arenn's 2001 Film Year in Review

Without any special effort, I managed to take in 30 films on the big screen in 2001, which turned out to be a generally good year for films. Getting right to it, here are my top eight films of the year that either were released in 2001 or premiered locally in Chicago that year. I cut it off at eight instead of the traditional ten because I only saw eight new films for which I'm willing to given an unqualified endorsement.

  1. GHOST WORLD (****) Directed by Terry Zwigoff (USA) Mr. Zwigoff pulls off a masterpiece in the normally tiresome teen alienation / coming of age genre.

  2. IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (****) Directed by Wong Kar-Wai (Hong Kong) A shockingly beautiful and incredibly touching story of illict love.

  3. NOWHERE TO HIDE (***) Directed by Myung-se Lee (Korea) A stylistic feast awaits in this Korean take on the Hong Kong action movie formula. See my review.

  4. MEMENTO (***) Directed by Christopher Nolan (USA) A gimmicky and preposterous - though very effective - premise is the highlight of this innovative film noir.

  5. JIANG HU: THE TRIAD ZONE (***) Directed by Dante Lam (Hong Kong) A triad flick with a great mixture of violence, introspection, humor, and stylism. Read my review.

  6. RUSH HOUR 2 (***) Directed by Brett Ratner (USA) I have a weakness for Jackie Chan. This was better than the first installment. I laughed my ass off.

  7. YI YI (***) Directed by Edward Yang (Taiwan) An intriguing if long portrait of a post-dysfunctional family soldiering on.

  8. AMELIE (**) Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (France) Syrupy, which I usually detest, but in case I'll make a big exception. Audiences have agreed.

Yes, it was another good year for Asian cinema. Yes, you'll notice I'm also parsimonious with stars. See my rating scale overview for the reasons why.

Here are some other 2001 releases / Chicago premiers that are worth watching.

Next, a list of highly critically aclaimed films I either though were seriously over-rated or outright no good.

Finally, the garbage list, no explanations necessary.

As a special bonus, here is a list of recommended films I saw on the big screen that were not 2001 releases, but are very much worth seeing in any case. In alphabetical order.

A special note on FAT GIRL. There are spoilers and I do not apologize for them.

Seldom am I morally offended by a film, but this is one that sickened me. Breillat exploits a 12 or 13 year old girl for her "art". You can quibble about the age of the actress playing the older sister, who was apparently of legal age to shoot porn in France, even if she portrays an underage girl who is sodomized on camera by an older boy and more. But it is simply not right to take a young girl like young actress Anais Reboux and put her into sexually explicit situations on camera - including showing her topless and portraying her being raped at a highway rest stop. There is no way a girl of that age could have given consent to that type of abuse by Breillat. To top it off, Breillat has Anais play a character named, you guessed it, Anais, implying a direct link between the character on screen and the girl in real life.

The critical praise heaped on this film - Roger Ebert gave it three stars and it won the top prize at the Chicago International Film Festival - and notable lack of criticism of Breillat's exploitation of a young girl in this film, show a strange moral blindness on the part of film critics. I am firmly convinced that had Breillat mistreated an animal or destroyed an environmentally sensitive area during the filming this work, we'd have heard all about it. When a film deals with a political or moral cause as its them - as in ERIN BROCKOVICH for example - critics are quick to highlight purported wrongs in the real world. Indeed, most of the moralizing about the film in the press came from cries of censorship when it was banned in Ontario, Canada. But apparently the exploitation of an actual little girl doesn't rate very highly in the critics' universe. Roger Ebert should be ashamed. Kudos to the Village Voice, which was one of the few publications to tackle this head on.

In short, I would put FAT GIRL on my to be avoided at all costs list. I certainly wish I had never seen it.

Copyright © 2002 Aaron M. Renn (arenn@urbanophile.com) All Rights Reserved
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