2004 Film List - Page 12

Saw - An interesting concept and an intense narrative is compromised by cliched filmmaking and an awful ending. B (probably too generous but I'd forgotten how fun it was to see a horror movie with a crowd)

I Heart Huckabees - Ugh, Eternal Sunshine redux as I fight the urge to claw my eyes out to avoid more of this pretentious nonsense. Jude Law is occassionally humorous and I enjoyed Jon Brion's score (though it only served to remind me of PTA's far better films) but the film is packed with so much philosophical technobabble and cool irony that it has no real heart at all. I tuned out early and spent most of the running time debating whether I should leave or stay simply so I could add it to my seen list. C- (boy am I feeling generous today)

It's not clear to me what the theatrical release pattern for Ginger Snaps 2 was, all IMDb has for the US is a 2004 video release. So it goes in my 2004 list.

8 of 10 film for me, I really enjoyed the original, a metaphor for sisters dealing with the older sister hitting puberty and leaving her younger sister behind for her new adult life that also worked as straight horror. Here they managed to dig up yet another troubled young girl issue of addiction and cutting/bleeding that has become a more common problem lately.



Brook, I read I Heart Huckabees totally differently than you did it appears.

I Heart Huckabees
9.5 of 10
A terrific use of characters as tangible versions of various philosophical ideals which allows several of the key characters to humorously and interestingly explore their life crises without resorting to sitting around a coffee table just discussing the issues. If you found Waking Life too dull, here are some of the same issues now debated with a real sense of humor without forgetting to care about the central figures.

I viewed almost every character outside of the big 4 (Swartzman, Wahlberg, Law, Watts) to be symbolic rather than literal, figures representing the various mindsets that people go through as they deal with tramatic upheaval in their life. From optimistic "everything is connected" views to pessimisstic "nothing matters" views to the basic tenets of Christian morals, the entire film is really about the main characters trying to utilize these various views in order to make sense of their life.

The final realization - it takes a bit of everything.

I can see a lot of mainstream audiences being turned off by nonsensical characters and situations that are allowed to exist in metaphorical film worlds such as this one. Obviously it didn't bother me however.

And I was more struck with a Wes Anderson vibe than a Spotless Mind vibe from this film.

Jason usually starts the Top 10 thread on the first or second day of January.

Stage Beauty - Is at its best when it is fun, light, and entertaining, with Rupert Everett's King Charles and his mistress getting the best material and funniest lines. But as a movie about acting and stage life it takes itself way too seriously, is saddled with Billy Crudup's standard "star who has a terrible downfall, learns something about themself, and comes back wiser and better off" character arc, and a romance without much heat between Claire Danes and Crudup. The direction is mediocre as well, including poor shot matching and obvious inserts. Crudup is quite convincing as a female impersonator, has lots of enthusiasm for the role, and there are some really fun moments, it's just too bad the movie as a whole isn't better. B-

Valentin - Another in a long line of foreign films about precocious children, Valentin is an Argentinian movie about a boy living with his grandmother, feeling rejected by his parents, making friends with various adults, and learning about life and in turn affecting their lives. While the film possesses a few scenes of touching emotion, the film often feels very packaged and imitative of similar films. B-

Next Up: A Home At The End Of The World, Saved!

I guess only Brook and I are watching new films anymore.

Saw
3.5 of 10
A very disappointing horror film that desperately wants to be a David Fincher film (Game, Se7en) but fails at almost every turn. The story is moderately interesting, but otherwise the script is just awful. Not just in dialog but in story and storytelling cliches. Inspired by such poor writing, Elwes and Glover give perhaps the worst performances of their careers. At times the acting borders on laughable (you'll wonder if the characters are supposed to be pretending to be who they are, but unfortunately in the end you find out that it really was just terrible acting).

On top of all this is the shoddy direction which often tries to be hip in a way that sadly resembles the direction behind House of the Dead.

The coolest things about the film are story ideas, and for the most part those feel strongly cribbed from Se7en among other sources. Save your money and put in that film or Usual Suspects instead, as this is no better than a 2nd rate TV movie.

