Note: New and permanent movie rating system. From now on I use the 4-star scale. I should never have to agonize about, for example, whether a movie is a 7, 7.5, or an 8 out of 10. This is much easier.

Leave it to Paul Thomas Anderson when you're looking for a lengthy, epic character piece. Like the two films he's best known for, Magnolia and Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood is a fascinating character study that holds an audience for the full two-and-a-half hours. I suppose you could call what happens "character development," but this is more along the lines of "character disintegration." In addition to providing a compelling look at the wheelings-and-dealings of the early days of oil, There Will Be Blood could be seen as a cautionary tale of how ambition can rot a person from the inside out, transforming into greed and worse. It's a timeless theme that makes as much sense now as during the movie's time frame (1898-1927).

The film opens with about 10 minutes of a dialogue-less scene as Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is mining for gold and silver on his Texas property. He finds what he's looking for and more. Several years later, he's changed his focus to oil and has made enough money to hire some hands. Alas, an accident leaves a man dead and Daniel takes it upon himself to care for the man's orphaned child. He names him H.W. (played later in the film by Dillon Freasier) and trains him as a partner. By 1912, Daniel has become one of the country's most well-known oil men and is actively looking to expand his empire. That's when a young man named Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) approaches him and tells him about an extremely fertile oil land out in California, presided over by Paul's family. Daniel and his son follow the lead and pretend to be quail hunters in order to gain access to the Sunday Ranch. When the opportunity arises, Daniel makes his move to negotiate for land for drilling.

The rigs Plainview develops operate very smoothly, but a roadblock exists in the person of Eli Sunday (also Paul Dano), who is adamant about using the money his family is paid to build his church. Plainview promises to donate $5,000 to Eli's Church of the Third Revelation, but later reneges on the deal. The battle between these two over business versus religion is only the beginning, however. Once an accident costs H.W. his hearing and a man claiming to be Daniel's long lost brother Henry (Kevin J. O'Connor) shows up at the strangest of times, Daniel already-questionable ethics take a turn for the worse.

Daniel Day-Lewis' performance is There Will be Blood's single greatest asset. As the slowly deteriorating Daniel Plainview, he is both considerate and conniving, smoothly-spoken and profane, loving and violent. He's a brilliant man who knows the market and can play flawlessly to people's emotions and desires. He treats his son and workers well and goes from being a poor miner to an extremely wealthy businessman. But, as the saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely. As the film goes on, Daniel makes one horrifying decision after another when his emotions overtake him. He abandons his deaf child on a train and walks off. He murders a man who committed no harm to him. There's even brief evidence that he may have had a relationship with a young girl. Toward the end of the film, Daniel is still rich beyond his wildest dreams but broken inside. At one point when he confides in his alleged brother, he says, "I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed." That quote, along with all the character's accompanying tone and facial expressions, best sums up his nature and indicates that success alone cannot truly motivate a person to change for the better.

Day-Lewis receieved a Best Actor nomination for his portrayal and certainly deserves to win. You know an actor has inhabited his character well when you think of him as and refer to him by the character's name and not the actor's (the reverse is something many, many people do when describing movies, myself included at times). The scene best indicative of Day-Lewis' work is when Daniel Plainview agrees to be baptized in a public ceremony. You can see that part of him undoubtedly feels himiliated to be put through this, while another part is just desperate to get it over with so he can appease the landowner who's property he's purchasing for a pipeline. And is there another part of him there that truly wants to absolve himself from sin? It's possible to see flickers of all three thoughts flash across his face here.

If there's a weakness in the movie, it's that the final 30 minutes-or-so don't aren't quite as involving as what came before it. When There Will Be Blood concentrates on the oil industry and the politics of negotiating for land, it's riveting stuff. When it concentrates on Daniel's personality decline, it's still got us. But when all comes full circle and Daniel has become more evil than anything else, the movie's pace sags. The personality transformation is complete; the movie doesn't need to keep laboring along. While the final scenes remain consistent with the character of Daniel Plainview and how he has eroded, they seem to belong in another movie. The score is also at times annoying and too far over the top. Seriously, we don't need all the high-pitched strings to foreshadow doom and gloom. We can see it coming anyway.

