Review for

The Top Ten Films of 2002

10: Insomnia - The performance by Pacino as the cop burdened with the overhanging Internal Affairs Investigation while suffering from total exhaustion is powerful. You really believe that Pacino can barely keep his eyes open and one wonders if the actor didn't stay up late every night before filming just to get that authentic exhausted look. The scenes where Pacino interacts with the murderer (Robin Williams) are chilling and made all the more frightening because in this game of cat and mouse the mouse may actually be stronger and thinking more clearly than the cat.

09: Adaptation - Nicolas Cage is brilliant as Charlie and Donald Kaufman to the point that we never have any difficultly telling whether we are watching Charlie or Donald at any particular time. The interaction of Cage with himself holds some of the funniest moments of the film. The standout performance of the film, however, is Chris Cooper as the eccentric John Laroche. Meryl Streep also puts in a very notable performance as the writer who becomes enchanted with her subject. The fact that all of these characters have such depth is a tribute to the real Charlie Kaufman and his actual screenplay.

08: Lilo and Stitch - Lilo and Stitch is an incredibly entertaining film filled with humor for both children and adults. Yet it still manages to takes us along on both the child and the creature's journey of learning the importance of family. The film never lowers itself to cheap manipulation, but instead remains thoughtful and intelligent throughout. Lilo and Stitch is classic Disney and will certainly be considered a Disney Classic someday. The film is also surprisingly lacking of the CGI techniques that seem to drive the majority of today's animated films. Disney has instead elected to go back to using watercolor backgrounds and achieves a look that is simply spectacular

07: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets has is a wonderful albeit slightly darker than the first, but just as (if not even more) enjoyable. All the familiar faces have returned for another year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) all look at least a year older and some of the voices seemed to have changed a little but the three quickly fall right back into their familiar roles. All the other supporting characters are back as well, including Richard Harris reprising Headmaster Dumbledore in his final role.

06: Signs - Signs is not necessarily about an alien invasion of the planet so much as it is about how one family deals with an alien invasion of the planet. The film works so well because we can all identify with this one family. We can all imagine how we would actually deal with this situation if it were our family. Everything in this film works perfectly to create the right mood and tell the story that M. Night Shyamalan wants to tell.

05: Minority Report - There are things that you begin to take for granted in a Steven Spielberg film: getting good or great performances from his actors, a masterful display of camera shots, a story that knows where it wants to take you, and the seamless mixture of special effects and live action. There are some amazing shots in this film that you just look at and go, "Wow". One such shot has Tom Cruise and Samantha Morton locked in an embrace each looking the other direction. The shot itself is amazingly simplistic yet something about the shot, the lighting, the angle and the eyes of both characters make it a powerful image. Then there is the crane shot that so reminded me of the opening of Brian DePalma's Snake Eyes that I thought was so cool back then and find it just as cool today (or perhaps even cooler) as Spielberg uses the angles to create suspense

04: We Were Soldiers - We Were Soldiers was written and directed by Randall Wallace who also wrote Braveheart so expect some pretty intense and gory battle scenes. Mel Gibson is very good at playing the part of the professional soldier although it is Sam Elliot, who steals every scene he's in as the quiet battle hardened Sgt.-Major that answers only to Mel Gibson's Lt. Col. Moore. The battle scenes are really just the backdrop for a great story about a group of soldiers struggling to survive. It is the characters and their stories that make this movie.

03: The Bourne Identity - This movie works on so many levels that it really is a masterpiece. The story is fairly simple, but told with such honesty that it makes the audience feel as though they are there with Jason Bourne trying to help him figure out who he is and how to get out of the mess he's in. The film stays true to life throughout and doesn't make any of it's characters objects or unreasonably stupid or flawed. Flawed yes, unreasonably flawed, no. The Bourne Identity is the smartest spy movie to have come out in a long, long time and that alone makes it worth seeing.

02: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - The Two Towers, like The Fellowship of the Ring, is a cinematic marvel that absolutely must be seen on the big screen to be fully appreciated. Based on the books by J.R.R. Tolkien, director Peter Jackson has once again created a grand and sweeping epic that together with The Fellowship of the Ring is part of what will certainly become one of the most beloved series in the history of motion pictures.

01: Frailty - Frailty is the kind of movie that I wish had gotten more attention from the bigger studios. This is the kind of film that could have had the box office success of Seven, The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects or Silence of the Lambs. It is the kind of film that with a big studio behind it, it could easily be a big Oscar contender. Instead it's a film from a smaller studio and will more than likely be comparable to Memento and Monster's Ball come March's Academy Awards.

Like Seven, The 6th Sense, The Usual Suspects, and Memento this is a film that you are better off going into knowing little to nothing about what's going to happen. Half of the "fun" of this movie is not knowing where the film is taking you as you watch the events unfold. It's one of those that I'd normally say, "Don't let anyone tell you anything about this film, just go out and see it." Like Seven and Memento, it's a film that afterwards you can sit and talk about for hours discussing different plot points and what you think they might or might not mean to the overall story.

Films I haven't seen that may make their way onto the list:
8 Mile
About Schmidt
Antwone Fisher
Catch Me If You Can
Far From Heaven
Narc
Punch-Drunk Love

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