Best of the Year? For some people, the only Top 10 list that matters is the following:
1. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST
2. THE DA VINCI CODE
3. ICE AGE: THE MELTDOWN
4. X-MEN: THE LAST STAND
5. CARS
6. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE III
7. SUPERMAN RETURNS
8. CASINO ROYALE
9. OVER THE HEDGE
10. THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA
Those are the 10 most successful films of the year at the global box-office – mostly cartoons and sequels, both of which play to a captive audience – led by the stunning success of the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel. There was no guarantee that this would be a smash; the first Pirates was a full three years ago, and Orlando Bloom has faded as a matinee idol in the years since. Yet it became only the third film (after Titanic and Return of the King) to pass the $1 billion mark worldwide.
Why did Pirates 2.0 do so well? Partly because Johnny Depp – the real key to the success of the franchise – has become something of a cult figure, and because Pirates 1.0 amassed a huge audience on video since 2003. But also because, like the Ice Age sequel (another massive hit), it offered something for everyone: a bit of horror (sea monsters and the like), comedy both slapstick and verbal, old-fashioned adventure, new-fashioned irony, a handsome hero, a spunky heroine. It even had sailors talking in pidgin Cypriot for the local market! More than anything, this kind of ‘crossover’ marketing is what makes today’s blockbusters – which is also why action heroes, from Superman to James Bond, are growing more sensitive, the better to appeal to the female audience.
There’s another reason why Pirates did well in 2006: quite simply, everything did well in 2006. If 2005 was the Year of the Slump, when Hollywood reported a decline in its profits and dozens of think-pieces blamed downloading, piracy, etc, then 2006 was the Year of the Recovery, when – despite the purported reasons for The Slump still going strong – audiences came back to theatres, especially in the US.
Sony Pictures broke the all-time record for domestic box-office by a single studio, making $1.573 billion, yet (here’s the important bit) only four of its films made over $100 million. In other words, the cash wasn’t being generated by Star Wars-type ‘tentpole’ movies. It was being generated by a steady flow of solid, medium-sized hits, proof that audiences were happy to go to the cinema week in, week out to watch the likes of The Pink Panther, R.V., Silent Hill, Open Season, Underworld: Evolution, The Pursuit of Happyness, etc etc. The year’s best statistic for Hollywood was the recent survey where 83% of 2000 moviegoers in nine cities (six in the US, three in Europe) declared themselves “satisfied” with the quality of current films.
Of course, there’s no guarantee they’re watching them in cinemas. Films can still be downloaded weeks before they come to the multiplex, transferred to pirate DVD for the non-broadband masses. I’m convinced a major reason why so many are lukewarm on Miami Vice (one of the year’s best films) is that they watched it in their living-rooms, where its moody ambience just doesn’t come through as effectively.
The other question to ask about the “satisfied” filmgoers is what films they’re watching. The latest Sight & Sound reports a scary statistic, viz. that in the weekend Casino Royale opened in the UK it earned 99.63% of the total box-office for new releases. In other words, almost every man, woman and child going to see a new film in the UK that weekend was going to see James Bond. Granted, there were others going for older films (it’s not like Bond accounted for the entire audience), but still – you’d expect a healthy percentage of people to have no interest in Bond, or choose to ignore the hype and wait for word-of-mouth, or give the other 10 (!) new releases a chance, especially since they wouldn’t be around for as long as Casino. This kind of herd mentality is a little worrying – and a similar frenzy had previously accompanied the release of Borat, and before that The Da Vinci Code.
