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AFI's Best Films for 2000
From: American Film Institute
| By:
Vicki Botnick |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
At the end of 2000, the American Film Institute kicked off its new annual program designed to recognize, preserve and honor excellence in film during the 21st century. To begin, a twelve-person jury made up of filmmakers, film historians and entertainment journalists named the ten best films of the year, listed and described below. The jury chose those movies--from the lightest comedies to the most wrenching dramas--that best advanced the art of the moving image, enhanced the rich cultural heritage of America's favorite art form, inspired audiences and artists alike, and/or made a mark on American society in matters of style or substance. AFI 2000 seeks to call attention to the collaborative nature of filmmaking by recognizing each film's whole creative ensemble, both in front of and behind the camera. |
<I>Almost Famous</I>
At the center of Almost Famous lies a question: When it would be easier not to, do you write the truth? Cameron Crowe writes the truth in this story about a young rock  journalist in the 1970s, with a profound understanding that can come only from lived experience--and Crowe directs with an uncommon attention to the details of time, place and character, capturing how deeply music affects us. All of Crowe's movies are about coming of age--whether it's from a child to an adult, or from an adult to a grown-up--and in this film, it's teenaged William Miller's (Patrick Fugit's) turn. |
While negotiating rock-and-roll backstage politics, William has to discover where his standards lie and how to fit them into a world where ethics are as wriggly as a lead singer's hips. With little experience in either writing or life, William's struggle to become a scrupulous reporter is repeatedly waylaid by an equally strong urge to remain an adoring fan. Although he focuses on specifics, Crowe illuminates the much larger story of the 1970s, when innocence was lost in both the music industry and America as a whole. Sandwiched between political assassinations, war and Watergate, it was also a time when the music industry was slipping from grassroots authenticity to pre-packaged merchandising. By drawing viewers into both the joy and anguish of its sharply defined characters, Almost Famous leaves you simultaneously nostalgic for the past and plenty happy to be over it. |
<I>Before Night Falls</I>
Julian Schnabel invigorates the biographical movie in his sensual, lyrical and searing  memorial to the late Cuban novelist and poet Reinaldo Arenas, played by Javier Bardem with a riveting mixture of passion and playfulness. Before Night Falls is a moving testament to artistic and sexual freedom, and Schnabel brings to it a painter's eye and a documentarian's attention to cultural detail. |
Arenas posed a double threat to the mid-century Castro regime in Cuba. Persecuted for both his homosexuality and his writings, the writer was jailed in the late '60s on false molestation charges and later escaped to New York, where he died of AIDS after ten years. As Arenas, Bardem projects a sensual innocence that fades palpably as the film progresses--an evolution that's most evident when the film flashes back from the ill, wan adult to the relaxed young man. With seemingly no concern for crowd-pleasing, Schnabel tackles an un-pretty, fractured story, bringing it to life with a rich color palette, an expressive camera and luscious imagery. |
The film's aesthetic look comments on its theme; beauty emphasizes the attempt to contain beauty, as the gorgeousness of the Latin American people and landscape shine through the government's increasing restraints. By the end of the film, the repressive regime has affected Arenas' spirit and, perhaps indirectly, his health, but nothing can contain the passion of his writings. |
<I>Best in Show</I>
Director/co-writer Christopher Guest and the ensemble cast elevate the mock-documentary form to new artistic heights. Best in Show raises comedy to the level of insight and weaves a seamless narrative fabric from actors' improvisation around a central theme--Fred Willard's performance is worthy of special recognition. |
Using many of the same cast members from Waiting for Guffman, including Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Parker Posey and Fred Willard, Guest explores the various tensions and ego trips of a number of couples who enter their purebreds in a Philadelphia dog show. Together with co-writer Levy, Guest gave his Second-City-trained performers only a rough outline of the plot and then shot hundreds of hours of improvisations. |
While the acting is often devastatingly funny, the real brilliance comes in the editorial choices. With so much footage to choose from, Guest unerringly harvests the strongest bits and weaves them together so cleverly that the intricately constructed film could almost be a straight documentary. In the final judgment, it's our call whether merely to laugh at these characters or also to love them for their passion, their idiosyncrasies and the very dopiness we can all lay claim to. |
<I>Erin Brockovich</I>
This finely-crafted studio picture goes beyond the familiar with humor, texture and a fine  attention to detail--an increasingly rare experience. With a luminescent performance by Julia Roberts, Erin Brockovich accomplishes what all Hollywood films should aspire to: excellence as both art and entertainment. |
Based on the true story of Brockovich's battle to force monolithic Pacific Gas and Electric to pay for the damage wrought on local families by its dumping practices, what makes this film stand out from other working-class-grit yarns is the sincerity with which director Steven Soderbergh approaches his subject. His straightforward direction never feels manipulative and, as a result, Erin Brockovich's outrage remains real, its fight noble and its sentimentality minimized. |
Underneath the unforced style and stellar performances lie complex themes: the struggle to balance home and work, and the compassion that compels Erin to give everything she has to people she doesn't know. Soderbergh tells a big, dramatic story in a simple, focused way, leaving the final impression that we, too, can find a way to be the person we most want to be. |
<I>Gladiator</I>
This film updates the traditional American genre--the epic costume film--through cutting-edge technology. Its hero, a noble and  unselfish man, is a type that movies have celebrated for generations. But the modern methods used to create the world he lives in give viewers a new kind of spectacle for the new millennium. |
Russell Crowe plays Maximus, a celebrated soldier imprisoned and forced into service as a superstar gladiator by the jealous emperor, Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix). In a role with few lines and copious melodrama, Crowe shuns grandstanding in favor of quiet machismo, radiating a strength of both character and physique that's proved magnetic to both men and women. In another standout performance, Phoenix inhibits his nasty potentate with flamboyant exuberance, adding just the right note of levity to the picture. |
