2006 Movies

Buenos Greetings, America! Roland McShyster here, back on the attack and off the crack! What better way to celebrate the months we’ve been apart than to round up the top flicks of the past year? 2006 was a busy year for movies, and though I know my esteemed colleague Orson Welch took a crack at the same last issue, it says here that this town’s big enough for the two of us, and I do think it is as long as Orson keeps his shoes on. So without further adieu, let’s make some magic!

1. The Deep Hearted
The first film in recent memory to function as both a remake (of Jackie Chan’s incendiary classic Nutbusted) and a sequel (to 1974’s dark-side of Elmer Fudd classic The Deer Hunter), The Deep Hearted finally gives screen icon Jack Nickelson a role he can sink his teeth into. Too bad it didn’t come along before his real teeth had rotted away due to lechery and extreme old age, but golf-enthusiast Nickelson sinks his day-glo white dentures into this role just the same. Vanilla Ice is almost as good playing Marky Mark in the supporting role, and both Math Damon and Leonardio Dicaprica shine at playing the same character at random intervals throughout the film.


2/3. Fags of Our Fathers/Letters from Hero Jim
The only thing hotter in Hollywood right now than butch-looking tough guys being gay is dudes going to war a long time ago to kill foreigners, but it still took the jaundiced eye of silver-screen megalegend Clint Eastwood to put two and two together and make two movies that each combine both ideas. Fags of Our Fathers came first (that’s what she said!), and turned American hearts upside-out with its stunning portrayal of American GIs and the guys they bungholed while they were overseas during WWII. But great as that film was, it was just Clint’s way of softening the ground for Letters from Hero Jim, the right-hook to Fathers’ jap. Or is it jab? I don’t know boxing terminology. Letters tells the story of two gay guys in the army writing to each other, but the twist you haven’t seen before is that one of them is actually in the distant past and is Japanese. Now be sure to pick up the pieces of your blown mind before we move on to the next film.

4. Babe!
Darker than the first two, sure, and lighter on the pig, but that’s just fine with me when you’re talking about a movie many thought shouldn’t be made. After the star of the first two films died in a horrible breakfast- making accident two short years ago, the weak- stomached of the movie watching community rose up in one voice and suggested that the blockbuster film series be laid to rest in this little piggy’s honor. Thankfully, Hollywood told those fruits to take a hike, and completed the epic trilogy in style. Brad Pitt brings a fresh-faced enthusiasm to his role as Babe’s handler on the little pig’s trans-continental journey to find something tasty buried just beneath the ground. Without a doubt, some of the best pig acting since 1998’s Copland.

5. The Queen
Hot on the heels of his smash success with The Doors, counterculture icon Olivier Stone rips the rock biopic genre a new one with this scathing look at the life and times of the most macho band ever to exist, Queen. Brit bombshell Hellen Mirren burns the screen down with her thick-mustached portrayal of musky sex God and Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, and the rest of the band is played by guys who could snap your neck with their breath. If you had a better time in a theater in 2006, you were high on something wicked and I’m calling the cops.

6. Lidle Missed Sunshine
This amazingly-fast response to the tragic death of Yankees pitcher Corey Lidle, who died months ago after trying to land his single-engine Cessna through the window of his Manhattan apartment, doesn’t deserve to be as good as it turned out, but there it is just the same. It’s films like this that make me wonder what the hell they’re doing over there, outside of America, and why can’t they make films this good.

7/8. Volver/Lucky Number Slevin
Dyslexia was the hot word for 2006, not that anyone could spell it. But Hollywood doesn’t have to be able to spell something to be able to cash in on it, as these two films specially-titled for the letter-ordering impaired were to prove. Surprisingly, they were both powerhouses. Actually, technically one was a powerhouse and the other was a brick house, but I’ll leave you to decide for yourselves which was which.

9. Untied 93
Finally, the truth comes out about why Gerald Ford fell down those airplane steps that fateful morning back a long time ago. Turns out his shoelaces were untied. Yeah, it sounds kind of anti- climactic when I say it just like that, but trust me, this movie will keep you riveted for the full 93 minutes as you see Ford’s shit-eating unfold in painstaking detail. Yeah, you know what’s gonna happen, but that just makes the film’s inevitable conclusion feel all the more tragic.

10. Preachy Home Companion
Although it’s not the kind of movie I’d usually like, since it’s not very good, Preachy Home Companion won me over by having a bunch of good-looking people singing a lot while at the same time showing why ugly people belong on radio. Private Parts tried to teach me the same lesson years ago, but for some reason it didn’t really sink in until this film. But it did, and consider me a changed man, America.

Until next time, I’m Roland McShyster, and you’re America. Try to wear it well.

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