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12.28.2001 00:05
A reel big year
Our critic's picks for the best and worst films of 2001
BY
MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal Arts Writer
It wasn't the best of movie years, and yet -- surprise! -- it didn't seem such a chore coming up with my picks for the 10 best movies of 2001.
While there was some juggling of contenders as I went down to the wire while awaiting screenings of
A Beautiful Mind, Ali
and
The Shipping News
(all of which made my list in the end), most of these films had been on my mind for some time.
How could you not love the sheer cleverness of the computer-animated
Shrek,
about a hideous green ogre who lives in a swamp and gets his chance to become a hero when he is sent to rescue a beautiful princess from a dragon?
Or
Monsters, Inc.,
Disney's clever computer-animated entry about the nighttime creatures who dwell in children's closets and under their beds, ready to frighten? Who knew they were unionized, and worked in an enormous factory where the doors to kids' bedrooms became portals to their nightmares?
How could I not include
Moulin Rouge,
whose sheer eye-popping audacity guaranteed it a spot?
Well, okay, maybe I had my doubts about
Pearl Harbor.
At the time of its release last May, I was one of the few critics who liked that wartime saga about the Japanese sneak attack 60 years ago on the U.S. fleet anchored in Hawaii.
Most razzed its central romantic triangle and its historical lightfootedness. Had I lost my marbles, along with the thousands of people who'd bought tickets and liked it as well?
After all, I'd praised the silly sex comedies
Saving Silverman
and
Tomcats,
only to discover on looking at them again months later that they were neither as original, clever or funny as I'd first thought. A friend who'd suffered through
Saving Silverman
on my recommendation told me she was sure I was really 16 years old at heart.
Would
Pearl Harbor
fall into that category? Well, no. After seeing an Atlanta review of the film's video release that said the film wasn't really as bad as had been reported, I watched it again. I'd planned to watch just the highlights, jumping into the film at the 15-minute mark.
But I got hooked and wound up watching the whole film, even onto the second DVD disk. Its love story played like one of those wartime romances straight out of a '40s movie. The action scenes were just as spectacular, even on video.
At the start of the first year of the new century I certainly wouldn't have guessed that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman would have split, nor that Kidman, who is not one of my favorite actresses, would wind up in two of my 10 favorite films of the year. But then that only goes to prove that in many respects 2001 was a very strange year indeed.
BEST
Shrek:
Big and green and scary-looking, this ogre turned out to be one of the most loveable characters of the year. Clever and tweaky enough for adults,
Shrek
held big appeal for all ages. (Available on video.)
Monsters, Inc.:
The truth behind what went on behind the scenes before those monsters turned up in a child's closet or under the bed. Funny and appealing, like
Shrek,
this animated film held as much charm for adults as for children . . . which is the secret to any animated film's success.
A Beautiful Mind:
Russell Crowe again shows what a gifted actor he is. In this bizarre story based on real life, Crowe plays a mathematical genius whose secret skulduggery work for the Defense Department leads to his paranoia and severe schizophrenia. The surprise in the middle of the movie is startling. That John Nash, the man Crowe plays with so many nuances, later went on to win the Nobel Prize is the most remarkable thing of all.
The Others:
This creepy ghost story revolves around a woman (Kidman) whose husband is missing in World War II, whose children must be kept in darkened rooms because of a skin condition and who hires three house servants to help her run a huge mansion on an island off the coast of England. When the unseen "others" of the title begin making noises and creating mayhem, it's time to get down deeper in the seats.
Moulin Rouge:
It's Nicole Kidman again! This time she's in director Baz Luhrmann's zany extravaganza about a young man head-over-heels in love with the nightclub star of an 1899 Paris revue. The script was a reworking of the opera
La Boheme,
but with a contemporary soundtrack that borrowed from the likes of Madonna and Elton John, not to mention Rodgers and Hammerstein. The manic results were truly out of this world. (On video.)
Memento:
Like its befuddled hero, most people watched this entire movie trying to figure out what the heck was going on. The only thing certain was that a murder had been committed. The film moved backwards as the hero tried to piece together how it had happened and who did it. But his selective amnesia forced him to write everything down, because he forgot everything that had happened more than two hours earlier. It was a strange, twisty course that had a big payoff in the end. (On video.)
Ali:
Will Smith has a commanding presence as world heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali in a gripping biography that doesn't pussyfoot around the man's shortcomings. Often using hand-held cameras and harsh lighting,
Ali
had a you-are-there sensibility that made it powerful and very real.
Pearl Harbor:
Enough said. (On video.)
Apocalypse Now Redux:
What would have happened if Leonardo Da Vinci had been given the chance to go back and rework his
Mona Lisa?
If Michelangelo had been able to go back and touch up the Sistine Chapel ceiling? Director Francis Ford Coppola got the chance to revisit his offbeat 1979 Vietnam epic and the results were an even richer experience. (On video.)
The Shipping News:
Kevin Spacey is wonderful in this brooding drama about a dull man with no future who finds redemption when he moves to barren, windswept Newfoundland. Director Lasse Hallstrom's film moves slowly in getting to the heart of its characters, but patient viewers are rewarded. Late in the film, Spacey's character discovers sordid secrets about his own family history that change his outlook on life.
Kudos also go to
The Score, Amores Perros, Amelie, Divided We Fall, The Closet, Bridget Jones's Diary, A Knight's Tale, The Mexican, Legally Blonde, Spy Kids, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
and
Made.
(All except
Amelie
and
Harry Potter
are on video.)
My 10-worst list always spotlights films that must have seemed so wonderfully right in the planning stages, but went so dreadfully wrong somewhere along the line. Most feature big names in movies that, maybe not yet, but sometime in the near future will miraculously vanish from their studio biographies.
WORST
The Majestic:
A wrongheaded movie if there ever was one. Cloying and sappy, Jim Carrey plays a blacklisted Hollywood writer who develops amnesia and wakes up in a small town where everyone believes he is a long-missing war hero. A disaster.
Captain Corelli's Mandolin:
Just about everything went wrong in transferring the best-selling book to the screen. Nicolas Cage plays an Italian officer whose unit has occupied a picturesque Greek island during World War II. The lighthearted Italians captivate the islanders with their songs and mandolins. The plot centers on the romance between Cage's character and the daughter of the local doctor, but since there was zero chemistry between him and co-star Penelope Cruz, the whole thing fell flat. A sudden, remarkable miracle at the end further underscored how nonsensical it all was.
Domestic Disturbance:
John Travolta was the sole convincing character in this movie, playing a divorced dad who was the only one who believed his son's far-fetched story about seeing his pillar-of-the-community stepfather commit murder. Despite an interesting start, the film quickly slid into standard crazed-character fare.
Bubble Boy:
Possibly the stupidest movie of the year. A boy who is allergic to the world and lives in a plastic bubble cobbles together a makeshift portable bubble to travel cross-country so he can stop the girl of his dreams from marrying the wrong man. Disney, which produced it, got lots of publicity from the mother of a real bubble boy who felt the movie made light of her son's situation. She needn't have worried. Hardly anyone saw it. (On video.)
How High:
Or rather, how low could the writers go in this attempt to revive the old '70s Cheech & Chong genre through a pair of rap artists who call themselves Method Man and Redman? They smoke some magic marijuana and become instant geniuses who enroll in Harvard. When the pot runs out, they try to replicate the experience by digging up the body of President John Quincy Adams, who died in 1848, and smoking his dried flesh. It ends with the vice president of the United States puffing on a giant bong, fashioned from a Revolutionary War cannon. No kidding!
Freddy Got Fingered:
It wasn't a good year for Tom Green. First he made this scattershot, lowbrow, lame comedy. Then his house burned down. Then he filed for divorce from Drew Barrymore, his bride of six months. In the film he plays an animator wannabe who, among other things, dresses in the skin of a fresh-killed moose, whacks a woman on her paralyzed legs while she urges him on, puts on scuba gear to dive for soap-on-a-rope in a toilet and accuses his father of sexually assaulting his brother. (On video.)
Say It Isn't So:
The Farrelly Brothers produced this lowbrow incest comedy. Star Chris Klein plays one of the final scenes with his arm stuck up a cow's anus. (On video.)
Jeepers Creepers:
A brother and sister find that a mass murderer has made a floor-to-ceiling collage of his many victims in the basement of an abandoned church. The ickiest movie of the year.
Kiss of the Dragon:
One character gets blown in half by a grenade. Another is stabbed in the neck with chopsticks. Yet another gets an acupuncture treatment that makes all the blood collect in his head until it dribbles from his eyes, ears, nose and mouth.
And those were just the male characters in martial arts star Jet Li's super-violent movie! Poor Bridget Fonda, playing a North Dakota farmgirl now living in France, is beaten, kicked, injected with heroin and forced to become a Parisian prostitute. Her little daughter is held hostage in an orphanage by a corrupt police official. The cop, for some unknown reason, keeps a turtle in his desk drawer. Gruesome and inane. (On video.)
What's the Worst That Could Happen:
It turned out to be this movie for stars Danny De Vito and Martin Lawrence.
Lawrence played a thief wrongfully accused of stealing an expensive ring from a newly bankrupt telecommunications mogul. The funniest moment came when Lawrence was trapped by a burglar alarm system's crisscrossing red laser beams and had to stand motionless on a staircase. Too bad Lawrence could get laughs standing still, but not when he was moving.
Just missing a place on this list by a hair were
Novocaine, Heist, Training Day, Swordfish, Scary Movie 2
and
A.I. Artificial Intelligence. (Swordfish
and
Scary Movie 2
are on video.)
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