Macresarf1's 10 Best Films of 2002
Mar 27 '03 (Updated Mar 31 '03)
The Bottom Line Despite chilling effects of Wars on Terrorism, The Patriot Act, the Great American Crusade to Central Asia and beyond, the Year 2002 in Movies was the best in decades.
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The Year 2002 was a quite extraordinary year in the Movies, not only Hollywood movies but in the Indie and Foreign categories, as well. In addition, it was a banner season for the Documentary Films. And unlike recent years, I found myself anguishing over a swollen list of fifteen to twenty pictures which might deserve a place, over and above my Top Ten. Among those which failed to make my contentious Number Ten spot were the following: THE FAST RUNNER, THE TRIALS OF HENRY KISSINGER, THE PINOCHET CASE, THE PIANO TEACHER, FRIDA, WHITE OLEANDER, THE GOOD GIRL, MAX, THE SECRETARY, THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE, INVINCIBLE, even CHICAGO, Either you or I could make good arguments why several of these pictures, for widely different reasons, should occupy a place from 5 to 10 on my list. I indeed want to review those pictures in this group that I have not as yet.
Patience.
I reject, without apology, several favorites among Epinionators: ADAPTATION (a pleasantly amusing little film but far too long-winded and satisfied with its cleverness to be taken seriously); THE LORD OF THE RINGS: The Two Towers (better than Part 1, but . . . .); and GANGS OF NEW YORK (aside from Daniel Day Lewis, a mess).
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Four films I dearly wanted to consider, however, I have not managed to see, so far:
MINORITY REPORT strikes me as a brilliant concept for an American movie in The Time of Ashcroft. I might be willing to forgive Spielberg's reported typical lapse of taste in the last section of the film, if he has brought his technical insights to the Bush Administration Attorney General's clear progress toward identifying and convicting citizens on the basis of our tendencies, rather than for actual legal violations we have committed. Rather like the Bush macro-plan of striking at up to 60 nations preemptively for what they MIGHT do to us.
Then, CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND sounds to me like great fun, playing as it does with notions which a majority of Americans dismiss as "conspiracy theories" or "Left Wing nutcase propaganda." Yet, we now know that, over the past sixty years, in an expansion of American Intelligence agencies to every part of our lives, an array of surprising individuals -- from Jack Ruby to Julia Child, Gloria Steinem and Mother Theresa -- have been employed in the capacity of American spooks. Why not Chuck Barris of The Gong Show as a CIA Assassin? At least, it's an intelligently amusing bit of paranoia in 2003.
Michael Moore's BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE: I guess the conventional negative spin conveyed by the Media that Moore is crude, egomaniacal and lacking balance has gotten to me. He may be weighed down by all those qualities, as is Oliver Stone, by the way, but they are among a few Americans to tackle important moral, ethical and political bears squatting in our TV and Congressional cornfields, such as a hugely powerful, and still largely unremarked part of the American Economy: The manufacture of "Instruments of Destruction" (mass, multiple or individual). A democracy like America, home of the largest arms industry in the World, a nation which has nearly twice as many guns as it has people, a place (no matter how the actuaries palliate us) in which at least a couple of times a month a man (usually) mows down his family or a teenager shoots someone, should closely examine Michael Moore's BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE. Especially as, according to our President, we are going to commit Serial War.
And finally, David Cronenberg's SPIDER, with reportedly splendid performances by Ralph Fiennes and Miranda Richardson, was eligible for an Oscar but entirely ignored by the Motion Picture Academy. It is a story of mental illness, told without much of the trickery of A BEAUTIFUL MIND, which observes the entire experience of the main character, I understand, through his camera eyes.
I plan to see it soon.
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Meanwhile, here is my list of The 10 Best Movies of 2002:
10. JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE -- Alexandra Pelosi's sentimental and largely affectionate portrait of George W. Bush on the edge megalomania is my only clearly partisan choice for this group. (As I've said, any of the dozen pictures I list in Paragraph One would fit here.). I pick the documentary because it is a substantially honest day to day cinematic chronicle of the Bush Campaign to win the Republican Candidacy and the American Presidency in 1999, a rare glimpse into the real George W. Bush, before the big time PR flacks, personal groomers, and spin doctors did their best to strip the resentment from his eyes and the uncertainty from his manner. With his bottle of Kaliber (non-alcholic) beer in one hand and baloney sandwich in the other, stealing a kiss from Alexandra, he expresses charismatically his political (lower case ) philosophy in a spray of bread crumbs: "It's us against them, babe." Any thought that George Bush, Yale-Harvard Graduate, an all-time influential American right-wing businessman/politician's grandson, and son of a former President, is really stupid should be dispelled.
