At The Halfway Point (1 Viewer)

Well, the year is almost there and so far, 2002 is shaping up to be another good year much like 2001, if not better. Here's how my Top 10 is shaping up at this point.

1. Y Tu Mama Tambien (Mexico)
2. Changing Lanes
3. Minority Report
4. Insomnia
5. Spider-Man
6. No Man’s Land (Bosnia)
7. We Were Soldiers
8. Late Marriage (Israel)
9. Last Orders
10. Spirited Away (Japan)
---
11. Panic Room
12. Son Of The Bride (Argentina)

Honorable Mention: Metropolis (Japan), Frailty, 13 Conversations About One Thing, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Kandahar (Iran) and Lantana.

A lot of potentially good ones are still coming and I still have not seen some of the current releases so I'm sure this list will change.

~Edwin

An fair amount of stragglers from last year on that list, Edwin. Anyway, here's what mine would be right now, from the link at the bottom of the post:

1. Metropolis (animated)
2. Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones
3. Le Pact des Loups (Brotherhood Of The Wolf)
4. Monsoon Wedding
5. Maelström
6. About A Boy
7. The Importance Of Being Earnest
8. The Cat's Meow
9. Italiensk for begyndere (Italian for Beginners)
10. Panic Room

Also > three stars: Ni neibian jidian (What Time Is It There?), Spider-Man and Space Station 3-D. I'm seeing the well-spoken-of Insomnia tonight.

So far, not a terribly strong start - there's a lot of imports there, and I don't know as I see anything from About a Boy down being near my final list; maybe The Cat's Meow.

A few happy trends, though:

It's a fantastic time to love science-fiction on film; Metropolis and Star Wars have both provided knock-your-eyes-out visuals coupled to good stories, and the summer promises Minority Report and s1m0ne. I'm salivating at the prospect of Treasure Planet in IMAX. And, speaking of IMAX and space, Space Station is essential viewing.

Also, foreign films are getting easier to see and more successful. Sure, easy to say from Harvard Square, but my 17-year-old brother in suburban Maine was able to see Brotherhood Of The Wolf, and not at Portland's tiny art-house place, either (Brotherhood also got plenty of national, mainstream advertising). Metropolis had its DVD release delayed because people actually went and saw a release Sony probably planned as a quick Oscar-qualifier. Amelie, Monsoon Wedding and Italian For Beginners all enjoyed long runs.

Acutally, I was thinking of No Man's Land, Last Orders, and Lantana, which at least had awards-qualification releases in '01. Sure, it's not wide release, but did Kandahar ever have one of those?

Limiting myself to films I've given :star: :star: :star: 1/2 or :star: :star: :star: :star:, my list looks like this:
1. Minority Report
2. Insomnia
3. About a Boy
4. Y Tu Mama Tambien
5. Italian For Beginners
6. Monsoon Wedding
I'm not sure if either Metropolis or The Son's Room "count" as 2002, thus my leaving them off.
Generally speaking, I think this year has been a lot better overall than last year up to this point. I've seen a lot of two and three star films, compared to the dregs of last spring. Of course, we're not quite to the halfway point, and I'm hoping Friday I can add another one to the list with Minority Report.
(I've left off non-qualifiers like Lantana since they were in consideration for my 2001 list, even though I did not view them until sometime this year. I know it's screwy, but we do our top films of 2001 show in late February/early March to compensate for such issues.)

I agree that so far this year, the selection of quality films has surpassed last year's at this point.

My 10 BEST so far are:

1.Changing Lanes
2.Minority Report
3.Insomnia (just saw it BTW..Excellent)
4.About A Boy
5.Spiderman
6.Brotherhood Of The Wolf
7.Frailty
8.Attack Of The Clones
9.Panic Room
10.We Were Soldiers

Edited to add the excellent Minority Report.

I'm restricting my list to only those films I gave a 9 or 10 to (I rate on the 10-point scale). Updated on 7/3/02 to include films seen through 6/30/02.

1. Y Tu Mama Tambien
2. About A Boy
3. We Were Soldiers
4. Minority Report
5. Insomnia
6. Attack Of The Clones
7. The Rookie
8. Monsoon Wedding
9. Spider-Man
10. Enigma

And to take it a little further, let's look at the performances so far:

Best Actor nominees:

Gael García Bernal, Y Tu Mama Tambien
Mel Gibson, We Were Soldiers
Hugh Grant, About A Boy
Al Pacino, Insomnia
Dennis Quaid, The Rookie

Best Actress nominees:

Kirsten Dunst, The Cat's Meow
Jodie Foster, Panic Room
Diane Lane, Unfaithful
Maribel Verdú, Y Tu Mama Tambien

Like the rest of you, I feel we're off to a good start this year. Much better than the previous two years, at any rate. Last year at this time I only had one or two titles that would have qualified for the list.

