As the year end is approaching, let us use this thread to update and rate the movies of this year.

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Here is the list of 2006 movies I watched and the ratings I currently give. The rating is based on what impression I have now after many days of watching, so they are better(atleast different) than the ones I gave immediately after returning from the theater. To read my reviews of all these, please click on this LINK .
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The Fountain ****
The Prestige ****

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The illusionist ***
Black Dahlia ***
Hollywoodland ***
The Descent ***
All the kings men
The Departed***

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Da Vinci Code **
Over the Hedge **
Casino Royale **
Miami Vice **
Borat **
Grudge 2**
Babel **

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Inside Man *
16 blocks *
Sentinel *
X-Men 3 *
Scoop *
Snakes on a plane*

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MI-3

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I didn't see any of those. I'm still catching up on 1999.

United 93 Paul Greengrass

Babel Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Bubble Steven Soderbergh
Departed, The Martin Scorsese
King, The James Marsh

Bobby Emilio Estevez
Borat Larry Charles
Building No. 7 Steven Soderbergh
Illusionist, The Neil Burger
Inside Man Spike Lee
Invincible Ericson Core
Little Miss Sunshine Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
Lucky Number Slevin Paul McGuigan
Miami Vice Michael Mann
Prestige, The Christopher Nolan
Proposition, The Richard Hillcoat
Scanner Darkly, A Richard Linklater
Talladega Nights Adam McKay
V for Vendetta James McTeigue

Camp Out Larry Grimaldi and Kirk Marcolina
Devil Wears Prada, The David Frankel
Thank You For Smoking Jason Reitman

Irishman's Top 10 for 2006:

1) V for Vendetta
2) United 93
3) The Departed
4) Clerks II
5) Thank You For Smoking
6) Superman Returns
7) Crank
8 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
9) Employee of the Month
10) Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

My top movies for this year.

V for Vendetta
X-men 3
Superman Returns.

Course those are the only movies that I saw this year, and I ended up renting those, as I never saw a single movie in a theater this year.

I looked at IMDB for 'V for Vendetta' which says it was made in 2005. That is why I did not include it in my list. Anyway my rating for it is ***

Borat 3/5
WTC 4/5
Da Vinci Code 3/5

Svsg, My list is conjoured up from movies released, in America, in the year of 2006. So yeah, the overrated V FOR VENDETTA would be eligible.

BTW, good call on THE FOUNTAIN...a film that the other regulars on the boards seemed to have missed(except for Sully, he's seen it, I think).

According to production dates:

Children of Men
The Prestige
The Departed
United 93
Mission: Impossible III
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Cars
Casino Royale
Little Children
A Scanner Darkly
The Black Dahlia
Miami Vice

Capo, CASINO ROYALE lost a star days after your review of it? What gives?

I've been revising my star system a little.

It's good, I liked it. But it's not excellent.

Sexual Deviants, perverts, children around the world. Here is my Top 10 list for the entire year of 2006. Films not listed are either because they were garbage and didn't deserve any mention, OR I've haven't seen them yet. The latter includes THE GOOD GERMAN, CHILDREN OF MEN, etc.

Lets start the countdown:

(10) BEERFEST

After the failure of the much wrongly-slammed CLUB DREAD, Broken Lizard made a return to the creative frathouse, but smart, humor that makes them perhaps the best comedy troupe in Hollywood today. Too bad they don't earn paychecks for doing lazy sketches like the Frat Pack do these days.

(9) BLACK DAHLIA

Brian DePalma reminded me why I love him. His(under-appreciated by fellow Americans) mastery of slow motion, crane shots, and of the guilt thriller narrative is on display for another film that critics hated, but which his fans and film buffs will celebrate years from now. Josh Harnett really should get an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. He impressed the hell out of me. Hillary Swank is fun as the evil seductive bitch from hell.

(8) MIAMI VICE

In a way, MIAMI VICE is for the cinematic cop/crime genre like CSI and LAW & ORDER are for the genre's TV equivalency. They are very good genre entertainment and quality, but never does the best of its material ever break out beyond genre. Not that I mind.

Of course, its about how much people will pay to watch HBO television on the big screen. Anyway, Capo is incorrect about one sequence about the closeup of "greasy forehead". If he refers to the revelation to the super-baddie of a protagonist's fling with an underling of his, notice how Mann is able to get the audience to know what the baddie's reaction is, without ever showing his face.

