The Ten Best Films of 2001
Ben Trout
(Note: This Top ten list reflects an opinion from 2001, any and all changes not only are assured -
but are necessary to the process. They will reflect changed attitudes since 2001.)

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1.    Memento

Seeing Memento, which contains three films worth of information given all at once, is a little bit like losing your mind. It is a puzzle movie, it is a slice of absorbed experience (you feel like you've lost your your short term memory watching it), and it is a story told backwards. The joy of watching Memento is how blissfully befuddled it makes us, how thoroughly writer-director Christopher Nolan delights and excels in the ability to mask, conceal, pinhole, divert, distort and red herring his way around being forthright. As Leanord, Guy Pearce demonstrates his usual cool under the cloth of professional, nerdy intellectualism. But there's something more to his "puzzle you could never solve" (as Joe Pantaliano's Teddy puts it). Memento all but requires subsequent viewings in order to deepen the reward; it actually allows for just as enriching a cinematic mind trip the second time around, because everything makes just as little sense to you (even though you've seen it) and you're still constantly forming theories and exercising them as you watch, forcing moments to play a certain way in your head so you can choose whether or not your interpretation holds weight. The beauty is in the fact that there is no real right answer per se to any character's place in the film's surreal world. We become as lost as they are, and this release from the normal rules of cinema, this welcome breath of fresh air that is confusion - this is Memento.

2.    Amelie

What a delight! One can't ask for a more perfect  marriage between lighthearted cake and innovative cinematic wizardry. After two visually driven (but painfully stiff) sci-fi pieces and a blundering stint in Hollywood, Jeunet has released his masterpiece. But the film belongs to Audrey Tatou, whose simply redefines generosity with her perky-sweet innocence (it's no coincidence that her first name matches that of Breakfast at Tiffany's star Hepburn). This is a sound, conceptually apt film that is long enough not to feel as if it's residue is fleeting,  yet varied enough to pass as both a movie and a gimmick (all at the same time) without offending the part of me that craves substance above all. The substance, we see, is the joyous abundance of life-praising, the kind of vibrant celebration of how enjoyable it is to be alive in a world where quirk and monumental change come in the most forgotten corners and the most unexpected shapes and sizes. I wore that kind of cinematic druggy smile (the one I don only once in a blue moon). Amelie is like finding a carte blanche of universality deep in your soul and being unable - and unwilling - to let it pass until you've bathed your psyche in it.

3.    Ali
 
Michael Mann seems uninterested in the familiarity of political, racial, religious and personal struggle, rather replacing these common values with a contagious, absolutely absorbing atmosphere, a carefully highlighted ecumenicalism of The Champ's context in history, his approach to life as the definition of self-interest and the flawed reasoning of events in a changing world. Will Smith undergoes the kind of mammoth transformation we give awards for, but more importantly, the kind that gives us instant Ali (never a moment passes when when we don't believe the actor), which adds to the assured nature of Mann's world, giving him free reign to tinker and tinker beautifully. Mann's supporting actors, from the unrecognizable Howard Kossel of Jon Voight to a never better Van Peebles as Malcolm X, give the film a reserved, centered perfection, a confirmation that every precaution has been taken to render this world acceptable and realistic. Using a brilliant cinematographer with an eye for the oblong spirit of life, a kind of tilted squint that adjusts an audience's consciousness as if it were unable to take in the awe of the world through eyes wide open, and a score by Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke who create a soundscape of bumps and softness, of tirelessly silky rhythm amidst era tunes (that aren't stock and never sound foreign to the moment). Mann has an uncanny ability to consistently transport an audience into the world of a film like no filmmaker living today.


