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eternal sunset of the incredible mind: 2004 in reviewMar 24 '05 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line - I'm not a film reviewer. Yeah, categorized somewhere on the net are approximately 600 of my one-paragraph takes on movies from across the board, and yeah, i cut my editorial teeth reviewing films for various internet magazines and local newspapers; but as Epinions folk will see to the direct right of this text, barring a sudden aesthetic overhaul of the site's layout, I am an advisor in MUSIC, therefore implying that it's all I know about and all I have the right to comment on. Which is totally wrong, since my reviewing method for music is the same as it is for movies: try everything out and like what sticks. Which means that I'm by no means a technical scholar as it pertains to either medium, but that I've seen enough to know what I like. And which means that my film tastes are broad enough to gleefully accommodate Fritz Lang's M, Undercover Brother, and North By Northwest; and appreciate them all in equal measure. So bearing in mind that, by my own definition of my preferred version of film criticism, very little I have to say about film should be taken to heart, there are a few things that i'd like to be listened to about. As funds for personal spending increase dramatically, that means more time is spent catching up on current releases. Which means that 2004 is, to date, the year in which i've seen the most movies; however, before embarking on this brilliant marvel of list assembly, I must tick off to you a few acclaimed 2k4 films that I, to various degrees of misfortune, have missed out on as of this writing: Million Dollar Baby, the Aviator, Finding Neverland, Being Julia, A Very Long Engagement, the Sea Inside, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Hotel Rwanda, Maria Full of Grace, Bad Education, Vera Drake, the Polar Express, Kinsey, Friday Night Lights, Birth, and, sadly, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights. That said, here are a few lists and scattered superlatives pertaining to the year that was 2004. THE TEN WORST MOVIES OF 2004 10. THE VILLAGE (d. M. Night Shyamalan) --Lengthy, stuffy, and less compelling than the dump i took directly after it, M. Night's misguided stab at social commentary/ painful audience manipulation/ dead-in-the-water conceptualism markets itself as a thriller, then reveals itself to be a big fat fraud. Okay, so i thought the Sixth Sense was overrated at first, a thriller based pretty much solely on the appeal of a cool twist, but the Village makes Sixth Sense almost Shakespearean in retrospect: this twist isn't even cool. As an all-encompassing filmgoer, I like films to stimulate my intellectual side, and to also appeal to my base instincts and ENTERTAIN ME. During the Village, the most entertaining thing was watching a retarded Adrien Brody shank the boring, oafish Joaquin Phoenix. This film would have given me ulcers under any normal conditions, but add it to the fact that Night's last film was the extremely excellent Signs, and the Village made me cry for days. - WORST MOMENT: Ever since he gave himself a pivotal supporting role in Signs and emblazoned his face on the cover of that film's DVD, i've known that M. Night Shyamalan was a moderate egotist with a Hitchcock complex. But in the Village, his requisite cameo is filmed - AS A REFLECTION - with such careful camerawork that you can tell he thought it was the most important thing in the movie. Sadly enough, other than Count the Times the Blind Girl Forgot She Was Blind, playing Spot the Director's Inflated Ego is the most entertaining diversionary tack crucial to tolerating the Village. I'll give you a hint: it's reflected in a pane of glass, ready to pop. 9. THE UNITED STATES OF LELAND (d. Matthew Ryan Hoge) --As much as i respect any cast that tosses Ryan Gosling, Don Cheadle, Kevin Spacey, and Lena Olin into the same film, making that film a disaffected teen tragedy might not have been the brightest of ideas. If this were simply another clunky thriller, United States of Leland could be easily shunted off to the Island of Mediocre Castaways, never to decorate the doorway of the downright awful, but it's not; Leland is a film that actually asks us to sympathize with a friendly simpleton (Gosling) who kills a retarded kid "because of the sadness." No. I'm not willing to do that. I can sympathize with immoral individuals - i root all the time for what essentially amount to bad guys in Pulp Fiction, the Usual Suspects, Goodfellas, etc. - but asking me to take some amiable slasher with a God complex into my heart because of piiss-poor reasoning like "the sadness" is too much. Kevin Spacey asked me to do that in worst-movie-ever The Life of David Gale, and i decided to hate him forever. Miraculously, this film accomplishes one original, unique moment: Chris Klein is given a dramatic role to play, and when he revenge-shanks Leland, you totally root for him. - WORST MOMENT: The opening credits. It signals that 108 minutes still remain. 