Afternoon everybody. Farah's asked me to kick this one off, which is a bit silly considering I've been to the cinema hopelessly few times in 2006. But anyway, by far the best thing I saw this year was Haneke's "Hidden": superficially a great thriller; profoundly an indictment of middle class complacency that makes you feel a shallow intellectual lightweight for enjoying it as a great thriller. I also liked The Squid And The Whale a lot, and A Cock And Bull Story quite a lot. Michel Gondry's The Science Of Sleep was excellent too, but typical of my luck this year, it got shunted into 2007 after I'd reviewed it.
The film I had most opinions about was Borat - which, of course, I haven't seen. Maybe you could tell me what it's really like?

(In no particular order, sure I've forgotten loads):

'The Departed' blew me away, (though Leonardo De C's unflashy, imploding performance far better, for me, than Jack's ham), Scorcese raising the benchmark yet again!

'The Squid and the Octopus', superb, moving cinema, hugely under-rated Jeff Daniels an emotional car-crash in front of our eyes.

'Syriana' and 'Good Night and Good Luck', both expertly crafted and politically timely, the former as fierce as the latter was elegant.

'The Notorious Betty Page' - naughty but nice and surprisingly charming. The one glaring ommission, I felt, from your list.

'United 93' - silenced a rowdy audience who left speechless, hearts pounding in their veins.

'Casino Royale' - who ever expected a new Bond film to be any good at all, never mind this good?

This year I have really made an effort to see as many films as possible (having been a bit slack in recent years) and have been pleasantly surprised by the quality.
I saw:
Volver - what can I say? Penelope Cruz shines in english-language films but when she is acting in her native spanish she postively dazzles. A poignant and supberbly crafted Amoldovar pice.

An Inconvenient Truth - I want to save the planet! Never has a documentary of a speech been so inspiring.

The Departed - Amazing. I wasn't sure I would really like a male-heavy action film but a female friend and I were on the edge of our seats the whole way through. I have never seen so many people get shot in the head before!

Casino Royale - so good I am going to see it again tonight. Daniel Craig brings real depth to the role of Bond. Can't wait to see the next one.

'THE PAGE TURNER' - a wellworn plot (staple of a thousand softcore shlockfests) given the Eliza Doolittle treatment and polished to unrecognisability. Twists, easy French elegance, Hitchcockian wit and a constant erotic tension made this one of the classiest thrillers in years - worth seeing while it's still doing the rounds.

2 excellent films in The Departed and Casino Royale are vying for my top spot this year. Being a fan of Infernal Affairs an also the books of Ian Flemming, I was delighted to see that the spirit of both was carried into the films. Will The Departed finally give Marty the Oscar he deserves. Who cares as long as he continues to produce superb films and to the naysayers who thought Daniel Craig couldn't fill Bond's shoes, Where are they now?

In Australia, we often get movies a little later than overseas, so I understand that a number of these were released abroad in 2005. Anyway, here's my top 10 of movies I saw in a cinema in 2006:

1. Brokeback Mountain
2. A History of Violence
3. Match Point
4. Cache (Hidden)
5. The Departed
6. Little Miss Sunshine
7. Bubble
8. The Inside Man
9. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
10. Kenny

Lots of good movies here, and I'll spare you reading about the obvious ones again. If you didn't like The Departed, Pan's Labyrinth and so on then you are a Satan-worshipping evildoer and should be burned at the stake etc etc.

Borat was perhaps the worst movie I've ever seen, let alone the worst of 2006. I walked out after 25 minutes, only the second time I've ever walked out of a cinema (the first was Sympatico, which I left out of sheer boredom, being careful not to wake the rest of the audience - no joke). The "joke" in Borat, which isn't really a joke at all, is that while Kazakhs are apparently a bunch of incestuous, racist, anti-Semitic misogynists, America has nothing to offer them culturally because they're worse.

The best movie I saw which hasn't been highlighted is the rather good Renaissance, France's answer to Sin City. Like most high quality French cinema it's a bit superficial, but since when has that been a bad thing? I'm already looking forward to Taxi 4 (out in Spring).