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LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS
" It seems pretty clear by now that in the fullness of time, Peter Jackson's adaptation of Tolkien's trilogy will be seen as one of the crowning achievements of epic cinema. To screw this up, Jackson would have to do something like conclude The Return Of The King with the fellowship grinning and slapping backs around a big bonfire while anthropomorphic teddy bears caper and sing. But who'd be dumb enough to end a much beloved trilogy with something that stupid?" - Adam Jahnke, Culver City, CA
"I believe we are watching THE great cinema adventure of our time, unfolding three hours at a time. As staggering and virtually flawless as it is technically, Jackson also manages to get the human dimension just right." - Gregory J. Prohl, Kent, WA
"The literally tree-hugging critique of the industrial revolution aside, Gollum restores the world's waning faith in the potential of the computer-generated character. Somewhere, George Lucas is saying, "I told you so." - Suzanne Scott, Los Angeles, CA
THE HOURS
"Things I Can't Tolerate: Miramax's out-of-whack sense of priority and Phillip Glass's score in The Hours, which demoted the entire movie for me. Phillip! Put the arpeggios down!" - Wayne Graham, Chicago, IL
"Aside from being one of the best book-to-film translations in recent memory, The Hours is smartly directed and features a trio of stunning performances. If only all mainstream adult movies were made with this much care and intelligence." - Ethan Alter, Brooklyn, NY
FEMME FATALE
"Another coup de Palma, this time starring John Stamos's wife and Melanie Griffith's husband. Femme Fatale was in and out of theaters quicker than Terrence Young's Inchon. It's a shame all the moviegoers out there didn't seem to have a clue .ˇ" - Walker Roberts, Nagoya, Japan
25TH HOUR
"The best and most important American filmmaker working today, Spike Lee is probably convinced that no film of his can be reviewed in any sense without mentioning his 1989 breakthrough effort, Do the Right Thing. Perhaps it is appropriate then that his first film after September 11th is a perfect companion to that film. 25th Hour, a heartbreaking love letter to New York City is the American film I consider to be the best of the last quarter-century. Potent themes arise not only from the narrative but from the rubble that lurks ominously in the background of nearly every frame. Before even his first shot, Lee extracts the off-screen sounds of a dog being beaten, and already we sense a threat from an attacker that is unseen. Sadly, critics and audiences in many respected circles are dismissing the film as inconsequential, their calm and control regained; how quickly they forget that fateful day, and the months that followed, where our sense of control was as lost as Lee's characters." - Zachary McGee, NY, NY
"At a time when most movies are trying to pretend the twin towers never existed, here's Spike putting it front and center as a grim fact of the city's daily routine." - Rob Morton, New York, NY
IN PRAISE OF LOVE
"In Praise of Love, disregarded for its politics, is the culmination of a cinematic master's lifelong quest to reconcile sound and image. Now in his seventies, Godard rebuts the notion that the avant-garde belongs solely to the enfants terribles. - David Connelly, Los Angeles, CA
"Curiously, my runner-up film, both this year and last, begins its English-language title with the word "In" and ends it with the word "Love." Both Wong Kar-wai and Godard's respective films are reveries for brief or hardly-realized romances, examining the manner in which our memories recreate the past, and conclude rather enigmatically in a different time and place. I suppose great minds do think alike." - Josh Timmerman
MORVERN CALLAR
"Morvern Callar lingered long in my head after seeing it. Scenes that seemed shockingly cold and detached become beautiful and almost tender when called up from memory after a few days." - Douglas Dow, Dallas, TX
ROAD TO PERDITION
"The critics polished their daggers for Road to Perdition and were prepared to praise whatever Scorsese had marinating in his editing room for the past several years. Worse, Tom Hanks's sublime performance has been overlooked in favor of Daniel Day-Lewis doing a bad imitiation of a deranged Robert De Niro." - James Kernochan, New York NY
"You didn't like Road to Perdition? You didn't get it!!!" - Nadine Pritchett, Homewood, AL
"Road to Perdition - I know it's become fashionable to badmouth this film, but I have no idea why. Featuring a quintet of the years finest performances, and the gorgeous, elegiac cinematography of Conrad Hall." - Gregory J. Prohl, Kent, WA
FITS OF PASSION
"Auto Focus was the feel good perv film of the year. Paul Schrader needs to re-hook with Scorsese, especially after the yawner that was Gangs of New York." - Eric Puls, Chicago, IL
"Why wasn't The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys more embraced? It is a mystery to me. It is one of the best films I've ever seen to truly capture the intense emotional state of a teenager. The animation was not gimmicky in the slightest - it offered a true insight into that concept that 'a teenager lives and dies hundreds of times a day.'" - Neil Marks, Hoboken, NJ
