Before we start down List Row, I always feel that it’s important to lay out the titles that I think could qualify for one of my lists and that I did not see this year. After laying out the lists, I have to say that I am thrilled to look at this list of 41 films and to see so many apparently horrible movie experiences that I managed to miss this year.

Five of the titles strike me as films that I might have felt good about… or at least better than the buzz. They are Stuck on You, Hollywood Homicide, Anything Else, Looney Tunes: Back in Action and Secondhand Lions.

My Unseen Films Of 2003

A Guy Thing
Alex and Emma
Anything Else
Basic
Beyond Borders
Biker Boyz
Boat Trip
The Boss’s Daughter
Bringing Down The House
Bulletproof Monk
Chasing Papi
Cold Creek Manor
The Core
Cradle 2 The Grave
Deliver Us From Eva
Dickie Roberts: Child Star
Final Destination 2
From Justin To Kelly
Garage Days
Gods & Generals
Hollywood Homicide
Honey
How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days
The Hunted
It Runs In The Family
Jeepers Creepers 2
Le Divorce
Looney Tunes: Back in Action
Love Don’t Cost A Thing
Marci X
Masked & Anonymous
The Medallion
The Order
The Recruit
Scary Movie III
Secondhand Lions
Sinbad
Stuck on You
Timeline
Tears of The Sun
Under The Tuscan Sun

And now…

Ten Movies That You Didn’t See... But Should Have - 2003

The 10 top choices will be below, but there is a second ten that I want to acknowledge first.

I never saw Guy Maddin’s Dracula: Pages of A Virgin’s Diary, but I should have. It barely got to Los Angeles and it was gone in a flash. People who see the film seem to love it and I wish I had gotten the chance.

Film Movement started last year and has done a terrific job of getting some extra attention for some festival films that just couldn’t get proper distribution. One of my favorites, Manito, did $11,000 in its few engagements, but has showed up in the Film Movement DVD library. Another terrific film from the festival circuit is Canada’s Marion Bridge, a story about a reunion of three sisters and their sick mother that stands up as a complex, funny, earthy movie experience that sneaks up on you.

Lars Von Trier does have domestic distribution for Dogville, which for me is his best work as a director by far. The film, which premiered at Cannes last year, was scheduled for a fall release, but has been pushed into 2004, perhaps because of some heat around the silly idea that the film is somehow anti-American. A more minor work, but one that I love more deeply, is The Five Obstructions, which is one of the best films about making art ever. As far as I know, the film still doesn’t have an American distributor. But I would go a long, long way to see the movie again. Someone needs to pick it up.

Blue Car and Taking Sides are two serious movies that got distribution, but not serious releases here in America. Taking Sides scored $850,000 in the rest of the world and only $175,00 here. Blue Car barely saw daylight and managed $465,000 last summer. The films couldn’t be more different. Blue Car is raw and realistic and Taking Sides is a stylized exercise in archness. But both are worth seeing for the performances and the exploration of challenging ideas.

River & Tides is a surprisingly successful documentary that you probably never heard of. The film managed to take in $2.2 million. A look at the life and work of Andy Goldsworthy, who makes art in natural settings, it is one of the most calming, beautiful documentaries you will ever see.

Finally, two films that got a lot of attention and not too many viewers. Sylvia did just $1.3 million in its short run this fall, but if you are comfortable with a story that you know ends in a suicide, you should check out Christine Jeffs interesting work as the director of the film, which features a solid performance by Gwyneth Paltrow. I wasn’t surprised that people hated the movie, but I was surprised that there wasn’t a bigger core group taking up the fight for it. Elephant is far more a critics darling, yet it has only managed to see $1.2 million in tickets here. (Overseas, it’s made $6.1 million already.) I don’t think it is a masterpiece, but it is terribly interesting moviegoing experience that is a lot more accessible as art than Gerry was.

And now…

10. Stoked: The Rise & Fall of Gator - $133,000 domestic – This documentary is kind of the flip side of Stacy Peralta’s Dogtown & Z-Boys. It chronicles the rise and the fall of Gator Rogowski, one of the high-profile skateboarders of the 70s. For the most part, it plays loose and fun. But when the hammer falls on Gator’s life, the doc hits hard. It’s not a technical marvel, but the material is unique and compelling.

9. Thirteen - $4.6m domestic /$1.7m international – Every sign tells you that this is going to be a smug exercise in exploitation. But it is so much more than that. The two young actresses are recognizable to anyone who’s spent five minutes around a young teen in recent years. Holly Hunter as the troubled parent of one of the kids is magnificent. And you are guaranteed to leave the theater talking about your perspective on the film, which will make for a long, long post-game.

