COMMENTARY
By Erik Lundegaard
msnbc.com contributor
updated 2:25 p.m. ET Jan. 3, 2006
This is not a list of the Top 10 movies of the year.
That list would include “The Squid and the Whale” and “Syriana.” It wouldn’t include — as this list does — “Lords of Dogtown” and “Thumbsucker.”
You could even argue that it’s easier for good scenes to stand out in so-so movies, just as it’s easier for a good ballplayer to stand out with the Royals than the Yankees. Wow, look at that guy. You remember him. Put him next to Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter and he’s a little more forgettable.
Nevertheless, most of the scenes below are from good movies. A surprising number deal with men breaking down emotionally (No. 5, No. 2) or connecting emotionally (No. 9, No. 6, No. 1). There are few women in the scenes below. I don’t know whether to blame Hollywood (and its chauvinism) or me (and my solipsism) for this. Probably some combination. I apologize in advance.
WARNING: SPOILER ALERT. Plot points in recently released movies will be revealed. If you don’t want to know, stop reading. Everyone else, party on.
10. This ain’t your father’s anti-war movie
Jarheads cheer on Wagner in “Jarhead.”
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Universal Jake Gyllenhaal is a different kind of soldier in "Jarhead."
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Twenty-five years ago Siskel and Ebert deconstructed the “Ride of the Valkyrie” scene in “Apocalypse Now,” finding it both sickening and exhilarating, which they felt was Coppola’s point. This year Lawrence Weschler, in an excellent piece in Harper’s Magazine, did the same, and wondered whether
any war movie could be anti-war since they’re all so exhilarating. But he concludes that “Jarhead” might be that beast — the true anti-war movie — because it teases and teases and doesn’t give the soldiers what they (and presumably we) want. We train these guys for war but don’t let them fight. We train them for war but — if you extrapolate into the 21st century — they become peacekeepers. The scene where the Marines all cheer the pointless “Apocalypse Now” carnage is initially disturbing but ultimately sad. There is no “Ride of the Valkyrie” for these guys; they don’t even get their own war song, as a jarhead later suggests. It’s a Hollywood movie reminding us that reality is rarely as exciting as a Hollywood movie.
9. A big man shows a big appetite and a bigger heart
Vince Vaughn eats breakfast in “Wedding Crashers.”
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New Line Cinema Heath and Jake have nothing on Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson in "Wedding Crashers."
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Vince Vaughn is a big bear of a man whose movie role is to encourage the leading man to do something crazy. He encourages Jon Favreau to go after women in “Swingers” and Luke Wilson to start a middle-aged fraternity in “Old School,” but he can’t convince Owen Wilson to give up on love in “Wedding Crashers.” Maybe that’s why he’s never been funnier. Critics focused on the glorious montage of wedding crashing that opens the film but I’m choosing the breakfast scene where Jeremy (Vaughn) is convinced by John (Wilson) to spend another day at the Cleary estate. Jeremy has just been violated twice by a brother-sister combo but he agrees to stay for his friend. Even so, he refuses to sit with him at the breakfast nook. He piles food on his plate and moves to the counter.
John (grateful): “I love you, Jeremy.”
Jeremy (mouth full of food): “I love you, too.”
It’s the second-best male love story of the year.
8. Taking over the table
Terrence Howard doesn’t drift away in “Hustle & Flow.”
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Paramount Classics Terrence Howard sits at Ludacris' table in "Hustle & Flow."
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Despite the chasm of ethnic, cultural and legal differences between us, there are few 2005 film characters with whom I identified more than DJay, Terrence Howard’s down-on-his-luck, desperate Memphis pimp. It’s part of the human condition, particularly when you reach middle age, to be dissatisfied with where you are. You look around. Is this it? How did I get here? And how can I get
there before it’s too late? Howard embodies this desperation; it sears in his eyes. In a movie full of great scenes, acting and dialogue (“You Mormons are some brave mother f----ers”), the turning point occurs when DJay finally gets to sit at the table of visiting hip-hop impresario Skinny Black (Ludacris). Initially celebrated for his weed, DJay is quickly dismissed and forgotten and you can feel him drift away. He could stand up and disappear and no one would notice, and you think that’s what he’ll do because that’s what you’ve done. Instead he takes over the table by calmly and respectfully telling truth to power. Michael Corleone would be proud.
7. Stacy? Stacy who?
Emile Hirsch makes his feelings known in “Lords of Dogtown.”
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TriStar Pictures Emile Hirsch captures the torment of being a teenager in "Lords of Dogtown."
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So you’re a young punk living in 1970s Venice, Calif., the ghetto by the ocean, and while you’re enjoying life with friends, surfing and skateboarding, and while the skateboarding thing seems to be taking off, your home life sucks. Your mom’s boyfriend split on her. Now she works nights at a sweatshop and it tears you up, and one morning you take a kitchen knife and stab the surfboard her ex left you. More and more, you don’t give a crap. So when you’re hanging out on the front porch of a party and your friend Stacy leaves his girlfriend Kathy (Nikki Reed) unattended on the lawn, and Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire” starts playing, you swoop down and dance around her, part-madman, part-Indian, part-air-guitar player. The dance is impromptu and goofy and sexual and it entices her away from the lawn, away from the party, away from Stacy. It encompasses the crazy, pent-up sexual energy of adolescence. If only more of the movie had been like it.
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