My 2006 rankings feature an early contender (spoiler alert) for my favorite #1 movie of the era I've been ranking movies, a title I hope to determine by using Flickchart at the end of the year to duel them all against each other.
Normally I wouldn't like to reveal this sort of spoiler now, but the truth of the matter is, my blog is already sort of spoiling it for me. Children of Men is one of two #1s (I won't name the other) that appear in my current Flickchart top 20 to the right of this post, and though that's a pretty solid bit of evidence in favor of its chances in this year-end project, I still have to rewatch it this year. I haven't watched it since 2016, so there's always the chance of a big shift in my feelings. (Good luck with that, though, as it will be my seventh viewing overall.)
Here's how the whole list from 2006 looks:
1. Children of Men
2. The Departed
3. United 93
4. The Queen
5. Letters from Iwo Jima
6. The Prestige
7. Bubble
8. Pan's Labyrinth
9. The Science of Sleep
10. Half Nelson
11. Apocalypto
12. An Inconvenient Truth
13. Cars
14. The Pursuit of Happyness
15. The Film Is Not Yet Rated
16. Monster House
17. Night Watch
18. Winter Passing
19. The Devil Wears Prada
20. Stranger Than Fiction
21. Quinceanera
22. Hostel
23. Venus
24. Little Miss Sunshine
25. Idiocracy
26. Friends With Money
27. Dave Chappelle's Block Party
28. Game 6
29. Click
30. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazhakstan
31. Hoodwinked
32. The Proposition
33. Inside Man
34. The Ant Bully
35. Casino Royale
36. World Trade Center
37. Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story
38. X-Men: The Last Stand
39. A Prairie Home Companion
40. Crank
41. Catch a Fire
42. Wordplay
43. Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World
44. The Break-Up
45. Saw III
46. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
47. Mission: Impossible III
48. Night at the Museum
49. Unrest
50. London
51. Little Children
52. The Hills Have Eyes
53. The Da Vinci Code
54. On a Clear Day
55. The Lake House
56. Idlewild
57. Superman Returns
58. Thank You For Smoking
59. Lucky Number Slevin
60. V for Vendetta
61. Renaissance
62. A Scanner Darkly
63. Last Holiday
64. American Dreamz
65. Kinky Boots
66. Eragon
67. Final Destination 3
68. Doogal
69. Silent Hill
70. My Super Ex-Girlfriend
71. An American Haunting
72. The Oh in Ohio
73. Brick
74. For Your Consideration
75. Date Movie
76. Art School Confidential
77. Lady in the Water
Ninety-three fewer films than I watched just 15 years later.
Here's the ranking of these films in 2022, with the number being its ranking on Flickchart out of 5764 films, as well as the percentage of that ranking out of 5764 films. That's followed by the number of spots it went up from 2006 (a positive number) or down from 2006 (a negative number):
1. Children of Men (17, 100%) 0
2. United 93 (154, 97%) 1
3. The Departed (187, 97%) -1
4. Pan's Labyrinth (319, 94%) 4
5. Idiocracy (350, 94%) 20
6. Letters from Iwo Jima (373, 94%) -1
7. Apocalypto (438, 92%) 4
8. The Prestige (534, 91%) -2
9. Night Watch (554, 90%) 8
10. Cars (572, 90%) 3
11. Half Nelson (602, 90%) -1
12. Bubble (655, 89%) -5
13. The Queen (685, 88%) -9
14. The Pursuit of Happyness (757, 87%) 0
15. The Proposition (802, 86%) 17
16. Hostel (832, 86%) 6
17. The Devil Wears Prada (1093, 81%) 2
18. Winter Passing (1144, 80%) 0
19. The Science of Sleep (1184, 79%) -10
20. Game 6 (1249, 78%) 8
21. Inside Man (1285, 78%) 12
22. Crank (1361, 76%) 18
23. Stranger Than Fiction (1366, 76%) -3
24. Monster House (1368, 76%) -8
25. The Break-Up (1470, 74%) 19
26. This Film Is Not Yet Rated (1523, 74%) -11
27. Click (1644, 71%) 2
28. An Inconvenient Truth (1718, 70%) -16
29. Quinceanera (1745, 70%) -8
30. Little Miss Sunshine (1776, 69%) -6
31. Dave Chappelle's Block Party (2092, 64%) -4
32. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2171, 62%) -2
33. The Ant Bully (2174, 62%) 1
34. Venus (2283, 60%) -11
35. Hoodwinked (2314, 60%) -4
36. Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2430, 58%) 1
37. Thank You For Smoking (2759, 52%) 21
38. Mission: Impossible III (2805, 51%) 9
39. Friends With Money (2901, 50%) -13
40. The Lake House (3015, 48%) 15
41. The Da Vinci Code (3056, 47%) 12
42. World Trade Center (3081, 47%) -6
43. Night at the Museum (3120, 46%) 5
44. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (3146, 45%) 2
45. Catch a Fire (3163, 45%) -4
46. X-Men: The Last Stand (3311, 43%) -8
47. Little Children (3434, 40%) 4
48. London (3581, 38%) 2
49. The Hills Have Eyes (3641, 37%) 3
50. Casino Royale (3645, 37%) -15
51. Wordplay (3844, 33%) -9
52. Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (3859, 33%) -9
53. On a Clear Day (3891, 32%) 1
54. A Prairie Home Companion (3942, 32%) -15
55. Idlewild (3986, 31%) 1
56. Saw III (4068, 29%) -11
57. Lucky Number Slevin (4206, 27%)
58. Brick (4287, 26%) 15
59. A Scanner Darkly (4288, 26%) 3
60. Kinky Boots (4340, 25%) 5
61. Superman Returns (4457, 23%) -4
62. Unrest (4570, 21%) -13
63. Final Destination 3 (4676, 19%) 4
