This is the thread where we discuss matters pertaining to the detrius that accompanies the "End of the Year in Cinema" -- 2004

and shit do i ever want to see the five obstructions (unrelated to anything)

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! No.

TOP TEN FILMS OF 2004
1. Finding Neverland
2. The Aviator
3. Closer
4. Million Dollar Baby
5. Sideways
6. Kinsey
7. Vera Drake
8. Ray
9. Collateral
10. Hotel Rwanda

TOP FIVE FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILMS
1. The Sea Inside
2. Bad Education
3. Maria Full of Grace
4. Les Choristes
5. The Motorcycle Diaries

TOP FIVE DOCUMENTARIES OF 2004
1. Born into Brothels
2. Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession
3. Paper Clips
4. Supersize Me
5. The Story of the Weeping Camel

Best Film: Finding Neverland
Best Foreign Language Film: The Sea Inside
Best Documentary: Born into Brothels
Best Animated Feature: The Incredibles
Best Actor: Jamie Foxx, Ray
Best Actress: Annette Bening, Being Julia
Best Supporting Actor: Thomas Haden Chuch, Sideways
Best Supporting Actress: Laura Linney, Kinsey
Best Acting by an Ensemble: Closer
Breakthrough Performance Actor: Topher Grace, In Good Company and P.S.
Breakthrough Performance Actress: Emmy Rossum, The Phantom of the Opera
Best Director: Michael Mann, Collateral
Best Directorial Debut: Zach Braff, Garden State
Best Adapted Screenplay: Sideways, Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor
Best Original Screenplay: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Charlie Kaufman
Outstanding Production Design: House of Flying Daggers
Career Achievement: Jeff Bridges
Special Filmmaking Achievement: Clint Eastwood, for producing, directing, acting, and scoring Million Dollar Baby
William K. Everson Award for Film History: Richard Schickel
Producers Award: Jerry Bruckheimer
Special Recognition of Films that Reflect the Freedom of Expression:
Fahrenheit 9/11, The Passion of the Christ, Conspiracy of Silence

Special Mention for Excellence in Filmmaking [basically runners up]

The Assassination of Richard Nixon
Before Sunset
Door in the Floor
Enduring Love
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Facing Windows
Garden State
A Home at the End of the World
Imaginary Heroes
Since Otar Left
Stage Beauty
Undertow
The Woodsman

1. Best Directorial Debut: Zach Braff, Garden State
2. Breakthrough Performance Actress: Emmy Rossum, The Phantom of the Opera
3. Best Supporting Actress: Laura Linney, Kinsey
4. Breakthrough Performance Actor: Topher Grace, In Good Company and P.S.
5. Best Original Screenplay: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Charlie Kaufman

I know. I'm just saying it should be on someone's list. Besides mine, I mean. It was, like, the most formally and narratively audacious movie made by any big-name director this year. And also the funniest. But whatever.

I'm not crazy about it either, but I think it's very well-made. What bothers me is the conceit, which strikes me a little less clever than it strikes some others. Sorta kinda a bit like a Brown student's undergraduate B- thesis, 'Tragic Mirror: The Interjunction of Metafiction and Semiotics.'

I was excited to see Million Dollar Baby until it showed up on the NBR list. Also...

TOP FIVE DOCUMENTARIES OF 2004
1. Born into Brothels
2. Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession
3. Paper Clips
4. Supersize Me
5. The Story of the Weeping Camel

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! You have got to be kidding me! Brothels (which I've seen) and Paper Clips (which I haven't) seem to both be sub-To Be and To Have innocence-of-children Unicef BS doc-pap. And Z Channel is terminally boring. I'm intrigued by Camel, though.

I too thought Kaufman's third act was his most heartfelt and best.

Damn, Church is gonna take all the supporting trophies from Wahlberg.

I'm looking forward to those Topher Grace perfs; he's talented.