4.    In the Bedroom
 

The most satisfying thing about great films - like In the Bedroom - is watching all the strings tightten with such confidence, such authenticity; such unabashed, non-manipulative poignancy. The film doesn't just present a potent, distressing emotional center, it spins it in a fundamental, original fashion, one that is more reminiscent of how things in the real world unfold - and why. It takes its time developingg bitter and beautiful relationships with such sharply drawn moments, but which have decayed and lay dormant In the Bedroom argues that things don't necessarily heal on their own and certain things don't heal as we expect them to.  The performances in the film are volcanic. Sissy Spacek is absolutely stunning: she is angry, she is bruised and beaten inside by grief, racked with guilt and aching to forgive herself and everyone around her. You can practically feel these abstract emotions trying to claw their way out of her soul.  In TomWilkinson, the film finds a quieter, more distantly affected performance where he worries for his wife, but can't seem to find the strength to look worried himself.  The result of  writer-director Todd Field's defining use of the ambiance of quiet is a naturalism that is often more interesting, more powerful and more vivid than dialogue. The final product is a charged, absolutely riveting, deeply moving piece of cinema.


5.    The Royal Tenenbaums

 
The Royal Tenenbaums, is emotional, an utterly hilarious love letter to a New York that may or may not have ever existed, a unique realism in familial strife, in fact, a matured, pristine creation. Anderson expands his use of cut-aways to give the film a whimsy, but all the while, he's tugging at us, goading us into feeling.  He appears to be having the time of his life. The nearly color coded, eighties inferred New York he lets his characters play in whilst he frames everything with an obsessive compulsive symmetry is worth the price of admission alone. That I was able to laugh out loud in the same ironic, quirky way I was able to laugh at his other films (Bottle Rocket and Rushmore) made the whole affair smell just that much sweeter. There isn't a bad card among the lot (even Stiller, who I feared would wield his usual spotlight stealing obnoxiousness, but doesn't). Anderson remains the current trendy independent filmmaker who seems at the head of his craft - and deserves the recognition he's receiving. His unique sense of humor drives the piece.
6.  Mulholland Drive

Even when you don't know what the hell is going on, it is so cool. Naomi Watts pulls double duty, molding naiveté into vampish sexuality, all the while spinning around in Lynch's less flamboyantly self-conscious labyrinth: part mind bender, part Hollywood commentary. Mulholland Drive has the sedated, exceedingly dark texture of Twin Peaks (more intimate than Lost Highway or Wild at Heart) in a landscape that feels equal parts like the work of a brilliant editor (culling his mini-series down to 146 minutes) and a capable filmmaker (the confines of coherence have never seemed to restrain Lynch and this film offers no digression). What other filmmaker can create a work that doesn't exactly make perfect sense and manipulate the confusion into feeling so right and so necessary. In 1999, I dubbed The Straight Story Lynch's best film. As it was less traditional for the director, I think I'd revise the statement and present, as in this film, two sides to one story: Mulholland Drive is the most satisfying Lynch film.

7.    The Man Who Wasn't There

This reminds me of Gates of Eden, a book of short stories written by Ethan Coen. The film is so skillfully multi-layered: we see a spoof, an homage, a genre entry and an existentialist spin all mixing together with that Coen verve, the hilarity of normalcy and the oddity found in the unlikely worlds of ordinary people. It is an escapist hootenanny and a rich, painstakingly crafted piece of art, much like most of their other films. There is a discerning quality, the one that recommends this film. It is the wacky sympathy the Coens seem to have for their characters which makes The Man Who Wasn't There seem so foreign (it could probably stand on its own, were it a film noir made by unknowns, whose work we didn't constantly feel the urge to play "auteur theory bingo" with). Billy Bob Thornton (who has never been better), plays the straight arrow in a curved world, the only centerpiece on a table with empty chairs. As he slinks through the film giving a host of one word answers and indifferent, mysterious glances, he gathers the kind of quiet momentum that leaves a thin residue of mimicry unwittingly placed inside our brain. We want to be that cool. And Roger Deakins, the Coen's oft used cinematographer, outdoes himself. His film noir chiaroscuro is both classical and playful, garnering from myself an adoring moan which I had to cover with a cough in the theater.

