The Year In Movies
Hugh Jackman In Best And Worst Movies For 2006


By Jeff Eason

Scanning the Top 100 list of top grossing movies for the year 2006, I see that I viewed 40 of them this year. Some of the ones that I missed were intentional (The Pink Panther) while others were movies that just didn’t make it to local cinemas (Marie Antoinette).

Here’s my list of the best, worst and most disappointing movies of the year, plus a list of movies I wish had made it to High Country theaters:

The Best of 2006

Actor Daniel Craig brought a gritty realism to the ultra-suave essence of British secret agent James Bond in Casino Royale.

Without speculating on what movie will win what when award season rolls around this spring, let me just name the movies that I found the most enjoyable this year. My top two movies of the year are Inside Man and The Prestige, both dramas that keep the viewer guessing as to what will happen next.

2006 was director Spike Lee’s year as he produced one of the year’s most provocative documentaries, When the Levees Broke, and one of the best thrillers in ages, Inside Man. Clive Owen, Jody Foster and Willem Dafoe give standout performances in Inside Man, but it is Denzel Washington—acting his age for once—who gives the movie its emotional and intellectual gravity. The negotiations between Owen and Washington recall great cop dramas of the past such as Dog Day Afternoon.

Christopher Nolan has quickly become one of my favorite directors with taut, thinking-man’s thrillers such as Insomnia, Memento and Batman Begins. In The Prestige he takes his unique “time mazes” one step further by focusing on the world of magicians. The rivalry between a couple of turn-of-the-century illusionists played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale is the backdrop for this wonderfully intense thriller. It is a film you’ll want to see again immediately to see what you missed the first time around.

Right behind those two picks are Casino Royale, Invincible, Brothers of the Head, United 93 and A Prairie Home Companion. Casino Royale made me genuinely excited about James Bond movies for the first time since I was a kid. Invincible was the best sports movie of the year—with great performances by Mark Wahlberg and Greg Kinnear. Brothers of the Head, based on the classic Brian Aldiss graphic novel, was the best foreign movie and best character study I saw all year. United 93 was as unblinkingly objective as a movie can be when dealing with such an emotional issue as 9/11…and as an American I appreciated the candor. A Prairie Home Companion was a perfect sendoff for Robert Altman, the quintessentially American director who died last month. Full of humor, humanity and good music, it summed up what was best about the man’s film career.

Kiddie Flicks Abound

2006 was a banner year for kids’ movies, and filmmakers seemed like they were intent on providing some quality entertainment this season for even the youngest moviegoers in the family. Charlotte’s Web, Cars and Curious George are all instant classics in the pre-pre-teen genre. Curious George gets extra points for inspiring one of the best soundtrack albums of the year featuring Jack Johnson and Friends.

For kids a little older, Flushed Away, Eight Below, and Monster House were movies that definitely hold up over repeated viewings. For a kids’ movie with twisted adult entertainment value, it’s hard to beat Hoodwinked, that lovable low-budget animated feature that plays out like a cross between Little Red Riding Hood and television’s CSI series.

Comic Book Movies

Academy Award winner Halle Berry and Tony Award winner Hugh Jackman plan their escape from the set of X-Men: The Last Stand.

Once again in 2006, moviemakers looked to that great American art form, the comic book, for inspiration. The relative obscurity of the original source was no problem for the makers of V For Vendetta, one of the best movies ever made from modern graphic novel. Of course it didn’t hurt that Natalie Portman with a shaved head was still more beautiful than 99% of the world’s population. 2006 also brought us the first Superman movie in two decades. Superman Returns brought that storied franchise back from the dead even if it failed to match the high standards of Batman Begins or the Spider-Man films.

And it is with my report on comic book movies that I come to the worst movies of the year. For my money, it was a tie between Benchwarmers and X-Men 3: The Last Stand. I don’t think anyone expected Benchwarmers to be any good, but expectations for X-Men 3 as a summer blockbuster were unusually high. Those expectations aside, X-Men was one long soap opera version of what super heroes do on their downtime until the big convoluted final 20 minutes where everything blows up…for no apparent reason. When the DVD version of the movie came out this fall, the big draw was the inclusion of alternate endings. If there were any endings better than the one used in the theatrical release, I wish they had used them in the first place.

Actor Hugh Jackman pulled off that rare feat of starring in one of the best movies of the year (The Prestige) and one of the worst (X-Men 3).

Pirates’ Treasure

If X-Men 3 was a disappointment in general, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was a disappointment to me in particular. I loved the first film and, like many other film buffs, was looking forward to the second installment. I thought the new movie was feature-length version of Johnny Depp taking part in a Benny Hill comedy chase skit. No plot, just a bunch of frenetic action sequences. Despite my objections, Dead Man’s Chest went on to be the highest grossing film of the year, earning $424 million since its debut on the first weekend in July. By comparison, the second place film, Cars, convinced moviegoers to surrender nearly $200 million less booty this year.

Docs & M.I.A. Movies

I wish someone would build a small movie theater for documentaries, or at least dedicate one of the screens of the local multiplex to the art form. While An Inconvenient Truth did manage to appear on a High Country big screen, a host of other docs missed us entirely. The list includes Roving Mars, Who Killed the Electric Car, Why We Fight, The U.S. Vs. John Lennon and Leonard Cohen: I’m You Man.

Other movies that failed to come to local theaters include The Notorious Bettie Page, Strangers with Candy, Fast Food Nation, The Last King of Scotland, Catch A Fire, For Your Consideration and Hollywoodland.

In conclusion, 2006 was just about like any other year at the movies. I saw some good ones. I saw some that I probably should have walked out and demanded my money back. If anything stood out as a major trend in the industry, it was the lack of good quality comedies for adults. There were no breakout comedies this year such as Wedding Crashers, The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle or My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Maybe that explains the popular and critical success of Borat…