Saved! - At times a fun parody of the "hip" Christian movement and teen films in general, but in parodying a genre that mostly produces barely watchable films, it commits many of the same mistakes. It can be quite funny, there are some solid, even interesting characters and relationships, but the movie is in such a rush to pack lots of events, jokes, and characters into 90 minutes, that it creates a lot of uneven scenes. The film also can't make up it's mind whether it wants to really attack the hypocracies it displays, or just be a feel good date movie. B-

(It is nice to see Mary Louis Parker looking more scrumptious than ever )

A Home At The End Of The World - In this film taken from another book by Micheal "The Hours" Cunningham, a boy who repeatedly suffers the loss of family members finds a partner for life in his best friend. The movie takes a long time to get going thanks to a tepid multi-actor "characters as boys and then teenagers" section kept alive only by the appearance of Sissy Spacek as a mother to one of the characters.

In it's "adult" section, with Colin Farrell as one of the friends and Robin Wright Penn as lover,wife,mother to both, the film becomes more alive and heartfelt. Farrell effectively portrays an innocent, for whom the tragedies of life simply wash over him as long as he has the company of other loved ones. Its message that the only thing that really matters between two people is how much they love one another, is attractive as well. It is simply unfortunate that the film falls into the typical American trap of being more concerned with describing events than people. Why do so many movies feel compelled to take us to a different location for some event (in this movie's case, usually a death), than whisk us somewhere else, and then we pause for a minute, and then we're off to do something else, etc, when it would be so much more effective just to have the characters talk to each other for more than 4 lines?

For a portion of the running time anyway, it has rich characters and emotional performances. The film just doesn't make as effective use of them as it should. B-

A very interesting point, Brook. I do think you might be on to something, although I would note that Hitch made a pretty good living on the strength of describing SITUATIONS, which is still not people. I do think he let the characters come out too, but most of his trademark scenes are about setting up all the mise en scene for a tension-based situation.

I suppose your theory goes hand in hand with the modern tradition of assuming cinematography means sweeping vista shots and giant landscapes most of the time. However, I'm not so sure this is just an American phenomenon.

Brad Bird's The Incredibles

The Ladykillers - I enjoyed the writing, music and Ethan and Joel Coen's offbeat humor on this one and thought it was better than Intolerable Cruelty. The Coen brothers have still yet to disappoint me.

~Edwin

Gads, has it been almost a month since the BFFF? I need to get to more first-run stuff.

#123: Shark Tale - ½ - Only fitfully funny, though colorful
#124: Goodbye Dragon Inn - ½ - A beautiful love letter to an old movie theater
#125: The Grudge - - A decent translation of the Japanese original, though the polish makes it a little less scary.
#126: Team America: World Police - - Some things are just funnier when done by puppets.
#127: Birth - ¼ - Just godawful, too poorly made to even make me uncofortable.
#128: Sideways - ¼ - I liked it better than About Schmidt, though I miss Payne's sharp satire.
#129: The Incredibles - ¾ - Man, Brad Bird and Pixar have raised the bar high. No disappointment yet, though.

I think that sums it up quite well.


Incredibles
10 of 10
Great characters, fine writing, and amazing, memorable sequences, all of which left my wife and I both wanting to see the film again (a good sign). This is what POPCORN filmmaking is all about. The next time someone apologizes for a "check your brain" film (like Alexander perhaps) I will simply point to this film. It's fun and fun to look at. Nuff said. Great superhero film, one of the best of that genre.


Friday Night Lights
9.5 of 10
To be honest I'm not really sure at this point why I'm not giving the film a 10. An outstanding film that somehow avoids cliches or incorporates them in such a way as to deemphasize their existence, and that's what sets this film apart from any other football (or most sports) film ever made. There is Hoosiers, Breaking Away, The Natural and this film. In fact limiting it to "great sports film" is just wrong; this is a great film by any standard that earns all of its moments of triumph and tragedy with clear but subtle setups throughout.