Rating the movies I've seen so far (scores on a 10-point scale):

Changing Lanes - 6
Panic Room - 6.5
Spider-Man - 8
Attack of the Clones - 9
About a Boy - 9.5
Insomnia - 6
Murder by Numbers - 5
The Sum of All Fears - 5.5
Blade II - 7
Dragonfly - 4
The Time Machine - 3


Pretty lame selection so far. I haven't gotten to see any indie/foreign films this year, which is a shame. Hopefully I'll catch some on DVD.

This has been a special year for me, as it's the first year where I made moviegoing an active hobby. The movies themselves have been very good overall, and the rest of the year looks promising. Here's my top 10, so far:

1. Signs
2. Minority Report
3. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
4. Spider-Man
5. One Hour Photo
6. Y Tu Mamá También
7. Changing Lanes
8. Kissing Jessica Stein
9. Lilo & Stitch
10. About a Boy

*Last Updated - 8-30-02*

I've yet to see several good films (About a Boy, Y Tu) but still enough to have a top 10 of pretty solid films. However I would expect all but 3-4 of these to be well out of my top 10 by year's end, and some out of the top 30.

1 Spider-Man
2 Changing Lanes
3 Minority Report
4 Panic Room
5 Brotherhood of the Wolf
6 Insomnia
7 AOTC
8 Metropolis (anime)
9 Monsoon Wedding
10 Frailty


You had to love the Kubrick tribute ending to Panic Room (from The Killing).

The thrilling action on par with CTHD in Brotherhood.

The subtle drama of Changing Lanes.

And within a 6 month period we have been handed 3, yes 3, LONG, fun, popcorn films after going years without a real winner there (FOTR, Potter, Spidey). I always wished that MIB1 ran about 20 minutes longer at least.

I've updated my list to make it a true halfway point.
~Edwin

Bah here's mine:

1- Minority Report 9.0
2- Star Wars Episode II 8.5
3- Spider-Man 8.5
4- About a Boy 8.5
5- The Bourne Identity 8.0
6- Insomnia 8.0
7- The Sum of All Fears 7.0
8- The Panic Room 7.0
9- Blade II 7.0
10- We Were Soldiers 7.0

Following Edwin's lead, I've updated my list as well.

Pretty blah year so far for me, though it looked like a lot of potential was shown at Cannes

1. Y Tu Mama Tambien (though a 2001 World release)
2. Sunshine State
3. Lilo and Stitch
4. The Lady and The Duke (2001 World)
5. Insomnia
6. Spiderman

Films like Minority Report, Clones, Perdition, and Austin Powers are not worth putting on my list just to make it 10.

In no particular order (except #1):

1) Minority Report (Should, but won't rack up Oscar nods,
Spielbergs best movie in a LOOOOOOONNNNNG time)
2) Star Wars Episode II (Close to Eps. III & IV)
3) The Bourne Identity (So it didn't follow the book..so
what???)
4) Enigma (Kind of slow, but really good if you read the
book)
5) Mr. Deeds (The John McEnroe scene was worth the admission
alone)
6) Insomnia (Oscar nominations are in order for Pacino and
Williams
7) Panic Room (Never thought the premise could make a great
two hour movie)
8) Spider Man (Kirsten Dunst...tastes great)
9) Changing Lanes (who knew Ben Afflek could act?)
10) Slackers (very under-rated IMO)

Here's my top five, for what it's worth. I've seen about a film a week, this year.
1. Brotherhood of the Wolf (made me want to kick some religious freak/werewolf-ish ass!)
2. Y Tu Mama Tambien
3. Minority Report. (the discussion thread here made me reconsider my originally poor impression of the film. Not that I thought it was BAD, per se. Just that I thought the ending was kind of lame.)
4. Enigma. (Acting was great, and it didn't telegraph the ending, for me, anyway.)
5. Panic Room
Notice that three out of five are foreign films, and I considered Monsoon Wedding for a spot. I wish Hollywood would stop turning out dreck, but for that to happen, Americans have to stop throwing money at dreck.

Updated with the excellent Minority Report.