Fantastic Metropolis

1. The River (1997)

Directed by Taiwan’s Tsai Ming-Liang, this unsettling film concerning a dysfunctional Taiwanese family living in a crumbling apartment building in Taipei, so estranged from one another that their lives intersect only geographically, is a brilliant narrative that resonates far beyond the limits of its story. Easily the most accomplished film released in this country in 2001.

2. Baran (2001)

Iranian director Majid Majidi’s beautifully achieved character study of a young Iranian man in love with an Afghani refugee who keeps a secret that threatens her life. The best coming-of-age story on film in the last ten years.

3. Amores Perros (2000)

New director Alejandro Iñárritu out-Tarantinos Quentin with this meth-injected trilogy of stories concerning citizens/denizens of Mexico City and their dogs. By turns ultraviolent, funny, and eloquently human. S.P.C.A. members should think twice before viewing it.

4. Himalaya (1999)

The classic cattle-drive western is given a new and gorgeously photographed setting in the Himalayan foothills by first-time director Eric Valli, and details the conflict between the chief herdsman and a young rival during a yak drive.

5. Ghost World (2001)

Terry Zwigoff’s (Crumb) first non-documentary film expands the materials of the underground comic into a kind of American magical realism. Featuring a star-making turn by Thora Birch and Steve Buscemi, who perfects his classic loser shtick.

6. The Pledge (2001)

Sean Penn’s third directing assignment proves a charm and produces that rarest of movie creatures, a quietly intelligent studio film. Based on Friedrich Durrenmat’s novel, it interweaves the story of a serial killer of children and an obsessed detective’s decline into alcoholic dementia. Jack Nicholson’s finest work since the mid-80s.

7. Donnie Darko (2001)

First-time director Richard Kelly crafts the purest black comedy in recent years and a hell of a time travel movie. Jake Gylenhaal (October Sky) delivers an astounding performance as a disturbed teenager who is told the world will end in 28 days by a visitor from the future dressed in a soiled bunny suit.

8. The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Makes this list simply because of the level of challenge presented by the book—no one could have made a better or more visually spectacular film of Tolkien’s work than Peter Jackson has. Wonderfully cast. Viggo Mortensen’s Strider may do for his career what Han Solo did for Harrison Ford. The best genre epic ever.

9. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Wes Anderson (Rushmore) matures as a director in this comedy with a heart about an eccentric American family that is redolent of Sallinger and John Irving, but more entertaining than either. Co-writer and performer Owen Wilson continues to prove that he is one of the two or three most talented young American actors.

10/10A. Memento (2000) and Sexy Beast (2000)

A double entry of noir films. Memento almost drowns in its relentless cleverness, but nonetheless succeeds in expanding the genre. Guy Pearce is alternately helpless and menacing as a man who has lost his short term memory and so, in order to find his wife’s murderer, must tattoo important clues on his skin and take photographs of everyone he meets. Beast, the latest in the excellent tradition of British gangster films, introduces American audiences to Ray Winstone, the British James Gandolfini, and offers Ben Kingsley as a clenched fist of a man who tries to persuade Winstone, who has retired from a life of crime in Spain, to return to England to rob a bank.

Honorable Mention: It is not a great movie—director Ron Howard saw to that—but Russell Crowe’s thoroughly persuasive performance as a schizophrenic genius mathematician makes A Beautiful Mind (2001) well worth the two-hour plus investment. It appears that Crowe won the Oscar for the wrong movie.