Gladiator, as befits the genre, is pure spectacle, including space-age computer graphics, saturated colors and plenty of rousing fight scenes. By making the film so darn fun to watch, director Ridley Scott begs the question of how different we, modern-day viewers, are from that ruthless Roman crowd. |
<I>High Fidelity</I>
High Fidelity is an offbeat odyssey about a 30-something record store-owner who  knows everything about pop music, but nothing about life. A terrific ensemble cast includes music as a central character and rather than shoe-horning its quirky characters into a tidy resolution, the film chooses a real-world ending. |
Record store-owner Rob Gordon (John Cusack) begins his trajectory with little understanding of where he has come from and ends it with only slightly more awareness of where he is going. His dilemmas, whether of the romantic, professional or all-purpose variety, are those of every struggling young adult, but presented with a lot more heart and humor than most of us managed to inject into our own coming-of-age angst. |
The film, based on the best-seller book by Nick Hornby, sidesteps the fears of the novel's fans by faithfully recreating its gritty, funny, quirky tone, even though the venue has moved from London to Chicago. A quintessentially male story that also appeals to women, High Fidelity follows ordinary people, lingers over their intimate personality traits, celebrates the power of music to provide a counterpoint to their almost-hidden emotions, and leaves us longing to step right back into their lives. |
<I>Requiem for a Dream</I>
Darren Aronofsky takes no prisoners in his harrowing second film: utilizing the language of cinema to startling film effect, he  condenses information through multiple points of view and propulsive editing; and Ellen Burstyn and Jared Leto give electrifying performances as a drug-addicted mother and son. |
Inspired by Hubert Selby Jr.'s harsh novel Last Exit to Brooklyn, the film follows Sara Goldfarb (Burstyn), whose addiction to diet pills is mirrored by her son Harry's (Leto's) heroin abuse and the coke habit of his girl friend, Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly). Although Aronofsky wants to achieve the same ends as a documentarist--to reproduce reality--Requiem for a Dream is as far from documentary as possible. Here, the very manipulative, unreal aspects of cinema come to create an alternate form of reality that lets viewers live inside the characters' heads. |
Using a highly subjective camera, split screens, jarring music, shock cuts, strobe lighting, high-speed motion and more, Aronofsky thrusts us into our own drug trip. The circular ritual feels personal: the desperate craving for a drug; the score; the spiral into relief and ecstasy; and then, all too soon, the descent into normalcy and its attendant anguish. Not escapism, not entertainment and not mere storytelling, Requiem for a Dream takes filmmaking to a higher level. |
<I>Traffic</I>
Steven Soderbergh balances a complex narrative structure that includes three separate stories  and multiple outstanding performances. Traffic moves with clarity, grace and intelligence through a broad strata of American and Mexican society as an uncompromising tale about the never-ending fight to win the war against drugs. |
Weaving together four main stories, the serpentine plot details the effect of the drug war on politicians, family members, law enforcement officers, dealers, users and drug lords themselves. It looks at the big questions: whether the American government's policy against Latin American drug manufacturers can work; if there's any way to protect loved ones against abuse; and if any other options exist for the people forced into the machinery of narcotics production and distribution. |
Even with so many characters and issues, Soderbergh's account remains clear, thought-provoking and intimate. Its authentic details and sharply delineated personalities let us feel like insiders. And better yet, we're insiders who are smarter than the characters, because we're also allowed to see the big picture, the joins between the parts, the double-plays and the futility of it all. But the message isn't unilaterally bleak: although the film presents no easy answers, there's a glimmer of honor and integrity, embodied by Benicio del Toro's role as a straight-arrow Mexican cop. |
<I>Wonder Boys</I>
This sophisticated, beautifully written comedy of manners is a melancholy and funny coming-of- middle-age story. Curtis Hanson displays a sure comic-satiric touch and draws remarkable performances from his ensemble, particularly Michael Douglas as the literary one-hit wonder and Tobey Maguire as his precocious student. |
At first glance, Wonder Boys could be just another white male middle-age crisis yawn, but as it unfolds, the film proves to be less about Grady Tripp's (Douglas's) scufflings with his ex-wife, pregnant lover and sophomore-effort writing slump, and more about how easy it is for any of us to get lost at some point and how many avenues there are to find our way back. |
True to its source, Michael Chabon's novel of the same name, Wonder Boys zeroes in on a succession of nice little details: a glance over a pot-packed glove compartment; Grady's increasingly shaggy woman's bathrobe; and a student's barbed giggle. Together, they add up to a full portrait of boys who want to be men, and the academic world they inhabit. Sometimes funny, sometimes pathetic and always endearing, Grady's floundering pushes him to turn to others for healing and, perhaps more importantly, to the film for inspiration. |
<I>You Can Count on Me</I>
Writer-director Kenneth Lonergan surprises time and again with his affecting story of a complicated, funny and emotional sister/brother relationship. Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo create heartbreakingly real characters in this underexplored thematic territory. |
Lonergan's tale of the guilt, resentment and, finally, deep affection that binds siblings is if not about truth at least steeped in truth. Lonergan jumps in just as drifter Terry (Ruffalo) hurtles himself into the rigidly ordered life of his sister Sammy (Linney), turning it into chaos as quickly as he can roll a joint. Terry and Sammy emerge as recognizably multifaceted people, their choices are wrong at least as often as they're right. The screenplay hits all the right chords in its language, in the beats between language and in the flailing around that adults do while trying to pretend they don't still feel like little kids. Smart and lucid, You Can Count on Me is in the exclusive camp of films savvy enough not to try to solve its characters' problems, knowing that it's these very struggles that both screw life up and power it forward. |
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