Top Ten Misses of 2006

There are a number of movies that I wanted to see but I missed. In some cases, these movies never came to London. In some cases they were superceded by other movies opening at the same time. And sometimes, I just didn't have anyone to join me and I rarely watch a movie by myself, despite the frequency with which I go the the movie theatre. Here's that Top 10 list.

[10] Zoom (Link)
Sure, it's a silly superhero teen comedy thing. It has Tim Allen, who has out out a bunch of cloying family movies in recent times. I'm hoping it has the feel of Galaxy Quest but I doubt it.

[9] Half Nelson (Link)
This movie stars Ryan Gosling in a critically acclaimed role, whom I have liked since the old Breaker High television show but that you probably remember from The Notebook. This movie is a heavy dramatic bit about "an inner-city junior high school teacher with a drug habit forms an unlikely friendship with one of his students after she discovers his secret." Gosling has a rare intensity as an actor and a character piece like this should work well.

[8] Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny (Link)
Jack Black's two-person pseudo-mock rock band spazzes through this movie about their mystical journey for a magical guitar pick. It died at the box office but it's a curiosity that I will have to see sometime.

[7] Nacho Libre (Link)
*sigh* I intentionally ignored this movie all year but I may finally watch it just because I have heard about it so often. For a while, I heard this movie quoted as often as Napolean Dynamite. The comparison did not sit well with me, though, because I thought that Napolean was made up of long doses of boredom punctuated by hilarity. Borat has definitely replaced Nacho as the movie that I hear quoted most frequently now but since I tried to watch that and walked out on it, I can't quote that movie either. I feel like I'm losing my cultural relevancy!

[6] The Good Shephard (Link)
I had little desire to watch this movie at first but once I heard the review saying that it's the "Godfather of CIA movies," it peaked my interest. Since it stars Angelina Jolie and Matt Damon, that's enough to get me to watch sometime.

[5] The Fountain (Link)
Psychadelic sci-fi movie, anyone? I really wanted to see this but no one else wanted to. I'm a sucker for sci-fi anything so despite the weirdness of the director/writer, Darren Aronofsky, I'll eventually catch this by myself.

[4] An Inconveniant Truth (Link)
Along with March of the Penguins, this marked a recent box office breakout for documentaries. And while March has cute penguin chicks fighting to survive, Truth has...the charisma of Al Gore going for it. It's actually just a movie version of his university tour in which he talks about the dangers of global warming. Apparently it's about as interesting as this topic can get, which still isn't saying much.

[3] Stranger Than Fiction (Link)
The main character in real life is somehow tied to the plot of a new book that is being written and if he dies in the book he will die in real life, too. This kind of humour is right up my alley, usually, but most people find these types of movies to be dry and boring. I'm a fan of Will Ferrell as an actor in the same way that I'm a fan of Bill Murray.

[2] Who Killed The Electric Car? (Link)
That's right, I have two documentaries on this list. This one was the harder of the two to find but it's the more interesting one to me. How did big business wipe out the promising and futuristic models of electric cars that we had in production in California?

[1] Idiocracy (Link)
It's a satirical comedy about a man that awakens in the future and finds that all of humanity has become a group of blithering idiots, thus making him the smartest man on earth. This movie was actually completed in 2004 or something like that but it was killed by the distributor for unknown reasons, especially since it had some good reviews. I desperately tried to find this movie and I would have gone to Toronto to see it but it only opened in, like, six cities and then it was killed off.

Reference: Top Ten Movies of 2006