Brandon's movie memory

1. Black Narcissus – I enjoyed this so much that the review I wrote that night is raving nonsense. I did call it one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, so I’ll take my word for it.

2. The Double Life of Veronique – beautiful in a way that doesn’t even make sense… will have to see it again and again.

3. Spaced, season 1 – good thing I’m accountable to no one with my end-of-year lists, so I can put a TV series up here among all the movies. Watched the whole season twice, and I’d do it again… hilarious and brilliant.

4. Edvard Munch – such a powerful movie, it troubled my mind all year.

5. Scarlet Street – I almost want to lower its ranking to punish Fritz Lang for being so cruel to Edward G. Robinson. So very dark… best noir I’ve seen since “Out of the Past”.

6. F.W. Murnau’s Faust – c’mon, it’s Faust.

7. Moolaade – best movie on female genital mutilation I’ve ever seen.

8. Dazed and Confused – a good time, a very happy movie.

9. Tokyo Story – not as happy, but an emotional trip… gotta see more Ozu soon.

10. Kageroza – glad to see what Seijun Suzuki did during his “time off” from filmmaking.

11. Touch the Sound

12. The Philadelphia Story

13. Greed (The TCM reconstructed version)

14. La Strada

15. Wages of Fear

16. Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting – made the list as soon as the curator fell asleep and the disembodied narrator started whispering so as not to wake him.

17. Jean Renoir’s The Lower Depths

18. Petulia

19. Mr. Arkadin (corinth version) – Orson Welles in full-on crazy mode… a bunch of amazing scenes loosely stitched together with a ridiculous (and poorly dubbed) framing device. Too weird not to love.

20. Letter From Siberia

Honorable mentions to The Thief of Bagdad, The Newton Boys, Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge, the Judex silent serial, and Fritz Lang’s While The City Sleeps, among many others.

1. Satantango at the Belcourt in Nashville with Jimmy and Trevor. Nice drive, nice theater, and the kind of movie that changes my feeling about movies.

2. Tales of the Tinkerdee and Handmade Puppet Dreams at the Center for Puppetry Arts – Heather Henson presents some of her father Jim’s early works, and some brand new shorts by indie filmmaker puppeteers

3. Bright Leaves at Agnes Scott. The movie was on DVD, but we got two Q&As by director Ross McElwee.

4. Viva Pedro! at the Landmark – six Pedro Almodovar movies in a week. Got to see Matador, Law of Desire, Talk to Her, The Flower of My Secret, All About My Mother, and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and missed Bad Education and Live Flesh.

5. George Pal’s Puppetoons shorts at Lincoln Center with Justin and Trevor

6. Three Mira Nair movies at Emory with Katy, and a talk/Q&A with the director.

7. Pickpocket at Emory. It’s nice when an acclaimed classic lives up to its reputation.

8. Kill! at Emory. It’s nice when a movie I’ve barely heard of turns out to be a brilliant classic.

9. Warren Sonbert shorts at the Eyedrum. Another filmmaker I never would’ve heard about if not for local artist/programmer Andy Ditzler.

10. Spirit of the Beehive at Emory

Only an honorable mention allowed for 2046 at the High Museum since I’d just seen it three times last year.

1. Kingdom of Heaven (director’s cut) – Not even its May 2005 release date can save this from being the worst movie of 2006.

2. Art School Confidential – The bit at the end – about how the only way to be a successful artist is to be a fraud (the cop) or a notorious killer (our protagonist) – wasn’t worth the whole misguided, hateful, unfunny journey.

3. Hostel – Couldn’t justify filling my head with nightmares of dangling eyeballs meeting power drills. I will be shocked if the revenge ending was supposed to be taken seriously… seemed so sloppy that it felt like a loving tribute to bad plotting.

4. Hellraisers 7 and 8 – I’d heard they were bad, I knew they’d be bad, I watched them anyway. Put the word “Hellraiser” on anything and I’ll watch it. At least they were bad/fun, hence only the number four slot.

5. The Yes Men – Such an obviously funny subject, and from the directors of American Movie. So why does it feel so dull and hastily-compiled? Most unexpectedly crappy movie of the year.

Dishonorable mentions go to Dance of the Dead (for being worse than the Hellraisers, but with lower expectations), The Leopard (for being extremely tedious), Fritz Lang’s Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (for having the most ludicrous script and characters), and Walk The Line (for pointlessly hollywoodizing Johnny Cash’s life)