My Top Ten of the Year

Hello all, I've been away for some time. Holidays, moving my homeless carcass from the rich hobo pickings of Farringdon to the altogether chavvier enclave of Enfield, all have occupied my life outside of blogging. But now on to my top ten of the year. The films that in some way made my life worth living and allowed me to see that, at its best, cinema is the best way (with your clothes on) to waste your time. They are in no particular order but they are all excellent.

1) Oldboy - Proof, if proof were needed, that Korea is the place of the moment for interesting, different and thoroughly enjoyable cinema. Oldboy takes risks, thematic and dramatic; it has fantastic acting, superb technical credits, and is boldly written. It looks and sounds great, and if Chan-Wook Park continues to make stuff as good as this he will be have Hollywood knocking at the door!

2) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Charlie Kaufman is probably the first American screenwriter since Paddy Chayefsky to be given most of the credit for the films he is involved in, such is his critical reputation. But a screenplay only works if the director concerned serves it well and the actors make the lines and ideas sing! The director Michel Gondry does a superb job, employing both CGI and old fashioned optical effects to bring a man's disappearing memories to jaw-dropping life. The cast are superb, but Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet are particularly good at making the audience care for these lovers, and the ending - something that Kaufman has struggled with in the past - is a doozy.

3) Memories of Murder - This film gets better every time I watch it. It is the closest that Korean cinema will get to the feel and form of a James Ellroy thriller, and that is one of the highest compliments that a crime thriller fanboy like myself can give. The directing, acting and screenplay are all top-notch.

4) I Heart Huckabees - David O. Russell's 'existential comedy' was one of the biggest surprises of the year. Not because it was good - that didn't surprise me at all - but because it was so amazingly ambitious for a mainstream American film. It manages to shoehorn classic screwball comedies and existential philosophy into one genuinely enjoyable whole. The fantastic cast (Jason Schwartzmann, Jude Law, Mark Wahlberg, Lily Tomlin, Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Huppert and Naomi Watts) are all on top form; the writing is genuinely challenging; the direction is slick and Schwartzmann and Huppert's sex scene in the mud is worth the entry price alone.

5) The Machinist - The fact that most American critics didn't get this film really surprised me. They attacked the writing, the direction, the music, and the whole sensibility of the film. Frankly, they were all wrong. Time will eventually mark this film out as one of true quality. Brad Anderson's film beautifully gets into the mind of a tormented man, a man who Christian Bale magnificently brings to life; he is aided along the way by Scott Kosar's fine script, Roque Banos' superb music (and the critics who criticised the music are morons because it is fucking fantastic), and cinematographer Xavi Gimenez's moody photography. The fact that the distributor released it in about 3 cinemas across America is a fucking travesty.

6) Before Sunset - The best American film of the year. Superbly written by Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, to the point where we could happily listen to this couple talking all day. The performances are A-grade. The film is tight, superbly structured and has a great, ambiguous ending. The fact that it did $6 million dollars in the US is another travesty. People complain that America doesn't make great love films any more...and when one comes along they all ignore it!

7) Shaun of the Dead - Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's affectionate, and often hilariously funny, pastiche of Romero zombie flicks is the best British film of the year in my opinion. It captures the English 'can't be arsed' attitude to perfection and the cast give game performances. It isn't perfect but it had the ambition to be different and the fact that it made money gives hope to all British filmmakers who don't want to make Working Title style rom-coms and hokey Mockney gangster films.

8) The Corporation - The more you see this film the more resonant it becomes. It covers the genesis of corporations, and the fact that they were never be anything more than temporary structures designed to complete a construction job, through to the modern day behemoths they have become today. It is a more intelligent and rational film than Fahrenheit 9/11 and the points it makes (and the horrible truths therein) are all the more powerful because of the evenhanded approach. Quality stuff.

9) House of Flying Daggers - It was a tough choice between this and Hero. Hero is the more beautiful film, any film shot by Chris Doyle will be, but - in my very humble opinion - this is the better film. Sure, it does get corny at the end but the fact that there are a lot of plot strands and an ambition that is absent from the standard martial arts film mark it out as special (I love the genre but it even I will admit that it rarely aims for anything more ambitious than increasingly complex and beautiful fight moves). The choreography, acting, writing, directing and technical credits are all first-rate. There isn't much between this and Hero, but I personally feel that this shades it...just.

10) American Splendour - Quirky and different, but not self-consciously so. Harvey Pekar's comic strip turned his ordinary life into something resmbling art. And this film turns the bio-pic - a genre that rarely grips me - into something throughly fresh, original and bold. It doesn't hurt that Paul Giamatti's performance is out of the top drawer.

Notable Mentions: These films just missed out on the top ten. Take it from me that they are all worth seeking out because they are all very good!

Finding Neverland; Bad Education; The Motorcycle Diaries; Fahrenheit 9/11; Hero; 2046; I'm Not Scared; The Return; The Bourne Supremacy