Okay, time to release my list. I haven't seen Monster's Ball or In the Bedroom yet, but hey, I'm not a professional movie critic, I do the best I can to catch everything supposedly worth seeing. My list, in no particular order:
Lord of the Rings
A faithful adaptation of the book, a grand time at the movies, the most fun I had at a movie all year. People who complain about how the movie ends obviously don't understand the concept of a trilogy. I was excited, given Peter Jackson's previous work, but it still exceeded my hopes.
Mulholland Drive
David Lynch's best film yet. I've often thought that film would be the best art form to capture the way in which dreams convey meaning. That particularly abstract yet totally understandable Freudian dreamscape. Well, Lynch has tried in the past, and it's been hit or miss. Some of his movies have struck me as just plain weird. But Mulholland Drive is weird, yet it conveys so much about Los Angeles and Hollywood and the threats that lurk there.
Waking Life
The most groundbreaking animated film of the year. Forget Shrek and Monsters Inc. Innovative in its animation technique, in which animators used computers to draw over live action film sequences. In doing so, the movie's artists actually reinforced the ideas being discussed with the animation itself. It's also a film about ideas, which is difficult to pull off, and what helps is that the ideas themselves are intriguing. Richard Linklater is a very talented, intelligent filmmaker. How many directors can claim to have as diverse a set of films as Waking Life and Dazed and Confused on their resume?
In the Mood for Love
Some people will find Wong Kar Wai to be too much of a stylist. Frankly, he treats movies as an art form, and I love it. The cinematography, music, and acting are all aesthetically manipulative and plain beautiful. As tyrannical a director as, say Woody Allen, but with a much more refined aesthetic sensibility.
Moulin Rouge
Many people see this film as a revival of the musical, but musicals have been popular on Broadway for years. I personally didn't find the popularity of Moulin Rouge to be surprising. What is original is Baz's ability to cross-reference love songs from throughout the years in a non-intrusive, meaningful way. It's a film that captures the core emotional value of each of the songs and films it quotes, yet at the same time it subtly subverts them all. In a way, with an art form with as long a history as the movie musical, that's the only way to break new ground. It's like trying to direct a film noir in this day and age. It's such an established genre that it's tough to break new ground (it's a challenge the Coen brothers took on in making The Man Who Wasn't There).
Oh yeah, and Ewan and Nicole were surprisingly good singers. Nicole Kidman hasn't played too many purely sympathetic parts in her career, but especially given her personal travails this year, she's very convincing here.
Memento
A clever, haunting film. Okay, so the idea of following a story backwards in time isn't wholly original, but in this case it takes on added meaning because it helps us to empathize with what Guy Pearce's character is experiencing with his short-term memory loss. We, like Leonard, learn about what's happening as we go. We think we have an advantage over Leonard; we can remember more than he can since we don't have short-term memory loss. However, since we're seeing the movie backwards, we're no better off than he is with his tattoos and notes, which are from the past. We are moving back in time, he's moving forward, and we think we'll meet somewhere in the middle. When the film ends we realize we may be no better off than Leonard is, and he may actually have more peace of mind.
Christopher Nolan's first film, The Following, experiments with the same concept--showing a film out of order to maintain a sense of mystery and to provide us with a fresh perspective on a film, but in that film it's not nearly as meaningful a mechanism.
Ghost World
Those of us who are clever will laugh at the cultural satire in this film, most of it spearheaded by the sharp tongue of Thora Birch in a commanding performance. But we'll probably also wince at the loneliness of some of the obsessive characters, like Steve Buscemi's Seymour, because in them we recognize our own solitary compulsions. Terry Zwigoff doesn't put these characters on a pedestal or demean them. The closing shot is poetic.
Ocean's Eleven
Not every "best of" list needs a guilty pleasure, but this will be mine. It's not a great movie, especially given Soderbergh's talents, but it's a lot of damn fun. The biggest problem with the film is that not everyone in the ensemble cast gets enough screen time. But it's a movie all about movie stars being movie stars, and Soderbergh makes a few of them, in particular George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Elliot Gould, sparkle and shine. Every now and then, we need to be reminded why paparazzi chase them around instead of hounding us, and movies like this remind me why. Big movie stars are magnetic, funny, sexy.
What's up with Julia Roberts, though? She walks funny.
So that's my list. One other thing that most of these film have in common--great soundtracks. I love movie soundtracks. Music is a big part of movies for me.
All in all, it turned out to be an innovative year in the movies. Most of these films on my list were groundbreaking in one way or another, and those that weren't were just plain good.
If I had to move to the next tier of movies from 2001, I'd include the following. These would be honorable mentions, I guess. Good movies, worth watching, but all flawed in one way or another.
A Beautiful Mind
The Royal Tenenbaums
Black Hawk Down
The Deep End
The Others
American Pie II
The Score
Shrek
A.I.
Sexy Beast
The Road Home
61*
Donnie Darko
Joy Ride
Amelie
The Man Who Wasn't There
Heist
Monster's Inc.
Bridget Jones Diary
Training Day
So, did I miss anything?