Some of my favorite films.

	The Machinist An insomniac bears an unexplained guilt, and his shrinking world is filtered through an expressionistic color palette of shadowy blue and Spanish black, muted by otherworldly theremin orchestration, and defined by the chilly, inexorable plot of writer Scott Kosar's excellent Kafkaesque screenplay. An empathy with mental and physical pain runs like an electric current throughout this film, perhaps informed by the suffering that went into making it: to play Trevor Reznik, Christian Bale starved himself, losing 62 pounds before the producers intervened, and director Brad Anderson directed much of the film while lying on a gurney with a hurt back. Shot in and around Barcelona, this film's settings seem archetypal yet slightly alien, and gentle interludes follow harsh blue-collar scenes like waves of anesthesia following an accident. 2004
	The Station Agent By moving away to a small, abandoned train depot he's inherited, quiet Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage), in near-rural New Jersey seeks to escape humanity but is instead besieged by it: the troubled Olivia (Patricia Clarkson), who nearly runs him over—twice—and the fast-talking but sincere Joe Oramas (Bobby Cannavale). Subtle and clever, this film won the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Award for 2003.
	Spirited Away Hailed by Pixar's John Lasseter, this anime masterpiece is about Chichiro, a petulant ten-year-old girl who moves to a new neighborhood with her family. The apparently abandoned theme park they discover opens up into a lost, beautiful place: its empty restaurants teem with food, lanterns are meticulously switched on at twilight, rain falls on the polished wood of a bridge, and a bath house, governed by the laws of a bygone age, looms out of the fog. Chichiro, unlike Disney heroines, who tend to either weep or burst into show-stopping dance numbers, evolves believably as the film presents moments of wonder—the rustling collapse of an army of origami paper birds, the doppler shift of a train bell sounding over the surreal and flooded landscape—with a poet's quiet authority. Go here to read an interview this film's beloved and reclusive director, Hayao Miyazaki, gave to the New Yorker's Margaret Talbot, who correctly observes that "surrendering to Miyazaki's films is a distinct pleasure." 2002
	Solaris After a group therapy session in which black-clad people describe how they are dealing with a recent public tragedy (Steven Soderbergh completed his script just weeks after the September 11th attacks), Dr. Chris Klein (George Clooney) rides home along rapid transit of sleek near-future Chicago, in which a continuous rain falls. Agents from the now-privatized space agency ask him to go to their foundering vessel, sent to assess the economic and energy potential of Solaris, a planet that "seems to be studying us." His mission: to salvage the ship, and bring back its crew. "Is that what everybody wants?" asks Dr. Klein. In answer to his question is only the haunting music (by Cliff Martinez, who also did great work in the film "Traffic"), swelling slowly and beautifully as he completes his voyage, depicted in understated, spectacular footage, which in moments handily outdoes Stanley Kubrick's endless "2001: A Space Odyssey." The texture of what he finds—a vast ship quietly humming with pneumatic machinery, the soft presence of the beautiful Natascha McElhone, as Rhea, his late wife, and the shifting, Lava-Light surface of the planet and its glowing plasma tendrils playing beneath the drifting ship—is the stuff of masterpiece. Appreciating it may require a relaxed, meditative state of mind: New Yorker critic David Denby, having a bad day, complained of this film's "electronic music that arrives in prolonged slabs, pinning your brain to the base of your skull." 2002
	Donnie Darko Set to Tears for Fear's unusually substantial 1985 single "Head Over Heels," the back-to-school scene brought a houseful of my noisy guests to an awed hush. That Richard Kelly has spun such a beautiful movie, with its slow-motion amateur dancers, Fibonacci spirals, and suburban secrets, out of such a ridiculous plot (it will not be giving too much away to reveal that the hero learns he must be impaled by a jet engine to save the world) announces the arrival of a talented director. 2001
	Remember the Titans It is the early 1970s, and mandatory racial integration comes uneasily to this Virginia high school football program, divided into white and African-American teams. A determined coach (Denzel Washington), confronting entitled white players, school administrators, and citizens resistant to change, forges a winning football team, overturns a Jim Crow racist sports system, and provides an unforgettable lesson in the power of courage. Heavy-handed stuff, in which lurks the unexpected: the coach's little girl (Hayden Panettiere) chews out the players for knocking over her card table, player Sunshine (Kip Pardue), an outsider from California, teases the captain by pretending to hit on him. Filmed clearly enough to be instructive, great game scenes show the trajectories of both the ball and the player's emotions, and training exercises, like the jog, jump down, push up, and jump back up drill. 2000
