http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2003/12/27/best_movies_sz/index.html
I can't say I've seen enough of these movies to have an opinion. Return of the King was pretty good. Master and Commander was good. I laughed at Old School and Bad Santa. Damn, my memory only goes back about 3 weeks.
Man, Charles Taylor of Salon has a hate on for Gus Van Sant's Elephant. In his top ten list, he gives a special "Emperor's New Clothes Award" to Elephant. In his original review of Elephant, Taylor called it "part exploitation flick" and said that the shower scene between the two boys who eventually shoot up the school was only in the film because Van Sant is gay. I couldn't believe he said that. It's one thing to hate a film; it's another thing use the "gays are dirty pedophiles" card. Taylor writes of the homoerotic encounter prior to the shooting, "It's pretty clear that the only reason the kiss exists in "Elephant" is that Van Sant couldn't resist watching two teenage boys make out." Taylor's remarks are just downright offensive and offer nothing in the way of an evaluation of the film's aesthetics.
Not only does he play the gay card, he also plays the French card: "It may be true, as has been charged, that the French loved "Elephant" because it conforms to their idea of America as a mindless, gun-ridden charnel house. The movie, though, is too dead to be a diatribe." Hey, Chuck, have you forgotten any stereotypes? Left anyone out? Obviously this film really tweaked Taylor, who is normally, I think, a reliable source. But someone should have taken him to task on his review of Elephant.
I saw Elephant, and I'd like to offer a rejoinder to Taylor's review. Basically, Elephant is a minimalist retelling of the Columbine massacre. I think too many reviewers have been blinded by Van Sant's own explanation of the title, and have neglected the evidence for a different reading available in the film. Van Sant says the title refers to Alan Clarke's film about violence in Northern Ireland. That's fine, and that allusion works here.
However, Van Sant's movie makes several references to animals (the students talk about how a farmer would identify a gay "ram," and the film ends with one of the characters reciting "Eenie Meenie Minie Moe" -- "catch a tiger by its toe," for example). I think the title is a reference to the way in which schools are like zoos or pens for animals (humans, let us not forget, are just another animal). The extended tracking shots that follow students around the fenced-in playground and through the corridors of the school only reinforce the caged isolation that high school really is. The boredom and the isolation and the forms of torture that these kids endure provides all the "explanation" one needs for something like Columbine: It's not guns or music or video games or even bigoted notions of homosexuality that "cause" something like Columbine. Columbine is just one of those random outbursts by an agitated animal, like an enraged elephant or tiger that kills its keeper/trainer/Roy.
In other words, I think Elephant offers a post-humanist explanation for Columbine, an explanation that presents all of the sociological probabilities but rests on the only certainty: Man is an animal, and sometimes caged animals go berserk. "If he hollers let him go."
1:58:38 PM 
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