Top 10 Movies of 2006 According to me!

Some of them have links to my reviews...Click on the title to read them if you like...

10. Stranger than fiction

A brilliant comedy, Zach Helm’s thoughtful, deliciously funny and somehow bitter tale of an ordinary man whose lethargic life is seriously bothered by a strange narrative voice which bizarrely follows him around. Apart from some great performances by Will Farrell, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, the movie is a true pleasure to watch. It’s simply amazing. As simple as the movie itself.

9. V for Vendetta

James McTeigue’s fantastic fantasy, a sharply political comic strip about a phantom-type outlaw who fights the authority of the intrusive, corrupted government of Britain, in a dark, depressing Orwellian ambience in the near future. One of the most pleasing experiences I have ever had in the movie theatre to say the least.

8. The last king of Scotland

The entertaining tale of a fictional Scottish doctor and Idi Amin’s personal physician as a backdrop for telling the true story of Uganda’s brutal yet charming dictator. Forest Whitaker’s mind-blowing performance as general Amin, is surely worthy an Oscar this year.

7. Volver

To me, Pedro Almodovar’s best work to date, a charming, nostalgic and intimate story about women in general and in particular, an ode to femininity.

6. Little miss Sunshine

One of the smartest comedies I’ve ever seen, it’s the story of a dysfunctional family and their road trip to get their little girl to a disgusting American idol-type beauty contest for kids.

5. Departed

Another miraculous movie from one the greatest filmmakers of all time, Martin Scorsese. A gangster movie about a Boston-based Irish gang that is as much a pleasure to watch as it is a brilliant art work.

4. Letters from Iwo Jima

Clint Eastwood’s the other half of the Iwo Jima’s story, this time, from the eyes of the Japanese who were defending the Island. Apart from the masterfully executed war scenes, this movie is much more than just another brilliant war movie. A great film, not to be missed.

3. United 93

Paul Greengrass’s masterpiece about the September eleventh’s fourth hijacked plane that crashed near Pittsburg. Apart from Sean Penn’s mind-blowing short film, united 93 is simply the best movie that anyone could possibly make about this subject.

2. Pan's Labyrinth

I said whatever I could have said about this movie however, I doubt that I succeeded to reveal even a fraction of how good this film actually is. I went to see Pan’s Labyrinth with unbelievably elevated expectations, which usually is a recipe for disappointment, but Del Toro almost humiliated my expectations as being too modest. I wish I was an octopus so I could raise my all eight thumbs up instead of two, imagining that octopuses have thumbs, to begin with.

and finally...the best movie of the year...

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Well, do you really think that I give the first spot to anything other than Pan’s Labyrinth?

Best movie of the year : PAN’S LABYRINTH

Pan’s Labyrinth…Perfection well defined

If there’s only one day in the whole year that you want to relax and not bother yourself with planning stuff, that would be your Birthday but normally, when you don’t plan something ahead, you dramatically increase the chance of having a plain, unmemorable birthday which ironically is in full contrast with what a birthday is supposed to be, the most special day of the year.

But last night, my 31st birthday was strangely unforgettable

For months, I was impatiently waiting for the latest film of Guillermo Del Toro, Pan’s Labyrinth, to be screened in Montreal. To my big surprise, as I checked the website for the upcoming movies, I realized that it was supposed to be screened, exactly on my birthday. Therefore, I dearly took it as both my birthday surprise and my mysterious birthday gift.

To be honest, I can hardly remember any better gift, anyone has ever given to me nor anything I can imagine anyone ever will. It was 112 minutes of pure perfection in every possible aspect imaginable. One of the best stories, cinematography’s, acting’s, visual effects and I can go on and on forever, combined with something else from out of this world, a well-balanced combination of all human emotions at their best, to say the least.

Pan’s Labyrinth or “El Laberinto del Fauno”, is the story of a girl, Ofelia (played by Ivana Baquero) who travels with her pregnant mother to a mill-house in northern Spain’s woodlands, to settle with her mother’s new husband, Captain Vidal (played marvelously by Sergi Lopez), a precise, dedicated and viciously brutal fascist officer who’s trying to crush the last remains of resistance to General Franco and his extreme-right dictatorial regime.

Ofelia, guided by a fairy-type creature, enters a labyrinth and is told by a faun that she might be the lost princes of the underworld and should prove herself in series of bizarre missions.

The rest of the story is a spectacular polyphony of her quest in the fantasy land, and the real world’s grim and atrocious brutality of the civil war, in 1944’s Spain.

Del Toro masterfully depicts how the grisly realities of the real world with all its nauseating ghastliness leer and leek to the children’s pure fantasies and transform their dreams from beautiful fairy tales to a tense and frightful world and the way children enthusiastically plunge as deep as possible into their imaginations just to get rid of the cruelty of the environment, surrouding them. He portrays how the tragedy of war imposes an unbearable weight on children’s shoulders, to the point that they innocently carry this unfair burden of responsibilities with themselves, even in their most personal fables. However, he insists that we, humans, in our lowest, are able to create such a ferociously frightening environment that no monster in any imaginative world could ever replicate.

Among thousands of mind-blowing subtleties of this film, I really enjoyed the way Del Toro represents Ofelia’s critical age, being on the verge of puberty, by occasionally letting her show of a little bit of feminine charm, while perfectly preserves her innocence as a child.

The film, both the illustration of the fairyland and the depiction of the real world’s civil war, has been executed so brilliantly, meticulously and eloquently that it seems impossible to alter any element of this movie and come up with a better film than what Pan’s labyrinth is and that’s what I call a shear Perfection.

To me, THE best film of the year, an instant classic and one of the top ten movies of all time.

Thanks Gillermo for this magnificent birthday present.

Time-Space

I’m amazed that the theory of general relativity was proposed by a German who was living in Switzerland!

The fact that time and space are not two separate entities, should have been as plain as a Gerard Depardieu’s nose on his face for anybody who was living in Montreal!

As someone who lives in this city, I can see and feel the expansion and contraction of space with time and vise versa and I don’t need any revelation or elaborate experiment to realize it!

For example, the nearest grocery store to my apartment, in a human-style weather (like in mid-may, or mid-September) is literally right on the corner. It would take me like a blink to go there, get something and come back. But in -30 with wind-chill (like what we had last night), the same distance would expand to almost eternity! You can walk and walk and walk and never get there. I mean seriously, somewhere along the path, you might even succeed convincing yourself to give up and return home by telling, “Oh, Fuck it! Why do I need milk in the first place; I’m not a little cow for god’s sake”.

Five minutes later, being defrosted at home, bearing the cereal box’s blaming regard, I remember how in the mid-spring, I would say “do you really want to take a bus to St-Laurent? Why can’t we just walk?!” and I truly regret why the Einstein’s theory of relativity is not Tremblay’s or DesJardin’s theory!

The disappointment of an infertile story

After a painfully long waiting, I finally got to see the latest work of Alfonso Cuaron, Children of men, a promising sci-fi about a time in the near future, 2027 exactly, where for some unknown reasons, the man kind has lost the ability to reproduce. The rest is the quest of the movie’s protagonist, played by Clive Owen, to get the only pregnant woman in the world to the apparently safe hands of a vaguely described group of scientists called “The human Project”, amidst all the chaos and disorder cause by this catastrophic pandemic of infertility.

Children of men powerfully starts, acceptably mediocre continues and pathetically poor finishes. Despite the brilliance of the idea behind the story, the scenario is so incredibly badly done that it even overshadows one of the best cinematography of the modern cinema. It is indeed twice upsetting since the same idea, had it been developed more eloquently, it could have been one of the best science fiction of the recent years.

Having said those, I should also mention that it is not a bad film at all. Even carrying the weight of this wretched screenplay, it is still considerably better than most of the Hollywood’s productions, by all means. All the disappointments, in fact, arises form the legitimately elevated expectations from such a genius as Alfonso Cuaron. If he only stick with the well written stories like Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban or Y tu mama tambien and do not waste his abundant talent and technique and his potentials on such a pitiful screenplay, he could truly make magic!

Thanks for the memory...

The last king of Scotland

The Last King of Scotland is the story of a young Scottish, recently graduated medical doctor who chooses Uganda, utterly by chance, to go and help the poor and ends up being the personal physician and the advisor to the charismatic and, at the time, promising leader of Uganda, Idi Amin!

Kevin Macdonald, based on Giles Foden's award winning novel, utilizes this intriguing fictional tale to, alongside, unravel the true story of one the Africa’s most brutal yet entertaining tyrant, General Amin who has been played astonishingly good by brilliant Forest Whitaker. In fact he is so successful in depicting the seemingly humble but mysterious and multi-layered character of Amin that I would be amazed if I don’t see his name in the list of the candidates for the Best supporting actor, in this year’s academy awards.