Minor quibbles aside, There Will Be Blood is powerful stuff. It may run a little longer than it needs to but the themes and the main character hit home. While the story begins to lose focus toward the finish line, Anderson compensates with an explosively violent ending that seems wholly appropriate. There isn't room for catharsis, and I for one, feel it's the right move.

Rating: ***1/2 stars (out of ****)

After a long, long, LONG hiatus, I've decided to bring the livejournal back. It won't be in this format for long because I eventually want to develop it into a professional-looking web site with movie reviews and the occasional commentary. From here on out, at least 3 updates a week are guaranteed, probably even more in most cases.

Now about the movies.... It's been a stellar year. Although my favorite movie critic, James Berardinelli of reelviews.net calls it one of the most disappointing, I found this year in film exceptional, especially toward the end. Right around the holiday season, we saw one great movie opening right after the other and sometimes at the same time. The final few weeks offered a cornucopia of great stories vividly brought to life.

Eventually, I'll look at compiling an all-decade movie list, featuring the best in film from the years 2000-2009. My top three of 2006; Dreamgirls, Pan's Labyrinth, and The Departed have a good shot of making that list. The top three this year have a chance as well, although #1 stands considerably above the other two.

On with the picks!

Runners-up (alphabetical order): Atonement, Black Snake Moan, The Brave One, Charlie Wilson's War, Into the Wild, Juno, Sweeney Todd, 300


#10-- Hot Fuzz: Leave it to the Brits to nail the action-comedy right on the head. Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz is an example of what results when the filmmakers don't negate an entertaining story and memorable characters when trying to make us laugh as well as thrill us. The movie's humor ranges from sly and witty to gut-bustingly funny. And the wild final 30 minutes of Hot Fuzz, delivering thrilling action sequences and still keeping tongue-planted-in-cheek, slapped a grin on my face and kept it there. Look for Simon Pegg, who's note-perfect here as a rigid cop who learns to loosen up bigtime, to headline more roles in the future.


#9-- The Great Debaters: Denzel Washington is scoring in bunches this year with this movie and American Gangster, but this one gets the nod for being moving, heartwrenching, and ultimately uplifting. This story about the historic run of a small all-black university's debating team has some of the rhythms of an underdog sports movie, but what makes it rise far above that is the depth of character development and the setting. This isn't a toned-down, Disney-fied look at a racist society; it's one that looks unflinchingly at some of the darker aspects of human nature. The ending is uplifting more because of the characters' individual achievements and growth than the result of the Big Match. Washington is excellent, but he willingly lets co-stars Nate Parker, Jurnee Smollett, and Denzel Whitaker as the debaters shine even brighter.


#8-- Lust, Caution: Ang Lee has followed up the infamous Brokeback Mountain with a movie I believe is even more powerful. A stunningly shot, sexy tale of espionage set during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in World War II, this movie moves slowly and requires patience, but it's involving the whole way. The sex scenes are notable not just because they were hot enough to garner the movie an NC-17 rating, but because they are the key emotional scenes in the story. Without them done this way, the film would've lost a lot of its urgency. The ending, much like many movies on this list, will have you pondering and debating after the credits are finished.


#7-- Knocked Up: Make that two comedies in 2007's Top 10. Several movies this past year focused on pregnancy, but I liked this one the best because of it's hilarious scenes, priceless dialogue, and solid character arcs. Writer/director Judd Apatow clearly has his hand on the pulse of the 20-something set, and he's made a romantic comedy that guys and girls will love equally. Maybe I'm just a sucker for edgy, profane dialogue in movies, but Knocked up is as much a winning love story as it is a comedy.


#6-- Ratatouille: It's official: Disney and Pixar are making movies for adults now. Kids will enjoy this offbeat tale of a rat who uses his highly developed sense of smell to wow Paris with his cooking, but much of the dialogue and tone seems more in tune with mature audience members. Director Brad Bird nails everything here, from the insight into cooking and critics to the satire of the restaurant and food business to the winning characters and storyline. I'm probably in the minority on this one, but this the most entertaining movie Pixar has ever made. Well done.


#5-- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Do you feel trapped by your circumstances? Watch this movie and see how a man was able to preserve his brilliant mind with only the faintest of physical communication. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly develops its main character with precision and fascinates us with the process of how he was able to write a memoir by blinking one letter at a time. It is 2007's most visually daring movie and is blessed with a superb lead performance by Mathieu Almaric. How many actors can communicate emotion with just the eyes?


