A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

GLOBAL WARMING'S ELWOOD BLUES: Pretty much every year, we like to kick off our "best in film" review by citing to the Village Voice Critics Poll (2002, 2003, 2005), but since the Voice isn't what the Voice was, we move over with the critics to the indieWIRE Critics Poll for 2006, which was dominated by a Romanian film, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, which I had never heard of before.

So, as always, let's just go to their comments for some fun:

The most important film of the year, by any standard, featured a sweet, kind of chunky dude in a bad suit giving a PowerPoint presentation. I think that says it all. --Andrew O'Hehir

Does it bug anybody that people are falling out of their chairs over a movie whose thesis is that QE2 and Tony Blair are just nice, harried, slightly neurotic people doing their jobs the best they can? --Matthew Wilder

I'm still awaiting the chance to see "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters From Iwo Jima" back to back. The great Japanese film critic Shigehiko Hasumi writes me that he likes both films but prefers the former. I prefer the latter, perhaps for the same reason -- it tells me a story I haven't already heard. --Jonathan Rosenbaum

From "Borat," a line of dialogue that just about sums up the year of Mark Foley and Ted Haggard: "Are you telling me that the man who tried to put a rubber fist up my anus is a homosexual?" --Noel Murray

Given how indispensable digital effects have become, it's pleasing to note the defiantly low-tech nature of some of the year's multiplex champs. While much of "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" was slick, noisy bombast, the real fun stuff--Jack Sparrow's fruit skewer, the duel on the mill wheel--testified to the old-fashioned pleasures of a well-choreographed stunt. The parkour-enhanced chase scene in "Casino Royale" was 2006's most thrilling action sequence for the same reasons. And of course, there was the epic battle between Borat and his producer Azamat, a scene so simple in its means, so relentless in its execution, and so potent in its impact, you could almost smell the testes. No piece of CGI could elicit the same awe. --Jason Anderson

What does it say about our world that you can lose "American Idol" and win an Academy Award for doing basically the same thing? -- Matt Singer

Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris's "Little Miss Sunshine" was far from 2006's worst film, but it was the most depressing. If "indie" has come to mean regurgitating '80s Hollywood comedies like "National Lampoon's Vacation" and cosmetic attempts at edge like having an old man snort heroin and read porn, it's better off dying. --Steve Erickson

Right now, I guess the best film I saw in 2006 was The Departed, though I wouldn't pretend it's anything more than a hell of a piece of entertainment, and not Meaningful.