8. Waking Life

9. Monster's Ball
 

Makes you feel like you were in a train wreck, and that you caused the train wreck, and that the train which wrecked was your life's work. Not even really a single motion, a certain scene or any thought the film evoked in particular; this is a film that takes redemption and goodness and doesn't find it in the most unlikely of places as we'd expect, but rather, shows us a soul who doesn't seem to be in control of his change as it affects him. Every minute detail of the worn, saddened Georgia life being halfway lived by these characters feels appropriately dull; the movie feels rightfully scarred and blunt, unable to express any glamour of any kind; each and every second ticking away as a reminder that there's just that much more worthless life to lead before death swallows you up. And doesn't that sound like a downer. And it is. Even moments which come close don't exactly give themselves away; though the movie does, in fact, achieve a season of satisfying closure, a bittersweet middle ground, if we were paying attention, we'd notice that even the massive uprooting that takes place in both Thornton and Berry's lives can't be ignored. These are people ripe for punishment. The emphasis on feeling almost makes emotion a stand-in, a kind of backup plan. Emotion, in Monsters Ball, is as earth shattering as it possibly could be. This is a rare, absolutely jarring motion picture.


10.    Chopper

A number of shocking things happen throughout the duration of Chopper. But the graphic things - and there is some blood in this film that looks really, really real - don't measure up to the attitude of the film, a nonjudgmental presentation of a criminal and a violent, evil man. Mark "Chopper" Read, a unpredictable villain smitten with a justified paranoia, possesses the kind of charisma that mixes well with violence on film. We watch him, angry with ourselves for finding him funny or interesting. Dominik burrows deep, giving us zero air with shots composed as if fish eyed, the whole film looking at us as if it is banging on our door, begging us to let it into our world.  Not only is it hard to shake this often amusing, rather visceral experience, but even the simple negotiation of a wasted adult life later registers as a cry for help in a world that's more interested in giving the willing party (Chopper) a pedestal to stand on, gaining the infamous recognition for his crimes that we both shudder at and applaud (remember Michael Haneke's film Funny Games?). Chopper never feels like its any fun - but its impossible to look away from. We feel really sorry for Mark, but we also hate every single moment of his violent rampage. That it is left almost an afterthought that he is a bestselling author makes the film all the more powerful: the final image doesn't judge us and it doesn't judge Mark. It just presents the facts. Which is what is important and successful about this film.

01. Memento - Christopher Nolan
02. Amelie - Jean-Pierre Jeunet
03. Ali - Michael Mann
04. In the Bedroom - Todd Field
05. The Royal Tenenbaums - Wes Anderson
06. Mulholland Drive - David Lynch
07. The Man Who Wasn't There - Joel Coen
08. Waking Life - Richard Linklater
09. Monster's Ball - Marc Forster
10. Chopper - Andrew Dominik

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Runners Up

Still debating whether or not to call it revelation or a breath of fresh air. Amores Perros connects its tri-tiered tales in a way that feels right, as if they crave each other. The transitions and time shifting, most notably why it joins the longest list ever (i.e., films compared to Pulp Fiction), are seamless almost to the point of working as peepholes that reward you before or after the fan is doused with shit. It doesn't hurt to stand up and shout that the amoral characters are sculpted in such a wonderfully accepted and likable manner that they almost transcend the mega clichéd idea of anti heroism. Oh, and the pace stirs the adrenal glands like, well, almost like nothing I've seen this year.

The bold Won Kar-Wai, without script or structure (so I've heard), fired hundreds of hours of question marks at his actors only to find their very disheveled collisions making up answers to put piece of puzzle to interlocking piece - before shape has come to the complementary outer edges of these shards of beauty. Playing shy, polite personalities whose spouses have strayed - with each other - the luminous actors Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung huddle in each other's personal space, just barely impacting the other amidst the strife they're quietly enveloped in. In The Mood For Love, fraught with the sort of cinema rich techniques which excel in blurry, indistinct concepts and situations (but in a good way), unearths a gold mine in exploiting time and undefined space in undefined relationships. Kar-Wi brings a passion to a hum and finds, in the most forgotten of seconds, more pow than is garnered in the rare, exciting scenes of curiously ambiguous flirtation.

