Children of Men
Directed by Alfonso Cuaron
2006
It looked like science fiction in 2006 and looks like the news now: Cuaron's roaming takes put you inside a collapsing Britain, and the ambush in the car is astonishing.
★ 8.7
Browse by time · year
2006
Showing 91 works across all media from 2006
Pan's Labyrinth
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
2006
Del Toro put a child's fairy tale and Franco's Spain in the same film and refused to make either one safer: the creature with eyes in its hands follows people home.
★ 8.5
The Lives of Others
Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
2006 · Germany
It made an entire country look at its own surveillance state: a Stasi officer listens in on a playwright's apartment, and the last line of the film lands like a blow.
★ 8.3
The Road
2006 · 287 pages
Pushing a shopping cart south through a burned gray America, a man and his boy hide from people who eat other people. The talk between them is the tenderest thing McCarthy ever wrote.
★ 8.3
The Departed
Directed by Martin Scorsese
2006
Scorsese remade a Hong Kong thriller and made it entirely his own: a cop inside the mob, a mobster inside the police, and a pitch that never once relaxes.
★ 8.2
The Wire · 2006
Back to Black
2006 · From Back to Black
Ronson cut it at Daptone with the Dap-Kings, sixties girl-group machinery rebuilt around a voice in ruins.
★ 7.9
Rehab
2006 · From Back to Black
Cut live to tape at Daptone in Brooklyn with the Dap-Kings, and it took Record and Song of the Year.
★ 7.8
International Player's Anthem (I Choose You)
2006 · From Underground Kingz
A Willie Hutch loop left alone at the top, and Andre 3000's verse reportedly returned with the drums stripped off.
★ 7.6
The Prestige
Directed by Christopher Nolan
2006
Nolan built a film about magicians the way a magician builds a trick, and tells you so in the first minute: two rivals destroy each other over one illusion.
★ 7.2
Casino Royale
Directed by Martin Campbell
2006
It stripped Bond back to a man who bleeds: the parkour chase in the opening twenty minutes told audiences immediately that the gadgets and the winking were gone.
★ 7.1
SexyBack
2006 · From FutureSex / LoveSounds
Timberlake sang it in a distorted low register borrowed from Prince, and it held number one for seven weeks.
★ 7.0
Letters from Iwo Jima
Directed by Clint Eastwood
2006
Eastwood made two films about the same battle, and the Japanese one is the better: shot almost entirely in Japanese, with a general nobody in America had heard of.
★ 6.9
Irreplaceable
2006
Ne-Yo pitched it as country, written with Shania Twain in mind; Beyoncé turned it into ten weeks at number one.
★ 6.8
When You Were Young
2006 · From Sam's Town
Twenty minutes for melody and title, by Flowers' account, and Flood and Moulder gave it Born to Run scale.
★ 6.7
United 93
Directed by Paul Greengrass
2006
Greengrass cast real air-traffic controllers and military officers as themselves, and shot in real time: the least exploitative film about September 11 because it refuses every note of uplift.
★ 6.6
You Know I'm No Good
2006 · From Back to Black
Ronson cut it at Daptone in Brooklyn with the Dap-Kings, Winehouse writing about infidelity and offering no apology.
★ 6.5
What You KnowT.I.
What You Know
2006
DJ Toomp turned a Roberta Flack interpolation into a synth fanfare, and T.I. won a Grammy for the performance.
★ 6.4
The Omnivore's Dilemma
2006 · 450 pages
Pollan traces four meals backward: a drive-through, Whole Foods, Joel Salatin's farm, and a pig he shoots himself. Carbon isotopes reveal Americans are built of corn. He made provenance a mass preoccupation.
★ 6.3
Borat
Directed by Larry Charles
2006
Baron Cohen stayed in character in front of real Americans who had no idea, and they told him what they actually thought: the funniest film of its decade and the most uncomfortable.
★ 6.3
I Will Follow You Into the Dark
2006 · From Plans
One microphone, mono, caught during a studio break when the headphones failed, and Gibbard's breath before the first chord.
★ 6.3
Hips Don't Lie
Shakira and Wyclef Jean
2006
Jean and Duplessis rebuilt his 'Dance Like This' around Jerry Rivera's salsa trumpet line; number one in eighteen countries.
★ 6.2
Before He Cheats
2006
Tompkins and Kear wrote it hoping Gretchen Wilson would cut it; Underwood's version stayed sixty-four weeks on the Hot 100.
★ 6.1
Promiscuous
2006
Nicknamed the BlackBerry Song because every line could be text-messaged, and Timbaland trades verses instead of just producing.
