Review of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) by Jordan D — 23 Jun 2006

After finally catching up on the previous year's movies, here are ten that I most liked last year.

1. [b]The Best of Youth / La Meglio Gioventu[/b].

This is a subtitled Italian film which lasts six hours, enough to have many stop reading further. Those willing to test the waters will find a movie that is a rich tapestry of Italian family life after World War II. It tellls a forty year story of two brothers, one a doctor and the other a soldier, through their various family dramas, travails, loves and encounters with the major events of the times. While it can appears sudsy at first, it is richly subtle and rewarding to those who stick with it and gathers a locomotive of emotion in the last third. The final few minutes are among the most touching I have seen in a long time. For those who like this sort of thing, it cannot be recommended highly enough.

2. [b]War of the Worlds[/b].

Relentlessly intense and scary, this was easily the best blockbuster of last year. The movie tells the story of an alien invasion and one family of a neglient divorced father and his two kids on the run from the tripod war machines. One of Spielberg's best efforts, it has his usual tale of the nuclear family encountering difficulties. However, in this tale, the child is Dakota Fanning and the star Tom Cruise, so the acting is superb. The technical credits shine and the metaphors and parallels with a post-9/11 world (or a post Iraq war is perhaps more accurate) are subtle but resonant.

3.[b]Star Wars Episode III[/b].

The final chapter in the Star Wars saga is a rousing conclusion. It takes all of the things that seemed half-baked in the first two prequel and makes a whole new cake. The love story that had looked cloying now makes one despondent. The turning of Anakin and the routing of the Jedi order makes for a deeply tragic story . The action sequences are among the best put on film, and the final fight has a freight load of pathos. Taken as a whole, the movie packs a wallop and the crisp story-telling keeps the whole two and a half hour movie sailing into its remarkable ending. While it's not uplifting, it's cathartic and the keystone that makes the first trilogy almost equal to the second. Congratulations to George Lucas for recpaturing all the old magic and injecting some new elements we had never seen before.

4. [b]Little Manhattan[/b].

A little gem, it tells the tale of a ten year old boy living with divorced parents who finally encounters love. Although he had thought girls have cooties, the cutie in his karate class turns his world upside down. Terrific fun to watch a ten year old, Wonder Years style, explaining the agonies and ecstacies of his first crush. Sometimes he's an adult, other times a little baby, but everything in between is funny and charming.

5. [b]Elizabethtown[/b].

I am surely the only person who has this on his top ten list. But I am also the most Cameron Crowe obsessed person around. It tells of a young man played by Orlando Bloom who designs a shoe set to revolutionize the world.....until it crashes and loses his company 989m dollars and leads to the loss of his job. Then his dad dies, and he must travel to Kentucky for the funeral. On the way, he encounters a young flight attendant, Kirsten Dunst, who tries to help him pick himself up.

To me, this movie was a gentle treatment of how one can fail and pick oneself up again to find something even better. The compassion of the characters while caught in their folly is endearing. The humor generated by the folly is equally endearing. Kirsten Dunst's character is a great multi-level one, full of pain and hurt and love and zany energy. The rest of the cast does well as always seems to happen in a Crowe picture, and the soundtrack keeps the energy moving zippily. The only problem is that we had to wait almost four years for its appearance !

6. [b]Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit[/b].

An imaginative, witty, wonderful Claymation film. Wallace the cheese-lover and his dog Gromit are fighting the town infestation of rabbits. One day, one of those rabbits when matched with one of Wallace's toys turns our hero into a terrifying Were Rabbit that stalks the town with floppy ears and a massive cotton tail. The wit level builds as the Were Rabbit trashes more vegetables, and the final scene trounces Peter Jackson's King Kong effortlessly. A greatly entertaining example of how animation can work for all ages.

7. [b]Munich[/b].

The second Spielberg effort on the list. Coming out of the theater, I was not initially a fan. Further consideration has made me appreciate just how accomplished it is. This is a tale of a bunch of Israeli agents hired to travel over Europe and avenge the Munich 1972 massacre of the Israeli Olympic squad by a Palestinian terror group. Foremost, it is a first rate spy movie and thriller in those moments. Secondly and more importantly, it tells of the terrifying cost of revenge, the creeping moral compromises made in the process of revenge, and most importantly, how those relate to the conception of home. Namely, home is a concept that is dear to all, but how do we envision it and what we will do to protect it ? Just like Minority Report, this is a thinking action movie that succeeds in both departments. The cast, especially Eric Bana and Daniel Craig, is quite good and the technical credits are great, led by Janusz Kaminski's typically astonishing cinematography.

8. [b]Tsotsi[/b].

A South African film which one the best foreign language Oscar (the language is a weird blend of Afrikaans, Zulu and other African languages with a sprinkling of English). The story is of a tough ganster in the Johannesburg townships who carjacks a car with a baby in the backseat. He then realizes that he cares for the poor little guy and starts to make a better world for him. Interesting developments and character changes proceed from there. The two main characters do a great job, and the film progresses credibly from a thuggish Tsotsi to a compassionate Tsotsi at the end. More importantly, it treats him with open eyes, allowing us to the see the good and the bad in the troubled young man. The redemption is not total, but there is enough hope in the story that we believe better things await the young man and South Africa too.

9. [b]Pride & Prejudice[/b].

Yours truly adores Jane Austen, especially this her best known and most accomplished work. The new adaptation would have seemed unnecessary given the momentous versions that have come before, but it makes itself relevant by taking a different tack. The story zings along, with Keira Knightley providing much of the pep as Elizabeth Bennett. The camera work is fluid and energetic, not the stodgy long takes and fixed shots one thinks of with this genre. The combined package is an upbeat retelling of the great story which neither cuts too much nor sticks closely to the path blazed by other versions. If you like romances, period pieces, or Jane Austen, then you owe it yourself to see this one.

10. [b]Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room[/b].

A well done distillation of a very complex subject into an entertaining and informative film. The monstrous hubris of the Enron founders is laid bare, as is the complicity of the many who kept the fraud going. Some of the deeds of the company just have to be seen to be believed (one word epitomizes: California!). The ending in a total implosion is a sad burden to bear for the thousands of innocent employees, but a fitting demise for those who thought they were smarter than the law or their investors they believed they could string along.