The Year in Film

December raises the best-of bar

[Photo: Miramax] CHICAGO: Catherine Zeta-Jones, left, and Renee Zellweger star in the film, scheduled to open in the bay area Friday.

© St. Petersburg Times
published December 29, 2002

[Photo: Feature Films] THE PIANIST: In the Roman Polanski film, Adrien Brody stars as a Jewish piano player hiding while everywhere around him his culture is under attack.

2002 would have been a very good year for movies even without December. As usual, Hollywood saved much of its best for last.

December is a mostly fun, definitely hectic month for film critics, as studios reveal their trump cards in a high-stakes game for awards prestige and box office profits. We may spend as much time in theaters and viewing DVDs during one December week than we do in some months. We're seeing several of those films a month before they open, yet we must write the reviews right away to keep details and impressions clear.

Hey, it isn't as tough as shingling roofs, but it also isn't as easy as it sounds.

The toughest part of 2002's homestretch was whittling away several of my favorite films of the previous 11 months to compose a top 10 list. I could have turned in a ranking on Thanksgiving Day -- before seeing great films such as Chicago and Gangs of New York -- that I could have felt better about than last year's list and the one before that.

[Photo: Miramax] THE QUIET AMERICAN: Michael Caine stars in Phillip Noyce’s film about a journalist in Vietnam in the early 1950s.

Fortunately, a pair of fine December screenings, The Quiet American and Rabbit-Proof Fence, came from director Phillip Noyce, enabling me to fudge a bit and place them in a single slot. That still didn't make it easier to fill the other nine positions.

It pained me to eliminate Roger Michell's fascinating ethics lesson, Changing Lanes, featuring an electrifying performance by Samuel L. Jackson. I'm truly sorry that the surfing-and-skateboard culture documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys got bumped off the list. One Hour Photo was slightly easier to dismiss because so much depended upon Robin Williams' sterling portrayal of an obsessive introvert. Steven Spielberg's Minority Report was the best popcorn movie of the year, but by December our tastes change to caviar.

What remains is a salute to all the best screen experiences I had in 2002, from the eerie chills of The Ring to watching Campbell Scott nibble on the scenery as Roger Dodger; from the pleasure of seeing James Bond return to form to the relief of knowing that Roger Avary's dismal, debasing The Rules of Attraction -- the year's worst film -- had ended. You can't have a top without a bottom and a middle, and barely a week passed in 2002 without something of note debuting at local theaters.

Several of the year's 10 best films (or 11, to be precise) won't reach Tampa Bay area theaters until January or perhaps later as studios nurture word-of-mouth and award considerations. We'll include the opening date for those films when available, although those dates are always subject to change.

If we can be assured of 11 films as good as these in 2003, it will certainly be a Happy New Year.

1. CHICAGO: The best film of 2002 is a splashy, sexy musical starring Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones as man killers turning crime into celebrity with the help of a shady defense lawyer (Richard Gere). Director Rob Marshall channels the pizazz of the late Bob Fosse to create an irresistible piece of entertainment. (Friday)

2. GANGS OF NEW YORK: Director Martin Scorsese regains his crown as America's greatest filmmaker with a sprawling epic about 19th century violence that shaped a city. Daniel Day-Lewis portrays the best villain since Hannibal Lecter, proving that the Big Apple ripened around a rotten core. (Now playing)

3. THE PIANIST: To be honest, the DVD sent by Focus Features is defective, preventing me from seeing the final 30 minutes of Roman Polanski's Warsaw ghetto drama. If they're anything like the first two hours, this is a staggering piece of work. Adrien Brody stars as a Jewish piano player hiding from Nazis while we watch his culture disintegrate. (Release date to be announced)

[Photo: United Artists] BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE: Michael Moore provokes, and even entertains, in his gut-wrenching documentary about gun violence in the United States.

4. BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE: Michael Moore's documentary about U.S. gun violence asks more questions than it answers and provokes viewers to think about the issue long after the end credits are over. Bowling for Columbine is tastelessly hilarious at times and somberly tragic at others, an important rant from an audacious muckraker. (Video release tba)

5. THIRTEEN CONVERSATIONS ABOUT ONE THING: Director/co-writer Jill Sprecher crafts an intriguing ensemble drama about the randomness of happiness and despair. Alan Arkin's portrayal of a grouchy businessman is terrific, and Sprecher's intelligent style even brings out the best in Matthew McConaughey as a lawyer with a crisis of conscience. (Available on home video)

6. SUNSHINE STATE: Maybe this pick seems provincial, but John Sayles' wry satire of Florida's future colliding with its past got everything right. Two east coast communities divided by race and land development provide Sayles with plenty of chances to skewer greedy real estate dealers, stubborn Crackers, restless natives and those who wouldn't trade Florida for anywhere else in the world. Not bad for a Yankee. (Available on home video)

7. THE QUIET AMERICAN and RABBIT-PROOF FENCE: Two very different films from Phillip Noyce. The former features Michael Caine's superb performance as a journalist in Vietnam in 1952, when U.S. involvement was secretly getting sticky. The latter is a fact-based tale of three Aboriginal children taken from their families under Australian law who go on a 1,200-mile trek to return home. (Rabbit-Proof Fence is now showing; The Quiet American tba)

8. FAR FROM HEAVEN: A second viewing brought Todd Haynes' film into clearer focus, although I still think it has a cop-out third act. But you can't argue with Haynes' affection for 1950s melodrama, from Julianne Moore's deft portrait of a wife discovering that her husband (Dennis Quaid) is gay to Elmer Bernstein's lush musical score. Still more style than substance, but what exquisite style it is. (In limited release; video release tba)

9. ANTWONE FISHER: Denzel Washington's first directing effort is fairly formulaic, but nobody will complain about the film's forceful performances and fascinating hero. Derek Luke makes an impressive screen debut in the title role, a Navy seaman whose violent temper stems from an abusive childhood. Washington is fine, as always, playing his psychologist. Both times I've seen this film, I sobbed. (Now showing)

10. SPIRITED AWAY: Disney bought distribution rights to Hayao Miyazaki's dreamy fantasy about a little lost girl, then botched the release, dumping this masterpiece into a few theaters without a fraction of the care devoted to junk such as Treasure Planet. This hallucinatory gem deserves to be seen on home video on a date to be announced.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: The Hours, Changing Lanes, Dogtown and Z-Boys, One Hour Photo, Minority Report, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, Adaptation.

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.