#4-- The Lives of Others: Yes, I'm aware this movie won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film and was released in most parts of the world in 2006, but since it didn't reach the states until 2007, I'm putting it here. This is a perfectly paced, moving tale about one man's remarkable transition from hardened government lapdog to compassionate partisan during the Cold War in East Germany. I watched this movie late at night knowing I had to be up at 3:00 am the next morning, but I didn't get tired. It held me until the end. The Lives of Others is powerful filmmaking on both an intellecutal and emotional level.


#3-- The Kite Runner: That's four subtitle-heavy movies in 2007's Top 10 (see also #8, #5, #4). Seriously, don't let that scare you away from these movies, especially this one, a brilliant examination of pre-9/11 Afganistan. With it's powerfully modulated themes of grief, loyalty, self-confidence, and redemption, The Kite Runner enriches the heart and the mind. There's no pretension here, just a perfectly paced story spanning a period of just over 20 years. There are twists that, in lesser hands, would come across as melodramatic and soap opera-ish, but not with Marc Forster(of Monsters Ball and Finding Neverland) at the helm. I haven't read Khaled Hosseini's best-selling novel which this movie is based on, but it goes without saying that I do now.


#2-- Gone Baby Gone: Who knew Ben Affleck had a film like this in him? This is Affleck's directorial debut, and it's hard to imagine a better start. Based on Dennis Lehane's
novel, Gone Baby Gone is a superbly crafted, highly compelling mystery-thriller. It contains some awesome performances and thematic material surrounding crime that really pumps the brain. But what rockets this movie from terrific to unforgettable is the moral quagmire it introduces near the end. You can make a compelling argument for either side, and you'll likely be arguing with folks over coffee following the movie. The ending wraps up the story but not the questions and issues, and that's what gives Gone Baby Gone its power.


#1-- No Country for Old Men: When I look back at the individual experiences I had watching 2007's greatest films, this is the one that I safely say enveloped me the most. It's by turns pulse-pounding, puzzling, mesmerizing, darkly funny, and never predictable. For the Coen Brothers, this film is a lot closer to Fargo than The Big Lebowski, and it's better than both of those films combined. Javier Bardem's psychopath Anton Chigurh belongs in a Hollywood "Villain's Hall of Fame," and his performance plus so many of the movie's scenes remain as fresh in my mind now as when I first saw them. No Country for Old Men concludes its main story but still ends so ambiguously that it might leave some people feeling cheated (shades of the reaction to the conclusion of HBO's The Sopranos), but for me, it's the perfect note. Congrats Joel and Ethan Coen, you've made 2007's lone sure-fire candiate for an All-Decade list.

Ugh.

More games are won than lost in the NFL, right? If you believe in that saying, than it applies to Super Bowl XLI in the following sense: Rex Grossman lost the game for the Bears.

In the weeks prior to the Super Bowl, his critics descended upon him like vultures to a wounded soldier. Who cares if Good Rex reared his head a little more often (7 games) than Bad Rex (5 games)? Negativity makes stories. Negativity gets people talking. And after the biggest of big games, those critics will still not shut up.

And you know what? They've added another to their ranks: me.

When Peyton Manning needed to lead his team on a long drive, he did just that, whether there were options downfield or (more often) receivers or running backs underneath the coverage. When Rex Grossman had the opportunity to do so, he responded to the pressure by fumbling snaps and throwing "can of corn"-style passes for interceptions, two of each.

True, Rex wasn't the only problem. Offensive coordinator Ron Turner deserves a share of the blame by not running the ball early enough and often enough. Most of the time, the game was within a single score, yet we saw far too many teeth-clinching, finger-crossing instances where Grossman dropped back to pass. Let's look at the numbers: 17 rushing attempts by running backs. That is NOT Chicago Bears football and it won't win a Super Bowl.

This will be a critical juncture in the career of Rex Grossman. The boos and criticisms will only grow in number and volume, and one of two things will happen. He will either step up and play more consistently next year, or he will disappear. But if you're wondering whether I have any idea, sorry, but I don't. My crystal ball is too cloudy.

