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David Mumpower's Top Ten Lists for 2002
2002 was one of the best years for movies in recent memory. As I compiled my best picture nominees, I realized that there were 25 entries this year which would have made my top ten in 2001. With such tremendous depth in overall quality, I found myself very much torn in voting for my selections. Wonderful films such as Big Trouble, The Cat's Meow, Frailty and Roger Dodger had to be excluded. I was somewhat shocked to discover that my Best Overlooked Films of 2002 list is a better set of movies than my top ten for 2001, and I think that says it all about how well Hollywood did. Please keep that in mind as you read the list below. Everything mentioned below is a movie I love. It wasn't just smaller films that offered quality either. Generally, the popcorn flicks of summer and Christmas are easily forgotten trifles (that's the point of the name popcorn flick, after all). In 2002, though, numerous films of this variety offered tremendous bang for the buck. The Sum of All Fears, Spider-Man, Road to Perdition, The Two Towers, Catch Me If You Can, Signs, and Men in Black II (my sitemates are nuts...I bought that DVD the first day it came out) all delivered on their promise of escapist entertainment. I even chose what should have been a generic action flick as my favorite of the year. The Bourne Identity gets the nod from me over several other films I really liked because it surprised me. As a huge fan of Doug Liman, I held out hope that this production would be good but with early buzz so mixed, I was losing faith. When I finally reached the theater, I was blown away by the Matrix-like quality of this quest for identity. Both of these are ordinary men who don't realize they're capable of much more. Each sequence in Bourne where he begins to realize what he's capable of doing is edited impeccably to emphasize the moment of self-awareness. It's not when Damon wipes the floor with the two overnight police guards that is special to me. It's the moment of prescience he has right before that happens. He knows what's about to happen as sure as he knows that he shouldn't have that capability. Similarly, when the guard yells at him in the embassy (which I voted as the best scene of the year even though Mani will never forgive me) and he sees they're coming at him, it's the way he carries himself which best defines the moment rather than the blows to the military men. When he reaches the top of the building and the metal barricade is about to collapse, his annoyance is similar to one a person would have for getting caught by a red light or running out of cigarettes. There is no better way to demonstrate how much of an automaton he has been melded to be than these instances of grace under pressure. It's not that he can do these things inasmuch as how robotic they are to his nature. As they sit in the bar and he describes all of the pieces of knowledge he possesses about his surroundings, the viewer is specifically impacted by just how unusual this man's talents are. That's how effective Liman is in drawing in the audience and that's why it's such a marvelous accomplishment with regards to both direction and overall quality for me. With Go! and Swingers already on his filmography, Liman already claims one of the best three-film performances of any working director. The fact that he has needed only three outings to pull this off speaks volumes for his gifts. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind has proven to be a divisive film with many viewers actively disliking it. As you can see from the Calvin results, the staff as a whole loves it. I'm right there with them on the group think here (as opposed to Adaptation), because I was greatly surprised and impressed by the deft touch George Clooney demonstrated in his directorial debut. This is, after all, a script considered by many to be unfilmable yet an actor by trade at the helm of a project for the first time has created an enveloping story which is largely based on a probable lie. Somehow, though, the falsehood works both as a metaphor and as a believable potentially non-fiction star bio. Even if you watch the film as a series of untruths, it still works on several levels because there is so much distrust of studio suits these days. An amazing accomplishment. Brown Sugar was one of the best date movies I've had in my life. We went to a sneak, and were part of a boisterous largely African-American group who turned the upbeat nature of the movie into a celebration of life. This was already a crowd pleaser, so it was a perfect experience to enjoy the film with a set of people who all laughed heartily and loudly. The extra oomph in enjoying warm, fuzzy productions such as this is crowd energy. Our group was kinetic and frenzied, thereby making Brown Sugar even more of a treat than it already was. Good times, good times. Oh, and Sanaa Lathan is a goddess. About a Boy has already been talked up enough during the Calvins, so I'll quickly say what I thought made it special. That's the willingness of Hugh Grant to play a complete git without fear of it damaging his public persona. This was a lesson learned in Bridget Jones's Diary which he took to heart and perfected as a clueless cad who uses single mothers for a few months of fun. As impressive as Grant was, though, About a Boy lives and dies on the character of Marcus, so Nicholas Hoult is the anchor. He is given the opportunity to escape all cliches of Hollywood teens, and be what most of us at that age are: tortured and confused. Say what you will about the Weitz Brothers, but this duo clearly remembers what