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Best Films of 2002 (alphabetically by director, selected from films which had their first Chicago screening in 2002)

Top 5 features:

• Time Out [L'Emploi du temps] - Laurent Cantet
• Scratch - Doug Pray
• *Corpus Callosum - Michael Snow
• Russian Ark - Alexander Sokurov
• What Time Is It There? - Tsai Ming-liang

Next 5 features:

• In Praise of Love - Jean-Luc Godard
• Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys - Michael Haneke
• The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat) - Zacharias Kunuk
• Sobibor, Oct. 14, 1943, 4 P.M. - Claude Lanzmann
• Hukkle - György Pálfi

Special Mention (& perhaps the best of all films seen in '02):  

• (...) Reels 1-4 - Stan Brakhage

Top 5 shorts:

• Inferno - Paul Kosoulides
• Reaper, Sheeper, Treasure Seeker - Dave Lieber
• Correcto! Incorrecto! - Matt Rodriguez
• Plain English - John Standiford
• In Order Not To Be Here - Deborah Stratman

• Stan Brakhage screenings in April, especially (...) Reels 1-4 & Anticipation of the Night
• Michelangelo Antonioni's Eclipse (AMMI, NYC) & L'Avventura (DVD)
• Alexander Dovzhenko retrospective (Film Center) esp. Earth
• Kon Ichikawa retrospective (Film Center) esp. An Actor's Revenge
• Andrzej Munk retrospective (Walter Reade Theater, NYC) esp. Passenger
• Béla Tarr's Sátántangó (Facets)
• Harold Lloyd on the rise in Safety Last (Gateway Theater)
• 70mm print of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (Music Box)
• The Young Girls of Rochefort - Jacques Demy (Music Box)
• Lonesome - Pál Fejös (Doc Films)
• Hans Richter's Rhythmus 21 & Ghosts Before Breakfast [Vormittagsspuk] (Film Center)
• Jon Jost's digital video Muri Romani (Film Center)
• The Sleepy Time Gal - Christopher Munch (Facets)
• reading Victor Grauer's Montage, Realism and the Act of Vision
• Jeanne Dielman - Chantal Akerman (Block Museum)
• Block Cinema's programming in general; in particular, Godard's Histoire(s) du cinéma (at least parts of it -- see below)
• Ticket of No Return - Ulrike Ottinger (Doc Films)
• the triptych at the end of Abel Gance's Napoleon (CATV), and his short Au Secours! (DVD)
• Same Player Shoots Again (short) - Wim Wenders (Facets)
• Daniel Day Lewis in Gangs of New York
• the new print of Singin' in the Rain @ Music Box
• news that 2003 will see the release of Criterion's 2-DVD set of Stan Brakhage films

Things that made me groan at the cinema in 2002:

• the computer glitch that wiped out most of the films listed in September's Doings
• going to see Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country at the LaSalle Theater, discovering it was a 16mm pan-and-scan print, walking out
• the video projectors at the Chicago Underground Film Festival (Landmark Century Centre), which either squished, cropped, or otherwise seriously fucked up the image
• Block Cinema failing to get parts 5 & 6, or subtitled copies of parts 7 & 8, of Godard's Histoire(s) du cinéma (*but see above)
• Spike Jonze's Adaptation
• increasing frustration with filmmakers/critics who fail to utilize/appreciate the vast potential of film, and treat movies as the equivalent of, or a convenient alternative to, reading screenplays or watching theater