MILAN PAURICH'S MOVIE PICKS The best and worst of 2002

By MILAN PAURICH
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
For a while there, the only movies worth talking and arguing about in 2002 were '01 releases ("The Royal Tenenbaums," "Black Hawk Down," "Gosford Park," et al) slowly filtering into the heartland after Oscar-qualifying year-end debuts in major markets. But once spring arrived, quality films were suddenly in abundance (including "About a Boy," "Unfaithful," and "Changing Lanes"), and summer brought the best slate of warm-weather offerings in more than a decade.
If my choices seem more heavily weighted toward film festival offerings than usual, so be it. Some of my favorites from this year's festival circuit -- "In America," "Phone Booth," "Irreversible" and "Spider" among them -- will no doubt be popping up on 2003's list as well.
The most unexpected discovery while compiling this list was the happy realization that so many of the titles played the Mahoning Valley, thanks in large part to the tireless efforts of Cleveland Cinema's Austintown Movies 3, which continues to amaze and delight with its willingness to play films that, in the past, would have never seen the light of day here.
So, with a tip of the hat to a very good year, here's how things stacked up for one inveterate cinephile who spent much of the past 12 months in the dark.
The year's 10
best films
1. "PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE."
This relatively small-scale chamber piece by the enormously gifted Paul Thomas Anderson ("Boogie Nights," "Magnolia") has as much creative daring, unerring craftsmanship, and original notions about life, love, and its various discontents as the director's heftier works. It's a cockeyed American original.
2. "Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN."
Alfonso Cuaron ("The Little Princess") returned to his native Mexico for an irresistible road movie about two teenage buddies and the unhappily married woman who becomes their traveling companion and lover. Earthy, unapologetically raunchy, and ultimately wrenchingly sad, this has the feel of a new classic.
3. "TALK TO HER."
In a hospital, two men (breakout stars Javier Carmara and Dario Grandinetti) form an unlikely bond while holding separate vigils over the comatose women they love. Exquisitely moving and brashly funny, the latest work from Oscar-winning Spanish director Pedro Almodovar ("All About My Mother") is, hands-down, the finest film of his 20-year-plus career.
4. "CATCH ME IF YOU CAN."
The amazing true-life story of legendary 1960s con man Frank Abagnale Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the dogged FBI agent who eventually captured him. Steven Spielberg's holiday present was the "E.T." director's most robustly entertaining movie in more than two decades.
5 "ABOUT SCHMIDT."
As a recently widowed 60-something retiree, Jack Nicholson gives a miraculous performance that deserves to win him his fourth Oscar. By tempering his usual acidic wit with compassion, the great American social satirist Alexander Payne ("Election") has created a humanistic masterpiece.
6. "LES DESTINEES."
France's Olivier Assayas triumphs with his first literary adaptation, an intimate three-hour costume drama that you luxuriate in like a four-star meal.
7. "GANGS OF NEW YORK."
Martin Scorsese's flamboyantly stylized and densely layered epic mosaic set on the mean streets of Civil War-era Manhattan was bursting with talent and ambition to spare. That rare 168-minute movie you wished were longer.
8. "MINORITY REPORT."
Steven Spielberg's crackerjack futuristic chase thriller in which Tom Cruise takes to the streets after being accused of a murder that hasn't been committed yet. It helped redefine both the science fiction and action movie genres for the 21st century.
9. "CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND."
Based on Chuck Barris' quasi-autobiography, George Clooney's remarkably assured directorial debut was as audacious and brazenly experimental a triumph as the best works from America's fabled 1970s New Wave. This, not "Adaptation," was Charlie Kaufman's best produced screenplay of the year.
10. "FAR FROM HEAVEN."
Provocateur extraordinaire Todd ("Velvet Goldmine") Haynes brilliantly re-creates the style and sensibility of an actual Eisenhower-era Hollywood movie with such uncanny precision that the result is a literally heartbreaking facsimile of a lost world.
RUNNERS-UP (in alphabetical order)
"Alias Betty"; "All or Nothing"; "The Cat's Meow"; "8 Mile"; "Eight Women"; "Femme Fatale"; "Frida"; "Igby Goes Down"; "I'm Going Home"; "In Praise of Love"; "Insomnia"; "K-19: The Widowmaker"; "Lagaan"; "Lady and the Duke"; "The Last Kiss"; "Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers"; "Lovely and Amazing"; "Merci Pour le Chocolat"; "Monsoon Wedding"; "Moonlight Mile"; "Narc"; "Nicholas Nickleby"; "No Such Thing"; "The Pianist"; "The Piano Teacher"; "Road to Perdition"; "Russian Ark"; "Safe Conduct"; "Signs"; "Simone"; "Storytelling"; "Time Out"; "24-Hour Party People."