8. The Good Thief - $3.5 million domestic – Another Fox Searchlight release, this one never really got out of the gate as Nick Nolte remained a Tonight Show punch line all spring. Neil Jordan’s remake of Bob Le Flambeur is loaded with fascinating actors, young and old. And Nick Nolte growls and snorts his way through the kind of performance that Mitchum dreamed of doing.

7. Man on the Train - $2.5m domestic – Patrice Leconte’s film is one of the many films this year that involved characters under stress manifesting alter egos who may or may not be real. The difference between the gross for this one and the gross for Swimming Pool? I’ll give you two guesses. Jean Rochefort may be developing breasts in his later year, but he’s still no Ludivine. Still, his duality with Johnny Halliday makes this one of the great overlooked pictures of 2003.

6. The Secret Lives of Dentists - $3.7m domestic – Alan Rudolph’s first really interesting work since Afterglow and probably his best work overall in a decade, this story of simple marital discord becoming high drama in the minds of its characters is well worth seeking out. Campbell Scott and Hope Davis are strong in the leads and Denis Leary is actually more than palatable… a real achievement.

5. My Life Without Me - $400,000 domestic /$9.1m international – Sarah Polley could have been a contender for this powerful, but still sweet drama about a woman who knows she is going to die and plans for her loved ones that she will leave behind. I don’t know anyone who has seen this film and not come away strongly effected. Yet, it never found an audience in its theatrical life here at home.

4. Irreversible - $792,000 domestic – There has not been a movie experience this brutal, in context, since A Clockwork Orange got the X rating in America. Truth told, this one is infinitely more disturbing as a viewing experience than Clockwork or, really, any film I have ever seen. Watching an 8 minute rape is one of the most unpleasant – and most important – experiences you can have in a theater… forcing you to confront your own discomfort by sheer force of the length of the experience. But the movie is more than a torture test. Gaspar Noe presses to find truths about love, about lust, about self-knowledge and more as you journey through this nightmare evening, backwards. I can’t think of a fictional image more violent than the man whose head is smashed in with a fire hydrant. But if you can get past the ugliness, the film is a stunning intellectual and emotion hi-colonic.

3. City of God - $4.8m domestic - $15.8 million international – One of the great films of the last two years, which Miramax released with results that just should have been better. Some people hate the movie. So be it. But I consider it and director Fernando Meirelles one/two of the great finds of the last decade. City of God is, in its own way, a poverty stricken answer to The Godfather… not everyone gets to live in the big house. $4.8 million doesn’t suck, but this is one of those movies of real importance.

2. Laurel Canyon - $3.7 million domestic – Frances McDormand has become one of the world’s great supporting actresses. Unfortunately, we rarely get to see her in a lead. Here, she isn’t technically the lead, but this movie belongs to her completely. Somehow, Sony Classics never really got a handle on this film, which is technically led by Christian Bale and Kate Beckinsale, the latter of whom embarrasses herself with a movie star “I’m not showing my boobs” performance in a film that is breathtaking for its casual immodesty. This was Alessandro Nivola’s opportunity to break into the leading man ranks… didn’t happen. My guess is that Bale was Batman-ed as much because of this role, where he is torn between two lives, as any other. And McDormand… ah, McDormand… she is a treasure.

1. Hero / Shaolin Soccer – I’m going to do a proper review of Hero soon after the new year. I stumbled into it in downtown Los Angeles, just weeks after Miramax started sending out threatening notes to websites that were linking to places where the film could legally be purchased on DVD from other countries, where it has been released and long been available for home viewing. Shaolin Soccer is also being sat on by Miramax for a ridiculously long time, so I am including it, but Hero is the shocker film you haven’t seen.

Zhang Yimou’s film is one of the most beautiful movies ever made. Yimou, director of such beloved films as Raise The Red Lantern, Not One Less and The Road Home, has taken on the Asian action genre with a classic true fable from China’s past, The Emperor & The Assassin. Yimou tells the story mostly in flashback – sometimes flashbacks within flashbacks – as the presumed hero of the film (Jet Li) chats with the Emperor about the recent history of assassination attempts.

The themes of love and honor coarse through the veins of the film. But it is the way that emotion is expressed, through the screenplay, the performances, Yimou’s direction and especially Christopher Doyle’s beyond-description cinematography, that makes Hero one of the very best films I’ve seen this year. It is, indeed, a chop socky film at its heart. But it is epic filmmaking.

Miramax’s failure to release this film is a tragedy for movie lovers everywhere. Fortunately, the DVD experience of the film is quite good. But when it comes time to see the film on a big screen, I will be there with bells on.

E-ME: What did I miss?

Tuesday, December 30 - The Ten Worst Films Of 2002
Wednesday, December 31 - The Best Films Of 2002
Thursday, January 1 – New Year’s Resolutions
Thursday, January 1 – @MCN – 20 Weeks To Oscar, 9 Weeks To Go
Monday, January 5 – THB Returns To The Daily Schedule

MCN will be updated daily through the holidays.