Lists. NYT.

Manohla Dargis looks back in the New York Times on a "disappointing year," a year with "nothing as sublime as Terrence Malick's New World, as thrilling as David Cronenberg's History of Violence." Studio fare? Forget it. Worse: "The studio dependents seemed more timid than ever, with few, outside Sony Pictures Classics, even bothering to release foreign-language films." And "the best film of the year" was made in 1969: Army of Shadows.

The waning days of 2006 find AO Scott slightly more upbeat: "It's always fun to mope and pine, but I find myself, for the most part, grateful to be alive at a time when so many first-rate filmmakers, from all corners of the world, are pressing against their own limits and those of the medium." He's got not only a top ten list, topped by Letters From Iwo Jima, but "an 11-way tie for 11th place" as well.

For Stephen Holden, "the emergence this year of two major 9/11 films, United 93 and World Trade Center, attests to a sober facing of reality in the movies." And then there were Clint Eastwood's let's-get-real WWII movies: "So goodbye for now to Private Ryan and traditional Hollywood notions of American go-it-alone heroism and 'the good war' fought by 'the greatest generation.'" His #1: Babel.

Posted by dwhudson at December 23, 2006 11:41 AM