★ 5.9
Hustlin'
2006
Produced by the Runners in 2005, it drew bids from Bad Boy and Murder Inc. before Def Jam won.
★ 5.8
Young Folks
2006
Yttling whistled a placeholder melody, ran it through tape delay, and kept it; Bergsman answers line for line.
★ 5.8
Blow the Whistle
2006
Lil Jon's beat never cracked the Hot 100, yet it became Too Short's signature, later borrowed by Drake and Saweetie.
★ 5.7
Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
2006
The band's early demos spread on burned CDs and file-sharing sites, passed around by fans rather than the band, long before any label appeared.
★ 5.6
Dani California
2006 · From Stadium Arcadium
One character, tracked across three albums to her death, and a Frusciante outro built on Purple Haze.
★ 5.6
I Write Sins Not Tragedies
2006
Pizzicato cello, a title lifted from Douglas Coupland, and a circus wedding video that won Video of the Year.
★ 5.6
The Queen
Directed by Stephen Frears
2006
Helen Mirren plays a reigning monarch during the worst week of her reign and makes her sympathetic without softening her: the week after Diana died, reconstructed almost hour by hour.
★ 5.5
FutureSex / LoveSounds
2006
The producer Timbaland built most of the tracks in two halves, so the songs change shape halfway through instead of repeating a chorus.
★ 5.5
The Looming Tower
Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
2006 · 541 pages
The book that made 9/11 comprehensible. Wright traces al-Qaeda to an Egyptian educator radicalized in small-town Colorado, closing on the FBI's bin Laden hunter, dead in the towers he was guarding.
★ 5.4
Chasing Cars
2006
Lightbody's father compared him to a dog chasing a car; a Grey's Anatomy finale sent it worldwide.
★ 5.4
Half of a Yellow Sun
2006 · 543 pages
Biafra secedes from Nigeria in 1967, and Adichie follows a houseboy, a radical professor, and twin sisters from talk of independence into blockade, famine, and flight. Her grandfathers both died in it.
★ 5.4
Ridin'
2006
3.2 million ringtones sold, a Grammy won, and Play-N-Skillz's beat under a hook about racial profiling.
★ 5.3
Gravity
2006
Alicia Keys sings backing behind Pino Palladino's bass, and Mayer called it the most important song he has written.
★ 5.3
What Goes Around...Comes Around
2006 · From FutureSex / LoveSounds
Danja's guitar riff started it in the studio; Timberlake's third straight number one turns betrayal into slow burn.
★ 5.3
Phantom LimbThe Shins
Phantom Limb
2006 · From Wincing the Night Away
Mercer sketched a young lesbian couple stuck in a small town, then floated it on Chiccarelli's widescreen jangle.
★ 5.2
Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
2006
Never a single, still platinum: Mayer, Steve Jordan and Pino Palladino playing a relationship that both parties know is finished.
★ 5.0
Inside Man
Directed by Spike Lee
2006
Spike Lee's biggest commercial hit is also his slyest: a rehearsed crew takes hostages inside a Wall Street bank, Denzel Washington negotiates, and Jodie Foster turns up representing somebody nobody can place.
★ 4.7
Hey There Delilah
2006
Higgenson told a steeplechase runner he had written a song about her, then spent a year making it true.
★ 4.5
The Last King of Scotland
Directed by Kevin Macdonald
2006
Forest Whitaker learned Swahili and studied Idi Amin's speeches for months: the film watches him through a young Scottish doctor who mistakes charisma for something safe to be near.
★ 4.4
The Crane Wife
2006
The title song is in three parts, and they are scattered across the record out of order. The story is a Japanese folk tale.
★ 4.3
Waiting on the World to Change
2006
Steve Jordan on drums, Pino Palladino on bass, and a Grammy for a chorus about feeling politically stuck.
★ 3.9
Loud Pipes
2006
Stroud's guitar over Mast's programming, not a word sung, and a gold single that landed in MLB 07: The Show.
★ 3.7
The United States is the last country in the world that Japan should fight.
Letters from Iwo Jima · 2006
Up Against the Wall
2006
Seven minutes long, never a single, self-produced by the trio, and the longest slow burn on Writer's Block.
★ 3.7
Little Miss Sunshine · 2006
The Wire · 2006
A real loser is somebody who's so afraid of not winning they don't even try.
Little Miss Sunshine · 2006
Smack That
2006
Akon met Eminem at an Obie Trice session, flew to Detroit's 54 Sound, and left with five weeks at number two.
★ 3.5