DESERVING OF AWARDS
BEST ACTOR
Jack Nicholson, "About Schmidt"; Kieran Culkin, "The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys," "Igby Goes Down"; Leonardo DiCaprio, "Catch Me if You Can," "Gangs of New York"; Mel Gibson, "Signs," "We Were Soldiers"; Tobey Maguire, "Spider-Man"; Aurelien Recoing, "Time Out"; Adam Sandler, "Eight Crazy Nights," "Mr. Deeds," "Punch-Drunk Love"; Tom Hanks, "Catch Me if You Can," "Road to Perdition"; Hugh Grant, "About a Boy," "Two Weeks Notice"; Sam Rockwell, "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," "Welcome to Collinwood"; Al Pacino, "Insomnia," "Simone"; Michel Piccoli, "I'm Going Home."
BEST ACTRESS
Diane Lane, "Unfaithful"; Isabelle Huppert, "Eight Women," "Les Destinees"; "Merci Pour le Chocolat," "The Piano Teacher"; Julianne Moore, "Far from Heaven," "World Traveler"; Kirsten Dunst, "The Cat's Meow," "Spider-Man"; Maribel Verdu, "Y Tu Mama Tambien"; Jennifer Aniston, "The Good Girl"; Alison Lohman, "White Oleander"; Sandra Bullock, "Murder by Numbers," "Two Weeks Notice."
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Ray Liotta, "Narc"; Alfred Molina, "Frida"; Alan Arkin, "13 Conversations About One Thing"; Daniel-Day Lewis, "Gangs of New York"; Jake Gyllenhaal, "The Good Girl," "Lovely and Amazing," "Moonlight Mile"; Richard Gere, "Chicago," "Unfaithful"; Paul Newman, "Road to Perdition; George Clooney, "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," "Welcome to Collinwood"; Ryan Gosling, "Murder by Numbers"; Colin Farrell, "Minority Report."
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Renee Zellweger, "Chicago," "White Oleander"; Amanda Peet, "Changing Lanes," "Igby Goes Down"; Rosario Dawson, "Chelsea Walls," "25th Hour"; Selma Blair, "Storytelling"; Samantha Morton and Lois Smith, "Minority Report"; Robin Wright Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer, "White Oleander"; Julia Roberts, "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," "Full Frontal"; Kim Basinger and Brittany Murphy, "8 Mile"; Miranda Otto, "Human Nature"; Ruth Sheen, "All or Nothing"; Angie Dickinson and Debra Winger, "Big Bad Love"; Geraldine Chaplin, "Talk to Her."
The year's 10
worst films
1. "MASTER OF DISGUISE."
Proving that not even Adam Sandler is perfect, the "Punch-Drunk Love" star executive-produced Dana Carvey's butt-ugly stinkeroo, easily the year's worst film.
2. "SCOOBY-DOO."
Scooby-Doo-Doo is more like it.
3. "ROLLERBALL."
Noisy, reductionist, and so deadly dull it almost makes Vin Diesel's "XXX" look good by comparison.
4. "WAKING UP IN RENO."
This self-described "redneck romantic comedy" starring Billy Bob Thornton and Charlize Theron was neither romantic nor comical, just a coarse and witless hoedown.
5. "CLOCKSTOPPERS."
How odd that a movie about stopping time felt like the longest 90 minutes I spent in a theater all year.
6. "KUNG-POW
Enter the Fist." Excruciatingly unfunny chop socky spoof so thin on material that the filmmakers actually threw in an intermission and coming attractions to pad out its 80-minute running time.
7. "SNOW DOGS."
Alaskan Huskies pawing away at a typewriter could have written a better script than the one that five -- count 'em -- scenarists penned for Disney's flea-bitten mongrel of a kidflick.
8. "SERVING SARA."
Matthew Perry continued his hard-luck streak on the big screen with a congealed farce so misconceived you could practically smell the actors' flop sweat.
9. "STUART LITTLE 2."
As creatively bankrupt as any straight-to-video sequel, this was so cloyingly saccharine it could send a diabetic into sugar shock.
10. "ANALYZE THAT."
Robert De Niro, Billy Crystal, and writer/director Harold Ramis made this slack, humor-deficient follow-up to "Analyze This" an offer you could definitely afford to refuse.
SPECIAL MENTIONS
& middot; Best Documentary: "Standing in the Shadows of Motown."
& middot; Best Career Re-Jiggering: Robin Williams traded in his icky "Patch Adams & quot;/ & quot;Bicentennial Man" bathos for smashing psycho turns in "Death to Smoochy," "Insomnia," and "One Hour Photo."
& middot; Most In Need of Career Re-Jiggering (a tie): Robert De Niro, "Analyze That"; "City by the Sea"; "Showtime." Eddie Murphy, "The Adventures of Pluto Nash"; "I Spy"; "Showtime."
