Tue Jan 27 12:11:56 EST 2015
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With 2015 upon us, we figured it was a good time to look back on the movies the millennium has brought us. We've dug into the archives and are re-running our Best of the 2000s pieces, from way back in 2009 when the Playlist was a little Blogspot site held together with tape and string. Each list runs down the top 10 films of each year (it's possible that, half-a-decade on, we'd put them in a different order and even change some of the movies, but we wanted to preserve the original pieces untouched as far as possible). Check out 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 if you missed them, and today we continue with 2006. The original piece follows below, and thanks to staffers past and present who contributed.
The mid-aughts were incredibly strong for movies — we dealt with 2005 yesterday, and had to expand the list it was such a good year, while 2007 (coming tomorrow) had several of the very best movies of the whole decade. In between the two, 2006 is less immediately stacked with goodness, but over time has been revealed as a truly great year for genre filmmaking. Young auteurs took the western, the detective movie, the sci-fi flick, the gangster film, and even the "inspirational teacher" genre, and turned them into films as smart and subversive as those below. Even the Bond movie was reinvented, and more successfully than anyone could have imagined.
Elsewhere, Martin Scorsese finally won a long overdue Oscar for "The Departed, " and Ken Loach picked up the Palme d'Or for "The Wind That Shakes The Barley" (although both are examples of filmmakers being rewarded more for past work than for their best movies; particularly considering the presence of Cannes films, "Volver, " "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Red Road")
Blockbuster-wise, the bloated "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" dominated, losing most of the charm of the original, while "X-Men: The Last Stand" and "Mission: Impossible III" also proved to be unsatisfying sequels, and "The Da Vinci Code" made a ton of money, despite easily being one of the worst films of the decade. On the plus side, "Borat" proved the sleeper hit of the year, and "The Devil Wears Prada" surprised by proving to be one of the best chick flicks (man, we hate that term) in some time.