Meanwhile, the Colts deserved to win, period. They gameplanned more effectively, their offensive line dominated the trenches, and they forced five turnovers. This is a sweet victory for Tony Dungy, a coach who is as far away from the old-school, drill sargeant model as one can find in the NFL today. He's a guy we never see lose his cool, and for him to break through harsh criticism of his own to capture the Lombardi Trophy is nothing short of heartwarming, even though it was against my team.

Ditto for Peyton Manning. Despite a rough start in which he threw an interception, he came back and finished with a very solid 25-for-38 with 247 passing yards. Here is the NFL's most marketable player, and he now has a ring to put alongside his commercials, stats, and records. Congrats.

The Bears will have a stressful offseason ahead of them. The contracts of Lovie Smith and linebacker Lance Briggs must be dealt with, and as for Grossman?

We know what he has to do. Better start.

I don't think I have to go on a rant about All-Star voting once again. I've done it before and there's nothing new I can bring to the table. So instead, I'll present Exhibit A as to why fan voting is retarded and can rob a truly deserving player elsewhere. You be the judge.

Shaquille O'Neal's stats for 2006-07 thus far:

Games played: 6
Points per game: 12.0
Rebouds per game: 6.5

A few years ago, I stopped taking the Academy Awards seriously after realizing that the whole thing is about politics and marketing. Therefore, while I should be mad as hell that my No. 1 movie of 2006, DREAMGIRLS, was denied a Best Picture nomination despite having most total nominations (8) of any movie, I'm instead just shaking my head.

I'm sure certain groups will be up in arms and slamming the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as racist, saying that they're "just not ready" to crown a movie with an all-black cast, but I'm not going to go that route. After all, it's the same kind of poor sportsmanship that Brokeback Mountain fans displayed last year in playing the homophobe card when "their" movie didn't win.

I am, however, stunned beyond belief. Dreamgirls, fresh off a Golden Globe win and growing more popular at the box office each week, had to be on the short list for Best Picture contenders. But somehow, it garnered the most nominations yet not "The Big One." I'm at a loss to explain how this happened.

The Academy Awards are mildly interesting, but nothing more. They're better for marketing than determining who really "wins." Ironically enough, this theme is one of the cornerstones of Dreamgirls. Image trumps talent.

Want proof? Look at the Best Picture nominees versus the Best Director nominees. Little Miss Sunshine was a critics darling, a movie that everyone and their mother enjoyed. But if it's such a great movie, why does it garner a Best Picture nod without equal credit given to the ones in charge of the production, namely co-directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris? It's easy. BECAUSE NO ONE KNOWS WHO THEY ARE. Stephen Frears, Clint Eastwood, and Martin Scorsese are all well-known, so therefore they deserve Director nods when they make an Oscar-caliber film, if you follow Academy logic that is.

I am thrilled that Paul Greengrass scored a nomination for United 93, but once again, if Hollywood is so eager to praise him, why not praise his movie? Makes about as much sense as the BCS, doesn't it?

The Best Picture race is squarely between Babel and The Departed. I have no idea who's going to win at the moment, and that should at least add some intrigue. Publicists, start your engines!

As I mentioned earlier, the Oscars are all about marketing. The winners gain more notoriety and marketability (Jennifer Hudson is going to love having the words "Academy Award Winner" precede her name on every poster and trailer from here on out....), but the results mean nothing more than my Best 10 List or anyone else's Best 10 List. With all the award shows popping up left and right, the Oscars have become what they really should be, just another committee's opinion.

That is what I dub Super Bowl XLI, a Midwestern matchup between the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts. Why? Because neither team was supposed to be here, or so experts say.

The Colts ended the season with a miserable run defense that bottomed out among all NFL teams. They've been a perennial favorite every season, but with the way opposing running backs gashed them for 173 yards a game, most of us who claim we knew about the NFL pronounced this team dead. After all, how can you win in the playoffs if you can't stop the run? Defense wins championships, after all. And the possibility of it being magically fixed wasn't just unrealistic, it was stupid.

Aside from that, we were still left with the "beat us over the head" quarterback analogies. Seriously, it's something that would show up on a SAT exam.

Manning : Marino :: Brady : Montana

This comparison is indeed insightful-- the first 50 times we hear/read it. Then it becomes a cliche, and we just wish Peyton would hurry up and win a damn Super Bowl so we can go back to talking about fresh topics like Terrell Owens (only kidding).

