I watched a lot of movies in 2006, both in the theater and at home. I’ve always watched a lot of movies, but I usually find myself catching up with present-year movies. I haven’t seen many of the Oscar hunting movies that come out in limited release towards the end of the year. This is because, well, they’re in limited release and not playing near me. Even still, I think I can come up with something interesting. To start, I’m going to announce some award nominations with slightly different categories than the traditional award shows (i.e. fun awards, more like MTV than the Oscars). I figure that I’ll comment on the traditional awards (best actor/actress, screenplays, etc…) when the Oscar liveblogging comes around. I may actually get a top 10 movies of 2006 list out there relatively soon as well.
To start things off, I’m going to list out some categories and nominees. The rules for this are that it has to be a 2006 movie and I have to have seen the movie (and while I have seen a lot of movies, I don’t pretend to have seen a comprehensive selection – don’t let that stop you from suggesting something though). Also, I suppose I should mention the requisite disclaimer that these sorts of lists are inherently subjective and personal. Part of the reason I’m doing this is just to give some love to films that I like, but which aren’t necessarily great or are otherwise flawed (as such, the categories may seem a bit eclectic). Some of these movies will end up on my top 10, but the grand majority of them will not.
Best Villain/Badass
For this category, I’m choosing individuals and not a group of people (or creatures, so no Snakes on a Plane).
- Le Chiffre, played by Mads Mikkelsen in Casino Royale
- Frank Costello, played by Jack Nicholson in The Departed
- Owen Davian, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in Mission: Impossible III
- Phoenix, played by Famke Janssen in X-Men: The Last Stand
Best Hero/Badass
On the flip side, again limited to individuals and not groups. This actually turns out to be a pretty tough category this year. I feel like I have to be missing something (feel free to suggest alternatives in the comments), but here goes:
- Jaguar Paw, played by Rudy Youngblood in Apocalypto
- James Bond, played by Daniel Craig in Casino Royale
- Geum-ja Lee, played by Yeong-ae Lee in Lady Vengeance
- Ethan Hunt, played by Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible III
Best Comedic Performance
Comedies aren’t given a lot of respect, even when they make us laugh really hard. In terms of comedic performance, I didn’t love all of the below movies, but I liked these performances:
- Justin Long in Accepted
- Sacha Baron Cohen in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
- Jeff Anderson in Clerks II
- Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine
- Jack Black in Nacho Libre
- Will Ferrell in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
Breakthrough Performance
This is more of a personal breakthrough than a mainstream breakthrough (indeed, some of these people may have already had their mainstream breakthrough). My main criteria here is when I watch a movie, then immediately look up one of the actors/actresses to find out who they are and what else they’ve done. Sometimes, they’re someone I recognized but never thought much of, sometimes not.
- Jonah Hill in Accepted
- Rosario Dawson in Clerks II
- Trevor Fehrman in Clerks II
- Nick Swardson in Grandma’s Boy
- Ellen Page in Hard Candy
- Stephen Rea in V for Vendetta
Most Visually Stunning
Sometimes even bad movies can be absolutely gorgeous.
Best Sci-Fi or Horror Film
Genre films get no love, but there really weren’t all that many good options that I had seen, so I had to combine these two categories.
Best Sequel
Everyone likes to revisit characters from movies they love. In theory, at least. Most sequels are terrible, but these stood out this year.
Biggest Disappointment
I wasn’t sure if I should include a “negative” category, but I think this one works (for this year, at least). There are two components to consider here. First, the overall quality of the movie. Second, my expecations for the movie. In some cases my expectations were low and the film was bad. In others my expectations were high and the film was mediocre. And so on.
Best Action Sequences
Since no single action sequence really, really stoodout from the crowd for me, I’m taking into account all the action sequences in the movies listed.
Best Plot Twist/Surprise
Because of the spoiler potential, you’ll need to swipe this category to see the nominees. I’m limiting the info displayed to simply the movie name, which should keep the spoilers to a minimum, but sometimes even knowing that there’s a twist can affect your enjoyment, so read on at your own risk.
- The Departed
- The Illusionist
- Inside Man
- Lucky Number Slevin
- The Prestige
- X-Men: The Last Stand
Anyone have any suggestions (for either category or nominations)? Comments, complaints and suggestions are welcome, as always.
It looks like Casino Royale, Mission Impossible III, and Clerks II are leading the nominations, with 4 each. The Descent racks up an impressive 3 nominations, while a whole slew of others pick up a respectible 2 (this is not counting the disappointment category). I’m going to give these nominations a week or so to stew in my head. I’ll probably also add some nominations as the week goes on and I remember something that I stupidly forgot (or something I just saw, like perhaps Children of Men – again, feel free to help me out in the comments). I figure I’ll announce the winners next week, perhaps with only one or two categories a day.
Wait, wait, wait.
You’re giving Pheonix the nomination over Magneto? Christ, Mark. Magneto was the best thing about X3. I mean, come on… Master of Magnetism. Pheonix was… meh.
