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The prevailing wisdom among film critics and regular moviegoers is that 2000 has been an awful year for movies. While the spring had pleasant surprises like Erin Brockovich, Virgin Suicides, Return to Me, and Keeping the Faith, the summer was an unmitigated disaster.  Every week brought out a new horror, and even the good flicks (The Patriot, Perfect Storm, X-Men) were only passable. The fall has continued the trend with a whole series of disappointments, from The Contender and Charlie's Angels to The Grinch, and very few pleasures.

That's not the whole story, though. As I've looked over the list of 225 movies I saw this year, there have been more than a few great ones and even a masterpiece or two. Yes, it's been an awful for Hollywood, but it's been a solid year for independent and foreign films, documentaries, and re-releases and retrospectives. So it is with enthusiasm that I offer my favorite movies of the year 2000. As I've done before, I've included any movie that played in a Chicago theater and which I saw for the first time. 

1. Chunhyang
Without a doubt, this film from Korean master Im Kwon Taek is the best thing I saw in the last twelve months. A sumptuous costume drama set in the 13th century, it concerns a young prince who falls in love with a peasant girl. Though it's a simple and time-worn tale, Im infuses it with so much beauty and passion that I was almost swept off my feet. His decision to incorporate a narrator who uses the ancient operatic tradition of pansori grounds the movie in Korean history and also makes Chunhyang a timely exploration of the role of cinematic narrative. The gorgeous costumes, stunning cinematography, and fabulous acting make this both a tremendous film and a genuine crowd-pleaser. I saw it at the Chicago Film Festival, but it returns in early February for a theatrical run at the Music Box. Don't miss it.

2. Good Men, Good Women
Last June, the Film Center presented a retrospective of Taiwanese director Hou Shiao Shien, and what a revelation that was. Hou's films typically center on Taiwan's convoluted 20th century history, and Good Men, Good Women is no exception. Switching between the present day and the events of World War II, when Taiwan was occupied by Japan, the movie is a meditation on both history and memory. With Hou's exquisite camera placements--he's famous for never using closeups but instead using long and medium shots to portray people's relationships--and fantastic use of color, Good Men is beautiful to watch and profoundly moving. His other films--Flowers of Shanghai and City of Sadness, in particular-- are well worth seeing, but
this one was my favorite.
 

3. Dancer in the Dark
My favorite widely-released movie of 2000, though you can hardly call it mainstream. The latest Cannes-winning feature from enfante terrible director Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves) is a pomo musical grafted onto the skeleton of an old-fashioned melodrama. With a gripping and emotionally wrenching performance from alternarock banshee Bjork, Dancer in the Dark is overwrought, over the top, and just plain over almost every other movie released this year. Fantastic supporting performances from Catherine Deneuve, David Morse, and Peter Stormare ground the story, and Bjork's musical numbers (for which she wrote the music) are enthralling and magical.

4. Three Kings
Better late than never. I ignored this Gulf-War film starring George Clooney, Mark Walhberg, and Ice Cube when it first came out. But after catching up with it last winter, I can say it's one of the best Hollywood films of the last two years. Featuring three soldiers who steal a truckload of Saddam's gold as the war is ending, the film ruthlessly confronts the economic aspects of that conflict as well as its human side. Daring to present Iraqi citizens and even soldiers as real people, the movie has a complexity that is admirable. Add in three top-notch performances and
gripping battle sequences, and you have a movie that works on all levels.

5. Viridiana
This past November, Facets presented a dozen of Luis Bunuel's movies to mark the centenary of his birth. I unfortunately missed a number of the ones I wanted to see, but this caustic satire of the Church and the
"virtuous" poor is both shocking and very, very funny. A young nun returns home to visit her uncle only to have him commit suicide after a sexual indiscretion. She decides to use his estate to "liberate" the poor, but their way of thanking her is decidedly inappropriate. Bunuel's black-and-white images were fantastic, and his corrosive use of both Handel's Messiah and da Vinci's The Last Supper were remarkable.