Now he's here, having beaten Tom Brady and the Patriots in their own department, the Clutch/Comeback. History was on Brady and Belicheck's side, but really, if these two teams were to keep meeting in the playoffs again and again, the one-sidedness would eventually end based purely on the law of averages. To make a long story short, Peyton Manning has doubted his critics who had always believed he couldn't win "the big one."

And how about Tony Dungy, who has worked even longer than Manning to excise his big-game demons? He's a defensive guy, the architect of the "Tampa Two" scheme which both he and his good friend and Super Bowl XLI counterpart Lovie Smith love to utilize. However, the Colts' constant failure to make stops when they really needed to mounted into a gorilla on Dungy's back. The triumph over the Patriots, capped off by an interception during a prototypical final drive that Tom Brady normally thrives in, finally allowed him to wrestle that monkey to the ground.

Meanwhile, the 13-3 Chicago Bears represented the most heavily scrutinized 13-win team I have ever seen, and with good reason. Rex Grossman posted seven games with a quarterback rating of over 100 and five games with a sub-50 mark. This type of inconsistency was enough to worry just about any Bears fan, yours truly included. The calls for backup Brian Griese simply would not disappear, until now, when Grossman silenced his critics by playing a mistake free football game and passing for a touchdown to help lead his team to the Super Bowl.

The once-dominant defense was showing as much wear-and-tear as Indy's, as well. After allowing 12 points a game through their first 10 games, they slid backward in the final six, allowing 22 points per game. Of course, the loss of defensive powerhouses Tommie Harris and Mike Brown were huge in influencing this drop. So with a defense suddenly appearing weak, how could it possibly stop the No. 1 offense in the NFL in the Saints? Simple. Create turnovers.

This has always been Lovie Smith's M.O. He helped turn the St. Louis Rams' defense around as a defensive coordinator, and in his third year as a head coach with the Bears, his gameplan has paid impressive dividends: a league-leading 44 takeaways. A team that isn't the stingiest around when allowing yards can easily make up for that shortcoming by forcing the opposing offense into mistakes. Apparently, none of the eight espn.com NFL experts took that into account when ALL of them picked the Saints to advance to the Super Bowl.

And so we arrive at the Doubters Bowl, where two scutinized quarterbacks and two criticized defenses meet, greet, and rumble. So who will win? Simple. The team that has the most to prove to its critics. That would be the Bears, who don't have the glitzy, high-octane offense that experts love so much. Already experts and fans alike are going with the Colts, and with that team's impressive comeback over New England, it's not hard to understand why. Plus, it's just an AFC World right now.

But you know what? I'm throwing stats out the window on this one and simply going with who has more to prove. In the last NBA season, we waxed poetic about the depth of the Western Conference, yet it was an East team in Miami that took home the hardware. In the last baseball season, the American League had by far the stronger contenders, yet an 83-79 St. Louis Cardinals squad upset everyone on its way to a World Series title. It's football's turn, ladies and gentlemen. The lesser conference will sport a champion, and not just because it's a recent trend, but because the Bears have silenced doubters again and again up to this point. Why deny them again so easily?

Hmmmm, so when the Boston Red Sox go up against the Yankees in 2004 in the ALCS, experts everywhere were picking the Red Sox despite the fact that the Yankees OWNED them so many times before......

Now in 2007, it's Pats-Colts in the AFC title game. And guess what? Peyton Manning's past struggles are a big reason why a major majority of ESPN's NFL experts are picking the Patriots.....



Question: Does past failure count against a team when the big game comes along?

Answer: Yes and no, depends on which side the Boston/New England team is on.

My Top 5 of 2006 may be the most impressive crop of movies I've seen in a single year in a very long time. Not since 1999, which boasted Fight Club, American Beauty, Being John Malkovich, The Matrix, Princess Mononoke, among others, have I had to make such hard decisions pinpointing all these awesome movies into little rankings.

How do I determine my Top 10? It's simple; they're the 10 movies I liked the best. No objectivity, no total points scale, nothing like that. Hell, some of these movies differ so sharply from one another that comparing them is impossible.

