The year 2001 didn't offer as many consistent cinematic delights as the movie of the same title. But the odyssey that was this film year had a number of things going for it, like the fact that it was a record-breaker at the box office. Despite all the glut of pay-per-view, DVDs and streaming Internet video, people still found the local theater to be the overwhelmingly preferred choice for entertainment.
With all the awards shows and best-of lists making their way throughout the media, a bit of explanation is needed for how we at The Mag compiled our handiwork. Movies that were screened for Kansas City-area critics through Dec. 31, 2001, were eligible, even if they hadn't opened yet in the market. Movies that may have earned praise on the coasts, such as "Black Hawk Down" and "Monster's Ball," aren't eligible since they won't screen in the Midwest until later in the year. But don't fret. There's still plenty of movies you've seen, haven't seen, didn't want to see and have never heard of to go around.
Best Title: "Sexy Beast."
Worst Title: "Pootie Tang."
Most Appropriate Title: "What's the Worst That Could Happen?"
Best Argument for Celibacy: "Original Sin." Any movie that can make Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie as sexy as linoleum deserves SOME kind of award.
Best Real-life Cameo: Teen TV favorites Topher Grace, Joshua Jackson, Holly Marie Combs and Barry Watson attempting to learn poker in "Ocean's Eleven"
Worst Real-life Cameo: Neil Diamond serenading his stalkers in "Saving Silverman."
Grossest Movie: "Hannibal."
Best Trend: Comic book adaptations such as "Ghost World" and "From Hell." It's about time snobs stopped looking down on graphic novels and started reading them. If these thoughtful adaptations are any indication, they offer filmmakers a good head start because they combine visual and verbal storytelling. In addition, they can deal with subject matter that's rather removed from the superheroes and anthropomorphic animals that are usually associated with the medium. Whether this trend can continue is up for debate. Film producers still have to be able to read to get through comic books.
Worst Trend: Video game adaptations such as "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" and "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider." Hasn't Hollywood learned from "Super Mario Bros.?" Video games can be addictive because they make players active participants in non-existent worlds. These movies don't. The first features an entirely computer-generated cast that's only partially more human than the folks in "Pearl Harbor." The second reduces Oscar-winner Angelina Jolie to a collection of pouty poses.
Best Performance by a KU Graduate: Laura Kirk's writing and starring role in the faux documentary "Lisa Picard is Famous."
Most Gratuitous Nude Scene: The constant ogling of actress Bijou Phillips in the true-life murder tale "Bully."
Best Use of Music: "Moulin Rouge."
Worst Use of Music: "Bandits."
Past Titles Coming Back to Haunt You: After just six months of marriage, actors Tom Green and Drew Barrymore filed for divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences" ironically the title of a 1984 movie in which she starred in. Following the petition, Green moved out of the couple's Los Angeles home thus emulating his 2000 movie "Road Trip." In the week's after Green's departure, Barrymore was repeatedly spotted "Riding in Cars With Boys."
Best Makeup: The chimps, gorillas and orangutans in "Planet of the Apes."
Worst Makeup: The Mary Kay nightmare of eye shadow and lipstick denoting Helena Bonham Carter's simian character as female in "Planet of the Apes."
Best Line of Dialogue: "It's a place used the world over where people can come together to bitch about movies and share pornography with one another." Ben Affleck, describing the Internet, in "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back"
Worst Line of Dialogue: "Returning from the dead wasn't all that I expected ... but that's life." Ben Affleck in "Pearl Harbor."
Best Reasons to Keep Signing Those TV Contracts: Courteney Cox Arquette ("Friends") in "3000 Miles to Graceland," David Boreanaz ("Angel") in "Valentine," Kelsey Grammer ("Frasier") and Melina Kanakaredes ("Providence") in "15 Minutes," Brendan Fehr ("Roswell") in "The Forsaken."
Best Reason to Wish John Hughes Had Never Been Born: "Not Another Teen Movie."
Best Reason to Have a Big Special Effects Budget: "The Fellowship of the Ring."
Worst Reason to Have a Big Special Effects Budget: "Evolution."