The last king of Scotland is a stylish and visually stunning movie and it has the right dose of almost everything, from suspense and action to romance and history. The result is a film which is informative but not boring and brutal but not impossible to watch. In one word, it’s a job well-done!

A homage to femininity

Although I’m a big fan of extravaganza in cinema, whether it involves a complicated, multi-layered story like Eyes wide shut or a brilliant camera working and technical indulgence like Munich, but I can’t hide my deep appreciation for anything brutally minimal yet widely expressive, like one of Hirschfeld's caricatures or Pedro Almodovar’s recent masterpiece, Volver.

I’m neither capable nor willing to analyze Volver, but there are some points that I really like to talk about.

First of all, it is to me, his best movie so far. Although some might argue that but it is Penelope Cruz’s best performance to date and I don’t think there would be Any disagreement in that regard;

Volver, like most of previous works of Almodovar is visually enchanting and women, and particularly mothers, play a key role in it. But what is particular to this movie is the exaggerated depth of this central role and the fact that even a few men who exist in the plot are far from good! They are irritatingly nasty or in the best case, completely neutral and excessively useless! and although I don’t quite share his negative view towards men, but I can not possibly hide my deep appreciation for the fantastic image he portrays of women, which is nothing less than a cult-like worshiping ceremony.

In this movie, unlike most of the stereotype portrayal of women, they are seriously independent, impressively in control and totally capable of managing almost impossible situations when they have to. They don’t scream, they don’t freak out or runaway and most importantly, they are absolutely not those typical irrationally-emotional creatures we’ve been culturally trained to envisage them. In contrary, here, one can hardly stop noticing their capacity to suppress their emotions when they need to make a fast yet vital rational decision, very much like real women in the real life.

Another impressive aspect of the movie to me, was Almodovar’s brilliant success to reach the inner and deeper layers of female beauty.

Obviously, a woman has an outer layer of visual beauty which is not so hard to notice but there is a deeper layer which reveals itself as one gets more intimate. The first touch, the first kiss, the first sex, each of the steps opens up a whole dimension of beauty that later on, can be visualized even by the eyes, or in this case by the lens.

I have to admit that I’d never been attracted to Penelope Cruz nor I had ever found her sexy or charming, but during this movie and while Almodovar’s camera is literally making love to her by exploring her forbidden angles and her intimate gestures, it is almost impossible not to notice her exquisite beauty. I may say, he more or less has done to her, what Kubrick did to Nicole Kidman in eyes wide shut.

Apart from that, her stunning performance is not something that can be easily neglected. Also the fact that she speaks in her own language and not with her awkward Spanish accent makes her more attractive and gives her dramatically more self confidence to glow on the scene like never before.

Finally, this emotionally rich and genuinely touching movie, though sometimes too feministic for me, is something to be watched, enjoyed and adored, by all means. A true homage to femininity.

morning tea

Sometimes,
it’s too hard to wake from a dream,

when its taste,
lingers in your mouth
so long,

that your toothpaste doesn’t taste the same
and your morning tea,
gets this wild, forgotten flavor,
for a moment,

when the grass you slept on,
in your dream,
is so fragrant that when you wake,
for a moment,
you can smell it on your pillow,

and you wonder,
for a moment,
why everything
is so gorgeously Green
for a moment,

when the kiss is so sweet,
that when you wash your face,
for a moment
your regretful eyes,
with an inexplicable anger,
and a childish grudge,
follow the water,
who’s washed away the taste of the kiss
from your lips
down to the drain,

when the smoothness of the skin,
under your soft, feathery touch
has spoiled your hands so much,
that the roughness of your wet, silk scarf,
can seriously hurt your hand….
and sometimes it does,
for a moment,

it’s too hard to wake,

not harder than keep up, for sure,
with the fucking alarm of the cell phone,
6:30 sharp, on a cold snowy Sunday,
that passes through your pillow
you’re desperately pressing on your face!

and neglecting the begging of your poor bladder,
bursting with champagne and scotch,

but harder than most of things
in life,
which are harder
than living,

though waking up
is the worst part of a dream,
but the best part of being awake,
is you can end up,
with a dream,
Sometimes…

and when the dream’s gone,
in a moment,
life would be so darn great
again,

Sometimes,