http://www.epinions.com/content_80194932356
9. SKINS --
Chris Eyre's Ethnic- or Native American film, SKINS, set on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation of South Dakota, is about two brothers and a displaced people as tragic as the Irish, the Israelis, the Palestinians or any other victims of terrorism you might want to mention. Specifically, it is about the attempt of one brother (Eric Schweig) to serve the Establishment as a law officer while taking care of his self-destructive older brother (Graham Greene), an emotionally shattered Vietnam war veteran. The rage that the younger man must suppress is tearing him to pieces. At a time when we are all being urged to "support the troops," SKINS reminds us that the best way we can do that is to get them back here alive as soon as possible. And once they are here, give them education, plus full medical and psychiatric attention, as needed, unlike the abandonment that met veterans of recent wars, such as Vietnam and the Gulf. Once those Troops were no longer "The Boys," they were forgotten. Released to moderate business, SKINS can now be found more easily on video.
http://www.epinions.com/content_69129113220
8. Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN -- When Mexican Director Alfonso Cuaron loosed this film on American audiences he created a cross-over sensation. Attracted by word of mouth, audiences who ordinarily would not be found at Spanish language films could be observed shifting in discomfort and pleasure in their seats. It is hot! Basically, two teenage boys persuade a cheated, beautiful married cousin they meet at a wedding to go on a vacation with them along the beautiful coast of Western Mexico. A coming of age/road trip film, Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN combines teen age lust, mature female passion and resignation, a study of class distinctions and a criticism of the Mexican political system. The film features great ensemble acting, especially that of Maribel Verdu as the experienced older woman, and location shooting on unspoiled beaches near Puerto Escondido and Huatulco in the State of Oaxaca. A film with something for everyone, believe me!
7. FAR FROM HEAVEN --
Todd Haynes' breakthrough movie is an essay on what social, sexual and racial mores were in America 50 years ago. Turned out in a miraculous reconstruction of the last real Studio Technicolor, and perfect attention to the time's style and production design; swelled with a lush period musical score by Old Pro Elmer Bernstein, and bolstered by the truly stellar performances of Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert and Patricia Clarkson, FAR FROM HEAVEN was dismissed by some critics as kitsch, a pastiche of German-born Director Douglas Sirk's Hollywood work. However, the film is more than that. It is a story about the good old days we better not try to go back to, even if we could.
http://www.epinions.com/content_80400649860
6. ENIGMA --
Prize winning Playwright Tom Stoppard's screenplay encouraged British Director Michael Apted to a career-best in this unconventional Spy/War Film. Intriguingly told from several quadrants, it is a fictionalized account of the desperate search for the German Enigma Naval Code at England's Bletchley Park think tank during World War II. In the balance is saving from U-boats a huge convoy from America on which the Allied victory may depend. It is also about a mentally disturbed math genius (Dougray Scott), the disappeared heartless beauty (Saffron Burrows) he loves, the bespectacled girl (Kate Winslet) who loves him and the master counterspy (Jeremy Northam) who claims it all involves a Nazi plot. Intricate, intelligent . . . enigmatic -- with a magnificent old fashioned score by John Barry, based loosely on Elgar's Enigma Variations. See it, if you have not.
http://www.epinions.com/content_649034174
5. RIVERS AND TIDES --
Here was perhaps the best documentary of the year: a meticulous account of the touch by touch, stroke after stroke, stick upon stick, stone over stone progress of renowned English Environmental Sculptor Andy Goldsworthy in constructing his various incredible works. In these days when we are reminded how Man covets Destruction as a creative act, as we go to "war" in the course of building the new American Empire -- and great peace rallies, for the first time since Vietnam, again swell across America and the World -- it may be comforting to watch an insignificant, thoughtful man creating with all his skill and heart a world of natural constructs, knowing that in half an hour, or in an instant, his work may be destroyed. As may be each of us. An inspiring little film.
http://www.epinions.com/content_88345579140
4. THE GREY ZONE --
Based on his own play, from the memoir of a Jewish camp doctor, Writer/Director (Actor) Tim Blake Nelson (O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?; CHERISH) has created a superb, exhausting, finally life-affirming account at of the uprising of the Third Jewish Sonderkommando at Auschwicz, late in 1944. Revelatory performances by the likes of David Arquette and Mira Sorvino, as well old pros like Allan Corduner, Daniel Benzali, Steve Buscemi and Harvey Keitel make THE GREY ZONE an astounding really heartbreaking drama. Held up by 9-1-1 for a year, lost in the stampede to war with Iraq -- it might be depressing, you know -- few people saw THE GREY ZONE. You now have a chance to find this top film of the past year on video. While you watch it, you might consider that, incidentally, Prescott Bush, our President's grandfather, was a Eugenics fanatic and in nominal financial charge of the Union Munitions Company at Auschwicz, from which four women, later tortured and executed by the Nazis, smuggled the gunpowder used to make bombs that enabled the uprising. He was also a financial sponsor and admirer of Hitler in the Pre-World II period. (He was convicted during the War of "Trading with the Enemy," but he volunteered to fund the United Services Organization (USO) in return for being appointed Honorary Chairman by his old Wall Street Friends. After the War, from proceeds of his investments in Occupied Europe, he became United States Senator, and as they used to say, a mover and shaker in persuading General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower to run for President as a Republican, saving the Party, some say.)
http://www.epinions.com/content_79403585156
3. ABOUT SCHMIDT --
Jack Nicholson's characterization of Warren R. Schmidt, retired actuary of the Woodmen Insurance Company of Omaha, Nebraska, is right up there with his best performances. Schmidt is an American Everyman of the Old (1950's) School, who upon losing his wife, tries to wrest what's left of value in his life, namely Jeannie his daughter, from a waterbed selling son and his family of Denver New Agers ( Dermot Mulroney, Kathy Bates, Howard Hesseman, etc). He is led to acceptance by his chance correspondence with a little African boy. Funny, wise, bittersweet, ABOUT SCHMIDT is the most conventionally entertaining and positive film on this list. A kind of occasional greeting card from what was the Former America.
http://www.epinions.com/content_86217232004
2. THE QUIET AMERICAN --
Another film which was held up over a year by our War on Terrorism, it may never go into general release, despite the Best Actor Oscar Nomination of its Star, Michael Caine. Ironically, adapted from arguably British Novelist Graham Greene's best and most prophetic novel (1952), THE QUIET AMERICAN deals with America's part in the development of Post-War, Cold War terrorism, which led over ten years later to The War in Vietnam. Shot on location in Saigon and environs. A career-best, too, for Australian Director Philip Noyce, after some years making absurd Hollywood "blow 'em ups." Here, he shows us what leads up to real blow 'em ups. Alas, we did not learn the lessons of Vietnam. We never seem to learn lessons about war, and every time we fail, we lose a little bit of what was best in our National Character. Brendan Fraser is also excellent as The Quiet American. Seek it out.
http://www.epinions.com/content_89755258500
1. THE PIANIST --
Well, well, not only did the Academy pick THE PIANIST as a Best Film possibility, but they gave Oscars to first time Nominee, Adrien Brody (the youngest, at 29, to win Best Actor), and to Ronald Harwood for Best Adapted Screenplay, and most amazing of all, to Exile Master Director Roman Polanski for Best Director. There can't be a much better definition of a Best Picture of the Year than those essentials. It is indeed the best picture of the year. Taken from the autobiographical account of a Polish piano virtuoso, Wladyslaw Szpilmann, THE PIANIST is a story of the sustaining power of Art (music, in this case) amid the most barbaric acts of the 20th Century, the Holocaust and the invasion of Eastern Europe. It is also by example, once removed, the story of Roman Polanski, who lost his family to the Nazis in Warsaw, during events similar to those Szpilmann witnessed, and lived as an orphan with that fearful doubt only through the kindness of Catholic farmers in the countryside. I wonder if Polanski reflects that America, the country which applauded his past triumphs, which rightly and righteously will put him in prison, should he return here, now is embarked on the Crusade of Empire in the 21st Century: the Creation of the New World Order. THE PIANIST is a wonderful film, full of spirit, courage, ordinary lives in terrible conditions, even humor; with a surprising testimony to the mystery of Human kindness near the end. Don't miss it.
http://www.epinions.com/content_86472756868
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Ah, Ladies and Gentlemen, the lights will go out soon. Archie Rice, the old English song and dance man I employ to sweep up after my clownish efforts, is shuffling on stage with his shovel and broom.
Good night.
Avoid junk, wherever you find it thrown in your face, and support good Art. In the end, that's all there is. That, and be friendly, be kind, if you possibly can.
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If you wish to explore all of Macresarf1's reviews, indexed by title and category, many with URL's, go to the following hyperlink --
http://www.epinions.com/content_2514526340
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macresarf1
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Location: San Francisco, Ca.
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12/1/09: Afghanistan, again: Between the Republican Devils and the Deep Blue Dog Obama.
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