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2002: The Year in Movies

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from: Roger Ebert
to: A.O. Scott, Sarah Kerr, and David Edestein

My Big Fat Oscar

Posted Thursday, Jan. 2, 2003, at 6:18 PM ET

Who are these people?

Dear Tony, Sarah, and David,

Funny that Tony should mention the 10-way tie for 11th place on his list of the year's best films since I faced the same dilemma. Yes, this was a very good year at the movies, and I awarded my own Special Jury Prize (from a jury of one) to 10 films that didn't quite make my Top 10. At film festivals, special jury prizes are essentially alternative first prizes, and all of these films are deserving: Diamond Men, The Fast Runner, Femme Fatale, Frailty, The Grey Zone, Ivans Xtc., Lovely & Amazing, The Man From Elysian Fields, Songs From the Second Floor, 24 Hour Party People.

Of the lot, Ivans Xtc. and The Man From Elysian Fields got the least critical support. Bernard Rose, I thought, obtained one of the year's best performances from Danny Huston as a Hollywood agent who attempts to treat cancer with cocaine, and George Hickenlooper made a smart, sophisticated comedy with a spot-on supporting performance by Mick ("Call Me Old-Fashioned") Jagger. 24 Hour Party People was one of those movies you either got or completely missed; I saw it on a few best-10 lists despite its generally poor reception.

Regarding John C. Reilly: Sixty years ago he would have found steady employment as the hero's best friend in westerns. He is reliable, sincere, and warm-hearted. No wonder he was good in Chicago: He spent his high-school years in Chicago as the lead in school musicals and so was singing and dancing long before Paul Thomas Anderson taught him the notes of discontent.

Regarding men: Gene Siskel always wanted us to do a special show on "Bad Dads," pointing out that the fathers in modern American movies are absent, evil, or clueless. To be a sensitive, caring, intelligent character in recent movies is to be a female. The only hope the male character has is to meet a good woman and learn from her. Can you imagine the outcry if Igby had been a teenage girl and her lover the 40-year-old best friend of her father?

What Time Is It There? grows and grows in my memory.

Sarah, like you I was amazed by The Fast Runner, but I am even happier to see Spirited Away so high on your list. Why does the American public continue to resist Miyazaki, when those who go to see his films love them so much? Is it that he includes silences and evokes moods and uses "pillow shots" while American animation is terrified of a moment's pause?

As for About a Boy, I wonder if it might not have ranked higher on my list if I had seen it recently. There is a psychological principle involving persistence of emotional memory, which suggests that memory does not record the intensity of past pleasure. When I saw Minority Report, I was gobsmacked by it, but in December, readying my list, I went to see it again, just to renew the feelings it had engendered. Similarly, last night I looked at Kieslowski's Red again and was reminded what an engrossing and touching experience it was. It had faded in my memory over 10 years.

As for My Big Fat Greek Wedding, it's the one movie everybody I meet has seen. (Recently that category has expanded to include Catch Me If You Can, which seems to be a smash hit among over-25s.) I wonder if Greek Wedding can actually ride its Cinderella trip right into the Oscars? If Nia Vardalos is able to get nominated as best actress, I have a feeling she will win (even over Julianne, Meryl, Renée, et al.) because when the Oscar voters mark their ballots, many of them are not so much voting for the best nominee as scripting, in their minds, the best Oscar cast.

Best,
Roger

the movie club
entries
1234567891011121314151617181920
from: Roger Ebert
to: A.O. Scott, Sarah Kerr, and David Edestein

My Big Fat Oscar

Posted Thursday, Jan. 2, 2003, at 6:18 PM ET
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Roger Ebert is the Chicago Sun-Times' film critic. David Edelstein is Slate's film critic. You can e-mail him at . Sarah Kerr is Vogue's film critic. A.O. Scott is a film critic at the New York Times.
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Notes From The Fray Editor:

The Movie Club Fray has been busy adding to and subtracting from the critics' lists (additions: Ararat, The Two Towers, Jackass; subtractions: Minority Report, anything that hasn't been in wide release, The Pianist). One item of note: critics should entertain gender-switched hypotheticals at their own peril. Ebert's feminized Igby reminds pnuge of Wish You Were Here; Edelstein's Man-Hours reminds DeaH of American Beauty. jknyc tracks down Ebert's Howard Hawks reference. There is also a smart Spielberg thread—that is, one about narrative and character development and not the omnipresent "bad dad"—here, with seanweitner, simparker and Rachel doing most of the bandying.

Remarks From The Fray:

The reason I felt betrayed by Adaptation's climax was because, just as Mr. Ebert claims, it was thumbing its nose at the members of the audience who didn't understand how "brave" it was. That's a pretty damning criticism from one of the movie's admirers. It's okay to thumb your nose at the start of such a movie--pre-empt criticism, confound expectation, etc. But by the end you should be making a movie for those in the audience who DO understand how brave you are. The best possible ending for this film would have been a true compromise, an actual adaptation by Kaufman; or, on the other hand, as un-McKee an ending as possible, something that Kaufman truly loved. If he was writing the ending for someone who didn't understand the rest of the movie, then it's understandable that I, who liked the rest of the movie, felt so alienated.

Worth it, however, for that gorgeous final time-lapse shot. Most elegant time-lapse photography since Boys Don't Cry.

-- simparker

(To reply, click here.)

"Can you imagine the outcry if Igby had been a teenage girl and her lover the 40-year-old best friend of her father?"

That sounds a lot like David Leland's "Wish You Were Here".

-- pnuge

(To reply, click here.)

Mr. Edelstein says that a man making the same choice as the woman in The Hours would be looked upon as a monstrous coward. It really wasn't too many years ago that Kevin Spacey won an Oscar for playing a man who made just that same choice. His character is seen as liberated for choosing to get high and lust after a rose-covered teen. Mentally, at least, he left his wife and children to live for the first time until he, ironically wasn't alive anymore.

-- DeaH

(To reply, click here.)

The quote about Hawks being enjoyable was in the Sunday NY TIMES Book Review section in a review on Elmore Leonard. [It is; here. The review is by Salon's Charles Taylor and he is citing Robin Wood.—Fray Ed.]

-- jknyc

(To reply, click here.)

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