I'm doing my annual top 10 best lists for decades past again and now that's we're officially in the year 2016, first up is the year 2006, exactly ten years ago.
Looking back on that year I can safely say it was a very strong year for mainstream entertainment.
Even that year's Best Picture winner, Martin Scorsese's The Departed, was a big fat gangster thriller, that made (forgive the pun) a killing at the box office. It was deserving, however, despite some detractors, but more on that in a second.
It was a solid year all around, especially for comedy -- Sacha Baron Cohen owned 2006 -- and it also heralded comebacks for James Bond and director Spike Lee. Anyway, without further ado, here's my top 10 picks:
10) The Hoax - I've maintained for a long time that Richard Gere is one of the most underrated actors of his generation, and this criminally overlooked movie helps make the case. It tells this incredible true story of a struggling writer who manufactured phony interviews with the reclusive Howard Hughes in the '70s. Gere is riveting in the lead role, showing cracks in his usual charming facade as a desperate man spinning his wheels. It's a fun movie that deserves rediscovery.
9) The Fist Foot Way - Danny McBride is definitely a divisive comic figure. I adore him, but some folks find his brand of crude obnoxiousness too relentless to be amusing. So this film is not for everyone. But I loved its oddball energy and pseudo-documentary vibe. Will Ferrell helped get McBride noticed by distributing this low budget film about an egotistical (and deeply insecure) Taekwondo instructor, which is uproarious and occasionally quite dark. A star-making vehicle to be sure.
8) Children of Men - I haven't revisited it in a while, but Alfonso Cuaron's visually dynamic sci-fi epic, about a future where babies have stopped being born, was one of those movies that should have been a blockbuster but somehow didn't connect. Even though everyone I know who saw it raved about it. Clive Owen stars (remember him?) as our hero but the real breakthrough here is the camerawork which foretold the groundbreaking work Cuaron would do with Gravity about eight years later.
7) Rocky Balboa - People who are marveling at the resurrection of Sylvester Stallone's career and his powerful performance in this year's Creed, should not discount his work here in the last fully-fledged Rocky movie. This film was a labor of love for Stallone who had drifted into direct-to-DVD obscurity. The movie was dismissed before it hit theaters due to Stallone's age and the 16-year gap since the last installment, but he proved the haters wrong with a gritty return to form and a moving finale which reminded us all why we cared about this character in the first place.
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| Denzel Washington in Inside Man |
5) Borat - Sacha Baron Cohen's other big hit of the year was like a comic grenade tossed on audiences. For those hip to his style of improvisational shock comedy, this was a welcome expansion of the universe Cohen created on his series The Ali G Show, but for many Americans this was their first glimpse of a surreal comic genius. I have sometimes wondered if too few viewers understood who the joke was on (it was us, not the blissfully ignorant Borat) but the film still holds up and Cohen was robbed of a richly deserved Oscar nomination for a wildly unpredictable lead performance.
4) Dave Chappelle's Block Party - When this rousing documentary came out (it debuted in '05 but didn't come to U.S. theaters until March '06) I don't think many people realized that it was the beginning of the end of Chappelle's iconic Comedy Central show. Still, Michel Gondry's electrifying (and emotional) concert film would be a perfect time capsule of this era of hip-hop and the good vibes Chappelle was generating, particularly in communities of color. There are some great comic riffs here, but the music elevates it to a whole other level. The show stopper is Lauryn Hill's reunion with The Fugees, which feels genuinely historic.
3) Inside Man - I fear that director Spike Lee may never again make a movie as fun and entertaining as this, his first foray into more mainstream filmmaking. Equipped with a big budget and A-list stars (Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, and yes, Clive Owen again), Lee made an exciting and very cleverly plotted heist movie without totally eschewing his trademark style and substance. This movie also has an authentic New York flavor that felt very real but also was a throwback to Big Apple-based thrillers of the '70s like Dog Day Afternoon and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.
2) The Departed - Although some have derided this Boston-based potboiler as lesser Scorsese, I strongly disagree. Both Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon do stellar work here as essentially opposite sides of the same coin, one informing on the cops, the other, the crooks. The theme of rats and double crossing is beautifully explored in this fast and very funny movie. Scorsese gets terrific supporting turns out of Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen, Jack Nicholson and especially Mark Wahlberg, all while boasting one of his best soundtracks to date. And for the record, I loved that last shot.
1) Casino Royale - We all take Daniel Craig for granted now, but he basically brought the James Bond character and series back from the dead with a totally fresh and intense take on the character that helped endure the character to legions of new fans, and critics, too. The action was both believable and epic, the story was a return to the more earthbound narratives of the early Connery Bonds, and Craig became the perfect Bond for his times, more brooding and psychologically complex. Along with Skyfall, this is one of the best 007 films ever made.
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