1) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2) No Country for Old Men
3) The Departed
4) Million Dollar Baby
5) Chicago
6) Shakespeare in Love
7) Gladiator American Beauty
9) Crash
10) A Beautiful Mind
"Young men make wars and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution." -- Alec Guinness (Lawrence of Arabia)
1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2. Million Dollar baby
3. I hated the movie at the time, but over the years I loved it more and more in a campy kind of way (the same reason I love Titanic): Gladiator.
(Titanic and Gladiator are the two best John Waters films ever
Newly difficult lineup. I give it to 'No Country'. 'Shakespeare in Love' is only a good movie because it's so lovely; in actuality, it's fairly middling but benefits from a lovely accidental presence. And I'm still not convinced that 'The Departed' wasn't an editing room masterpiece. 'No Country' is confident from beginning to end in its vision and I respect that a little more.
Shakespeare in Love, Return of the King, The Departed, and No Country for Old Men are all terrific winners, but I'm still moved every time I see Million Dollar Baby. Eastwood achieves the elegiac in an unlikely place and his sure, steady hand is a thing of beauty despite Paul Haggis' conservative tendencies. The man was simply robbed of the Best Actor Oscar.
Thank goodness for No Country or I'd never be able to decide between The Departed and Million Dollar Baby. The Coens manage to surpass Scorsese and Eastwood here. Shakespeare is lovely and Rings is OK. The rest are shit.
Now that the 8th Decade has wrapped up, we can do a bit of examining. Now, since this year's films are firmly in the heads of everyone, I fully expect there to be some prejudice, so we'll have to take that with a grain of salt.
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin