The last few weeks of the year are always a little crazy for movie critics. That's when the studios suddenly snap to and become desperate for reviewers to quickly see every single film they feel might have a shot in hell at someone's Top 10 list or at some all-important pre-Oscar buzz. Many of these films haven't even opened locally, or even nationally, which means that a veritable slew of movies suddenly appear in a mad rush of last-minute screenings right before the New Year. During the last few weeks, a time of year I like to affectionately refer to as the 14 Days of Purgatory, it wasn't uncommon to find me sitting in a movie theater two or even three times a day, diligently chipping away at this daunting mountain of filmic backlog. As it turns out, only a few of the films I saw during this time actually made it onto my Top 10 list, but quite a few were very good. Only a handful were outright stinkers, and I won't waste either your time or mine by dwelling on those.
As for the "last-minute" films that almost made this year's Best-of list, Adaptation and The Pianist go right to the top of the class. I also enjoyed Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Chicago and The Quiet American, and would add those to a short list of fine films seen throughout the year that didn't quite make the cut. That list includes Road to Perdition, Unfaithful, 8 Mile, The Ring, Gangs of New York, 13 Conversations About One Thing and the exquisite French imports Time Out and Read My Lips. I'm an equal opportunity critic, so let me also add a pair of devastating black comedies from Israel and Palestine, respectively: Late Marriage and Divine Intervention.
Finally, at the risk of pushing one button too many, that short list of runner-ups would also have to include Rules of Attraction, a cinematic slap in the face sure to show up the annual Worst-of lists of many shortsighted critics. I also stand firm in my admiration for Steven Soderbergh's two recent films that weren't Ocean's Eleven: Full Frontal and Solaris. Add two one-night stands from last year's Tampa Gay and Lesbian Film Festival — Claire and Karmen Gei — and that's pretty much the best of the rest.
But now, on to the real deal. 2002 contained some absolutely remarkable films, and here are 10 that stand above the rest.
1. Spirited Away Alice in Wonderland has nothing on this brilliant animated fantasy from Japanese mythmaker Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro). Spirited Away is a true modern classic, a film steeped in a dream logic as memorable as that found in Lewis Carroll's book, and every bit as strange, beautiful and brimming with wit. It's a crime of epic proportions that Disney treated this treasure so shabbily, allowing it to open in only a handful of theaters across the country, and then with virtually no publicity. There may be a happy ending to this story, though: Hopefully, Miyazaki's masterpiece should eventually enjoy a long and happy life on DVD, a format where it's all but sure to find the respect it so richly deserves.
2. Far From Heaven Todd Haynes' exquisitely crafted homage to the 1950s melodramas of Douglas Sirk is clearly a film buff's dream, but there's a heart here as well as a brain. Far From Heaven emulates the gloriously artificial look of 1950s films perfectly, but it's all in service to a story that unfolds as a symphony of genuine emotions. Haynes guides us through it all, using the movie's formidable style to make connections between what was going on in America a half-century ago (but couldn't always be openly addressed) and what's happening here and now. The director isn't interested in poking fun at the classic form of melodrama so much as he wants to honor it and then massage it into some extended version of itself, one capable of addressing a uniquely modern sensibility. Besides that, it's all drop-dead gorgeous.
3. The Fast Runner It's doubtful you've ever seen anything like The Fast Runner, a movie that breaks all sorts of new ground while sifting through some of the oldest ground on earth. The world's first Inuit production relates a centuries-old tale of secrets, lies, lust, murder, rape, revenge and seal blubber. The bulk of this three-hour opus is made up of carefully observed details of 11th century Inuit life, but there's something thoroughly universal about it all too. This is a movie about life's simple pleasures and primal pains, and the film depicts it all with austere but enormous beauty.