8. SAW (d. James Wan) --Interestingly enough, here's another film that decides to happily tread in the large footsteps left by a Kevin Spacey performance; except Saw at least has the sense to rip off a good one. The psychopath killing for the greater good of humanity angle reached its peak with Spacey's chilling John Doe in Seven; Saw is a film that pretty much rips off Seven in every way, from the self-righteous serial killer to the theme of one's basest desires leading to downfall to the epileptic editing and sterile, creepy lighting of the earlier picture. What Saw lacks is originality, plausibility, acting ability, and two things that should be prerequisite for anyone attempting to make a subversive movie: brains and balls. And it's so juvenile: the only people who'd pay to own this, I suspect, are adolescents searching for the puerile high of seeing a grown man chop his own leg off. If the thought of that, along with a fat man crawling through reams of razor wire and a woman sorting through ropes of human intestine, titillates you, you're probably sick enough to take pleasure in this perverse clunker. - WORST MOMENT: The unveiling of the serial killer. It's the moment that we realize that what we're watching was actually intended to be meaningful, and the moment we futilely hold our breath for the revelation that whoever congratulated the filmmakers on this was actually elaborately pranking them for a special episode of Punk'd. 7. THE GRUDGE (d. Takashi Shimizu) --The Ring totally cornered the market on PG-13 remakes of Japanese horror hits. Then, someone decided to resurrect Sarah Michelle Gellar's fledgling career by casting her in a similar film. Would-be creepy images amount to little more than glorified clown make-up grotesquerie, Gellar's performance is so wooden that you could've put, i dunno, Val Kilmer in the role to the tune of at least a little bit more artistic success, and there's a jump scare that turns out to be a fluffy little kitty (see Hide and Seek and every other crappy horror movie). Other than that, though, the Grudge is not a good movie, but one indictative of everything wrong with the current in-vogue horror cinema. I never thought I'd wish for the "good old days" of the late 90's and the by-the-books slasher. - WORST MOMENT: Boo! Oh, wait, it's just the kitty cat. PIISS OFF. 6. CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS (d. Joe Roth) --What is truly unique about Christmas With the Kranks is how unusually ugly it is for a film that should be realistically brimming with holiday cheer. What I mean by that is the aplomb with which the performers are able to make us HATE EACH AND EVERY LAST CHARACTER. In good movies, you root for the good guys. In bad movies, you root for the bad guys, because the heroes piiss you off too much. But since there is nobody worth rooting for in Christmas With the Kranks, we must assume that it laps "bad" and goes straight to "bowels of Hell awful" in its quest for a new low. It's not the lowbrow comedy or the slapstick humour that gets to me; that's to be expected in a film of this nature. It's the fact that Tim Allen's character is such an irredeemable a-hole that we hope he gets crushed by a wayward Christmas tree; Jamie Lee Curtis is so shrill, annoying, and far from anything remotely resembling funny that her performance itself could be considered ritualistic torture; and every last bastard trying to inflict the superficial trimmings of the holiday on the Kranks is just as unpleasant as the Kranks themselves. Which means that there's no real solution to the film, every plausible situation being totally unsatisfying for such an ungratifying cast of jackasses, save for demolishing the street and everybody on it in a Dr. Strangelove-esque mushroom cloud. Now that would be an ending; wouldn't forgive the 100 minutes before it, mind you, but it would at least allow us to leave on a note of relief following an extended act of torture, kinda like setting off a mousetrap on your nipple, leaving it there, and removing it just when you feel you can't take it anymore. - WORST MOMENT: At one point, the film teases us by having a main character fall from the roof while trying to string decorations. In a show of goodwill, he is saved, crashing us back to harsh reality after entertaining the fantasy of having him splatter all over the yuletide sidewalk. 5. NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (d. Jared Hess) --There were two scenes that i laughed at in Napoleon Dynamite: first, the site of an animal being slaughtered in front of a bus full of children, and second, the pathologically moronic title character busting out into an elaborate dance sequence to the strains of Jamiroquai's "Canned Heat," which is only cool because dance sequences make good movies better and bad movies bearable. But Napoleon Dynamite isn't even made bearable by ending in move-busting (like the bad-but-tolerable Be Cool earlier this year). No, it still sucks, even despite the obvious hero worship of Wes Anderson films (which i also hero worship), the inexplicable hero-worship from droves of 'tweens who've made this their first independent film ever, and the prank calls from my sister in Jersey wanting to know if I can bring her her chapstick. If only it was the wealth of detached stupidity masquerading as indie-cool that passes for comedy that made Napoleon Dynamite bad; no, it goes a step further by being actively offensive, postulating, among other things, that Mexicans are people with convertibles full of Latino gangsters at their disposal, and that black people exist solely to bestow soul upon us whities. Don't get me wrong, Napoleon Dynamite would be just as bad without that stuff. It's just that it was nice enough to give me even more reason to hate it. - WORST MOMENT: Any time Napoleon breathes one of his moronic catchphrases. I used to like saying "sweet" before this doofus ruined it, and if I ever hear "Liger" or "flippin'" again I'll get angry and YOU WON"T LIKE ME WHEN IM ANGRY DREW SMASH 4. SOUL PLANE (d. Jessy Terrero) --As difficult as it is to admit that movies technically worse than Napoleon Dynamite exist, Soul Plane emerged this year, outrageously offensive to blacks, whites, gays, asians, arabs, and people with brains, opening with a flurry of shiit jokes that, yes, serve as the most sophisticated humour the film has to offer. I'll be honest with you: i saw it because Snoop Dogg and the guy who played Smart Brother in Undercover Brother were both in it, both of whom make me laugh when they show up in movies. And then I find out that Snoop is a lethargic stoner and Smart Brother is a flaming gay caricature. Sigh. Soul Plane, 1. Humanity, 0. (This film, too, culminates in a dance sequence that is the best part of the movie, but only because of Sofia Vergara's rump. See also Taxi and Jennifer Esposito.) - WORST MOMENT: A blind man thinks a potato is a woman's holiest of holies and promptly tries to fingerbang it. I'd elaborate but my mind just exploded remembering that. 3. TIE: PAPARAZZI (d. Paul Abascal), MAN ON FIRE (d. Tony Scott), THE PUNISHER (d. Jonathan Hensleigh) --Sure, it's cheating to lump all these movies together, but it's my list. Besides, if they hadn't made the same movie three times (and made it suck every time) I could be nicer. These three films boast the same plot: bad guys mess with the wrong hard-asss and get caught on the business end of a bloody revenge rampage. Glorify the hero for doing the same thing the bad guys do. Gotcha. There were other revenge movies in 2004 - Kill Bill Vol. 2 and Walking Tall, for example - but Kill Bill has artistic merit and a heart on its side, and Walking Tall is less brutal and more entertaining, not to mention has more of a sensible, moral pulse. Of the three, Paparazzi has the best villians - if you're gonna kill someone, might as well make it sleazy Tom Sizemore and the fat Baldwin - and Man on Fire has the best hero - at least Denzel's grizzled drunk has more screen presence and creative means of killing (a bomb up the poop chute - cooler than simply shooting someone, i suppose). Still, though, the disturbing glorification of these, ahem, heroes is more than unsettling. - WORST MOMENT(S): In Paparazzi, everytime the inept Dennis Farina character looks the other way. In Man on Fire, every time an annoying, unnecessary subtitle - WHEN CHARACTERS WERE SPEAKING ENGLISH - popped up and faded away. And, in Punisher, the overhead shot revealing that the Punisher rigged a bunch of cars to explode in the shape of his logo. At that very second I found myself praying to God that he'd walk onto the set of Man on Fire and have Denzel violate his stinkiest of stinkies with another butt-bomb. 2. THE FORGOTTEN (d. Joseph Ruben) --This Julianne Moore vehicle appears to have a pretty cool setup, and upon watching it i was intrigued. Then the last hour and a half of the movie came along. I'm going to reveal it without a spoiler warning, so maybe I can deter