Movie Most Likely to End the New Patriotism Phenomenon: "Pearl Harbor." Thanks to the limited attention span and shoddy storytelling of director Michael Bay, one of this nation's greatest tragedies is reduced to the backdrop for a love story that would be laughed off most soap operas. Leave it to Bay to make the hair-raisingly dangerous raids of Jimmy Doolittle boring. Should you be in a flag-waving mood, go rent the multiple Oscar-winning "From Here to Eternity," which despite '50s censorship, has more convincing romantic tension and features real footage from the Pearl Harbor attack. The Doolittle raids are better served by "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo." It may lack the digital effects of "Pearl Harbor," but the script by the legendary Dalton Trumbo ("Spartacus") packs considerably more narrative firepower.
Best Accent: Tilda Swinton ("The Deep End") Tom Wilkinson ("In the Bedroom") and Johnny Depp ("From Hell"). The first two are transplanted Brits passing for Yanks, the latter is an American convincingly speaking in a lower-middle class English drawl.
Worst Accent: Nicolas Cage ("Captain Corelli's Mandolin"). In addition to giving a performance broad enough to be a form of meta-discourse (he waves his arms as if trying to take flight), Cage's attempts to sound Italian have a mozzarella cheesiness to them. From listening, it's hard to believe his ancestry really is Italian (his actual surname is Coppola).
Best Reason Not to Remake Good Foreign Movies: "Vanilla Sky." Tom Cruise liked Alejandro Amenbar's "Abre los ojos" so much he sponsored the director's creepy hit "The Others" and produced and starred in the aforementioned remake. Lacking the original Spanish film's faith in the premise, "Vanilla Sky" was probably made because Hollywood executives assume most Americans to be too lazy or stupid to read subtitles, just as they are. As a result, in attempting to please domestic audiences, they greenlight horrid remakes that please no one.
Best Reason to Hate Lorne Michaels: "SNL" vet Chris Kattan's starring role in "Corky Romano."
Niccum's Best Sleeper: "Made." Sure Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn's attempt to recapture the spirit of "Swingers" didn't cause the same cultural revolution as their first pairing. But this wise guys comedy provides dozens of hilarious scenes where the actors excel at getting on each other's nerves.
Lockerby's Best Sleeper: "Panic." Henry Bromell's melancholy drama went virtually unnoticed during its limited theatrical run. As a result, too many people missed not only William H. Macy's nuanced performance as a conflicted hit man, but some of Donald Sutherland's best work in years, rare dramatic turns from Tracey Ullman and John Ritter, and what could have been a comeback role for former "Mission: Impossible" star Barbara Bain. In other words, get the video.
Lybarger's Best Sleeper: "The Fighter." This engrossing documentary concerns two Czech Jews, Jan Wiener and Arnost Lustig, who emigrated to the United States after surviving both Hitler and Communism. The former fled Prague, wandered through Italy, spent time in an Italian POW camp, and eventually became a hero in the British Royal Air Force. The latter made it through Auschwitz alive. After World War II, Lustig later became a Communist Party official while Wiener's defiant attitude landed him five years in a work camp. Time has not dulled their fierce ideological differences, but as Amir Bar-Lev's fly-on-the-wall filming reveals, they are also the best of friends. Their chummy rapport is charming, and their mutual courage is awe-inspiring.
Niccum's Best Guilty Pleasure: "The Fast and the Furious." This ridiculous car chase movie somehow holds together, despite having a plot that is harder to believe than "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." Maybe it's because of director Rob Cohen's ability to utilize speed the way most filmmakers use light or color. Maybe it's the authoritative performance of Vin Diesel, who elevates the role of a menacing, ambiguous bad guy to fine art.
Lockerby's Best Guilty Pleasure: "Kate & Leopold" Yes, it's a shameless attempt to market unattainable romantic fantasies to women who think Hugh Jackman is hot. And this would be a bad thing because...?
Lybarger's Best Guilty Pleasure: "A Knight's Tale." Writer-director Brian Helgeland isn't working up to the potential he demonstrated with "L.A. Confidential," but this piece of cinematic corn is a good deal easier to digest thanks to a hilariously flamboyant performance by Paul Bettany as "The Canterbury Tales" poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Heath Ledger's willingness to play a fool helps considerably. He gives some of his character's goofier pronouncements (when told to look above his beloved's chest, he asks, "I should look at her throat?") a conviction that keeps the film from becoming a recycled Monty Python sketch.
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