives us a beautiful love story about spanking and finally, at long last, being understood, not necessarily in that order. There are some who say American movies are filled with sex, but they're not watching very closely. Most American movies are deathly afraid of sex, the source of life's most damnably confounding mysteries. "Secretary" is different -- it's a forthright fairy tale about erotic love -- and yet it's less a genuinely sexy picture than a liberating, kindhearted one. Maggie Gyllenhaal's performance is the embodiment of loneliness and desire, and one of the year's most moving.
5) "Femme Fatale" A lot of moviegoers complained that Brian De Palma's beautifully structured thriller about a very bad girl didn't make sense. Not liking the movie is one thing; claiming it doesn't cut together is something else again. If there were a remedial school for film fans, this one would have to be on the curriculum.