It's no blind coincidence that Spectacular Spectacular, the musical number the entire film anticipates, is about an Indian woman in love with a lowly Sitar player. Moulin Rouge segues the whole Bollywood revolution (if you haven't dabbled - do so) into Baz Luhrmann's tripped out, bombastic, musically visual, visually musical extravaganza. Nicole Kidman is the perfect choice to play a much revered, much sought after beauty. Complementing her is a performance by Ewan MacGregor that is so good, so different than anything he's done before, that you may scarcely recognize him. I had to see this film twice in order to prove to myself it was as good as one viewing suggested. There is so much going on, I can't imagine anyone could make a judgment call lest they've seen it at least twice. Entertaining as all get out.

 

Tykwer proves himself to be an auteur unafraid of the limitations of his palette, mixing technique and storytelling like they were gin & tonic, ready for an audience to gulp down. The pace is immaculate, but, as if this were an answer to the speed obsessed beauty of Run Lola Run, The Princess and the Warrior is  less gimmicky than that film and whole lot more interested in the quirky, cinematic moments Tykwer finds in real life. Reminded me more of the destiny driven edge to the characters' fate slathered journey of Tykwer's first film, Winter Sleepers. Here, Tykwer sidesteps the melodramatic, half realized touches which made Winter Sleepers such a failure. He replaces them with a kinetic energy buzzing through all the scenes, a magic realism feature that works so well it almost begs a second viewing to justify your astonished disbelief. Potente is gleefully likable as Sissi, the protagonist whose life is saved in an act of courage and compassion that turns out to be innate, but deeply repressed within Bodo, her knight in shining armor, played with a gruff handsomeness by Benno Furmann. In the end, what makes the film such an obvious and potent achievement is that it feels like both progression (from the territory Tykwer occupied in Run Lola Run) as well a return to all of Tykwer's established skills. Skipping the loopy, infinite rewind of Run Lola Run, this is something more meaningful. A more traditional, conclusive epic.

What makes Sexy Beast sing to the Gods with shock value is Ben Kingsley's staggering anti-Mohatmas turn as a menacing British automaton called Don Logan. The real zinger in Sexy Beast is how Kingsley interprets the word "persuade" as written in the script.  I was rocked by how credible the rapid-fire dialogue comes through. Written as if sucked from a chiding playground refrain of "Am too!", "Are not!" and run through the Tarantino ringer of violent, offensive, speed driven arguments, every line of Logan's has us hanging on his next one. That is half the genius. Kingsley's dark inversion of his former persona isn't merely inspired casting, it lets loose a performer who appears to have been waiting to play an abusive villain for eons. Glazer fills this world with nightmarish set pieces (a tumbling boulder that ruins a swimming pool, an underwater robbery, a reoccuring dream sequence with giant rabbits) and a concise, if occasionally displeasing pace (at least half of the running time is an epilogue). But most of all, Kingsley is allowed to swear. Uncharacteristically. Loudly. Repeatedly.

What SPY Kids boasts that current kiddy fare clearly does not is the sense that being a kid, though a bummer at times, is a time of fantasy. It is conceived with Macy's Day Parade proportion: everything in SPY Kids is big, colorful and round - it looks as if it has fallen from the imagination of a child. The special effects all appear purposefully exaggerated  in order to appear cartoonish rather than seamless and realistic. A surprising but welcome entry from the previously interesting but uneven filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, SPY Kids takes flight in a realm of cinematic wonder that gives everything a sensational gravity, a film to be placed alongside the likes of The Goonies or Labyrinth (pint-sized heroes riding high adventure for audience pleasure) rather than the recent wave of so called kid pics, films which seem aimed suspiciously at my generation and higher (like Antz, Chicken Run, Toy Story 2).