4. Minority Report Steven Spielberg's sci-fi noir boasts a fascinating premise beautifully expanded into a provocative and consistently gripping feature. Based on Philip K. Dick story of a not-so-distant future where crimes are predicted and criminals arrested before they actually commit their offense, Minority Report is considerably more than just another exciting ride by a master entertainer. This is, dare I say it, an important movie, made timelier than ever in the pre-emptive political atmosphere of today. Spielberg enriches his surprisingly dark project with all sorts of odd little noir-ish flourishes, bringing to mind Blade Runner and even Chinatown. Spielberg's latest in right in that league.
5. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Detractors of Peter Jackson's richly imagined addition to his Rings saga will complain that the movie either has too much plot or not enough. Both complaints are valid, but so what? Yes, there are dozens of characters, species and tribes zipping about, all engaged in a series of torturously entangled machinations. And yes, not much really happens other than a bunch of elaborate battles leading up to one even more massive Uberbattle. Still, when a film communicates the essence of its world so completely and confidently, what's not to like? Two Towers brings Middle Earth to life in such an astonishingly vivid way that it's all but impossible not to already seriously consider Jackson's two-thirds completed trilogy as a landmark of fantasy cinema.
6. The Devil's Backbone A densely textured, elaborately imagined ghost story, in which the most resonant horrors turn out to be not just supernatural, but also psychological and social. There's a ghost rattling around Guillermo Del Toro's richly atmospheric tale, but the real terrors in this thinking-person's horror film turn out to be greed, murder, betrayal and a whole gamut of human ills associated with the plague of war. The movie's setting is as poignant as it is creepy — an isolated Spanish orphanage — and its inhabitants are embroiled in kinky secrets that would be right at home in a Mexican potboiler by way of Luis Bunuel.
7. In Praise of Love Jean-Luc Godard's densely constructed cine-essay operates on numerous levels and it makes us work to understand it. The film is jam-packed with cultural allusions, both high and low, and informed by an abiding interest in history, literature, poetry, politics, metaphysics, philosophy and all the fine arts, beginning and ending with cinema itself. Ideas, words and images are piled on fast and furiously, and the film actively resists easy comprehension, even as it demands our attention and even our participation. More than ever, the pain or pleasure yielded by Godard's movie is often directly proportionate to what we bring to the experience.
8. The Piano Teacher Another astonishing film from one of the most provocative filmmakers of our time, Michael Haneke. As elegant as it is perverse, The Piano Teacher features a mesmerizing performance by Isabelle Hubbert in one of the most extreme depictions of aberrant sexuality ever seen on the screen. Haneke's film is often difficult to watch — it makes the proceedings in Last Tango in Paris look like an episode from Sesame Street — but the movie demands to be seen and thought about. Even those who wind up hating The Piano Teacher will probably never forget it.
9. 24 Hour Party People One of the better rock 'n' roll movies of the last few decades, and certainly the definitive film about the Manchester music scene of the punk and post-punk era. Well, actually, it's the only one. 24 Hour Party People is a sly, self-mocking ball of pomo energy that's as interesting and as much fun for the uninitiated as it is for diehards who know everything there is to know about bands like the Buzzcocks, Joy Division and New Order. Director Michael Winterbottom offers proof positive that, from Welcome to Sarajevo to Wonderland to The Claim, this is a man who has never made the same film twice.
10. Y Tu Mama Tambien In clumsier hands, this blatantly sexual Mexican road movie detailing a mobile menage a trois composed of two 17-year-old boys and an attractive older woman might have been just another American Pie. As it turns out, the film is a gem, pure and rarely simple, alternately wry, exuberant and bittersweet. The beauty and originality of Y Tu Mama Tambien lies not just in its empathy for its characters and its attention to minutiae, but in its bluntly eloquent honesty. The abundant sex in Y Tu Mama Tambien frequently feels clumsy and even haphazard, just as in real life, and it's all the more erotic and effective for it. A film so good it almost makes us forget that 2002 was also the year that brought us Pluto Nash.
This article appears in Jan 1-7, 2003.