& middot; Best Indication That Chick Flicks Aren't Really Dead Despite the Less-Than-Divine "Ya Ya Sisterhood:" "Tuck Everlasting," "Lovely and Amazing," "White Oleander."
& middot; Best Revitalization of a Played-Out Genre: With "Narc," director Joe Carnahan works the same kind of magic on cop movies that "Serpico" and "The French Connection" did back in the early '70s.
& middot; Best Movie I Wished I'd Seen in Time for Last Year's 10 Best List: "Donnie Darko."
Best Songs: "Lose Yourself," Eminem, "8 Mile"; "Die Another Day," Madonna, "Die Another Day"; "Hero," Chad Kroeger, "Spider-Man."
& middot; Best Blasts from the Past: "Big Bad Love" and "Chelsea Walls," two directorial debuts by actors (Arliss Howard and Ethan Hawke) that recalled the glory days (1969-79) of American cinema yet were misunderstood by critics and all but ignored by audiences. Hope home video proves a lot kinder.
& middot; Most Impressive Directorial Debut by an Actor: George Clooney's stunning "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind." Is there anything the former 'ER' star can't do (besides turn "Solaris" into a hit, that is.)
Best Musical: "Drumline."
& middot; Best Agatha Christie murder mystery/musical hybrid: "8 Women."
Made-for-Cable Movie Most Deserving of a Theatrical Release: HBO's "Live from Baghdad."
& middot; Best Movie to Go Straight to Cable: The revelatory Sundance Film Festival documentary "The Devil's Playground" about Amish teens, which premiered on Cinemax .
& middot; Best Performance in a Terrible Movie: Mandy Moore, "A Walk to Remember."
Best Woman-and-Her-Kid-in-Jeopardy Flick: "Panic Room."
Worst Woman-and-Her-Kid-in-Jeopardy Flick: "Enough."
Second Banana Most Deserving of Her Own Starring Role: Zoey Deschanel, "Abandon," "Big Trouble," The Good Girl" and "The New Guy."
& middot; Best Movies You Wanted to Take a Shower After Watching: "Auto Focus"; "The Piano Teacher."
& middot; Best Crossover from Music to Movies: Eminem, "8 Mile."
& middot; Worst Crossover from Music to Movies: Britney Spears, "Crossroads."
& middot; Best Buddy Team (Grown-Up Division): Dario Grandinetti and Javier Camara, "Talk to Her."
& middot; Best Buddy Team (Teen Division): Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, "Y Tu Mama Tambien."
& middot; Worst Buddy Team (Any Division): Jackie Chan and Jennifer Love-Hewitt, "The Tuxedo."
& middot; Biggest Nonevent "Event" Movie: "The Scorpion King."
& middot; Most Unfortunate Cinematic Casualty of 9/11: Barry Sonenfeld's prophetically titled if immensely enjoyable shaggy-dog farce "Big Trouble" got pushed back from its original Sept. 21, 2001, release date to April, then promptly sank without a trace.
& middot; Most Deserving Cinematic Casualty of 9/11: Arnold Schwarzenegger's aptly named (do I smell a trend) "Collateral Damage" got yanked from its original October 5, 2001, release date, opened in February, and fell off the box-office Top 20 by its fourth weekend.
& middot; Lamest Movie (Besides "Scooby-Doo") to Open at No. 1 on the Box-Office Chart: "Swimfan."
& middot; Most Depressing if Predictable Hit: "XXX."
Favorite Guilty Pleasures: "Blue Crush"; "Deuces Wild"; "Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights"; "Jackass the Movie"; "National Lampoon's Van Wilder"; "Queen of the Damned"; "The Rules of Attraction"; "The Sweetest Thing"; "Trouble Every Day."
& middot; Most Admirable if Misplaced Loyalty to Former "Saturday Night Live" castmates: Adam Sandler partially soiled an otherwise impeccable track record this year by executive producing "The Master of Disguise" and "The Hot Chick," two dismally unfunny comedies starring his less talented fellow "SNL" alums Dana Carvey and Rob Schneider.
& middot; Movies I Wanted to Like More Than I Did: "Adaptation," Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman's intermittently brilliant follow-up to "Being John Malkovich" completely derails in its final act; "Antwone Fisher," Denzel Washington's directing debut had nobility and good intentions to burn, but its true-life story still felt like a knock-off of "Good Will Hunting" and "Ordinary People"; Michael Moore's admittedly amusing "Bowling for Columbine" was simply too rambling and unfocused to deserve all of its critical laurels; despite dazzling musical performances by Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones, "Chicago" awkwardly straddles the no-man's land between stage and film without ever finding a singular identity; while sumptuously produced, "The Four Feathers" lacked both immediacy and impact; "The Hours," an overly decorous treatment of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that literally drowns in overwrought symbolism; the dramatically juiceless "Quiet American" with its overrated lead performance by Michael Caine; Steven Soderbergh's drop-dead gorgeous, fatally pretentious, and emotionally hollow "Solaris"; Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki's sluggishly paced, visually unappealing anime "Spirited Away"; and "25th Hour," another fascinating, overlong mess from Spike Lee who hasn't made a genuinely satisfying movie since 1995's "Clockers."