I've seen this documentary twice now and I'm reasonably sure that it could have just as easily taken place on a playground. Tom and Kaleil, two of the most immature businessmen in existence (probably), plot and bicker like two kids trading Tonka trucks in a sandbox. Startup.com is also the most dramatically arresting film I've seen all year. It has all the perfect conditions for a fictional film, but instead, it turns out to be one of those documentaries that grabs you from minute one and involves you as if it has been painstakingly written to do so. Watching Kaleil's and Tom's GovWorks.com internet business / friendship slowly rise and quickly (and sadly) crash feels like a wonderful summation to a time in history when dot comers became a wave of nerdy cyberspace prospectors, hoping to strike it rich and yield the mother lode in internet bucks. As good as the makers' The War Room.

This is a fish out of water comedy that works. Set on a Swedish commune in the mid 1970's wherein one of the members' sister comes to cool off after her husband hits her one too many times, the temperament is light - but light taken seriously enough to be done competently. Instead of being traditionally straightforward, Together uses its jittery camerawork, quick fade transitions and a screen steeped in red to suggest the elevated stature of its viewpoint: serious, but disposable; real, but surreal. It has moved beyond acknowledging the oddity of its characters to a place where they seem normal and comfortable. Perhaps the best thing I can say about the film is that it uses the title countless times in dialogue and inference - and this never seems pretentious or off key. For a film about people who choose to live together without rules and can't seem to agree on anything but what's wrong with their own rules, the contradiction is subtle enough not to drift into message territory while being clear enough to let its presence be known. All that and a great song by ABBA.

At first glance, the immensely rewarding Va Savoir plays like an elongated American screwball comedy populated with Woody Allen characters. The fusion of these distinct and revered strains of comedy are at core related by absurd narratives told with overflowing amounts of romance, slapstick, one-liners and convenience. They are both proven successful and pleasurable. What keeps Jacques Rivette's entirely sprawling, yet feather light tale interesting is his knack for distributing charm and reward over a larger canvas than is usual.. Comparable to a theatrical production, Va Savoir requires a uniquely massive build-up of steam to facilitate itself (hence, the listless opening scenes) and to promote maximum clarity. Though whimsical, it contains a bigger payoff than most films like it. Rivette's film leaves one feeling the kind of carefree joy of existence that the best of films often emanate. Put quite simply: this is pure diversion from reality that  - thankfully - just happens to last a little bit longer than most of its breed.

The Vertical Ray of the Sun is a warm day to day wash of poetic imagery and human interaction. I think the best part about watching Tran Anh Hung's films (see also Cyclo and The Scent of Green Papaya) is how easily he allows you to grasp the decidedly Eastern filter in his brain that composes such a stark and original world on the screen. In The Vertical Ray of the Sun, the gabby lives of three sisters come off very French (where Hung lives), but their world is a celebration, like a painting, of the art present in how we live life and manipulate our culture. Songs by Married Monk, Arab Strap and especially Lou Reed fill the apartment of Ngo Quang Hai, a twenty something aspiring actor who embraces the carefree routine of waking each morning as if it were a coronation ceremony. In beautifully structured moments like these, we can feel Hung's vision in a free, unclouded expression almost as admirable a director's piece as it is an overall film. Watching it gives one that lofty, extremely rare intoxication that you wish could last forever. It's like that moment when you first wake up - and anything is possible.

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The Year's Worst

The Battlefield Earth prize for
    MOST UNINTENTIONALLY HILARIOUS FILM OF THE YEAR:

American Outlaws
You can't possibly hate a movie that makes you laugh this much. Not merely the acting, not simply the dialogue, but the very idea that someone would make a teenage horse opera, even one this lame, and release the damn thing in theaters. "I think she had more than a mustache".

Well, I had more than a chuckle.

Forget opening weekend, which one can fizzle out quickest:
So, the title is meant to be....cute?

