Bond or Brokeback? Or both? Our team of critics nominate their highlights of the year, while Sunday Herald readers who entered our Everyone�s A Critic competition have their say.
Film
By Demetrios Matheou
Brokeback Mountain This has been a good year at the cinema: a year, in particular, when the line between mainstream and arthouse became blurred in some very interesting ways. Two great examples of this came at the beginning of the year, and both were major Oscar contenders. Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain was a truly majestic film, both a western in the great tradition - of intimate stories taking place amid epic landscapes - and one that subverted the genre altogether: as a "gay western" it provided an important new perspective on a way of life that is central to America's self-made myth. Beautifully adapted from the short story by Annie Proulx, it was robbed of the best film Oscar by Crash.
Good Night, And Good Luck Crash also edged out George Clooney's second film as director. This too I regard as a crossover film - one with a gold-star cast and the production values of a mainstream movie, but with the integrity of an independent. Clooney's homage to crusading journalism in the 1950s, specifically Edward R Murrow's famous confrontation with anti-communist crusader Senator Joe McCarthy, was one of a handful of movies (Syriana, in which Clooney also starred, being another) willing to criticise America's direction. It confirmed its actor/writer/director as the heir to Warren Beatty - a matinee idol with brains and liberal commitment.
United 93 Of two major films made about the events of 9/11 (Oliver Stone's World Trade Center being the other), United 93 was by far the best; as well as being an extraordinary achievement in its own right. Paul Greengrass's film took the form of a docu-drama - a naturalistic, non-sensationalist, fact-based account of the fateful day, focusing on the flight of the hijacked aircraft not to reach its target. The moment when air traffic controllers and military watched the second crash into the World Trade Center, live on TV - realising the awful truth about their lost planes at the same time as the viewing public - resonated in every auditorium in which it showed.
Children Of Men In another year packed with comic book and fantasy films, from the commendable Superman Returns to the lamentable Aeon Flux, Alfonso Cuaron's Children Of Men was a rare and very welcome example of classic science fiction. Though set in the future, its themes - of global infertility, immigration and of war between a repressive government and terrorists - reeked of today's problems. As a disenchanted former activist returning to life when confronted by a miraculously pregnant mother in danger, Clive Owen turned in his best performance since Croupier. The real surprise was the muscularity of Alfonso Cuaron's direction, lending his sci-fi scenario the visceral intensity of a war film.
Volver Like Nicole Kidman before her, Penelope Cruz found that parting with Tom Cruise did wonders for her acting. She gave the performance of a lifetime in Volver, the latest ripe, woman-dominated melodrama from Pedro Almodovar. The film featured murder, ghosts, family skeletons and the Spaniard's usual twists and turns. But at its heart was a director's love affair with his muse. Other fine foreign language films this year include Paradise Now, the gripping account of two Palestinian suicide bombers; Time To Leave, Francois Ozon's poignant study of a young, terminally-ill man choosing to die alone; German film Requiem, in which newcomer Sandra Huller gave a tour-de-force as a young student who believed she was possessed; and Madeinusa, an unsettling account of twisted religiosity by Peruvian director Claudia Llosa.
Hidden But standing above all these has to be Michael Haneke's Hidden, whose atmosphere of foreboding lingered long afterwards. Viewing was, in fact, a key element of the film, as a bourgeois husband and wife (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche) are terrorised by a stalker whose voyeuristic videos become increasingly disturbing. As the contents sent Auteuil on a voyage into his ignominious past, Haneke alchemised a reflection on the links between personal and national guilt.
The Queen Director Stephen Frears achieved what I would have thought impossible: a portrait of the current Royal Family at its darkest hour - the death of Diana - which was both critical and sympathetic, amusing and incisive; and which, in Helen Mirren's performance, turned the elusive monarch into a flesh-and-blood woman, at once appealing and flawed. Set in the aftermath of the Paris car crash, and focusing on the family's indecision as to how to respond, the film played as an ironic intrigue, in which smiling new PM Tony Blair (also brilliantly played, by Michael Sheen) guided the Queen towards closure with her people. Written by Peter Morgan, without peer as a chronicler of contemporary politics, the easy pleasure of the film concealed enormous skill.
A Cock And Bull Story A rare good year for British films included veteran Ken Loach's Irish war of independence saga, The Wind That Shakes The Barley, Sacha Baron Cohen's ribald satire Borat, and two films heralding major home-grown talents: Andrea Arnold's absorbing and disquieting Glasgow-based drama Red Road, and Paul Andrew Williams's powerfully seedy thriller London To Brighton. My personal favourite, though, was A Cock And Bull Story, Michael Winterbottom's dazzlingly cheeky transposition of Tristram Shandy to the screen: the post-modern novel about writing becoming a brilliantly funny, post-modern film about movie-making - and shaggy dog stories, of course. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon were the hilarious double act at its centre.
Little Miss Sunshine The American independent scene continued, dependably, to turn out quality films. The Squid And The Whale was a typical indie - a well-written, beautifully acted, low-key New York family drama; Tommy Lee Jones's directorial debut, The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, was atypical: written by Mexican Guillermo Arriaga, it was a very black comedy told through Jones's dead-eyed gaze, and with the panache of Arriaga's Amores Perros. But edging the honours is Little Miss Sunshine, not least because it was one of the few unadulterately joyous films of the year. Combining two trademark indie mechanisms: the dysfunctional family and the road trip, it told the story of the Hoovers and their journey to deliver young Olive to the eponymous child beauty pageant. It was a lovely, character-driven film full of wackiness married with wisdom.
Casino Royale I would never have imagined a Bond film making my top 10 list. But Casino Royale deserves a spot, for the sheer courage behind its franchise revamp - and the success of its delivery. It was also head and shoulders above the year's other blockbuster efforts - Mission: Impossible 3, The Da Vinci Code and Pirates Of The Caribbean 2. This was a back-to-basics Bond, doing away with the gadgets and ludicrous scenarios, and introducing Daniel Craig as a younger, more rough-edged agent. "Blond Bond" Craig proved to be the best since Connery - cruel, cocky, sexy, funny and totally buffed up. The bone-crunchingly realistic action scenes were accompanied by a pleasing fidelity to the card games and testicle-bashing of Fleming's novel. Casino Royale ensured that, for the first time anyone can remember, at the end of a Bond film we're actually looking forward to the next.
