Dragons, dark dancers, dreams and duds

>> 2000's top 10, plus the overrated and the truly terrible

by MATTHEW HAYS

1. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Ang Lee took a sharp genre turn with this film and it pays off. Great action sequences, beautiful use of colour and cinematography, fun to the final credits.

2. Nurse Betty Renée Zellweger delivers a wondrous performance as Betty, a small-town waitress who, upon witnessing a murder, becomes convinced she's a nurse existing in the universe of her favourite soap opera. Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock round out the exemplary cast.

3. Dancer in the Dark Lars von Trier's latest divided just about everyone, winning laurels at Cannes while drawing disdain from others. Björk and Catherine Deneuve rise to the occasion in this, Trier's bizarre take on the traditional musical. Joel Grey also appears. You may end up hating this, but it's undeniably different.

4. Chuck & Buck An utterly hilarious comedy about pubescent infatuation revisited, starring a stuck-in-suspended-animation Mike White (who also wrote the screenplay). Very strange indeed, darkly hilarious and somehow touching.

5. The Virgin Suicides Sofia Coppola stepped out of the shadow of pops with her feature debut, a breathtaking look at a legion of daughters intent on doing themselves in. A haunting story matched by brilliant art direction, The Virgin Suicides is a dream-like masterpiece, told from a splintered and constantly shifting perspective.

6. Requiem for a Dream Director Darren Aronofsky returns with this adaptation of the work of Hubert Selby Jr. (Last Exit To Brooklyn). The film follows the harrowing journeys of four different addicts and their coinciding breakdowns. Most noteworthy is Ellen Burstyn, who should be nominated for an Oscar for this work.

7. You Can Count on Me Kenneth Lonergan's screenplay confounds our every expectation--and does so seemingly without effort. Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo star as estranged sister and brother trying to work things out as adults, after being orphaned at a young age.

8. Maelström Denis Villeneuve's follow-up to August 32nd on Earth is a slightly more confident and even stranger riff on fate and auto accidents. This one rightly leads the pack in Genie nominations.

9. Humanité Bruno Dumont's profile of a man investigating the murder of a young girl is unsettling and utterly unlike anything you've ever seen. Dumont throws a wrench into the editing machine, allowing the film a deliberate, hypnotic pace.

10. Chicken Run Nick Park returns triumphantly with this film about a group of chickens trying to invent a flying machine so they can escape the slaughterhouse. Featuring the voices of Mel Gibson and Jane Horrocks, Chicken Run manages to enthrall both kids and adults.



The overrated: This year saw a number of films that, for my money, didn't quite make the count, but still managed to wow critics and audiences. Erin Brockovich, for one, felt like a warmed-over China Syndrome with a series of corny one-liners thrown in. If there is a performance Oscar to be given here, I suggest it goes to Julia Roberts' push-up bra. Almost Famous had its moments, but really, this was not a very carefully scripted film. Also, Kate Hudson got a few too many raves for an adequate, but hardly remarkable, turn as a groupie.



The downright horrendous: Clint Eastwood hit rock-bottom with the geriatric astronaut movie Space Cowboys, full of the kind of yuk-yuks we can all do without. Despite their stellar budgets, Red Planet and Mission to Mars made outer space look downright dull. Horrors! Even Roman Polanski, the man behind Rosemary's Baby, wasn't in tune with the recent horror renaissance--his Ninth Gate sucked, big time. The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas should have stayed in Bedrock, while the teen movie Gossip was nothing to talk about.

Quills opens Friday, Dec. 15