you from watching this film: IT'S ALL ABOUT ALIENS. They came to earth to experiment on Julianne Moore. But they don't want to know sensible things, like how a reclusive bookworm can manage to evade, on foot, athletic and trained government agents, or how a plot so semi-promising can turn sour so quickly; they want to know how Moore will react to the kidnapping of her child. She's going to bake you a peach cobbler, you extraterrestrial retards. Of COURSE she'll be upset! That the film treats this as a psychological revelation is testament to its own ineptitude. These aliens sucked even more than the aliens in Dreamcatcher. When I finished this movie, I wanted the Dreamcatcher aliens - little weasels that crawl in and out of anuses - to come and violate my hole, because it would be a little less painful than watching the Forgotten. Then, I figured, how about the Forgotten aliens - who are able to erase certain experiences from a person's mind - just come into my room, zap me senseless, and make me think that I did something productive with my two hours? That would be ideal. - WORST MOMENT: The second you find out it's all about little green men. 1. CATWOMAN (d. Pitof) --I can't say anything about this film, except that watching it once is as much an act of self-flagellation as sitting through a Gigli film festival. I was kind of banking on this being so-bad-it's-funny. Instead, it was so-bad-it's-bad. THE TEN BEST MOVIES OF 2004 10. THE GIRL NEXT DOOR (d. Luke Greenfield) --Actually, I'm serious. This film, raunchy and ridiculous though it may be, totally gave me the warm fuzzies, even more than other 2004 featherweight romantic comedies like 13 Going on Thirty and Shall We Dance? (both of which I loved). But giving us a lovable leading man in awkward Emile Hirsch and a bombshell of a leading lady in super-fine Elisha Cuthbert already makes the Girl Next Door the best teen flick in a loooong while. Using "Under Pressure" in the nostagia-inducing opening sequence and casting super-hilarious Timothy Olyphant as a glorified pimp seals the deal: i don't care what you say, the Girl Next Door made me happy and tingly inside. - BEST MOMENT: Hirsch grows a pair of balls and plants one on Cuthbert. I just had to stand up and cheer (much to the chagrin of the guy behind me in the theater). 9. THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU (d. Wes Anderson) --If it's not up to the usual standard of Wes Anderson movies, that's just because he's got a lot to live up to. Still, The Life Aquatic was a total delight to me, centering on a wonderfully idiosyncratic Bill Murray character and a wet dream of a supporting cast holding down the fort on Zissou's loopy research boat. Add a bunch of Portuguese David Bowie songs and Willem Dafoe in a thick German accent and tight shorts, and the only real drawback is Owen Wilson's silly Kentucky drawl. - BEST MOMENT: Zissou pulls a gun on a prying journalist during an interview; unexpected and hilarious. 8. KILL BILL VOLUME 2 (d. Quentin Tarantino) --Where the first half of Kill Bill brought the splatter in buckets, the second is a film of intrigue, intelligence, and heart. Together, they are flipsides of the same coin, different pieces of a really awesome puzzle that starts out with breathtaking action setpieces and ends on a note of wistful triumph. Also, these films made me fall deeply in love with Uma Thurman, who I wasn't even remotely a fan of before. - BEST MOMENT: Bill (David Carradine), having rendered the Bride unable to move, relays to her his theory on Clark Kent as Superman's critique of the human race. An intoxicating and entertaining dissection of the superhero mythos, injected into one of the most comic-book-like movies in some time. 7. CLOSER (d. Mike Nichols) --Fascinating and fantastic in that soul-ravaging, emasculating sort of way, Closer reads like the product of a man fed up with romanticism of love and sex choosing to, instead, show us the barnacled underbelly of it all. And at that, i found it, like a Neil Labute film, almost painful to watch at times - usually because of the sheer capacity for base human cruelty communicated through the blistering dialogue - but brilliant nonetheless. What separated this from something like In the Company of Men or The Shape of Things, though, is that while those films created characters for us to actively, passionately hate, Closer builds characters that do the things that we do and say the things we say when we get upset; and it's all the more disturbing for that. - BEST MOMENT: It's a toss-up, really. The fallout between Clive Owen and Julia Roberts' characters following Julia's admission of infidelity stung, left me sweaty and