it's like to be a kid. Brotherhood of the Wolf is the Mani show. Mark Dacascos made me proud of my Indian heritage as he portrayed a man of few words who happened to be capable of magnificent actions. Only the Transporter and a CGI Yoda sequence had action scenes which were in any way comparable to the payoff given when Mani was allowed to take flight. More impressive was the way that Brotherhood didn't rest upon these sequences. Instead, viewers are treated to a convoluted, intellectual puzzle whose pieces fit together nicely after the reveals are all completed. Also, when Samuel Le Bihan's Jean-François is forced to step up in Mani's absence, he is almost as impressive as an action hero. It's been exactly a year since Wolf entered theaters yet I haven't seen a more surprising amalgam of genres in a movie since. It's got action, horror, political intrigue, fractured time, a CGI monster, and a bit of historical drama. Brotherhood of the Wolf is eight films in one package. As a baseball fanatic, The Rookie is a film I expected to mean more to me than it did to most. I had followed the story of Jimmy Morris (and Joe Strong, a 38-year-old rookie the following year) as it unfolded, so I had this production on radar from the moment it got the greenlight. I was shocked when the film hit theaters to see that if anything, non-baseball fans liked it more than I did. The Rookie was a solid hit, and managed to include two sweeping story arcs at once. The first hour of the film is exclusively centered around the high school baseball team, while the rest of it focuses on Morris living up to the promise he made to try to be professional ball player. Both pieces would work fine as stand alone stories, but together, they comprise an amazing six month journey for a grown man who had already given up his dreams. The Rookie is called slow by some and that's probably fair to an extent. Personally, I see the movie as a timeless entity with an ebb and flow mirroring the game it so lovingly discusses. Watching Spirited Away is an experience which takes me back to my favorite moments from childhood. It makes me feel like an eight-year-old rushing downstairs on December 25th to see all of the gifts under the Christmas tree. Each wrapped package offers me the promise of new mysteries and surprises which have yet to reveal themselves. All I know as I look at the glossy gift wrap is that my happiness is tucked away safe and secure in the hands of Hayao Miyazaki, so all that is required of me is to sit back and enjoy the unfolding events and eye candy. The film marvelously encapsulates the carefree adventures which occur each and every day of our youth. In eighth place, I chose Lilo & Stitch because of its charm and warmth. Neither of these is surprising from a Disney flick, but what warmed the cockles of my heart was the fact that Lilo was a more interesting character than her six-legged alien counterpart. As I watched the movie for the first time, I noted that like Mulan before it, a genuine attempt was made to show a strong female point of view without it being artificial, an unfortunate but fair knock against the Minnie Mouses of the Disney world. I don't know exactly why Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida is so much better at this than their other production studios, but since Mulan and Lilo & Stitch are their two films to date, there is no disputing the fact that they are. Lilo and her sister Nani are engaging heroines fighting to keep their family together. I flat out defy you to watch this movie and not feel empathy for them in their struggles. They could have eliminated all of the extra-terrestrials from this film and called it Lilo & Nani. I still would have adored it. Along with Iron Giant, this will be a movie I relish watching with my child some day. Minority Report is my ninth selection. Like A.I. last year, the movie had its detractors, but I got what Spielberg was trying to do and liked it a lot. After first viewing, I expected it to finish much higher on my year end top ten, but I must admit I haven't had a burning desire to watch it a lot since then despite owning the DVD. Since a lot of my judging for these bits of recognition is based upon repeat viewing potential, I had to give it a position toward the bottom. Even so, this is a brilliant view of the future with a Big Brother-esque governmental ideal and a foundation starting to show cracks. Tom Cruise as always makes for the perfect everyman as the action unfolds before him. Also, if you ever want to see the definition of a movie star, watch him work the remote in the first scene. Check out what pure joy looks like. The last film I picked in my top ten is Undercover Brother. Even when compared to something as joyous as Brown Sugar, UB is an upbeat movie. All it does is celebrate the fun of cultural diversity while poking gentle, warm fun at cliches in both the movie industry and the real world. It does all this while still managing to celebrate a man with (literal) parachute pants and a chia-fro. This movie is a 90 minute hug and I love everything about it. Still, if I had to pick a scene, the catfight will always take a place amongst the most humorous sequences in the history of film.
Special Recognition AwardMost Gratuitous Nude Scene of 2002Kathy Bates takes this one in a landslide (of flesh). Sam Rockwell would win if I were simply basing this on quantity, and Farva from Super Troopers has scarred me for life. Still, it's hard to ignore a hot tub sequence where a person's breasts drop below the knees.
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Friday, April 26, 2024
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