These are the year’s big films, the ones everybody knows. Borat and Bond in particular defined the post-summer months, both being the rare kind of movie that’s adored by audiences but also taken seriously by critics. Both appear on the year’s Top 10 list as defined by Empire magazine in the UK:
1. UNITED 93
2. PAN’S LABYRINTH
3. CASINO ROYALE
4. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
5. THE DEPARTED
6. THE PRESTIGE
7. CHILDREN OF MEN
8. GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK
9. BORAT
10. MUNICH
Admittedly Empire appeals to a specific young-male demographic, and it’s no surprise that the only non-English-language film on that list is a sci-fi fantasy (though it’s still a surprise to see it as high as No. 2). But even David Ansen of Newsweek – always a good bellwether for which films are getting consensus acclaim – finds room on his list for Borat, calling it “[not] just the funniest movie of the year but the most controversial, fudging the divide between comedy, documentary and faux-documentary”. Here’s Mr. Ansen’s list in full, rather bizarrely led by Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows, a French film that was made in 1969 but didn’t play US cinemas till this year:
1. ARMY OF SHADOWS
2. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
3. THE QUEEN
4. LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
5. THE DEPARTED
6. HALF NELSON
7. BORAT
8. DREAMGIRLS
9. VENUS
10. VOLVER
Unsurprisingly, not a single one of the year’s Top 10 blockbusters makes the list – which is as it should be, because there’s so many other films to choose from. After all, cinematic highlights of 2006 included:
Career highs for two of the most respected American directors. Martin Scorsese looks like he may (finally) win his Oscar for The Departed, a jagged gangster pic with a very individual rhythm. Clint Eastwood’s earning plaudits for Flags of Our Fathers and (especially) its companion piece Letters From Iwo Jima, viewing the war from a Japanese perspective – a pair of sober WW2 films for a war-weary America.
A thriving US independent sector turning out consistently strong fare. The mainstream favourite is Little Miss Sunshine – a family going on the road to a kids’ beauty pageant – but more individual visions included Brick (film noir transposed to high-school) and Old Joy, a hushed, poignant piece about a day in the woods. Also worthy of mention: A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints and Half Nelson. And The Squid and the Whale (best film of 2005) was an ’06 release in the UK.
Films from all over, but especially Spain which contributed the year’s two most acclaimed foreign films: Pedro Almodovar’s Volver – now playing in Cyprus – and Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, co-produced with Mexico. For those (like me) who didn’t fancy either of those, there were also Gabrielle (France), Three Times (Taiwan), The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Romania), Climates (Turkey) and The Child (Belgium) – and I’m not even touching the host of excellent films (including The Host from South Korea) that so far have played only festivals and should really be counted as 2007 releases.
Is there more? Of course there is; much, much more. We’ve barely scratched the surface. There were two 9/11 films – the soggy World Trade Center and the sharper, rather inappropriately Hitchcockian United 93. There were two poetic masterpieces, Terrence Malick’s The New World (which actually came out at the tail-end of 2005) and David Lynch’s Inland Empire, a fuzzy nightmare shot on cheap video, pregnant with the nameless sense of dread only Lynch can evoke. There were two superb Spike Lee films, sardonic heist movie Inside Man and the 4-hour Hurricane Katrina expos? When the Levees Broke. There were two Oscar-bound performances based on real people: Forest Whitaker as Ugan
dan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland (though the film is poor) and Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II, dealing with the aftermath of Diana’s death in The Queen.
There were great films nobody’s heard of. Caveh Zahedi’s funny-sad confessional I Am a Sex Addict. A terrifying German documentary called Workingman’s Death – albeit not as terrifying as Al Gore laying out the basics of global warming (and kick-starting his political career) in An Inconvenient Truth. Documentaries were trendy in general. So were horror films, especially the ultra-violent kind typified by Saw 3, The Hills Have Eyes and the much better Hostel.
It’s time to wind down, pausing only to note that Lady in the Water wasn’t as bad as some people claimed and The Black Dahlia had two incredible scenes – the crane-shot revealing the murder in the background, then the meeting with heroine’s family – even if it didn’t hang together as a whole. Oh, and Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada was great, better than the role deserved. Oh, and Running Scared and Slither were the two guiltiest pleasures, both caught on DVD. Oh, and Date Movie was by far the year’s worst film, absolutely excruciating.
Can movies survive in the age of downloads and Internet and YouTube? The main cautionary tale of 2006 may be Snakes on a Plane, a film that became a legend before it had even been shown. Folks on the Internet loved it – i.e. loved the concept of snakes on a plane – blogs were created to discuss it; new scenes were shot in order to incorporate suggestions from the cyber-fans. Then it finally opened – and promptly flopped, because the Internet brigade stayed on the Internet instead of going to the cinema. Moral of the story? Hollywood worked best in 2006 when it played it safe instead of trying to ‘embrace the future’ – but, with that minor caveat, it did very well. The Russell Crowe film is forgettable, but its title is apt: A Good Year.
