Well, here I am one year later writing my second retrospective. A lot of things have changed since this time last year; I have a website to immediately post this on, I’m in college with significantly less access to movies (seeing as how we have three movie screens in Tuscaloosa), and the wonderful world of cinema has certainly given us a lot more to be proud of. Ask any critic or film buff and they’ll tell you that 2002 has been one for the history books. Not only did more people go to the movies this year than any other year in history, with hugely popular blockbusters like Spider-Man, Star Wars, and The Lord of the Rings raking it in at the box-office, but there seem to be more critically acclaimed, award-caliber films out this award season than any year in memory. It was truly a great year to love movies, no matter what your tastes, and I am here to share with you my favorite movies of 2002. While 2002 has finished up with a barrage of artful, award-worthy films, you might remember that earlier in the year, the studios were cranking out their usual crop of big-budget remakes, sequels and pop culture adaptations. This summer saw sequels to Men In Black, Austin Powers, Star Wars, and Silence of the Lambs. This year’s sequels had its usual flat retreads (Men In Black II), but we actually began to see filmmakers take advantage of some great original material and put a whole new spin on it, as in Brett Ratner’s fantastically creepy thriller Red Dragon. We also saw other unusual anomalies this year, like an intelligent teen comedy (Orange County), a non-sex-based teen romance (A Walk to Remember), a Black comedy that doesn’t degrade Black people (Barbershop), and a comic book action movie with a brain and a heart (Spider-Man)! Is it possible that Hollywood has actually bothered to improve the quality of its movies rather than lower the expectations of its audience? At last, the industry has taken a step forward and the audiences of America with it. Oh wait, I forgot…Scooby Doo made $60 million. Oh well, so much for progress. Seriously though, I can’t tell you how excited I am that the studios are finally bothering to make good movies and I’m even more excited that so many people went to see them. Most of the movies on my list this year did very well at the box office, which is a rather unusual feet since my tastes and the tastes of the American masses are seldom the same. All in all, I wouldn’t mind another year like this one, and it’s left me with so many great memories that I can look back and say that it was all worth it to be a movie fan in 2002. Now comes the hard part. See, since there were so many great movies this year, this makes a top ten list once again impossible and a top twenty list still damn near impossible. I have tried my best to assemble what I feel are the twenty absolute best films of the year that I can’t imagine going the rest of my life without seeing again. Even with that strenuous criterion, I have had to leave several of my favorite films out, so I will be having an even larger Honorable Mention section this year. My top twenty films are all absolutely fantastic and if there is a film on the list you haven’t seen, you are seriously missing out if you don’t see it. For each film, I have included a brief summary of why the film is great and why I ranked it where I did, as well as a link to my original review of the film. If you disagree with any of my choices, well, too bad it’s my site…but I would love to hear from you as to why you disagree so that I can quickly e-mail you back and tell you just how incredibly wrong you are. So if that’s all cleared up, here are my Top Twenty Films of 2002:
20) K-19: The Widowmaker
19) 8 Mile
18) Catch Me If You Can
17) Frailty
16) Road to Perdition
15) Insomnia
14) The Hours
13) Gangs of New York
12) Red Dragon
11) Brotherhood of the Wolf
10) One Hour Photo
9) Chicago
8) Signs
7) 25th Hour
6) Punch-Drunk Love
5) The Pianist
4) The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
3) About Schmidt
2) Minority Report
1) Adaptation
Honorable Mentions