2006 Top Ten Lists - Time to Throw Down! (1 Viewer)

[Justin Hargis]

 

[PatW]

Saw Children of Men and placed that at #3 on my list. That drops off Superman Return from the list.

 

[Tim Glover]

Have now seen 62 films from 2006. Only lack a few left that were on my radar. What a FANTASTIC year.

 

[BarryS]

1. Children of Men
2. Pan's Labyrinth
3. The Prestige
4. The Departed
5. Clerks II
6. V for Vendetta
7. Little Miss Sunshine
8. Little Children
9. Casino Royale
10. Hard Candy

Runners-up:

The Fountain
Babel
Borat
Superman Returns
The Descent
Slither
Flags of our Fathers (I still have not seen Letters from Iwo Jima...)
Sherrybaby
Brick
Thank You for Smoking
Cars
Stranger than Fiction

 

[Seth Paxton]

Regarding rating films vs other films...I don't do it by genre. An "important" film doesn't get an auto bump if it's trite, formulaic and dull. But just because I get some laughs out of a comedy doesn't mean it gets to be a 10 either.

I think you can tell between briliant comedy writing, acting and direction vs just funny bits. Some portions of Anchorman or Old School are hilarious, or better yet Caddyshack, but as a total film they are very flawed. Points for creativity and brilliant moments, but minus for poor efforts to tie it all together in a story, pacing and other issues.


What I do instead is look at previous years and think about how I feel about those 10 films, or 9s, etc. Do these films grab me and impress me like thoshe films did and still do?


I think we all understand that this is just our best effort on this stuff. It's not a perfect science, and after reading Adam's recommended book I can't say that he truly made the case for OPINIONS being better with uninformed voters.

The book is about how the noise of uninformed voters can smooth out the expert bias and guide it even closer to the right answer. So voters picking who will win the Oscar works great with a variety of voters, but a vote on what truly is the best doesn't.

He's mistaken the application of unbiased noise for some hidden intuition of crowds IMO. But this is a big sidebar to this thread, except that I think it validates the general idea that polling a group of people can lead you to a "better" answer than just a single voice, no matter how expert it is.


I'm not altering my top 10, but Marie Antoinette is a strong entry. Not sure where to place it. I think probably a 9 rating somewhere in the 15-17 range on my list.

 

[Seth Paxton]

I like your take on Babel.

 

[Brook K]

Been playing catch-up the last several weeks but I still don't feel like I've seen enough to make a top 10. I'm still missing too many of the year's "big" films.

I found Babel underwhelming too. The Japanese story was well-handled..the other two, not so much, and the editing crushed a number of the emotional beats.

 

[BarryS]

Finally saw Little Children. Wow. Quite a film. It's gonna bump Babel off my top ten.

 

[Tim Glover]

After a couple of viewings this week...I bumped up Deja Vu from the Honorable Mention list to #9. Denzel is just too good to keep out.

 

[PatW]

Well I've seen most of the 2006 movies or at least the important ones other than Pan's Labyrinth and the Fountain. My list stands as it is.

 

[Jacob McCraw]

1. The Departed
2. The Prestige
3. Miami Vice
4. Pan's Labyrinth
5. Brick
6. Children of Men
7. Little Miss Sunshine
8. Clerks II
9. Casino Royale
10. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

 

[PatW]

Well, I thought that was it as far as updating my list again. I didn't expect either the Fountain or Pan's Labyrinth to make my top ten list.
Then I rented Little Children and it now sits at the very top of my list at #1. That bumps Superman Returns off and I moved V for Vendetta up a couple of spots to #8 after re-watching it recently.

 

[Rich Malloy]

I'm missing big'uns, small'uns, and maybe even some medium-sized "studio indies". I've not even seen the latest films by two directors who've topped my list in recent years (Lynch, Weerasethakul). Maybe sometime by mid-August I'll consider myself to have had sufficient exposure to hazard a list-in-progress!

 

[rich_d]

Late to the party but I wanted to see some films I missed or that were slow to come to my neck of the woods (such as The Lives of Others).

1. Children of Men

2. Pan's Labyrinth

3. Volver

4. Brick

5. Letters From Iwo Jima

6. Little Miss Sunshine

7. The Lives of Others

8. Short Bus

9. Casino Royale

10. The Illusionist

Notable films that I didn't see yet. The Good Shepherd, United 93 and Perfume: Sotry of a Murderer

 

[TerryRL]

Took me long enough, but here's my top ten.

I listed them alphabetically because I couldn't decide on what was #1.

"Children of Men"
"Clerks II"
"The Departed"
"Letters from Iwo Jima"
"Little Children"
"Little Miss Sunshine"
"Miami Vice"
"The Queen"
"Stranger than Fiction"
"V for Vendetta"

The Best Performances: Actors
#1 Forrest Whitaker "The Last King of Scotland"
#2 Ken Watanabe "Letters from Iwo Jima"
#3 Leonardo DiCaprio "The Departed"
#4 Jackie Earle Haley "Little Children"
#5 Will Ferrell "Stranger than Fiction"

The Best Performances: Actresses
#1 Helen Mirren "The Queen"
#2 Kate Winslet "Little Children"
#3 Maggie Gyllenhaal "Sherrybaby"/ "Stranger than Fiction"
#4 Jennifer Hudson "Dreamgirls"
#5 Claire-Hope Ashitay "Children of Men"

 

[Tim Glover]

Children of Men seems to be the most nominated film on the HTF.

A quick note on my list. I bumped Pan's Labyrinth from #8 to #3 after taking in my 2nd viewing the other night. Already had it a 9.5/10 rating & now it's a solid 10/10.

Good list Terry. Looks we share some of the same taste.

 

[Adam_S]

nope Departed outranks Children of Men, easily, in list mentions on HTF. I don't have the exact stats, but Departed was on something like 80% of the lists, while Children of Men was only on 60% of lists, iirc. That's why, although Children of Men has a higher average ranking of people who listed it, (11 #1 mentions to Departed's 5) it's still quite a ways behind Departed's generous lead, though I haven't added the last half dozen lists yet, CoM would have to be 1 and departed not on them at all for COM to even come close, and for the most part if a list has one of those two it's highly likely it'll have the other.

 

[TerryRL]

Tim, great minds think alike.

 

[rich_d]

By that logic (or lack thereof), a film that was rated number 10 but on everyone's list would be number one on your list.

As people are actually seeing fewer and fewer films all we really learn is that of the films that people saw, many of them saw The Departed and liked it.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

rich,
He's used the same logic EVERY year on making the overall rankings. Read the thread from the start and it'll be explained in detail. Makes sense to me. He tallies up the top #1 vote getter as well (which he explained).

Works for me because I think The Departed is a better film than CoM; both are on my list, and neither are #1 or #2.

I do need to update my list (I have seen The Queen and Little Children, and I'm adding one of them), but I'll wait until Dreamgirls to do it.