"Certain audiences and computer nerds may fawn again and again over the scope and range of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, but what about Taakshi Miike's recently concluded Dead or Alive trilogy, completed over the last three years along with the many other dozen productions the Japanese director has completed or begun over that same time span. Jumping from horror to musical comedy to science fiction to action to alternate combinations of all of the above, Miike has brought together the most fascinating and still overlooked filmographies of the brand new 21st century. Where do his films, fecal stained operas of destruction and familial bonding, fit into the new picture world cinema has created for itself? I say (and I'm sure he would agree), Who gives a shit? Miike will still keep producing a product that consistently delivers all the goods, both high and low, sans much of the pretensions (digital vs. celluloid) of the Western cinematic dialogue. At heart, he's that boy in the basement lovingly destroying his film worlds (and perhaps ours) over and over again, while at the same time building them right back up. So the important question, why has so much cinematic of late lost this kind of energy and passion"? - Patrick Kennelly
"To make your characters ridiculous is no great feat. But to make them ridiculous AND identifiable - human even - now that's really something to see. Affections as heavy as Love and Compassion and Repentance and Forgiveness all lift Death to Smoochy high above such condescending, stereotype-indulging fare as The Good Girl, About Schmidt, and My Big Fat Greek Wedding." - Ryan Tracy
"The most unjustly maligned film of the year is The Emperor's Club. Slightly oversentimental but ultimately honest, every critic said the same thing - "I'm tired of the same old story about a teacher inspiring a student . . . well, this one's different but it's the same thing." !!! This is Dead Poets Society that exists in a world where passion has to be weighed with ethics. An unappreciated gem." - Andy Black, Memphis, TN
"The complete non-mention of Full Frontal in your year-end issue was a major disappointment. I am at least 70% certain/hopeful that within 5 years, people will see the light and recognize the sophistication and structural insanity of this unsung, experimental-comedy masterpiece. In the postmodern, film-industry-satire category, I value Full Frontal much more than the overly ironic Adaptation.
- Jonathan Doyle, Montreal, Quebec
"How sad it is that Adaptation and Being John Malkovich have been embracced while Human Nature has seemed to slip by everyone. Human Nature is by far the better work - funnier, smarter (but without falsely pretending to be smart, as the other films do), with a more unusual feel, and much stronger clarity of purpose; it is a classic satire of behavior, and more true a satire than many recent attempts at the genre. Human Nature is a complex portrayal of our ideas about nature and society and an expression of the paradox of our existence - driven by "nature"'s instincts, processed through the artifice of society, yearning for the illusion of nature's purity, and yet refusing that illusion has some real substance to it (as opposed to the all-shot, no-content self-consciousness of Malkovich and Adaptation." - Steven Toews, Kingston, ON
"Went to Late Marriage dutifully. Wowza! Amazed at the world I was shown. Storytelling of a very fine caliber. Passionate, pained acting. Every dumb lunk who enjoyed My Big Fat Greekˇ should be made to see this. Blushing ensues." - Eric Puls, Chicago, IL
"Why do people have such difficulty appreciating films with no redeemable characters? I loved The Rules of Attraction and I think it more accurately reflects social values than any of the other films on the listˇ.sad, but true." - Tony Larder, New Brunswick, Canada
"I found Maggie Gyllenhaal's performance in Secretary to be electrifying. She created a sympathetic character who, despite her pain, found something and someone she could love, and we loved her for it. Also, her portrayal of a woman caught in a cycle of self-mutilation was a refreshingly honest performance, which deftly avoided turning the film into a diagnostic melodrama about the disease." - Jordan Foster, New York, NY
"Songs from the Second Floor is the most visually innovative film of the year, but also the most disturbing end-of-the-world scenario since Dawn of the Dead. - Danielle McCarthy, Brooklyn, NY
"Sunshine State - Forget Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, and the rest of the usual suspects. John Sayles is the Great American Filmmaker. If there really were justice in the world, John Sayles would be allowed to make a movie like this for every one of the 50 states."
- Adam Jahnke, Culver City, CA
"Trouble Every Day was either ignored or misunderstood. The best homage to Euro-horror by a great director since The Ninth Gate (Yes, that's a compliment)." - Timothy C. Dennison, New York, NY
"I know this isn't the most original of complaints about going to the movies in the past year, but I'm going there anyway. Is it me or is it getting much harder to go to the movies these days? Besides the over-inflated cost of the ticket, how many other people or distractions do I have to listen to when I go to the movies? It seems as if every time I do go to the theatre, I have to listen to some jackass yapping or cell phone ringing or god knows what else. I am not going to stop seeing as many films as I can this coming year, but I'm just hoping something will shift in the cultural climate to make people a little more courteous and the film industry a little kinder to people and their wallets. " - Robert Ham, Portland, OR
"Strong kudos to Gavin Smith for his blistering diatribe on Harvey Weinsten. He echoes what many of us have been saying and thinking about Weinstein and Miramax for the past several years, but does so from a prestigious pulpit and in as concise and detailed a manner as any of us could wish." - Jim Faller, Flushing, NY
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