Anyway, I am sad my nineteen straight posts on this thread in a vacuum have been lost.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Sideways
Dogville
Bad Education
Million Dollar Baby
Before Sunset
I Rebuff Huckabees
Crimson Gold
Hero and/or Flying Daggers
Goodbye Dragon Inn (only because of its phenomenal rout in last year's undistributed poll)

I'd say go for it, youn. The worst thing that can happen is that you'll get into a car accident.

1. Sideways (Alexander Payne, U.S.) 684 points
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, U.S.) 602
3. Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, U.S.) 593
4. Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, U.S.) 471
5. Goodbye Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan) 462
6. Notre musique (Jean-Luc Godard, France) 460
7. Vera Drake (Mike Leigh, U.K.) 407
8. Kill Bill Vol. 2 (Quentin Tarantino, U.S.) 405
9. Dogville (Lars von Trier, Denmark) 388
10. Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembene, Senegal) 387
11. Bad Education (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain) 344
12. The Aviator (Martin Scorsese, U.S.) 336
13. The Incredibles (Brad Bird, U.S.) 310
14. Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi, Iran) 305
15. Fahrenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore, U.S.) 286
16. I ♥ Huckabees (David O. Russell, U.S.) 283
17. Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen, U.S.) 275
18. Collateral (Michael Mann, U.S.) 255
19. House of Flying Daggers (Zhang Yimou, China) 228
20. Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette, U.S.) 223

(21-50.)

Candidates for my Worst list: Dogville, Tarnation.

Ludicrously overrated: Before Sunset.

Too high: Million Dollar Baby, Sideways.

Need promotion from 21-50: S21, The Saddest Music, Distant.

I was not crazy about the Hou movie that tops the Unreleased list. "Checkpoint" is super.

Filtered into some of Dr. Morbius' categories:

FAVORITES:
Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, U.S.)
Vera Drake (Mike Leigh, U.K.)
Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembene, Senegal)
Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi, Iran)
Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen, U.S.)
Blissfully Yours (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand)

RATHER OVERRATED:
Sideways (Alexander Payne, U.S.) -- this would be the only one I'd go so far as to say it's "ludicrously overrated"
House of Flying Daggers (Zhang Yimou, China)
The Saddest Music in the World (Guy Maddin, Canada)
Infernal Affairs (Alan Mak & Andrew Lau, Hong Kong)

TOO HIGH:
Kill Bill Vol. 2 (Quentin Tarantino, U.S.)
Fahrenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore, U.S.)

NOT HIGH ENOUGH:
Bright Leaves (Ross McElwee, U.S.)

THE REST:
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, U.S.)
Dogville (Lars von Trier, Denmark)
Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette, U.S.)
Distant (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey)
Hero (Zhang Yimou, China)
The Five Obstructions (Lars von Trier, Denmark)
Cowards Bend the Knee (Guy Maddin, Canada)
Time of the Wolf (Michael Haneke, Austria)
Primer (Shane Carruth, U.S.)
Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman (Takeshi Kitano, Japan)
Team America: World Police (Trey Parker, U.S.)

-----------------
Hmmm... by my count, 21 of the 50 are in languages other than English. Of those, I've seen only 10. (On the other hand, that means I saw only 14 of the remaining 29 that are in English. So I guess I am worldly.)

Bad Education is also playing nearby.

I can't wait for the new Eastwood to open around here. If the Unforgiven/Perfect World standard holds, the followup to his overrated Oscar winner will be fantastic.

I had a moment of skepticism when I thought of the scenes of nature before death in Soylent Green (too easy), but then I was reassured by some of the ways he shoots people, e.g., when one of the Native American men shakes out his hair and stands, so much a companion, next to the other. Also, the woman's wrist during Godard's lecture and the woman running and Olga's face and the man's hand against his black coat at the reception. And someone mentioned the hard cuts, so I looked for that, pretty obvious I guess, and was propelled along and held at a distance. So long looking doesn't lead to identification. It's more like looking in a mirror and remembering what you look like.

Also, the dreariness of the city in rain and traffic: this is what we have built for ourselves - this way of life.

So mostly I'm not bothered by my philistinism because he's right, you can't go back. He's just further along than I am, maybe out on a limb.