6. O Brother, Where Art Thou? 
I've never been a huge Coen brothers (Fargo, Raising Arizona) fan. While I admire their artistry, their chilling cynicism and not-so-subtle contempt for humanity has often left me cold. But this comic gem, loosely based on
Homer's Odyssey, is a different matter altogether. George Clooney (continuing his run of fabulous roles), John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson are three prisoners who escape from a chain gang. Running across the
Mississippi countryside, they encounter all manner of folk. Clooney, as a man in love with his own vocabulary, is priceless, and the Coen brothers' script is bust-a-gut funny. Add in some remarkable cinematography and fine performances all around, and you have a movie that is both great fun and great filmmaking.

7. Hidden Fortress
Doc Films' retrospective of Akira Kurosawa was a welcome reminder of the huge influence he's had on world cinema. While I enjoyed all of the movies I was able to see--Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, and Ikiru--my favorite was Hidden Fortress. Starring Mifune as a royal bodyguard who has to smuggle a beautiful princess to safety, the film has fantastic martial-arts sequences, some great comic touches, and a gripping story. More than Seven Samurai, this film has the role that Mifune was born to play, and he grabs it with both hands.

8. Documentaries You Unfortunately Didn't See
I'm always reluctant to highlight movies that hardly anyone saw, but there were three fantastic documentaries released this year. That the vagaries of American distribution meant you never even heard of them doesn't diminish their artistic value whatsoever. My favorite of the three, A Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenivitch, was shown at Chicago Filmmakers towards the end of the summer. Directed by Chris Marker (La Jetee), it focused on the last days of the great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. Using video as a tool of film criticism, this doc was profoundly interesting and educational. On the other side of the documentary spectrum, First Person Plural (which showed at the Film Center) was directed by Korean-American Deann Borshay Liem. The film tells her own story of adoption by a Californian couple and later discovery that her birth mother was still alive in Korea. The movie's climax comes when her adoptive parents fly to Korea to meet the Korean family she left behind. Incredibly moving and powerful, this documentary is occasionally shown on PBS. Finally, Agnes Varda's documentary, Gleaners and I (which played at the Chicago Film Festival), was a delightful rumination on the idea of gleaning and how it's translated into contemporary society.

9. Re-releases of Uncommon Virtue
As studios readied various movies for DVD release, it was common this year for various films to be re-released in theaters. Two that stood out were Hitchcock's Rear Window and Kurosawa's Ran. I had seen the former before on television, but seeing it on the big screen with a remastered sound track was eye-opening. Hitchcock's use of ambient sound and music was particularly revelatory, a fact that came through in this stunning remastered print. Kurosawa's Ran, a magisterial and epic exploration of the nature of man and power, was quite possibly the most breathtaking movie I saw this year. With enormous battle scenes and magnificent compositions, Ran is a movie for the ages.

10. Magnolia
One of the first movies released in Chicago this year was also one of the best. Paul Thomas Anderson's Altman-esque exploration of suburban Los Angeles is one of the finest three-hour movies you'll ever see. Confidently threading over a dozen characters and storylines, Magnolia is audacious and hugely ambitious. That it succeeds so well is testimony to Anderson's ability and the work of his fantastic cast (Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tom Cruise, and many others).

Other great movies of the year included Tim Roth's brutal The War Zone, the French film An Affair of Love, Mike Leigh's Topsy Turvy, the Japanese animated epic Princess Mononoke, Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, and Genesis, a stunning African movie that played at the Film Center last
winter.

So you see, it's actually been a good year for movies. You just had to be willing to venture off the beaten path. I hope in the coming year to be able to guide you to many more worthwhile selections.

And in case you want to compare this list with other critic's Top 10's, my favorite 2000 films were, in order:

1. Chunhyang
2. Dancer in the Dark
3. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
4. An Affair of Love
5. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
6. Ghost Dog
7. Erin Brockovich
8. Chicken Run
9. Beau Travail
10. Bamboozled
11. Traffic
12. The Claim.