1. Fake screwball comedy which purports to make gigantic celebrities
    (playing fake gigantic celebrities) dry as Thanksgiving turkey.
        ('America's Sweethearts')
2. Here's the thing. Make a cutesy romantic misgivings road movie or
    make a modern day Treasure of the Sierra Madre-esque epic
    about a down-and-out loser. Don't cram both into one running  time.
        ('The Mexican')
3. Pop Quiz: You'd rather watch a sweet, clever romance for fifteen
    minutes or an exercise in frustration for seventy-five minutes? Decide.
        ('Serendipity')
4. I already saw The English Patient and it didn't star no damn
    Penelope Cruz and Nicholas Cage. Was this a parody of ?....oh, it
    was serious. Oh. Geez. Sorry, man.
        ('Captain Corelli's Mandolin')

Appalling Indies:
It's independent, so it's gotta be good, right?

1. If two pompous people type on two pompous typewriters the story of two pompous people (and their pompous) friends, eventually, they'll churn out:
        ('The Anniversary Party')
2. Clever to tell a story from the point-of-view of a mentally questionable guy. Not so clever to make it a generic detective thriller.
        ('The Caveman's Valentine')
3. Not all that clever to tell the story of mentally touched folk living in a hotel. Even less clever to frame it around an incoherent murder mystery. One rung of cleverness lower: Adapting a film from a story by Bono.
        ('The Million Dollar Hotel')

This just in, "Kids are stupid and Easy to Please! (But mostly stupid!)"
They look like laughs, they're crafted like laughs - but brother, they ain't funny.

1. Animated road trip with too much music. Oh, and let's throw in overpraised and under funny to boot.
        ('Shrek')
2. You see, we have these digital effects. And they're pretty cool. We wrote a script around them. It's really plain. A feat, truly.
        ('Dr. Doolittle 2')
3. The movie is about a guy who wants to change the moon's orbit and freeze the earth. To eliminate summer vacation. Need I go...? I needn't.
        ('Recess: School's Out')

If vomiting and laughter switched places, here are your masterpieces:
It is possible for vomiting and laughter to switch places, you know.

1. Allow me to quote myself: "...miscasting, horrific editing choices, lack of fluidity between scenes and comedy that seems to toil somewhere between being a Woody Allen spoof and a teen comedy about grown ups."
         ('Town and Country')
2. Wadda-da. (No, really, that's how he talks.)
          ('Pootie Tang')
3. Ooo, those male models. There's a gold mine for comedy. Or, more
    accurately, a gold mine for Ben Stiller to finally sink to the very bottom
    of the has-been bucket.
          ('Zoolander')

Twists, Turns, Ten Day old Red Herring:
Thrillers that don't quite cover all.

1. John Boorman + nonsensical plot line + unnecessarily severe Geoffrey Rush performance + comic tone that every other critic except for me gushed over + Jamie Lee Curtis's hilariously off key performance + Dylan Baker's, too + that "alternate", more realistic ending on the DVD =
        ('The Tailor of Panama')
2. Nice twists. Do they have anything to do with the film itself or are they merely in existence to fool the audience? Oh, and that guy who plays the lead, what's his name, remember him, he used to be a really great actor - - - uh, damn, it's gone.
        ('Along Came a Spider')

Bang, it's loud. Chu-Ching, it's expensive. Christ - it's crappy:
History comes alive. But it's been tampered with. And changed. And stuff.

1. Besides the obvious fact that this film is racist, melodramatic and anachronistic (The Day FDR Stood Up was its working title), it annoys me just a bit that people think it's a catharsis for their ailing souls after a certain event that took place on a certain day this past year.

