2000 Framed - critics' picks for best films of 2000

Film Comment, Jan, 2001

Film Comment unleashes its regulars on the year in movies

We asked contributors and selected colleagues to vote for ten films in each category. The results were determined by a point system with a number one choice receiving 10 points. Participants: John Anderson, David Ansen, Nicole Armour, Paul Arthur, Michael Atkinson, Marjorie Baumgarten, Chris Chang, David Chute, Andrew Lewis Conn, Richard Corliss, Roger Ebert, Graham Fuller, Larry Gross, Dennis Harvey, Molly Haskell, J. Hoberman, Peter Hogue, Robert Horton, Harlan Jacobson, Kent Jones, Kristin Jones, Dave Kehr, Phillip Lopate, Mark Olsen. Gerald Peary, Richard Pena, Alissa Quart, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Andrew Sarris, Alissa Simon, Robert Sklar. Gavin Smith, Gregory Solman, Chuck Stephens, David Sterritt, Amy Taubin, Anne Thompson, Armond White, and Michael Wilmington.

I STAND ALONE

We invited critics to take in their favorite orphan film of the year

Bring It On (Peyton Reed)

"Awesome, oh wow, like totally freak me out, I mean, right on!" Without forsaking the barbed tongues and occasional glimpse of white underpants we expect from teen movies, Bring It On brings still more to its prototypical SoCal high-school caricatures that actually develop into real characters. Both sending up and legitimizing cheerleading, it's unexpectedly affecting, thanks to its sense of humor and captivating leads, feuding cheer captains Gabrielle Union and Kirsten Dunst -- the latter particularly appealing because she uses her prettiness so expressively and looks like she couldn't possibly be having more fun.

-- Nicole Armour

Battlefield Earth (Roger Christian)

I remember little about Battlefield Earth: experiencing so many shameful pleasures tends to wipe the brain utterly clean, leaving only a beatific smile and the urgent desire to smoke. Was it the dialogue or the plot complexity, both ever-so-faithful to L. Ron Hubbard's novel? The performances, both scenery-chewing (Travolta) and scenery-blending (Barry Pepper)? Whatever: I laughed, I cried, distinctions ceased to be relevant. Travolta, putting the best possible face on the worst possible wiggage, insists a sequel is definitely-maybe, box office be danged. What better use for the Church of Scientology's ample resources? Spend it all, now -- spend until thou art Clear at last.

-- Dennis Harvey

Kikujiro (Takeshi Kitano)

Japan's king of all media is a man with more than one face: there's the tough guy, the funnyman, and the rank sentimentalist. The over-praised Fireworks attempted a synthesis; the unfairly dismissed Kikujiro does the same thing to funnier, more painful effect. Playing off an abysmally cute, nine-year-old co-star, Kitano is a relentlessly loudmouthed bully. As a filmmaker, however, he has perfect timing. The carefully constructed sight gags are worthy of Albert Brooks and even Jacques Tati. This superficially mawkish fairy tale is subverted by a remarkable combination of comic brutality, acute formalism, and inconsolable sorrow.

-- J. Hoberman

Return to Me (Bonnie Hunt)

Minnie Driver got David Duchovny's wife's heart, Duchovny ached for Drive, her grandpa and his buddies threw them into each other's arms, and the tears rolled down my cheeks on cue. I liked this slice of sentimental calculation -- liked the sense of quiet, the sweet understatement of the acting, Laszlo Kovacs' cozy images, and the overall "prole" ambience, these days as rare as a hooker on Times Square.

-- Kent Jones

Black and White (James Toback)

Gaseous, inflammatory, and limitlessly self-deluded, James Toback's films don't so much reflect American political thinking as enact it. They're all either about baffled gay men in disastrous hetero relationships, or the interior existence of an aging white director who's convinced that, libidinally, he's actually football hero/movie star Jim Brown. In Black and White, those cracked convictions combine and combust in the most powerful scene in any American film this year, as longtime Toback alter-ego Robert Downey, Jr. happens on Jim Brown--substitute Mike Tyson -- and propositions him. "Don't do this, man, I'm on parole," implores Tyson, but Downey (on parole himself at that very moment) can't help himself any more than the boxer or the director can. America: black and blue.

-- Chuck Stephens

Forever Mine (Paul Schrader)

Unceremoniously dumped on the Starz movie channel because of "the collapse of the financing institution," this ravishing, transcendentally romantic, utterly deranged soap opera probably never had much chance to begin with. Paul Schrader's beautifully lucid 'scope compositions became panned-or-unscanned sludge on TV, but what theatrical audience is there for a speaking-in-Fifties-tongues reverie on disfiguring, spiritualizing, all-consuming passion? Forever Mine is what would happen if the terrorists of La Chinoise took over American Movie Classics and programmed it according to the slogans of Chairman Sirk instead of Chairman Mao: "Give All For Love."

-- Howard Hampton

Rules of Engagement (William Friedkin)