	Strangers with Candy: The First Season As a 46-year old recovering junkie and ex-prostitute going back to school as a high-school freshman ("High school sophomore, if I keep these grades up," she says sprightly, pointing to a paper graded "D"), Jerri Blank (played by the beautiful-in-real-life Amy Sedaris) makes all the wrong choices, but for the right reasons. In the first episode, she makes friends by doling out drugs, sending popular Poppy Downs to the hospital, where a male orderly mistakes Jerri for Poppy's uncle. The nine remaining episodes, details of which you can find on jerriblank.com, are packed with equally ridiculous scenes. My favorite: Jerri, cast as "Mama" in an all-white production of "A Raisin in the Sun,"—"I'm so right for this part in the school play. I wonder how much it pays,"—forgets her lines, gestures to a giant cardboard sun and raisin, and watches an errant cable inadvertently hoist her drunk mother above the audience. Each implausible plot overflows with comic detail: a purportedly educational tape entitled "Retardation: a Celebration"; an elaborate golf-themed high school dance, "Bogey Nights," with plaid-wearing couples weighed down by golf equipment; and a guitar ballad with the lyrics, "You are large and quite obese / Fat fat fat, fat fat fat" that constantly sounds over any nearby speaker during the episode in which Jerri tries to lose weight ("I can't believe that's the number one song!"). With an entertaining audio commentary by Sedaris and fellow-series-creators Paul Dinello (who co-wrote and plays art teacher Geoffrey Jellineck) and now-Daily-Show-famous Stephen Colbert (who plays, with magnificent condescension, Jerri's history teacher, Mr. Noblet). 1999
	The Matrix In a subtly green-tinged world, a faceless computer neophyte (Keanu Reeves) discovers an appalling truth. The Wachowski Brother's finest movie succeeds because of the teamwork behind it. Don Davis's expertly mixed music speeds us from cable to simulacrum, Bill Pope's penetrating cinematography moves between a subtly awry office dream world and the ruins of 2199, and a crew of 100+ digital animators create the 360º slow-motion combat scenes that rewrite cinema for the twenty-first century. Near-perfect story, picture, sound, and action, mesh to make a movie without equal. (Its impossible-to-follow-up heroic ending doomed the lavish but shallow Matrix sequels.) 1999
	The Straight Story In depicting Iowa farmer Alvin Straight's odd tractor journey from Iowa to Wisconsin, director David Lynch approaches the Midwest—appropriately—like an explorer landing on the moon: he pans across the back yard of an overweight neighbor arranging her morning sunbath refreshments with an almost scientific curiosity. As we slowly meet townspeople, few who have escaped damage from life or time, the camera lingers lovingly over fields and roads to give this quiet comedy a lasting depth. 1999 I have more to say about this film here.
	Dark City Its clocks stop, its trains shudder to a halt, and its people fall asleep on their feet: this mysterious city, frozen in an anachronistic era—of automats with perfectly typed cardboard labels for its food; of steam off its streets, canals, and pools; of vertiginous billboards, seedy hotels, and closed alleyways—is patrolled by a doctor (Keifer Sutherland), Daniel Paul Schreber. A brilliant German judge of the same name went mad at the beginning of the last century, claiming his thoughts, identity, and even his apartment were being changed by alien beings. 1998
	The Truman Show Even the sky of Seahaven (Seaside, Florida) seems amiss—it's dome-shaped, and a light labeled "Sirius - 9 Canis Major" falls onto the street below. Blinds, partially obstructing our view of the pier Truman (Jim Carey) just happens to be walking across, open with a mechanized whir. The customer at the newspaper kiosk, when spotted, furtively hurries away. Larger hints of the true nature of Truman's flawless, sunlit world follow: a child among a full bus of silent passengers whispering, "Is that…?" as Truman boards; joggers appearing out of nowhere, each incongruously wearing both a race number and a radio headset; the crowd of pedestrians each simultaneously wincing and holding their right ears when Truman's car has a radio mishap. Peter Weir, working off a deliciously paranoid script by Andrew Niccol, creates an artificial world of intricate and disturbing beauty. 1998
	Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery Alternating effortlessly between gray-toothed lady's man Austin Powers and neurotic Nehru-jacketed Dr. Evil, Mike Meyers sends up three decades worth of Bond movies with bits like an unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism and a father-son support group, over which Carrie Fisher, in a delightful deadpan cameo, loses control. 1997
	The Brothers McMullen Tough, but naïve and funny, New Jersey native Edward Burns, who wrote, directed, and also plays Barry, one of the brothers, carries this, the first of a series of movies about the trials of the working class Irish-Catholic guy. The girlfriend problems, guilt, and gifts of three close-knit brothers entwine into a good story but the brothers McMullen seem implausibly compelled to talk to each other—constantly—about their feelings. The result is, in the words of another Netflix reviewer, "a chick flick for guys." 1995
	Star Trek: Generations The fulfilled promise of a shimmering nexus in which desire becomes reality, the vivid sunset and explosion of a man-made supernova, and the campiness of the Klingon sisters ("Human females are so repulsive!") make this film the strongest of the Star Trek series. Light, by turns sparkling, blue, or orange, plays a major role here, making the question, raised by some reviews, about this DVD's image quality important. For what it's worth, the image and audio quality of the DVD I rented were perfectly good. William Shatner's Captain Kirk lingers a little too long, but Stewart's Picard and Spiner's Data mesh seamlessly with Malcolm McDowell's Dr. Tolian Soran, who delivers lines like, "Without my research, the trilithium is worthless, as are your plans to reconquer the Klingon Empire," with catchy arrogance. 1994
	Black Robe Vast and rugged, the wilderness of Quebec's Saguenay River is the true star of this somber film, which measures out the appallingly hard journey of 17th-century Catholic missionary Father Laforgue (Lothaire Bluteau) in scenes depicting great courage amid awesome natural beauty. 1991 I have more to say about this film here.
