Seth Goodkind's Top Ten for 2006
The Squid and the Whale - Dir. Noah Baumbach, 2005 - It starts out as an amusing if a little sad look at an odd family that's going through an awkward and painful separation. The weird parents, Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney both in excellent form, and their two equally eccentric sons live in 1980’s Brooklyn. Like I said, it seems funny at first, and remains so, but it starts to effectively and gracefully layer on some pretty poignant human emotion. The film manages to do all of this without getting excessive or extreme, treating it's subject with a gentleness and respect. Beyond the humorous insights are real people, confused about life, weak, foolish and in the long run, resilient.
The Hustler - Dir. Robert Rossen, 1961 - As far as I’m concerned, any movie Paul Newman has done is pretty much gold, and not surprisingly it's his early roles that really solidified him as a powerhouse actor. In The Hustler, Newman is young brash pool hustler Fast Eddie, cocky and selfish and talented to a T. He gets his ass handed to him by pool legend Minnesota Fats and hits rock bottom. What follows is a visceral and sometimes uncomfortably real portrait of inner conflict and growing-the-hell-up-real-damn-quick. The rightful and eloquent blueprint for Newman's The Color of Money, and just about every other movie about a screw up who scrapes bottom and has to pull it together.
When the Last Sword is Drawn - Dir. Yojiro Takita, 2003 - I'm definitely a sucker for anything samurai, but I have trouble with a lot of the modern films because they tend to lean towards the sci-fi or super-power business. I like cold hard history and even though I'm not by any means an expert, I can feel when it has the ring of truth. Last Sword saves all the best parts of modern samurai stories, the expansive, graphic settings and visuals, and uses them to strengthen, not carry, a very real and tangible story. When I wasn't gaping at the screen for the spectacular fighting, I was fully engrossed in the story. When something that should be foreign to you, feudal Japan for example, feels familiar and close, you know you've got a good one. There go those bells.
The Big Sleep – Dir. Howard Hawks, 1946 - I knew Bogart was a stud, but I had to witness it myself and this movie really drove it home, in terms I could understand. It takes remarkable something, talent, charisma, both, to be as ugly as Bogart and still nail it to the wall like a champ every time. Private dick drama at its finest with all the impeccable line dropping and gorgeous jaw dropping dames you could want. I guess it's really no surprise that something this good is from the book penned by the king of the genre, Raymond Chandler. Both make it acceptable, even desirable to carry a pint of rye in your pocket at all times. The Big Sleep is easily the most unique and horizon expanding experience of the last year for me. From the genre, to the actors, to the plot, it opened up a whole new realm I had neglected.
Oldboy - Dir. Chan-wook Park, 2003 - Two of my colleagues covered this one last year and so I won't waste too much time. This whole movie is a cleverly plotted and planned out as the revenge story that it portrays in painful, decadent close-up. Not very many films of this genre, or at all I suppose, are really able to pull you in to agonize right along with the "protagonist," particularly not when he's actually a jerk. Nor are many films are able to effectively realize a story with such complexity and be taken seriously after pulling teeth with a claw hammer.
Yakuza Graveyard - Dir. Kinji Fukasaku, 1976 - I honestly thought that Americans pretty much had the market cornered on 70's hard-boiled cop flicks. Not that I didn't think anyone else could do it; I just didn't think they really had, until now. Maybe I should just keep my mouth shut on this one, it seems so obvious now. Tetsuya Watari plays the most explosively out of control rogue detective I've ever seen, surrounded by a corrupt police force, and assigned to investigate Yakuza crimes, this is set to be a vivid, insane downward spiral of violence and action. This movie raises the bar, and proves me wrong in spades.
Shrunken Heads - Dir. Richard Elfman, 1994 - What makes this movie so awesome is - everything about it. There really is no reason not to, seems to be its answer to every question. The first movie I've ever seen in which the questionable acting seems to actually serve the film well, and the first film in which I've ever seen zombified shrunken heads that fight crime under the control of a wisecracking voodoo magazine vendor. A bizarre and brilliant combination of zombified underage children, gore and even some unbelievable but true sexual tension between a flying shrunken zombie head and its living girlfriend. The most off the wall collection of cheapsploitation and illogically combined horror conventions ever effectively combined.
Sex and Fury - D: Norifumi Suzuki, 1973 - Revenge, or at least vindication stories seem to play a big part on my list this year, and it wouldn't be complete without a nod to sexploitation. A gambler/pickpocket woman, Ocho takes spectacular bloody revenge on her father's killers, and then gets into even more trouble she has to solve with the business end of a sword. As if all that wasn't enough, she's inclined to do much of it sans clothing, and has a knack for crossing paths with other similarly inclined women. What is it about graphic violence perpetrated by beautiful women that's so fulfilling? That might make it seem like a cheap skin flick, but it's not. Well made on all counts, Sex and Fury, along with Yakuza Graveyard further prove and expound my theory that the 70's were the best years for film.
The Boxers Omen - Dir. Chih-Hung Kwei, 1983 - The biggest what the heck movie I may have ever seen, a worthy trump card over Shrunken Heads, but it really belongs all on it's own, way waaaaaay out there in left field. When a guy's brother is crippled by a Thai boxer, he vows to take revenge. To do so he must become a Shaolin monk and undergo the strangest and utterly mind-blowing series of voodoo/black magic battles and tests ever committed to screen. When the one-eyed green brain creature emerged from the rotting maggoty carcass, spinal cord-tail violently whipping around, I was sold. I don't see how it could ever get more engrossingly bizarre than this.
Notorious - Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1946 - Like The Big Sleep, this one came out of nowhere and really laid into me. If finding out for myself that Hitchcock actually is the genius that everyone told me was the right cross, then seeing immaculate Cary Grant in action for the first time, was the uppercut that laid me out. Not to mention Ingrid Bergman, and I know I'm a couple years behind on this, but she’s totally hot! Grant is a government agent investigating espionage by Bergman's father and his cronies. She agrees to help him so she can clear the family name, and also manages to fall in love with him. His arrogance and distance only seem to galvanize her, until the moment of their success when in classic vivid tones, Grant must step up to meet the challenge.