It's embarrassing to go on like this.

This assumes Million Dollar Baby isn't on a collision course with at least 7 Oscar nominations, which it is.

-- milozauckerman (wooderso...), December 24th, 2004

Short answer, yes. It's a decent film, but would've been largely ignored had it been made by anyone else. Most the acting talent went to waste in rather lifeless characters.

Collateral
Farenheit 9/11
Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle
Kill Bill 2
Maria Full of Grace

the winner was Farenheit 9/11

I am not making this up.

Nice feature of the Voice poll: the clickable titles and voters, so you can personally blacklist everyone who voted for "Dogville."

Melissa Anderson
Jason Anderson
David Blaylock
Donna Bowman
Tom Charity
Travis Crawford
Mike D'Angelo
Howard Feinstein
Scott Foundas
Graham Fuller
Stephen Garrett
Ed Gonzalez
Elizabeth Helfgott
J. Hoberman
J.R. Jones
Kristin M. Jones
Anthony Kaufman
Dave Kehr
Ben Kenigsberg
Michael Koresky
Joshua Land
Dennis Lim
David Ng
Ed Park
Keith Phipps
Nathan Rabin
Jim Ridley
Mike Rubin
Laura Sinagra
David Sterritt
Ron Stringer
Benjamin Strong
Scott Tobias
Jessica Winter

Critics who Dr. Morbius can still trust (i.e. Dogville is on their "worsts" list):

Roger Ebert
Owen Glieberman
Rex Reed

01 Sideways
02 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
03 Goodbye Dragon Inn
04 Fahrenheit 9/11
05 The Aviator
06 Kill Bill Vol. 2
07 Infernal Affairs
08 Notre Musique
09 Collateral
10 Spider-Man 2

Let's just say I'd take the rest of Hoberman's list over Mike D'Angelo's. (Time Out NY's critics don't appear to have even seen many films more than 30 years old.)

not a top-10, but my list from ILF which might be missing some that I saw

won't see because the trailers repulse me:
Napoleon Dynamite
Spanglish

disliked:
Saw (hated)
Intermission (hated)
Spider-Man 2
Coffee & Cigarettes
Garden State (kind of hated, but at least it wasn't the Rick Moody novel)(Ms. Portman please go back to doing 'chick flicks' like Where The Heart Is, I enjoyed that one)
Hero (bo-ring)
Team America: World Police (oh yeah, so [i]that's[/i] why I dislike libertarians)
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
The Girl Next Door
Troy
the Dreamers

meh:
Fahrenheit 9/11 (a few good sequences, mostly shrill and self-defeating)
the Incredibles
Kill Bill 2 (my God this seems never-ending on DVD)
Van Helsing (not as bad as some would lead you to believe, the first third is decent for a CGI blockbuster)

halfway between meh and liked:
I Heart Huckabee's (hated the Christian family scene and the crowd scenes)
Saddest Music In The World (could have been better)
Hellboy (loses a lot from big-screen to DVD)
Control Room
Dodgeball
Anchorman
Mean Girls

liked:
Sideways (overrated)
Harry Potter
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (don't understand all the love, it was good but not great)
Closer (which was shallow and pretentious, maybe, but fun to watch and good performances except for Portman)
the Bourne Supremacy
Undertow
Baaaddddaaaaassssssss or whatever

Liked a lot:
Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
Zatoichi
Collateral (even if the last 15-20mins were pretty bad)
Friday Night Lights

loved:
Twilight Samurai
Before Sunset

>I Heart Huckabee's (hated the Christian family scene and the crowd scenes)

Since the dinner scene is probably the favorite of everyone I know who likes IHH, tell us why? It seemed to encapsulate Divided America better than anything I've seen lately (and Marky apparently improvised his "Jesus is most definitely mad at you" line).

Most of the scenes with more than a few people (the environmental group meetings, the Jesus people) were pretty bad. Russell seemed to be trying for madcap, screwball energy in them, but they were all just overly shrill and unfocused.