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THE BEST FILMS OF 2004
There were forty films that I thought might be terrible that I didn't see in 2004. But among the many films that I thought might be great this year, I managed to miss, as it turns out, only eight. (I'm leaving out Touching The Void and The Mother, since I think they were considered last year.) The missing are…
.............. A Home At The End of the World
.............. Badasssss!
.............. Ghost In the Shell 2: Innocence
.............. Miracle
.............. Saved!
.............. Taking Lives
.............. Teacher's Pet
.............. The Big Red One: The RestorationI'm sure I'll catch up with all of these before too long. That leaves 34 films in my list of potential Top Ten-ers. I decided to split this into three groups since, much as with the Worst list, my sense of clear distinctions between the very best and the very good was a little light. Still, here we go…
America's Heart & Soul - I really liked this film, which was unfairly tagged as a right wing film and, it seems to me, that Disney backed off a bit on promoting it to avoid any more negative media attention than they were already getting over Fahrenheit 9/11. I guess you could say that it felt like something you would see in a Disney theme park, all positive and American, but I liked the variety and the sense of what an entire nation looked like in one film.
The Aviator - Leo was terrific and the aviation stuff was as good as any I have ever seen. I only wish that the "crazy stuff" was half as interesting as the conversation that Leo and Marty had about it with Oprah.
Bukowski: Born Into This - This film was a personal obsession turned into a rather densely packed look at the work and life of a true original. John Dullaghan isn't exactly the most skilled documentarian in the world. But his passion and the subject makes up for a whole lot.
Dawn of the Dead - Yeah, it's a stupid zombie movie, but I enjoyed the heck out of it. A big part of it was the style brought to the film by Zack Snyder, but in my case - and I know I should be embarrassed to admit it - a lot was added by the sound of the audience, laughing and screaming and cheering along on the off-screen pirate DVD that I saw it on. I bought the film, among others, to see what the quality of the Canal Street pirate DVDs were… most were unwatchable crap or would not even play. But this one, shot horribly with people walking into frame all the time, turned out to be an oddball gem. So much so that I have suggested to Universal that they add an audience reaction track to the real DVD. And they really should…
Hellboy - I just enjoyed the hell out of this movie. The tone was endlessly irreverent. The performances were on pitch. The comic bookishness worked the line of real, arty and surreal just perfectly. And I love the central character. Because Hellboy is not a hero looking for action, but a guy who has to make the donuts now and again, he is endless fun.
Home on the Range - I don't know why Disney couldn't get this one going, but I found it to be good, old-fashioned, Warner Bros. style fun. I liked the songs, I liked the sentiment and I liked the cows. I have a feeling this one will be "re-discovered" at some point.
I'm Not Scared - Gabriele Salvatores' wonderful based-on-a-real story film takes reality and makes it into a metaphor for everyone's coming of age. It's an odd little movie, but like Guillermo del Toro's underseen and underappreciated The Devil's Backbone, it is a genre bender that has a strong beating heart at the center.
Intermission - A movie that really never got its due here in the U.S and I'm not sure why. Colin Farrell show why he is a real movie star, Here is a performance where he can charm a woman, punch her in the face and rob her, and still leave you with the sense that she'd go through it again if he would only do the flirting part again. But he is only one of many pieces of this patchwork film that has an energy and a sense of relentlessness that movies like I Heart Huckabees and The Life Aquatic flail at, but are too busy looking at their own reflections in the mirror to actually achieve.
Man on Fire - I don't know why this Tony Scott film was given such short shrift by critics and some viewers in the spring. I think it had a lot to do with the fact that it made you feel something… and this was the year of the critic enraged by actually feeling anything. This was a dark film… not silly… not falsely sentimental… it was John Wayne with sharp knives and nasty explosives. And maybe it was that… politics. But I think it was one of Tony Scott's best films and was, for me, a relief from the political correctness and showy lame irony of movies like Kill Bill, Volume 2. I don't think that KB belongs on my worst list. But something about a film that is so smug about killing being so embraced as art is deeply embarrassing to me, about current criticism and about the culture. At least I can take some solace in the film grossing 15% more than KBV2 domestically with less than half the hype. (Kill Bill did do more overseas… but if you pay attention to the box office, you know that any movie starring a black man does less business overseas than the same level of movie starring a white man. Denzel, Eddie Murphy and other black actors who rate here are most assuredly not huge box office stars in Japan and other countries, while guys who can barely open a film here, like Brad Pitt, are huge there.) I like a film, now and again, where the director grabs me by the lapels and takes me for a good, raging, bumpy ride.
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster - Sinofsky and Berlinger are among the best young documentarians in the game right now. Both Brother's Keeper and the Paradise Lost films are part of the documentary canon. Their third such film in the dozen years working together, Some Kind of Monster is like no other doc ever made because it covers the wealthy and famous in a way we've never seen before. As usual, they got in close and stayed the course. My guess is that the film has not gotten as much attention as it deserves since it is about a heavy metal band. But the music is the least heavy thing about this one.
Ocean's Twelve - A real surprise. It's deeply imperfect. The third act is a mess. But it is a lot closer to the fun that it promises with all those actors.
Soul Plane - The film was ghetto fabulous… way over the top… stereotypes flying all over the place… gross gags… but I thought it was funny as hell.
The Terminal - Another genre that is well out of favor… the nice film. Yes, if you intellectualize the film, you can wonder why Catherine Zeta Jones is attracted to this middle-aged foreigner with no money. But why? If we put many of our classics to the arch standard that The Terminal was held to, they would fail. But even as irony falls to the edges of the entertainment culture, pure "nice" is still frowned on a judged harshly. I just plain liked this movie.
Vera Drake - Another powerful Mike Leigh effort. There is only one voice like Leigh's and this is one of his best.
LATE NOTE: Somehow I managed to miss two films I really loved this year when doing the list, Enduring Love and The Yes Men. Both could well have made it into the Top 20, but I don't want to dislodge anyone else after publishing.
I believe that Roger Michell's Enduring Love is one of the most misunderstood films of the year, in part because of the sophiticated effort to cross genres. The central quesiton, about the power of the intellect versus the power of the heart/soul is profound and it is a shame that so many got caught up in the film as a "gay stalker" movie.
Dan Ollman, Sarah Price and Chris Smith's The Yes Men is one of the rare political films of 2004 that both takes action and maintains a sense of humor. It fits the great theme of documentaries in 2004... the power of the individual to create change. A wonderful film.
The Runners Up | Numbers 11-20 | The Top Ten | The Worst
December 30, 2004 - The Ten Worst
December 29, 2004 - Movies You Should Have Seen, But Didn't