64. V for Vendetta (4813, 16%) -4
65. Renaissance (4935, 14%) -4
66. Eragon (4962, 14%) 0
67. Last Holiday (4971, 14%) -4
68. American Dreamz (5086, 12%) -4
69. Silent Hill (5280, 8%) 0
70. Doogal (5336, 7%) -2
71. The Oh in Ohio (5493, 5%) 1
72. An American Haunting (5494, 5%) -1
73. My Super Ex-Girlfriend (5534, 4%) -3
74. For Your Consideration (5681, 1%) 0
75. Art School Confidential (5700, 1%) 1
76. Date Movie (5702, 1%) -1
77. Lady in the Water (5726, 1%) 0
Five best 2006 movies I've seen since closing the list (alphabetical): Lemming, The Lives of Others, Marie Antoinette, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Shortbus
Five worst 2006 movies I've seen since closing the list (alphabetical): The Benchwarmers, The Black Dahlia, Little Man, Sorry Haters, The Wicker Man
Biggest risers: Thank You For Smoking (+21), Idiocracy (+20), The Break-Up (+19)
Biggest fallers: An Inconvenient Truth (-16), A Prairie Home Companion (-15), Casino Royale (-15)
Average percentage on Flickchart: 51.56 (1 of 2)
This is the first time I'm identifying an explicit influence of the Filmspotting podcast on my feelings on films. I didn't start listening to this podcast until 2011, but I've gone back and caught the episodes before I started listening from 2005 onward. (I actually got stalled in 2007, but that means the full year of 2006 was covered.) Positive words on the podcast about The Break-Up and The Lake House -- the latter being one of host Adam Kempenaar's great guilty pleasures -- helped those films be among my biggest risers, 19 and 15 spots respectively. That's not because I consider their opinions sacrosanct, but because they gave me permission to acknowledge I like these movies better than I originally ranked them. I also recently rewatched The Break-Up, as I wrote about here.
Some big jumps are, as they were in 2007, the end result of my Second Chance Vance series on The Audient, which boosted American Gangster from 2007. I famously hated Brick the first time I saw it, but felt better about it on a rewatch, leading it to jump up 15 spots. The biggest riser is also a result of that viewing series, though I was mystified on second viewing what it was I hadn't liked about Thank You For Smoking the first time. If you are really interested in that discussion, you can find it here.
An interesting note about the 17-spot rise of the Australian film The Propostion, directed by John Hillcoat and written by Nick Cave: it was given to me as a gift, but I've never actually watched it a second time. I guess my ownership itself has won it some duels on Flickchart?
As for the fallers, I'm noticing something that is an interesting offshoot of my recent post on Looking for Richard, in which I mentioned I don't generally rewatch documentaries. I wonder if that also means they slip in my estimation when I think back on them. The biggest faller was An Inconvenient Truth, and yes, I do now think back less positively on it since it feels like it grew out of a particular moment in time -- a funny thing to say because we haven't, in fact, solved the climate crisis yet, so maybe it's more relevant than ever. But maybe I've taken on some of the criticism that it was a better message than movie, or that Al Gore is a bit of a self-parody. I also think that although the themes of climate change are evergreen -- pun not intended and only noticed in the editing phase -- documentaries more than fiction films can't rise above the particular moment in which they were made. I think their adjacency to the news, which is sort of part and parcel to the form, saps them of some of their rewatch value.
(Incidentally, another 2006 film that I didn't watch in time to rank it, Who Killed the Electric Car?, is a perfect example of this. We are still interested in electric cars today, but when I rewatched this as part of a series involving randomly chosen rewatches from my Flickchart, it felt like its moment in time had passed.)
But the ratings system documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated was also a big faller, 11 spots. I think I might have just overpraised it the first time due to my enjoyable experience watching it at the L.A. Film Festival, where its director Kirby Dick was present for a Q&A.
I'm kind of surprised Casino Royale could fall as much as it did, because I remember not liking it from the start. I still haven't rewatched it though. That is also true of A Prairie Home Companion, which I must have given a little bit of a pass back then just because I listened to the real show growing up with my parents, and I wore out our Garrison Keillor audio tapes of Lake Wobegon stories extracted from the show.
Special mention needs to go to Idiocracy, which I saw too late in the year to properly go any higher with it than the still very respectable 25th I ranked it in 2006. It's now one of my favorite comedies of the 21st century and is all the way up at #5 for the year.
Okay, I'll hit you up with my 2005 list in March.
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