(7) PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST

I don't have a problem with people who prefer the first PIRATES movie. We all have our personal preferences. What I don't understand is, why they think the sequel is inferior. The first film was a fun, if a very loose, major production that at times was on the verge of being another super-big, and super generic, budget bombastic sequel from the Bruckheimer factory at Disney.

With the sequel, director Gore Verbinski actually does something that neither Tony Scott or Uberhack Michael Bay never did under the Bruckheimer banner: Crafting a sequel that not only is better than the original, but he and scriptwriters Elliot and Rosio actually have a grasp in what they want in terms of improvement.

Learning from his mistakes of the first film, Verbinski delivers a very confident sequel that gives us things I was surprised with. Jack Sparrow isn't just the humorous side-guy that stole the show. He is the charming bastard that would sell even his comrades to save himself, and he isn't apologetic at all about it. Orlando Bloom isn't the useless Luke Skywalker-clone that acted as wooden in the first film as the ships he sailed, but now his stoic style of leading-man acting gives us a very competent, and whyly, hero that even outsmarts a curse of infinity.

Most of all, notice how in many action sequences, which in deep into their rocking-n-rolling editing narratives, Verbinski pauses to give a different, wide-shot perspective of whats happening, which gives a certain bit of humor to the proceedings. A deathfight between three swordsmen, from far away, looks like a chaotic brawl. No wonder Bruckheimer dumped Michael Bay and has taken a liking to Verbinski. Gore actually improves and evolves with time.

(6) THE PRESTIGE

Britain's successor to Sir Ridley Scott as the national champion in autuer cinema, Christopher Nolan delivers another winning film, about as unique and different in itself as his other works. The movie's twist ending may either be too coincidental, or ridiculous, for some viewers, but like JACOB'S LADDER, its just part of a remarkable journey. Sometimes, we need to realize that the ending isn't everything.

(5) CLERKS 2

Kevin Smith brought back justification to his claim of being the Woody Allen of the suburban Generation-X white Christian nerds. Like Allen, Smith's films make or break with his screenplays. Smith not only makes for perhaps the most legitimate strong script of his since the days of CHASING AMY in terms of humor, but as well he makes his story relevant to audiences outside his rabidly loyal ViewAskew fanbase.

(4) THE FOUNTAIN

You all realized that Darren Aronofsky has delivered his first movie in 6 years? Certainly time makes us forget how it took eternity for his ambitious science-fiction/drama to get produced. He was set with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in a $70+ million production, before Pitt killed the project because he "didn't get the script". Retooled to a $35 million budget, with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, Aronofsky gives us perhaps the most ballsy philosophical film to come from Hollywood in 2006.

I deplore my movie buffs here at FCM and at BB.Net. Go see this damn movie before it leaves theatres. Svsg and I have seen it, and there is something to the theatrical experience that DVD can never reproduce. Seriously, if at times Aronofsky doesn't score as well as he hopes to do, his gaul is such that it overcomes the gaps, which seems to almost be the same exact story that THE FOUNTAIN itself relates: Mankind's quest for perfection that, for a fact, is impossible, and yet we still seek it.

More and more, I feel glad that I did see it in theatres.

(3) CASINO ROYALE

James Bond is damn cool again, and I never thought I would live to see it occur. People say the franchise is going back to the basics, I say its simply returning to what made Bond attractive in the first place: A stylish smug charming asshole who's actions excuse his arrogance. Not to mention the action is no longer as fantastical, and silly, as something from the STAR WARS prequels.

Plus, it helps that for once in a good long time, an actor, Mr. Merkelsen, actually takes a scripted-cardboard villain and makes him an equal, worthy match for Bond. Plus, in the already infamous torture sequence, there is a point when Bond, strapped naked and bound to a chair, actually owns Merkelsen, and you could see on Merkelsen's face that he knows that Bond owns him.

Besides, Eva Green....most beautiful, not pretty(hell, any surgeon can make any woman "pretty" these days) Bond girl in ages.

(2) UNITED 93

If Oliver Stone delivered a very safe, and melodramaticly boring, take on the 9/11 tragedy and its impact on America with WORLD TRADE CENTER, Paul Greengrass delivers a very honest docu-drama where its realism makes everyone that remembers that dark day come home in relevance minute-by-minute. Greengrass doesn't use composite-New Yorkers to display the chaos of 9/11, like Stone did. No, Greengrass gives real people that, for the most part, aren't actors, which adds to the humanity they display.

