{"id":2011,"date":"2006-12-31T23:55:50","date_gmt":"2006-12-31T23:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/mt-entry-2011.html"},"modified":"2007-01-01T01:16:11","modified_gmt":"2007-01-01T01:16:11","slug":"2006-in-review-films","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2006\/12\/31\/2006-in-review-films\/","title":{"rendered":"2006 in review: Films"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/quickreviews\/images\/theprestige.jpg\" alt=\"My favourite film of the year: The Prestige\" class=\"left\" \/>I only saw 58 films in 2006.  This is not a particularly good count, especially considering I have a subscription to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lovefilm.com\/\">LoveFilm<\/a> which provides more back catalogue than any human can reasonably handle.  (As a mater of fact, of the 58 films, only 19 were LoveFilm rentals.  And I&#8217;m paying \u00a39.95 a month for this service.  Although I love the idea of having 40,000 films on tap, this isn&#8217;t exactly giving me enormous value for money.  I think it&#8217;s time to re-assess my subscription package.)  I also haven&#8217;t been keeping up-to-date with my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sunpig.com\/martin\/index-quickreviews-archives-by-date.html\">quick reviews<\/a>, although I have made sure at least to <em>rate<\/em> everything I&#8217;ve seen.<\/p>\n<p>This leaves me feeling remarkably unqualified to comment on the &#8220;best&#8221; of 2006, because I&#8217;ve missed so many films that I <em>know<\/em> would have been totally awesome.  So I&#8217;ll just point out a few really good ones:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0482571\/\">The Prestige<\/a><\/i><\/b><br \/>\nSuspenseful story of obsession, revenge, and deception between a pair of magicians in 19th century London.  If you&#8217;re put off by the apparent historical setting (period pieces are not normally to my taste), don&#8217;t be afraid of this one, because you can actually see it as <em>science fiction<\/em>.  The performances are nothing short of magnificent.<\/li>\n<li><b><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0433387\/\">Harsh Times<\/a><\/i><\/b><br \/>\nAnother amazing performance by Christian Bale.  I found his transformation from Home Counties to Homeboy somewhat disconcerting for the first few minutes of the film, but after that he totally <em>owned<\/em> the screen, giving a tightly contained portrayal of an Iraq War veteran failing to come to terms with life as a civilian.<\/li>\n<li><b><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0419815\/\">Holly<\/a><\/i><\/b><br \/>\nI saw this at the Edinburgh Film Festival with Richard of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmstalker.co.uk\/\">Filmstalker<\/a> (your first stop for quality movie news), and was blown away.  It&#8217;s a harrowing tale of ex-pat antiquities dealer Patrick (Ron Livingston) who meets a child prostitute and becomes obsessed with the idea of saving her.  You&#8217;ll be hard-pressed to actually find this film anywhere, but it&#8217;s definitely worth making the effort to catch it if you can.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmstalker.co.uk\/archives\/2006\/08\/holly.html\">Read Richard&#8217;s review<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><b><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0406375\/\">Zathura<\/a><\/i><\/b><br \/>\nNot an exceptionally original story, just a perfectly paced family adventure film.<\/li>\n<li><b><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0317919\/\">Mission: Impossible III<\/a><\/i><\/b><br \/>\nAgain, not especially original, just a perfectly executed action blockbuster.  Great set pieces, and edge-of-the-seat tension.  Loved it.<\/li>\n<li><b><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0365737\/\">Syriana<\/a><\/i><\/b><br \/>\nComplex political drama that crawls all over the corruption that surrounds middle-east politics and the oil trade.  Difficult to watch, but important to have done so.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Remarkably, I didn&#8217;t rate any films lower than 2 stars (&#8220;disappointing&#8221;) this year.  Normally there are at least a couple of outright stinkers.  The greatest disappointment was <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0348150\/\">Superman Returns<\/a><\/i>, which <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sunpig.com\/martin\/quickreviews\/001932.html\">I felt was dull and emotionally aimless<\/a>.  I have higher expectations of superhero films, and especially of Bryan Singer.<\/p>\n<p>The worst film I saw all year was probably <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0365830\/\">Tenacious D: The Pick Of Destiny<\/a><\/i>, but I didn&#8217;t have terribly high hopes for it in the first place.  Which means that rating it as &#8220;disappointing&#8221; weighs disproportionately strongly.<\/p>\n<p>My favourite movie people of the year are Christian Bale (for <i>Harsh Times<\/i> and <i>The Prestige<\/i>) and George Clooney (for <i>Syriana<\/i> and <i>Good Night, And Good Luck<\/i>).    Christopher Nolan also gets awesomeness points for putting out <em>yet another<\/em> film that is going to hit my all-time favourites list.<\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t really been keeping up with my movie news, but there are a few films that I am excited about for 2007:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0414993\/\">The Fountain<\/a><\/i> (Hugh Jackman was excellent in <i>The Prestige<\/i>, and I have high hopes for this one.)<\/li>\n<li><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0450259\/\">Blood Diamond<\/a><\/i> (Leonardo DiCaprio gets better with every film he stars in.)<\/li>\n<li><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0449467\/\">Babel<\/a><\/i> (Likewise Brad Pitt.)<\/li>\n<li><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0413300\/\">Spider-man 3<\/a><\/i> (There is no way this cannot be awesome.)<\/li>\n<li><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0489235\/\">My Name Is Bruce<\/a><\/i> (I just hope this gets a UK release.  Because it&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bruce-campbell.com\/\">BRUCE CAMPBELL<\/a>, baby!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, is there anything I&#8217;ve missed?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I only saw 58 films in 2006. This is not a particularly good count, especially considering I have a subscription to LoveFilm which provides more back catalogue than any human can reasonably handle. (As a mater of fact, of the 58 films, only 19 were LoveFilm rentals. And I&#8217;m paying \u00a39.95 a month for this &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2006\/12\/31\/2006-in-review-films\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;2006 in review: Films&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","category-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}