Oh. Or Multiple Man. The forest scene? Pretty awesome.
Also, for the record, the Descent isn’t a 2006 movie. It’s a 2005 movie.
😉
I’m surprised by all of the love you’re giving to M:I:III!
Also, V for Vendetta: disappointing by comparison to graphic novel, or far more sinister forces at play?
PS. Keep an eye out for my Arbitrary Awards! The categories are stupid, overly specific and made up!
Roy, Yeah, I considered Magneto, but Phoenix was a more epic villain, so I put her in there. I honestly didn’t care for X3 all that much, and I don’t think either is going to take the award anyway. But it’s been a while since I seen x3, and I do seem to remember that Magneto was pretty cool, but again, he seemed to take a back seat to Phoenix in x3. Incidentally, I considered Wolverine for the hero/badass category, but opted against it because he was much more of a badass in the first two films (at least, as I remember it.)
Alex, Yeah, I was actually a little surprised that MI 3 got so many noms as well. In all honesty, given the first two movies and Tom Cruise mania, I was expecting this movie to be totally crap. It shocked me that it was even watchable, let alone good. I think it’s probably the best of the MI series (which is not saying that much, but I like the first one too), and I think it’s been unfairly maligned by the public for reasons not actually pertaining to the movie itself (i.e. “I hate that Tom Cruise, so I won’t see his movie”) Regardless, when you pit MI against Bond, guess who is going to win most of the time? Heh. I look forward to your arbitrary awards, and have enjoyed the recap of monthly viewings you’ve been doing. I like the concept of arbitrary awards, and I might just throw in some additional awards at the end of this series of posts (i.e. awards that I couldn’t come up with a bunch of nominations for)
Oh and my definition of a 2006 movie is somewhat loose, as movies like The Descent and Lady Vengeance didn’t come out in the U.S. until 2006. Also, I’d probably consider a movie that came out in New York and LA on December 29 as a cusp movie that might qualify either way, depending on if I get a chance to see it (this year, examples of cusp movies would be Children of Men and Pan’s Labrynth). I’m not sure how to treat such movies. But Descent and Lady are two relatively easy examples of movies that I’m considering 2006, even though they were released earlier in the rest of the world.
Yeah, X3 was a big letdown, to me. The second movie was pretty solid, and I was really looking forward to the third, but it just didn’t deliver. Wolverine was at his best in the second movie.
Well… really… he was at his best during the scenes in the mansion during the second movie, because watching him get knocked around by Deathstrike was sort of sad.
Anyway.
Yeah, MI:3 was actually pretty watchable. I was kind of surprised, because MI:2 was awful, I thought, and MI:3 was getting such bad press, I expected it to be awful.
And Pan’s Labrynth… someone was just telling me about that. It sounds interesting. Hope it hits one of the theaters here.
Whenever people do lists like these it always reminds me of how many movies I don’t end up seeing. Only in your hero/badass and best action scene categories have I seen more than one of the films listed for the category (and in those two I’ve only seen two). Nevertheless, I’ll be interested to see what your results are to keep in mind for future viewings. I will at least say that, in my book, James Bond should win over Geum-ja Lee.
I’m somewhat astounded by the number of movies I saw this year. And yet, I have the same feeling whenever I see other lists. Where are all these movies coming from? Grrr.
Spurred on by Casino Royale and Comcast’s On Demand service having all the old Bond movies, I’ve been watching a lot of the older Bond movies. I’ve seen bits and pieces, but I never saw a full Connery Bond movie all the way through before. I’ll most likely be doing a series of posts on the Bond movies (perhaps after the Animation marathon finishes).
*ahem* Not that that means Bond will win a bunch of awards. Not at all.*Whistles*
It makes me sad that Connery wasn’t bond for Octopussy just because I think it would be really great to hear him say the word “pussy,” over and over again, yourethemannowdog.com style.
There was a Bond marathon not too long ago (maybe for Christmas or New Years) on some channel. I didn’t catch much of it but my roommate was telling me about On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, with some random guy as Bond for only that film, and described it as pretty nonsensical.
Dude, haven’t you seen Goldfinger? That’s the one with Pussy Galore! At least, I think it is. They all seem to blend together in my head.
Spike, TBS, and probably a few other channels are always doing Bond marathons during holidays. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is indeed a wierd film, but I kinda liked it. Lazenby (the one timer Bond) is a horrible actor who’s basically doing a bad Connery impersonation (and not in the good, funny way). I also hated Telly Savalas as Blofeld (whose character fell about a thousand notches in this film). It’s the only one of the older films to even make an attempt at humanizing Bond (and the ending is heartbreaking), even though I don’t think it compares with Casino Royale.
Again, I’m going to save my thoughts on general Bond stuff for another post, but there is certainly a lot to chew on. I actually don’t think the earlier films are all that fantastic (though they’re better than a lot of the newer ones too), but for their time, they seem rather spectacular…
Oh! I actually don’t think I’ve seen that one… well, I’m not sure. They all blend together for me as well. I think maybe I’ve seen part of it…?