Very unfortunate that some people, including many people on these boards that won't admit it now, that slammed UNITED 93 as "Too Soon!"(which reminds me, where were they with WORLD TRADE CENTER?) Now they realize that Greengrass, with the first Hollywood-produced drama based on 9/11 released in theaters, may very well have delivered us the definitive movie on this historic day.

(1) THE DEPARTED

I liked THE AVIATOR, and most of GANGS OF NEW YORK(the slack-jaw editing sanctioned by Miramax killed an otherwise-good film). BRINGING OUT THE DEAD is decent.

Maybe, among other reasons, thats why film buffs and critics have jumped into the DEPARTED orgy of love and passion. I'm in the middle of the action myself. In self reflection, People are wrong to say that Scorsese has delivered his "best" movie in a decade. No, its just his most effective and re-watchable drama since CASINO.

The original INFERNAL AFFAIRS was a really good Hong Kong drama with a killer concept, too good for Hollywood not to pass up. What Scorsese does is to adapt an Eastern tale made from the culture and philosophy of China, into that of American Christiandom, and as well deliver a remake that's superior to the original.

Asides from applauding William Monahan(KINGDOM OF HEAVEN) for his script adaptation work(he will win the Adapted Screenplay Oscar in Febuary), its the acting from this all-star talented cast that makes THE DEPARTED my number one movie of 2006.

Leonardo DiCaprio was a pretty boy teen idol before Scorsese took him under his wing. Through 3 films, DiCaprio the actor has emerged as an emotional, humanist actor who's gradual breakdown will get him a Best Actor nod.

Matt Damon's stoic intellectual internalization makes him the ideal counter-block to DiCaprio. Jack Nicholson actually doesn't act anything remarkable that we haven't seen before, but he's the reliable presence in the background that this movie needs.

Mark Whalberg the actor, not the movie star, emerges from the Witness Protection Program for the first time since BOOGIE NIGHTS(though some sources claim he also appeared in I HEART HUCKABEES, but those are just rumors at the moment).

Additional dues must be given to Baldwin, Martin Sheen, Vera Farmiga, and others that don't do anything memorable, but their beams make the foundation for which to DiCaprio/Damon/Whalberg shine.

The Proposition ***1/2
The Departed ***1/2
Neil Young: Heart of Gold ***1/2
Miami Vice ***
Inside Man ***
The Break-Up **1/2
The Da Vinci Code **

I probably forgot some.

I think I haven't watched a single 2006 movie yet. However, possibly except for The Departed, I got the feeling this wasn't but a mediocre year for movies. Sadly enough, my impression is that we have been facing a decline in recent years. When titles like Superman returns, The Da Vinci Code, Casino Royale, Pirates of the Caribbean and Miami Vice are nominated as best movies of the year, the panorama is frankly bleak.

All assumptions regarding general, overall quality of films, and so-called "declines", is simply illusion. I think there's always been bad films. People say 1939 "was a good year for films", but consider how many films you haven't seen in proportion to the good ones that you have.

And to flip the coin, there's always fantastic films being made, because there are always fantastic minds wanting to create them.

at least you said "illusion" instead of "ridiculous". I highly appreciate it.

Lavinia, watch fountain and ilusionist. Both are good romantic movies you might like. fountain is a multi layered movie, you might like it for several different reasons.

I can't wait to see The Fountain. It's my most anticipated film after Lynch's Inland Empire.

I'll certainly watch both, SVSG, Thank you for the suggestion!

Updated

1) V for Vendetta
2) United 93
3) The Departed
4) Apocalypto
5) Clerks II
6) Thank You For Smoking
7) Superman Returns
8 Crank
9 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
10) Employee of the Month

How Was Thank You For Smoking havn't got round to watching yet.

It was very good and one of the best comedies I've seen since probably The Wedding Crashers or Clerks II

did u like the book -the da vinci code?

In my opinion 'Flags Of Our Fathers' may be one of the best movies of 2006.


Don Cardi

well, it's undoubtly an absorbing reading, even though I rarely found as many bullshit statements in one book.

Have you read the Bible?

yes, and one of my fav passages is the following: "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him." (Proverbs, 26:4)

How pretentious. Why is it written in that old language?

Both of my favorites don't find a place in the Golden Globes nominations
I hope Oscars do justice for these, especially The Fountain . Anyone else other than RRA seen this?

I will use the Leonard Maltin technique!

When a stranger calles(remake) BOMB
Why: Not scary at all,all they do is look cute,and get spooked by opticle illutions.

Waiting
Why: Nasty,full of annoying white dudes

As soon as I think of others Iv'e seen,I'll list 'em!