Also, I dislike the fact that Ben Affleck thinks he's...I dislike Ben Affleck.
        ('Pearl Harbor')

2. Instead of a film, we're going to make a video game. And people will pay to watch some unknown guy somewhere play it. And we'll call it:
        ('The Mummy Returns')

3. We've got these two snipers who hunt each other down. And also, there's this script that jumps around like a monkey on acid. Oh, and it's authentic because there are computer graphics and dirty people.
        ('Enemy at the Gates')

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The Ten Worst Films of the Year

01. Soul Survivors

02. Rush Hour 2

Even though it is still Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan, it feels like someone made a sequel with different actors. The characters aren't remotely reminiscent of themselves in the first film. I usually don't turn movies that are this unfunny off (as a rule). But rules are made to be, uh, broken.

One of those films where everything prior to the ending is rendered unreal by one statement, which, if uttered at the beginning, would have brought forth a thankfully premature end to an otherwise guilty pleasure-less Teen B-Movie.

This film feels more like the raw footage for a trailer than an actual film. Everything that happens in the movie is meant to garner a different animal reaction from Rob Schneider. And absolutely none of these reactions are creative in the least. Or humorous.

06. Thirteen Ghosts

07.  Head Over Heels

Unfortunately, Freddie Prinze, Jr.doesn't deliver enough of an unintentionally hilarious stint to make the movie so bad that it's good. Instead, it's so bad, I almost vomit in terror (note the third use of the word "vomit" in this list).

09. Tomb Raider

Short and sweet: the expensive looking but utterly sedating action sequences are upstaged by slow motion shots of Jolie's breasts bouncing in and out of the frame (read: the tone and genre don't exactly mix; Is this a summer movie or is this a story?).

When it's not blatantly incoherent in drawing parallels between cows and dating, Someone Like You is a fashion show / apartment tour highlighting the latest in wild miscasting, flimsy direction and an exhausted, dry romance.

Yet to see: (a brutally unforgiving limited release makes this an inconvenient blockade on a comprehensive overview - but nevertheless, I'll see it eventually) Audition, The Day I Became a Woman, Eureka, The Gleaners and I, Our Song, Go Tigers!, Thomas In Love, The Believer, The King is Alive, Nico and Dani, Our Lady of the Assassins; Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 PM; When Brandon Met Trudy, Bread and Tulips, Liam, The Endurance, Chunyang, Happy Accidents,

Yet to see: (you can make a bloody list w/out films like) Divided We Fall, The Majestic, Pinero, The Shipping News, Innocence, Tape, The Gift, The Crimson Rivers, Beautiful Creatures, About Adam, The Man Who Cried
 

Award Choices which are not made obvious by the above list:

Actor: Tom Wilkinson, In the Bedroom, Will Smith, Ali, Billy Bob Thornton, The Man Who Wasn't There, Russell Crowe, A Beautiful Mind, Guy Pearce, Memento
Actress: Sissy Spacek, In the Bedroom, Naomi Watts, Mulholland Drive, Audrey Tautou, Amelie, Nicole Kidman, The Others, Halle Berry, Monster's Ball.
Supporting Actress: Carrie-Anne Moss, Memento, Anjelica Huston, The Royal Tenenbaums, Francis McDormand, The Man Who Wasn't There,  Hélène de Fougerolles, Va Savoir, Samantha Morton, Pandaemonium.
Supporting Actor: Joe Pantaliano, Memento, Jon Voight, Ali, Steve Buscemi, Ghost World, Ben Kingsley, Sexy Beast, Brian Cox, L.I.E.
Cinematography: The Man Who Wasn't There, Ali, The Royal Tenenbaums,  In the Mood For Love, The Vertical Ray of the Sun (Special nods to Together for its use of red and The Widow of St. Pierre for its use of dark).
Music: Amelie, In the Mood For Love, The Man Who Wasn't There, The Claim, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Special nods to Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Moulin Rouge for overall music, though it falls more into the "collections of songs" category)
Editing: Memento, Mulholland Drive, Amelie, Ali, In the Mood For Love.
Art Direction: Amelie, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Man Who Wasn't There, Together.
 

