2004: The Year In Movies
Luke Rush counts down the best films of 2004
12. Super Size Me
Director: Morgan Spurlock
It’s practically common knowledge by now that fast food is generally bad for you (though judging by the increase in related lawsuits, public responsibility regarding that fact seems to be waning), but Morgan Spurlock’s gutsy, voyeuristic exercise in public awareness is the first time someone has gone as far as to put a face on it. Turning himself into a garrulous, engaging emcee in the name of science, Spurlock’s Super Size Me is an informative, entertaining and sometimes shocking document, part documentary and part road movie. To think that he was rejected from film school five times is enough to give any burgeoning filmmaker hope.
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11. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
The third installment in the Harry Potter series has been cited by the greatest number of fans as the best story to this point, and the movie version holds true to that proclamation all the way through. Azkabanis also the darkest of the first three in terms of theme, so the move to Cuaron as director works just as well as you might think. The kids are noticeably more comfortable than they were at the start, but the presence of notable supporting talent like David Thewlis (Professor Lupin) and Gary Oldman (a striking turn as Sirius Black, a cornerstone character in terms of importance if not presence) pushes this one over the top. An adventure fit for any audience, young or old.
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10. Shaun of the Dead
Director: Edgar Wright
A smash hit in its native Britain, Shaun of the Dead was unjustifiably quite a flop in the States, never reaching a level of release that would have allowed it to make a real dent. And that’s a shame, because Shaun is a well-written, whip-smart comedy that comes off well regardless of whether you’re a zombie cinema aficionado or not. Simon Pegg, the title character and also the film’s co-writer with director Wright, creates the perfect modern anti-hero with his oafish flatmate Ed (Nick Frost). Chock full of pop culture references both common and obscure, Shaun of the Dead is destined to become a cult classic (Office Space, anyone?), just due for a movie that never really had a chance in America.
The opening of a new IKEA store
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09. Goodbye, Lenin!
Director: Wolfgang Becker
On the surface, Goodbye Lenin! is a story about a newly-liberated Germany struggling to come to grips with Capitalism. Dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll find a touching story about a son who loves his mother enough to go incredible lengths to keep her alive, even if it means intentionally distorting reality. Goodbye Lenin! is a sweet, whimsical fable the likes of which we don’t see very often anymore, entirely fictional but still grounded within the confines of basic reality. Becker, who also co-wrote the screenplay, intertwines social commentary with some striking comedic moments, to great effect. Certainly one of the year’s great surprises.
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08. Control Room
Director: Jehane Noujaim
Control Room was this season’s most striking documentary by virtue of its modest intentions. It was made not to inflame or provoke, as most were during this election season, but to merely tell a familiar story from a different angle. The proliferation and influence of the news media is nothing new to Americans, but to see the media influence by way of the Middle East and its primary media mouthpiece, Al Jazeera, one sees that the general role of network news in culture is quite universal. Noujaim juxtaposes the efforts of Al Jazeera with the public relations efforts of other organizations as well as the American military in Iraq, on a balanced, depoliticized stage. It passes no judgment, and there are no antagonists or protagonists, just a public relations battle that finds its greatest divergence in the two sides’ cultural philosophies.
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07. Collateral
Director: Michael Mann
Michael Mann has proven himself to be equally adept at creating compelling character sketches about both ordinary people and extraordinary people (The Insider being an example of the former, and Alibeing one of the latter), and his 2004 effort, Collateral, finds him dabbling in the corner of each. The interplay between Jamie Foxx’s everyman taxi driver Max and Tom Cruise’s amoral, impenitent hitman Vincent brings the two groups face to face, a culture clash of sorts that finds two men just trying to make their living, albeit through wildly factious avenues. The film boasts a top-notch cast, even below the headliners (including Mark Ruffalo, Bruce McGill, Javier Bardem and Peter Berg, who directed this year’s Friday Night Lights), and Mann’s knack for handsome, atmospheric nightscapes gives the film a suitably reined-in, claustrophobic feel.
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06. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Director: Michel Gondry
If you’re a music fan, you’ve probably seen Michel Gondry’s handiwork accompanying the White Stripes’ “Fell In Love With A Girl” or any number of pop videos. His gifts as a visual trickster play well with the quirky strengths of Charlie Kaufman’s script (a redundancy if I’ve ever heard one, “quirky” and “Charlie Kaufman”) for the audaciously titled Eternal Sunshine, as well as a group of actors who can ably carry that aura of quirkiness along. Buoyed by what is arguably Jim Carrey’s finest performance to date and a resplendent Kate Winslet (lest we forget Elijah Wood, Kirsten Dunst, Tom Wilkinson, and yes, Mark Ruffalo), it is the antithesis of Before Sunset’s traditionalist romance, but no less the attuned love story with its finger right on the relations between the heart and the mind.