And by the way, I'm doing something a little different this year by briefly describing one "highlight" from each movie I list. As always, I present the list in reverse order, saving the best for last. Enjoy!

Runners-Up: Find Me Guilty, An Inconvenient Truth, Lucky Number Slevin, Superman Returns


10. Cars



A lot of people thought this was the weaker sibling of the Pixar crop, but not me. I found it wonderfully creative, amusing, and even touching (yes, a movie about talking cars can have that affect, believe it or not). The voice casting, as always, is spot-on across the board (even Larry the Cable Guy, who's very funny here), and there's a message about sportsmanship that comes across very effectively, especially in today's age of selfish, arrogant athletes around every corner.

Highlight: The spectacular, lush visuals, especially during Lighting and Sally's "Sunday Drive."

9. Borat



Whether it's "real" or not hardly matters. Borat made me laugh harder and more frequently than any other movie released in 2006. Sacha Baron Cohen has created a character that not only strikes the funny bone too many times to count, but also sports razor-sharp satire about that awkward little feeling we like to call "culture shock." People who practice bigotry and racism of sorts are given the biggest roasting, of course. No matter what your sense of humor, you'll find something funny here, and if you consider yourself open-minded, be prepared for a laugh-riot.

Highlight: The naked wrestling match between Borat and his Fat Bastard-like producer. Crude, but it brought the house down.

8. Apolcalypto



Despite whatever trouble Mel Gibson is finding himself in outside of filming, there's no doubt the man can craft superior epics. Here he works his magic in bringing a long-dead, little-seen world back to life; the Mayan civilization on the eve of its collapse. This is a spectacular action/adventure film with a hero who's easy to relate to, villains who we're yearning to see die, and set pieces that leave us breathless. The film's graphic violence makes it not for the faint of heart or stomach, to be sure, but for those who don't mind it, prepare to have your socks knocked off.

Highlight: The entire 45-minute chase sequence through the jungle. You have your quicksand, wild animals, waterfall jumps, and mano-a-mano showdowns. What more could an action fan want?

7. Casino Royale



Finally, Bond gets back to basics. Rarely has a James Bond story been told this straight, and it's for the best here. No more cheesy sexual innuendos and uninspired villains who want to rule the world/hijack nuclear weapons, etc. This time, suspense is the name of the game. Daniel Craig is in the running for best Bond ever, and he's a major reason why the character seems so much more human and (dare I say it?) vulnerable this time around. Having him genuinely fall in love, only the second time in the character's long history, also adds a much-needed extra dimension.

Highlight: An adrenaline-pumping chase scene that takes Bond and his quarry through and above a construction site. It's amazing how much more tense these sequences are when they rely on stunts moreso than CGI.

6. V for Vendetta



Make that three top-notch thrillers in 2006. A tale about a Phantom of the Opera-inspired vigilante with some points to prove, V for Vendetta pumps out an intense story at a blistering pace, all while giving the audience plenty of food for thought. this is really a sly comment on the state of America is open to interpretation, but at the very least it will have you looking at the term "terrorist" from a whole different angle. Props go out to Hugo Weaving for creating such a memorable character without the benefit of facial expressions.

Highlight: It's a toss-up between V's intro monolouge (where nearly every word begins with "V) and the final battle where he shows just how the knife is mightier than the gun.

5. Little Miss Sunshine



Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris take two off-the-shelf plot elements; the quirky dysfunctional family and the road trip, and somehow concoct them into a delightfully entertaining tale where the flavoring is perfect and there's never a hint of artificiality. You'll laugh quite a bit throughout this movie, but at the same time you'll really feel for these characters as well. And the climax, taking place at a beauty pageant where we glimpse the creepiness of 7-year-old girls dolled up to look like glamour queens, is brilliant.

Highlight: Olive's (Abagail Breslin) routine is finally revealed. Simply hilarious, not to mention a biting dig at beauty pageants.

4. United 93



Before I saw this movie, I thought the time was far too soon for a fictional film about 9/11. United 93 proved how wrong I was. This doesn't play out like a conventional film; there are no "name" actors and no sequences of character development. In fact, the overall approach feels more like a documentary. But the chaos of the scenes at the New York control towers and the tension of the events aboard the plane feels so real that you feel as though you're there. An extremely powerful film that treats the event and its victims with the utmost respect, but only see it if you think you can handle a film about 9/11. If you can, you won't regret it.