The year's best moments:

How-to make cocaine in the Blow credit sequence (set to "Can't You Hear Me Knocking?")
Linklater's lament ("There's Only One Instant, and it's now, and it's eternity") in Waking Life
Charlotte Rampling packing/driving to Portishead's "Undenied" in Under the Sand
*Our first glimpse of Big John (Brian Cox), set to "Hurdy Gurdy Man" in L.I.E.
The thundering dream sequence in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
A woman fires her piece at approaching gangsters while birthing her baby in Time and Tide
Heath Ledger gives dance lessons (via "Golden Years" by David Bowie) to a roomful of medieval
        squares to A Knight's Tale
Anthony Hopkins grilling then offering Ray Liotta a piece of his own brain (and later, offering it to a
        trusting kid on an airplane) in Hannibal
Fat Girl's chilling, violent climax which I can not/will not/should not ruin.
Sergi Lopez first presents The Egg (with explanation) in With a Friend Like Harry
*Two characters embark upon a most unusual duel (heights and vodka) in Va Savoir
*Denzel Washington, with the help of Dr. Dre's "Still D.R.E.", gets his car into motion in
        Training Day
In mid-traffic, Ethan Hawke smokes a bowl at (Denzel Washington's) gunpoint in Training Day
A husband kisses his wife, after they make up to ABBA's "S.O.S." in Together
A gigantic explosion is captured from an moving camera shot which spans through a block's worth
        of stores in Swordfish.
An claustrophobic underwater heist in Sexy Beast
Ben Kingsley refuses to extinguish his cigarette in Sexy Beast
We meet the characters of Donnie Darko in a montage set to Tears For Fears' "Head Over Heels".
Every curtain in the house disappears (and the kids are allergic to the light) in The Others
The heist - from start to finish - in Ocean's Eleven
The heist - from start to finish - in The Score
The movie - from start to finish - called Heist.
*Ving Rhames takes the murder weapon from Tyrese in Baby Boy
*Slowly awaking each day to Velvet Underground tunes in The Vertical Ray of the Sun
Ewan and Nicole sing a song pieced from dozens of love songs on a big elephant in Moulin Rouge
Billy Bob Thornton laments about mixing hair with soil in The Man Who Wasn't There
Any one of the many stairway brushes in In the Mood for Love
*Mark "Chopper" Read is stabbed repeatedly while being calm and comic in Chopper
*Leanord's screeching halt in front of the tattoo parlor in the middle/end of Memento. "Now, where
        was I".
*Tom Wilkinson raises his gun to the man who killed his son in In the Bedroom
Jennifer Connelly stumbling into a room full of magazine cut-outs, dissected for code with red ink.
The dude with the seven foot sleeves fighting the heroes (on of whom is the Iron Monkey) while all
        three balance on wooden poles, which are on fire
Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry, drinking and eventually, rolling in the hay in Monster's Ball

Films I saw for the first time this year - or -  noteworthy as hell:
    Everyone when funkin' gonuts over the re-release of the already endless Apocalypse Now (with forty five new minutes to add to the already existing eternal slow poke narrative) - - - but I didn't even see it. I'd love to see the film on the big screen again. But bragging that I saw it and then whining about the new footage hardly seems intelligent. Instead, I'll brag that I didn't go out of my way to shell out money to watch long get longer, drawn out get more drawn out, incoherent get downright blurry. What I did with my time, which was more fulfilling, was watch these films for the first time:

An Affair of Love, Andrei Rublev, The Apartment, Blow-Up, The Decalogue, Funny Games, Maborosi, The Mirror, Monsieur Hire, Ordinary People, The Sacrifice, The Seven Year Itch, Shoot the Piano Player, Small Change, Sweet Smell of Success.

(and also, Kyoshi Kurosawa's 1997 film, re-released this year, called Cure.
    I just wanted to get my two cents in: I believe it will be remade in the next five
    years).

3/11/02: PS - apparently, I was half right; Miramax snapped up the rights to Kurosawa's 2002 film Pulse, which it is planning to remake.