Ten Best Films of 2004

[Eric]

Also, forget Zelary, forget Eternal Sunshine. I never thought I'd see a year in which a film directed by Kevin Spacey placed nine slots higher than a film directed by Bruno Dumont. I can't remember if you were a fan of Tsai Ming-liang's previous films or not, offhand.

Oops. Sorry about disbelieving you, Damien. Twentynine Palms (which I finally decided to have a crack at following the tepid reports on Dumont's latest at Cannes) ranks below both the Garry Marshall movies I saw in '04.

[Heksagon]

I think I'm finally getting to be done with 2004, although I haven't seen many of the smaller films yet. In any case, 2004 was a fairly good year, much better than 2003.

Just the Top 10 this time:

1. Bad Education
2. Million Dollar Baby
3. Twilight Samurai
4. The Aviator
5. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
6. Kill Bill, vol. 2
7. Kinsey
8. Zatoichi
9. Hotel Rwanda
10. Before Sunset

[Okri]

Completely agree, Sabin.

I watched it with two hardcore engineering physics students, and we spent the next three hours discussing it. And when it came out on DVD, we snapped it up and watched it again. I gave it ***1/2 stars, but it holds up after repeat viewings.

[Sabin]

Primer--****
...this is likely to fall maybe half a star once the initial kick wears off. I'm just coming off working on a student film budgeted at some $75 thousand that is capital R-tarded. And it's only going to be seven minutes long! It's everything I pretty much hate about film: wasteful, visionless, gaudy. And then I watch this thing, an intensely personal $7,000 film that left me almost giddy.

Also, I don't really get it. By which I mean, I don't entirely understand the thing. I'm not stupid but I don't get it. YET. I'll be watching this thing again. The screenplay is pretty close to perfect, forwarding the narrative while always keeping visually interesting (Carruth's sense of framing is impeccable for such an antiseptic-looking film) and very, very funny, never bordering on techno-babble. I'm sure on repeat viewings some cracks might appear but I admire this film so goddamn much right now that my enthusiasm is absolutely piquing. See Primer.

[Bog]

Silly Damien......it's April Fools, not May....and we usually do it on the 1st, but......

[anonymous1980]

Funny you should mention Dumbo because it was the very first movie I have ever seen and loved. I remember when I was 3 or 4 I would abuse our old Betamax player with that copy of Dumbo. I watched it EVERYDAY much to the annoyance of my parents. LOL.

[Big Magilla]

My tolerance for cartoons is probably even lower than Damien's.

My introduction to cartoons was the old ink blot Farmer Gray cartoons that ran on late 1940s-early 1950s TV and the Chiquita Banana commercials which ran theatrically in the late 40s. Those were great in their simplicity.

As I've said before, the only cartoon movies I saw as a child were re-releases of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio, so I did not grow up on the damn things the way most of you did. Aside Mary Poppins, which is only partially a cartoon, and Beauty and the Beast, which was my favorite childhood fairy tale, I have not looked forward to seeing any of them since. I was over 30 when I saw Bambi for the first time and over 40 when I saw Dumbo for the first time.

I thought The Incredibles had a clever plot that went on way too long. The lameness of the first half of Shrek 2 so bored me to distraction that nothing that came later could salvage it for me. If they had to give an award to a cartoon movie this year, The Incredibles was the right choice, but, really, it is not a category I care much about.

[anonymous1980]

Now, here's where I stare at Damien in disbelief and puzzlement.

Then again, he only caught the second half. The first half tried to cram as much fart jokes and inane pop culture references that I can stomach. The second half did contain inventive gags but ultimatelY comes off as shallow and inconsequential.

Believe you me, Shrek 2 will age terribly (the first one already has that groan-inducing Matrix spoof which was just kinda funny the first time you saw it). On the other hand, in The Incredibles, as long as kids (and adults) like comic book superheroes (with the longevity of Superman and Batman, that's a sure bet), people will still endear themselves to it.

But, yes, Antonio Banderas's Puss N'Boots (and to a lesser extent, Jennifer Saunders's voice work as the Fairy Godmother) was the best thing about it.