	Ferris Bueller's Day Off A former Chicago suburbanite, I can attest that this rite of passage, the senior-in-high-school-ditching-a-day-in-May-to-drive-to-Chicago, indeed occurred, although seldom with fake five-star restaurant reservations, phony answering machine outgoing messages ("This is the Sloane residence. There's been a.. [sob]..death in the family."), and a cross- Loop parade led by an oompah band. John Hughs's mania for perfection brings an idealized, clockwork version of mid-80's Chicago vividly to life, and Edie McClurg's stoutly inefficient secretary, Grace (at one point, she can be seen quietly sniffing white-out) provokes helpless laughter. 1986
	After Hours With perfect camerawork, lighting, and music transforming seemingly pedestrian material—Joe Minion's flawed screenplay about a soft-voiced male office worker (Griffin Dunne), leaving a now-museum-piece workplace of chattering typewriters and meets a beautiful woman (Rosanna Arquette) at a coffee shop—director Martin Scorsese's comedic masterwork imbues late-night mid-80's SoHo with the unmistakable tang of imminent revelation. 1985
	Evil Under the Sun Flawless ensemble work makes the most of Anthony Shaffer's light and witty screenplay. Sylvia Miles, as Myra Gardner, wearing a series of over-the-top costumes by Anthony Powell, delivers caustic one-liners, such as, "More like a sudden attack, of gold-digging," with paint-peeling acidity. Peter Ustinov's Poirot emits a veritable orchestra of tones, from piccolo, when he advises a starchy British secretary she should pronounce his name "as if about to bestow a kiss," to basso profundo: "Or, that you are lying." John Lanchbery's virtuosic Cole Porter arrangements achieve moments of unexpected glamour. Hugh Casson's effortlessly elegant title sketches, Christopher Challis's masterful cinematography (the shot of the clifftop with "no one there" pausing long enough for us to hear wind through the pines): each aspect of this production so exceeds its predecessor, the serviceable Ustinov-as-Poirot-starring "Death on the Nile," that this film seems to emanate from a golden age, inspiring legions of gay fans with its frivolous cocktails, campy music, and Nicholas Clay's skimpy bathing suit. 1982
	Diva A young bike messenger (Frederic Andrei) worships an opera diva's music with near-sexual passion, even as he illegally records her concert. Director Jean-Jacques Beineix's consummately French use of symbols will delight any literature student: for example, the bundle of dirty money tossed disdainfully out the window lands next to a blind accordion player, whose music turns out to be what has been playing all along in the earphone of Priest, the punk assassin (Dominique Pinon). C'est bon! (This film is one of my Paris favorites.) 1981
	The Return of the Pink Panther This airy, unsurpassed amusement remains, even today, the stylistic and commercial peak of the Pink Panther franchise. Unfazed by his surroundings, the intrepid, incompetent Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) earnestly bumbles his way through a series of well-choreographed disasters. He drives his car into a swimming pool (twice), has trouble with the "pheune" (phone), and then efficiently demolishes a vacuum cleaner, a steam room, and, famously, a hotel bathroom. Exuding an agreeably 1970's mix of glamour and good spirit are the lovely Lady Lytton (Catherine Schell) and the film's magnificently clichéd locations, Morocco, Nice, and Gstaad: "Today, a paradise in the Swiss Alps, tomorrow, a wasteland," as Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Herbert Lom, in top eye-twitching form) dourly predicts. 1975