& middot; Best Evidence That Dying is Easy, but Romantic Comedies Are Hard: "Brown Sugar"; "Crush"; "40 Days/40 Nights"; "Maid in Manhattan"; "Serving Sara"; "Sweet Home Alabama."
& middot; Most Depressing Franchise Inauguration: "Scooby-Doo."
& middot; Best Franchise Inauguration: "Spider-Man."
& middot; Most Futile Franchise Inauguration: "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever."
& middot; Most Unexpectedly Pleasant Franchise Continuation: "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets." Action-Adventure Franchise Most in Need of Life-Support: Despite its $150-million gross, "Die Another Day" marked a creative paralysis for the 40-year-old 007 series.
& middot; Comedy Franchise Most in Need of Some Fresh Jokes: "Austin Powers in Goldmember" quickly wore out its welcome by simply recycling the same gags from the first two Austin Powers flicks.
& middot; Best Franchise Killer: "Jason X."
& middot; Most Alarming '03 Franchise Resurgence: "Rocky VI" just got greenlighted by MGM. Be afraid; be very afraid.
& middot; Most Exciting '03 Franchise Completion Prospect: "The Return of the King," the finale to Peter Jackson's glorious "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
& middot; Worst Remake of an Already Terrible Movie: "Rollerball."
& middot; Most Unnecessary Remake of an Old-Fashioned Swashbuckler: "The Four Feathers."
& middot; Most Unexpectedly Satisfying Remake of an Old-Fashioned Swashbuckler: "The Count of Monte Cristo."
& middot; Most Pointless Remake of a Great Movie (aka The Gus Van Sant/ & quot;Psycho" award): "Red Dragon."
& middot; Best Remake of a Good Movie: "Insomnia"; (Runner-up: "Unfaithful.")
& middot; Most Underappreciated Remake: "The Truth About Charlie."
& middot; Best Performances by Nonactors Playing Themselves: Orny Adams, "Comedian"; Chris Pontius, "Jackass the Movie."
& middot; Best Concert Film: "Notorious C.H.O."
& middot; Worst Concert Film: "Martin Lawrence: Runteldat."
& middot; "The Emperor's New Clothes" Award: "The Fast Runner." Nearly every major U.S. critic did cartwheels over this scenic, if staggeringly dull three-hour Inuit folk tale.
& middot; Continuing Proof That Some Movies Should Remain Locked in Miramax's Vault: "Equilibrium"; "Waking Up in Reno"; "Wes Craven Presents: They."
& middot; Most Shameless Bid for Oscar Attention (aka The "Beautiful Mind" award): "Antwone Fisher."
& middot; Most Misunderstood Masterpiece (aka The "Eyes Wide Shut" award): "Punch-Drunk Love," the year's best American film.
& middot; "The Little Engine That Could" Award: The $220-million-grossing (and counting) "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."
& middot; Best Animated Film: Disney's "Lilo and Stitch."
& middot; Most Underrated Animated Film: Disney's "Treasure Planet."
& middot; Most Overrated Animated Film (Besides "Spirited Away"): "Ice Age."
& middot; Best Teen Gross-Out Comedy: "National Lampoon's Van Wilder."
& middot; Worst Teen Gross-Out Comedy: "The Hot Chick."
& middot; "Real World Las Vegas" Roommate Most Likely to Star in a Teen Gross-Out Movie: babe-magnet Steven.
& middot; Most Underappreciated Teen Comedy: "Orange County."
& middot; "It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times" Award (a tie): Edward Norton was unaccountably stiff and dull in October's lackluster "Red Dragon" but ended the year on a high note with his cagey cameo as Nelson Rockefeller in "Frida" and strong lead work in "25th Hour." Poor Winona Ryder's delicious comic turn as a spoiled diva in "Simone" went largely unseen while her glum, disengaged performance in "Mr. Deeds" cast a pall over one of the summer's biggest hits.
& middot; Proof That Bad Movies Can Happen to Good Actors: Christian Bale and Emily Watson in "Equilibrium."
& middot; Spookiest Opening Credits Sequence: "Signs." James Newton Howard's thunderous score channeling Bernard Herrman combined with the creepy-crawly, Saul Bass-like titles transported you back into a 1950's Hitchcock movie.
& middot; Best Ensemble Performance: "Nicholas Nickleby."