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05. Finding Neverland
Director: Marc Forster
You can usually tell after seeing a movie whether the director truly had his heart into the project or not, and it becomes flagrantly apparent in the case of Finding Neverland that Marc Forster was pursuing his vision with a reckless abandon. It’s a fantastic story about a legendary story, and while it is certainly susceptible to fits of creative license, it becomes rather easy to just roll with the tides of the crisp, well-told tale of James Barrie and his realization of Peter Pan. It’s honest, heartfelt, and true to itself, which is more than we can seem to ask of most films these days. If your eyes aren’t damp by the end, then you probably didn’t invest in the story as much as the film itself does. But they won’t be.
Marc Forster's Finding Neverland
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04. Million Dollar Baby
Director: Clint Eastwood
I couldn’t help but think time and time again during Million Dollar Baby of how ironic it is that the man who might very well be the greatest living American director – who not only writes the musical scores for his films but carries them along on a bed of emotion and nuance that every other movie director should wish they had such a feel for – was the guy who once played Dirty Harry Callahan. Million Dollar Baby uses boxing as nothing more than a surface metaphor, its axioms as analogous to life’s trials and tribulations. The boxing sequences, while impressively carried off, are secondary to the exchanges amongst the three primary characters, which vacillate from the standard Eastwood terseness to engrossing, near-lyrical dialogues. It’s not a stretch to think that all three, Eastwood, Hilary Swank, and good-as-ever Morgan Freeman, could and should get nominated. It seemed unusual that the first Oscar season in four years not to have the specter of the Lord of the Rings hanging overhead didn’t have a surefire favorite, but after all, that was just the first 11 ½ months. It’s here now.
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03. The Passion of the Christ
Director: Mel Gibson
While it was bound to meet an avalanche of contradictory opinions in light of the fuss that was raised long before its release, one thing is for sure about The Passion: There’s never been anything like it. The best thing that The Passion had going for it is that it wasn’t made by someone within the Pentecostal Christian/Falwell-approved loop, a group who would have undoubtedly shunned the film’s heretofore unseen level of personal violence had it taken place under any other set of pretenses. They certainly would have never put something like that to film themselves. Gibson never budged from his original concept ofThe Passion, and it shows. The film is unflinching, brutal, audacious and uncompromising in every sense, light years beyond Scorsese’s revisionist history of Christ or any Christian-endorsed filmmaker’s Sunday School-ing of crucial historic material. Mel Gibson might be a radical, but then again, radicals do seem to have a flair for getting people’s attention.
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02. Sideways
Director: Alexander Payne
Chances are that you’ll probably find a lot of flawed movies about perfect people at your local cineplex – I’m looking at you, Hollywood - but much less often do you find a perfect movie about flawed people. Or at least a just-about-perfect movie.Sideways finds its beauty in the flaws of a handful of lost, wandering souls, and a little bit of northern California sun… But mostly the lost souls. Paul Giamatti is quickly going to have to take out a patent on the sad-sack character, taking one step closer to being this generation’s everyman actor with his performance as Miles, an aspiring author who buries his constant struggles in his auspiciously astute knowledge of wine. Sidewaysis a familiar story, being that we’ve seen its characters in our own daily travails, friends and acquaintances who make the same mistakes and find it hard to snap out of their bad habits. We laugh at the characters in Sideways because we know this sort of stuff happens. Sometimes it even happens to us.
01. Garden State
Director: Zach Braff
The Passion might be the bigger spectacle with all of the press, and Sideways might be the finely honed, spit-polished tale of human ineptitude, but there wasn’t a single movie in 2004 that charmed any me more than Garden State. It’s not a perfect film, but as a level headed, personable examination of everything from suburbia to family life to the sometimes-aimless purpose searching of young adulthood, it’s dead on. As evidenced by this movie and his directorial efforts on Scrubs, it’s pretty clear that Zach Braff, despite being a relative greenhorn on the scene, knows how to put together an affecting, emotionally relevant story arc. Add an immaculate supporting cast of Ian Holm, Peter Sarsgaard and that irresistible pixie Natalie Portman (her idiosyncrasies here seem to match up pretty squarely with her precocious youngster from Beautiful Girls), and you’ve got yourself a small-scale masterpiece.
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Honorable Mention
- Before Sunset (Director: Richard Linklater)
- Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (Director: Adam McKay)
- The Corporation (Directors: Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar)
- Mean Girls (Director: Mark S. Waters)
- Friday Night Lights (Director: Peter Berg)
- The Terminal (Director: Steven Spielberg)