Top Ten Films of 2002 By Justin Remer Justin Remer is an Ohio-born writer and filmmaker, currently living and studying in New York City.

The Best: Gangs of New York, Eloge de l’Amour (In Praise of Love), Punch-Drunk Love

Two masters and one with training wheels. - Three of the most idiosyncratic living directors making narrative films stand out as having made the most interesting releases of 2002. While Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York is a crowd-pleaser, Jean-Luc Godard’s Eloge de L’Amour and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love tend to polarize opinions (my favorite negative adjective I’ve read describing Eloge was “curdled”). My own quibbles: Gangs seems to have suffered from compromises in the name of popular appeal (one can sense it even without having heard about the arguments between Scorsese and studio chief H. Weinstein); Eloge meanwhile is the precise opposite, with the film so self-seriously intent on
being marginal that it veers dangerously close to (and some would say, veers straight into) unintentional self-parody – oh boy, now the main character is a reading a book full of blank pages; and finally, Anderson’s filmmaking, as evidenced by Punch-Drunk Love, is so precociously inventive that one fears he’ll tire himself out before he matures. That said, these films release the power that cinema has in a way that should hearten the fan who fears that popular tripe like The Hot Chick will cripple the form forever. Cinema may be mortal, but it ain’t dead yet.

4. Time Out – A fired corporate worker keeps leaving the house every day so his family will not know he is unemployed. He begins swindling money from acquaintances to support his daily wandering. If this were an American film, he would get caught and do time in jail in the end. But this is a French film, and his fate is indeed damning but also more interestingly ambiguous, a fitting end to a compassionate film that is tempered with a scientific curiosity about what happens to a man when he loses his reason for getting up in the morning.

5. What Time Is It There? – Coming out of the theater, my roommate said about this film, “That movie was so boring. It was great.” I can’t add much more, except to say that this deliberately-told tale of longing and missed opportunities is also deadpan hilarious and quietly touching.

6. Late Marriage – While garnering some attention for a “realistic” sex scene that lasts around twenty minutes, this Israeli film proved itself to be the best small movie about ethnic families and weddings this year. Our hero keeps refusing his parents’ fix-ups and instead chooses to hang around with a forbidden single mother, pitting tradition against modern idealism. Reminiscent in a roundabout way of Cassavetes, with its warm portrayal of realistic characters who are nonetheless larger than life and its tendency toward scenes of untidy motions.

7. Cremaster 3 – Despite its title, this experimental epic is actually the fifth and final film in Matthew Barney’s Cremaster series (and the only film I have seen in the series). Automobiles crash in the lobby of the Chrysler Building; the Guggenheim Museum becomes a gauntlet featuring punk shows, a treacherous tiger woman, and the Rockettes; teeth pour out of an extended anal canal; and images of masculinity and Masonry (the latter of which I know nothing) are utilized and explored. Some of it is baffling, some of it is funny, but it remains compelling, even at three hours.

8. Far From Heaven – Intended as a neo-Douglas Sirk melodrama which emulates his visual style and the mannered acting of the ‘50s while tackling topics taboo for the time, this does indeed have sumptuous production design, but it merely serves as the backdrop for an actors’ showcase. Julianne Moore and Dennis Haysbert play affected well enough, but Dennis Quaid as Moore’s closeted husband is most interesting in his unwillingness to be polite and blend in, not just in terms of his sexual preference but gradually in his daily life.

9. Adaptation – I was disappointed when I first walked out of Adaptation. It didn’t seem as playful as Being John Malkovich, the first film by the same writer-director team. Malkovich was full of giddily bizarre jokes (look! Malkovich got sucked into his own mind! look! the monkey just had a flashback!) that seemed missing from Adaptation; instead, the film’s structure was the joke (look! it’s a deus ex machina!) and that seemed a letdown. The next day, I thought about it some more and liked it much better.

10. CQ – The debut film of music video director Roman Coppola is like a filmmaker’s wet dream. An awkward young filmmaker (Jeremy Davies) working as the editor on a cheeseball sci-fi flick in ’69 Paris steps in as director after the original guy (Gerard Depardieu) gets canned for being too arty. Davies begins to fantasize about the main character and attempts wooing her real-life counterpart (Angela Lindvall). CQ is a character study and an exercise in style that is made endearing by its genuine love of the time, the place, and the movies.

Honorable Mentions - other interesting films and well-made entertainments:

About a Boy
Bowling for Columbine
Full Frontal
Lovely and Amazing
Panic Room
Secretary
The “Fiction” segment of Storytelling
Y Tu Mama Tambien

                                                                 © FILM JOURNAL 2002