Highlight: The ending. We all know what happens, but it's handled very tastefully and will still leave you pinned to your seat during the credits.

3. The Departed



The phrase "edge of your seat" is often overused when applied to thrillers, but here's a case where I'm not exaggerating. From beginning to end, The Departed crackles with suspense, snappy dialogue, clever plot twists, and brilliant performances. And just when you think you know where the film is headed, it wallops you with a final series of scenes that defy expectations. Leonardo DiCaprio delivers his best acting EVER and deserves a statue come Oscar time. For those who don't mind a movie where nearly every single character dabbles in a lot of moral ambiguity (as has always been Martin Scorsese's kind of story), The Departed is not to be missed.

Highlight: Any scene where DiCaprio's Billy Costigan has to go toe-to-toe with Nicholson's Frank Costello in quelling the later character's suspicion about a rat in his inner circle. Two great actors at work.

2. Pan's Labyrinth



The most original movie of 2006, Pan's Labyrinth is unlike anything you have ever seen before. Part gothic fairy tale and part war movie, the film takes us on an incredible journey involving a young girl who attempts to escape a brutally harsh, post-WWII reality by way of three tasks given to her by a bizarre-looking faun who promises her entry into a lush kingdom in return. But is it real or just fantasy? The film leaves that for us to determine, but in the meantime, interweaves two equally engrossing stories. The talk about this being a "fairy tale for adults" is certainly appropriate, because it's truly magical.

Highlight: Ofelia's visit inside the sancutary of a child-eating ogre called the "Pale Man." A very intense and memorable sequence.

1. Dreamgirls



Anyone who knows me will see this listing as a stunning surprise. Believe me, I didn't expect the No. 1 movie of the year out of this one either.

But really, this is the rarest of breeds, a musical where the story and characters pack an even bigger punch than the music itself. The film's primary subject, the idea that careful marketing of an entertainer's image can overshadow actual talent, is as important and true now as it was during the time when the original Broadway production debuted. But even aside from that, Dreamgirls gets EVERYTHING right, from its multi-layered story to its complex characters to its show-stopping production numbers to its goldmine of acting. Jennifer Hudson is simply incredible in her debut role, and Eddie Murphy tears up the screen like he hasn't in years. Nothing else engaged my emotions and intellect quite the same way in 2006. Moulin Rogue and Chicago ain't got nothing on this.

Highlight: Effie (Hudson) does her lengthy number "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going." Chilling, intense, and makes you wonder how someone with this voice lost in American Idol.

So Florida beat the living snot out of Ohio State to win the National Championship 41-14. Chris Leak won the Most Valuable Player and struck a decisive blow against all his critics. You know what?

Big freakin' deal. That's not the real story.

The story is, and ALWAYS will be, until we get rid of this crappy system, the fact that the only undefeated team in Division 1A football will not receive at least a share of the National Championship.

In the Masters tournament, if Tiger Woods wins, do we spend the next morning talking about how someone else was more deserving? No we do not, because HE WON ON THE COURSE.

When the St. Louis Cardinals win the World Series despite barely getting into the playoffs, do we cry foul because they didn't have as good a regular season as the New York Mets? No we don't. They beat three good teams in playoff series. They're the champs.

And when George Mason stuns Connecticut and makes the Final Four, are we upset because they simply aren't as good a team and one measly win shouldn't vault them ahead in power rankings? No. We revel in their conquest.

This is why college football is on the bottom rung of sports for me; no playoffs. Playoffs are the most intense, exciting thing in all of sports, and to deny that college football needs them because they would "destroy the Bowl tradition" and "make the regular season meaningless" is complete and utter BS.

The regular season will still have power. Rivalries would still be a big deal. A 16-team playoff would still leave you out if you lost more than 20% of your games. The stats that count the most, your WINS, would determine your place more than how many points you score and how often you blow out your opponents.

Why do we not protest the BCS as feverently as we protest the Iraq War? The "Bowl" tradition is crap when compared to playoff traditions in other sports. Why is football the only college sport in Division 1A not to have a tournament? It sucks, and it will ALWAYS suck until one is implemented. Case closed.

COMING JANUARY 13, 2007. For real this time.