1. Stone Reader
3. Monster
4. Elephant
5. Stoked: The Rise & Fall of Gator
6. Crude [undistributed]
8. Distant Lights [undistributed]
9. Love at 7-11 [undistributed]
Honorable Mention: The Wild Dogs, Chaos, Shattered Glass, the Mira Nair and Sean Penn segments of 11/09/01, Dopamine, The Company.
Some Favorite Performances: Glenn Close and Mary Kay Place in The Safety of Objects, Alberta Watson and Nelu Dinu in The Wild Dogs, Marilyn Dodds Frank in The Company, Essie Davis in Girl with a Pearl Earring, Catherine Frot in Chaos, Charlize Theron and Christina Ricci in Monster, Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis in American Splendor, Suzanne Flon in The Flower of Evil, Patricia Kaas in And Now…Ladies and Gentleman, Ernest Borgnine in 11/09/01, and Hayden Christenson in Shattered Glass.
1. Whale Rider
3. The Cooler
4. The Other Side of the Bed
6. The Secret Lives of Dentists
7. The Good Thief
9. Bad Santa
10. Le Divorce
Dishonorable Mention: Overnight [the 2 ½ hour festival cut, not the substantially shorter theatrical release in 2004], In This World, Spider, The Barbarian Invasions, The Event, Camp, My Architect, Triplets of Belleville.
Ghastliest Performances: Alec Baldwin in The Cooler, Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation, Jude Law in Cold Mountain, Nicole Kidman in The Human Stain, the entire cast of Morvern Caller, Audrey Tautou in L’Auberge Espagnole, Marcia Gay Harden in Casa de Los Babys, Parker Posey in The Event, and Keisha Castle-Hughes in Whale Rider.
©©2006, N.P. Thompson
npt [at] moviesintofilm [dot] com