Apart from your boners over Blake Edwards movies and Ethan Hawke, it's tough to predict where your opinion on movies will go, Damien. LOL.

[Mann]

Damien,

I was watching Shrek 2 as well tonight. I love it, as well as the prequel.

I agree that it does act like its not an animated film at all. It made very much like an adverture/fantasy film, not letting the animation hinder it.

I picked it over the Incredibles as well.

[Sabin]

*sigh*...why can't the world make sense again?

[Damien]

Tonight I was flipping channels, and ended up watching the last half of Shrek 2. It struck me as an hilarious, extremely clever, very witty and sweet-natured film that doesn't for a moment seem like a Goddamn Cartoon. I was laughing out loud throughout -- anybody who has a cat couldn't help but be enraptured by Antonio Banderas's kitty's sudden mood swings, and the treatment of Pinocchio bordered on the brilliant.

So my question is why was it that the dull, predictable, lame and banal The Incredibles became the critics darling among Goddamn Cartoons last year when Shrek 2 was so superior in every way? Shrek 2 herkened back to Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett; The Incredibles belongs in the same garbage heap as Quick Draw McGraw and Clutch Cargo.

Any thoughts?

[Kova]

Ah, my first year of grad school is over-- let the DVD renting begin!

Here's a tentative top 10:

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2. Kinsey
3. Million Dollar Baby
4. I Heart Huckabee's
5. Sideways
6. The Assassination of Richard Nixon
7. The Aviator
8. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
9. Dogville
10. Vera Drake

Runners-up:
Bad Education
Before Sunset
The Dreamers
Fahrenheit 9/11
Hero
The Incredibles
Infernal Affairs
Kill Bill, vol. 2
The Mother
The Saddest Music in the World

[Sabin]

Just the opposite. I'm just making an observation that it's interesting that a stoner movie is so tightly structured, that's all. One wouldn't imagine that from a movie called Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. The director's previous work is Dude, Where's My Car?, a lousy movie not without its charms that sunk precisely because it had too many subplots. That was a movie about two people looking for a lost car and at the end there were giant alien women that needed to be taken down. If I laughed after the first thirty minutes, I'd be surprised; that Harold and Kumar more or less stuck to the perils of the mundane kept it going.

And the actor who plays Kumar is very charismatic. I had a good time watching the film and it only improved in memory. It has some of the funniest moments of the year: Kumar marrying the bag of weed, Kumar trying to wake Harold up by "doing some gay ####"...

[Sonic Youth]

What I meant by A leads to B leads to C is that the screenplay is very conventionally structured for a stoner comedy. Unless I'm mistaken, the detours that the film takes -- while not all of them pertinent -- never meander from the film's sole objective. I mean, we get set-up, inciting incident (they want to go to White Castle), obstacles & solutions, climax (tiger & hang glider), White Castle, resolution. For all intents and purposes, the film is Sideways.
.

Way off. It's Bringing Up Baby is what it is.

I love this sort of structure, in which the chain of events could not have happened without one setting the other off and everything is interconnected, with one incident affected by something that happened three incidents before. It's an intricate Rube Goldberg machine. Are you saying sub-plots would have improved the film?



Edited By Big Magilla on 1241622847

[Sabin]

The fact that they are in fact very smart people who manage their habit is a refreshing change of pace from archetypal stoner characters - although also from reality, in my experience.

What I meant by A leads to B leads to C is that the screenplay is very conventionally structured for a stoner comedy. Unless I'm mistaken, the detours that the film takes -- while not all of them pertinent -- never meander from the film's sole objective. I mean, we get set-up, inciting incident (they want to go to White Castle), obstacles & solutions, climax (tiger & hang glider), White Castle, resolution. For all intents and purposes, the film is Sideways.

As for the filmmaking, it looked pretty drab and the editing was kind of lackluster (honestly, this could've been done on an iMovie laptop) but a couple of weeks later I saw Without a Paddle which is one of the most resolutely ugly productions I've ever bore witness to, with a very similar Stoner Buddy Journey concept (they go on a treasure hunt). Whatever the director's shortcomings, the film was fine by me.