The Ten Best Films of 2001 One Opinion

By: Abbie Bernstein
Date: Thursday, January 10, 2002

The year 2001 has come and gone, and it's now 2002 (has been for over a week actually). That doesn't mean that we at CINESCAPE aren't going to force yet another "Best of the Year" list down your throatjust when you thought you'd avoided all the others! And look for another of our esteemed contributors to offer yet one more opinion on the year in film tomorrow.

1) THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING Director Peter Jackson and his cowriters Frances Walsh and Philippa Boyens have performed one miraculous task somehow condensing the first part of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic into something that fits into three hours of screen time without losing any of its essence topped by Jackson's mind-blowing realization of its world on screen. He literally seems to have brought Middle-earth to life.

2) MOULIN ROUGE

Director Baz Luhrmann's love it or hate it pop musical eyeful is imaginative, exuberant, tragic and sweet, but what puts it over the top is how consistently funny and entertaining it is. It also has some fabulous performances from Ewan McGregor, Nicole Kidman and especially Jim Broadbent.

3) THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE Scary, atmospheric, sad and complex, director Guillermo Del Toro's tale set in a haunted Spanish Civil War-era orphanage has elements of Ken Loach, LORD OF THE FLIES and classic ghost stories, woven together in a way that seems at once timeless and completely fresh.

4) A BEAUTIFUL MIND

Russell Crowe gives a terrific performance under Ron Howard's direction, but the real star here is Akiva Goldsman's script, which has a central plot twist that is at once ingenious and startlingly illuminating it's a bold way of illustrating what it's like to be inside a mind out of balance.

5) MEMENTO A dazzling, smart and fascinating film noir thriller written and directed by Christopher Nolan, elevated by a deftly handled, tricky plot (telling the story backward), compelling work by star Guy Pearce and a wry intensity of tone.

6) THE DISH A delightful, fact-based comedy/drama that didn't get much attention in the U.S. (it's a big hit in Australia) about the travails of the team in charge of the satellite tracking station responsible for broadcasting Neil Armstrong's moonwalk to Earth. Rob Sitch directs with warmth and a sense of wonder that make the goings-on genuinely funny and eventually very affecting.

7) SERIES 7 An absorbing, scabrous black comedy about a to-the-death game show that nevertheless has surprising human emotion and a persuasive 10-minutes-into-the-future take on how fake and surpassingly vicious "reality programming" is. Daniel Minahan writes and directs.

8) IN THE BEDROOM

A mixture of the sensibilities of ORDINARY PEOPLE and a thriller that's as heartbreaking as it is steadily tense. Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek are brilliant as a well-to-do New England couple drawn into tragedy that feeds on itself; Todd Field directs.

9) LANTANA An Australian thriller that makes the half-comprehended motives of adultery almost as scary as those that lead to sudden death. Andrew Bovell's screenplay seldom veers in predictable directions and Ray Laurence's direction elicits unfailingly lifelike performances from the cast.

10) HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH A rock 'n' roll musical with a huge Bowie-style ballad based on "Plato's Symposium" and a hero/heroine who's suffering being plagiarized, far from home and the recipient of a botched sex change operation. The description makes it sound camp, but it's not instead, director/writer/star John Cameron Mitchell has made something unusual and insightful, not to mention musically exciting.