Best & Worst films of 2006

The Best

The Queen - If Helen Mirren doesn't win a Oscar for her performance, she's been robbed. She is brilliant as an emotionally cold and out of touch QEII.

An Inconvenient Truth - Terrifying and heartbreaking all at once. I had no idea Al Gore had so much charisma or so much passion.

The Bridge - A catalog of suicides off the Golden Gate Bridge, it's not as depressing as you might think. In the end you leave feeling kind of uplifted. Hard to explain, you should see it for yourself.

The Pursuit of Happyness - I cringed at how many bad breaks this poor guy endured, but I bought every minute of Will Smith as an amazingly motivated dad trying to improve his son's life.

Honorable mentions

Cars (sweet, and I'm a sucker for anything by Pixar); Superman Returns (the return of the "big" movie); Flushed Away (for the frog commandos alone!); Talladegah Nights (you have to see it to believe it)

The Worst

Marie Antoinette - What I thought was going to be an ingenious blending of fashion, history and pop music turned out to be a grueling art school film.

Nacho Libre - I loved Jack Black in The School of Rock, so I thought this would be gross, but hilarious. Turns out it was just gross.

The Curse of the Golden Flower - In a palace so colorful I thought I had fallen into a kaleidoscope, a queen consort is being poisoned by her king. She finds out and plots revenge with his first son (also her lover). This is King Lear again writ large. What is it with Asian directors and King Lear?