trembling, frightened at how closely Owen's insistent, angry questioning mirrored my own reaction to a similar betrayal ("why is the sex so important?" she asks; "because i'm a f*cking caveman!," he bellows in return). And then there's the heartbreaking use of Damien Rice's "The Blower's Daughter" in the final scene; i think i almost cried, but you can't tell anyone that. 6. SIDEWAYS (d. Alexander Payne) --Such a rare, intoxicating motion picture could only be made, I'm convinced, by Alexander Payne, who romanticized Jack Nicholson's tragicomic cross-country trek in About Schmidt without condescending to any of his characters. Payne's got a gift; it's a gift for that intensely tragicomic storytelling, where the funny moments are drop-dead, piiss-your-trousers funny, and where the serious parts are actual moments of genuine pathos, instead of typical token dramedy respites from laughter. And the characters! Oh, man, the characters. The central quartet rivals only that of Closer; Thomas Hayden Church is one of the most memorable jackasses EVER, and Virginia Madsen is so beautiful and such a potent mixture of fragility and strength that I just wanted to reach through the screen and scoop her and Paul Giamatti up in a group hug. Sigh. Such a gorgeous film. - BEST MOMENT: Though i'm tempted to cite the moment Church and Giamatti are driving down the street being pursued by an angry, naked fat man, tiny phallus flapping in the breeze, it's Giamatti and Madsen's dialogue about wine that brings about the most gooseflesh. Such a memorable scene. 5. COLLATERAL (d. Michael Mann) --It's Jamie Foxx's show. Ray was all about Foxx, and so is Collateral, although Collateral would probably still be good without Foxx (Ray probably wouldn't). But Foxx makes Collateral that much better, as does Mann, weaving a romantic portrait of L.A. with Foxx and Cruise's tumultuous trek through the City of Angels. A rare action film, quiet and reflective (for the genre), and full of genuine suspense. - BEST MOMENT: Of course it's when Foxx takes on the Vincent persona. But because everyone talks about that one, I'm going to go with the Rear Window-like scene where Foxx's hapless cab driver tries to warn a worker at the office building he's staring up at, via dying cell phone, of a killer's impending entrance. So tense you can feel it. 4. THE INCREDIBLES (d. Brad Bird) --Pixar may have outdone themselves. This is just one of the most entertaining movies i've ever seen in my life. - BEST MOMENT: Beyond this point on the list, these films aren't about individual moments, but about entire experiences. 3. SHAUN OF THE DEAD (d. Edgar Wright) --Spoofing the zombie horror genre and the lethargy of modern-day existence with equal aplomb, Shaun of the Dead is, simply, the funniest film of the year, and one of the funniest i've ever seen; every laugh is totally earned, and it's uproarious and rewatchable and brilliant. But beyond that, Shaun of the Dead makes a hell of a lot of sense: when Shaun walks past drones of zombies while completing his morning routine, not noticing the mass of undead until he sees it on the television, it's hilarious, but also kind of disconcerting in that "yeah, that's kind of true" sense. But yeah, more importantly, Shaun of the Dead is so hilarious I can't describe it. 2. BEFORE SUNSET (d. Richard Linklater) --Jesse and Celine meet up, nine years later, more grown up and cynical. It doesn't make sense that this film would be even better than its predecessor - a brilliantly simple romance classic - but it kind of is. It rings truer, the characters are more endeared to us, and, yes, Julie Delpy is even more enchanting than she was that night in Vienna almost a decade ago. Oh, and the ending? It's almost too much perfect for one movie. 1. ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (d. Michael Gondry) --What, did you think it would be anything else? No, Eternal Sunshine is 2004's perennial favorite, among those of us in the know (everyone else is heretofore referred to as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), and for good reason; there's the fact that it's the most brilliant film in ages, the fact that it's brimming with brilliant, meaty performances, the fact that Joel and Clementine are, as far as i'm concerned, the screen love icons of the new millenium, and, most importantly, the fact that, despite its intellectualism and conceptualism, Eternal Sunshine is totally accessible and emotionally affecting. In other words, brilliant without being clinical, one of the most gripping, intriguing, bizarre, and beautiful films of all time, and easily the best of 2k4.  |
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by lindaohio