Take Hoosiers, turn it to basketball, film and score it like Traffic and add a dash of Last Picture Show and you have this film. Thorton is exceptional as the understated coach and the younger actors are generally perfect in their roles, especially Mike the QB.

This isn't really the avenue for the discussion Seth, but I consider this more of a 90's and newer phenomenon. Michael Reuben describes what I'm talking about in his review of Redlights in the indie/foreign thread.

I tried doing this yesterday but crashed. Our access has been down since Friday, plus I was out of town. It's supposed to get fixed tomorrow afternoon.

Control Room - Documentary look at the innerworkings of Al Jazeera as told by its reporters and producers. The film provides an interesting look at journalistic organizations operating during wartime and a glimpse of Middle Eastern points of view. While I would have appreciated some proof to back up the allegations of event staging made by both Al Jazeera and the US Military, it effectively calls into question our value system and describes the capabilities of military and government organizations to control media. B+

Love Me If You Dare - This French import about childhood friends whose game of "dares" turns into an ugly obsession is one of the most mean-spirited and bizarre romantic films I can think of. While spinning their game into ever more selfish and hurtful ways, the pair engage in vicious dares that destroy those they profess to love and display a complete lack of caring for any but themselves. Yet we, the audience, are somehow supposed to root for these devil-may-care lovers to get together in the end. Like certain recent American films I could name, this tries to use graphics and effects to create the magic that the writing and characters are completely incapable of. Joins my worst of the year list. D

That's why I like French movies.

Brook,

I agree wholeheartedly with you regarding Love Me If You Dare. I went to see what I had to say when I saw it. Excuse me for quoting myself...

"The twisted romantic comedy LOVE ME IF YOU DARE (JEUX D'ENFANTS) borrows the whimsical and fanciful nature of AMELIE in order to use and abuse it. Part melodramatic love story, part wicked subversion of such a thing..."

"These grand gestures are supposed to convince us of their great destined romance, but more often than not it signifies behavior ranging from perversely cruel to grossly immature. It's JACKASS rendered as a French romantic comedy."

"AMELIE'S fairy tale was prime material for being reworked as a cynic's account of obsessive love, but LOVE ME IF YOU DARE is not that film. Rather it is Laetitia Colombani's HE LOVES ME...HE LOVES ME NOT (À LA FOLIE...PAS DU TOUT), with Audrey Tautou putting a counterspin on her best-known role and film, that provides a palatable sourness to AMELIE'S sugary buzz."

To qualify those statements, I loved Amelie.

Agree completely on Love Me. I was surprised to find so many positive notes from people at IMDB. Thanks for reminding me about He Loves Me...He Loves Me Not, which I liked better than Amelie, but had slipped my mind.

Next 2004 viewing for me will be The Clearing.

So far I've seen Sideways and Incredibles most recently, and would give Sideways a 9/10 and Incredibles 10/10. Very impressed...what I have to say is redundant so all I"ll say is...amen!

Looking fwd to:

Closer
Nat'l Treasure
The Life Aquatic
Meet the Fockers
Being Julia
Spanglish

The Clearing - It is a pleasure watching actors like Robert Redford and Willem Dafoe face off against one another, but too often The Clearing directs the attention away from the drama and emotion they generate. Helen Mirren brings weight and quiet power to her role as Redford's wife, but she blows anyone she shares a scene with off the screen. The scenes with the police or her adult children often seem like filler. The family reactions and police procedural material is entirely uninteresting compared to the Redford-Dafoe performances or the scenes of Mirren alone, contemplating what has happened in her marriage and life.

It is successful at times in using a measured pace and observational style to parse out information about the characters in small bites, but just doesn't have enough meat to sustain even the 90m running time. B-

Updated with Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers (****½/*****). By no means a perfect film, but the characters were interesting and engaging enough to get a big recommendation from me. The film presents too many ideas to manage efficiently, and the use of voice-over narration at the beginning but nowhere else is a strange choice...but those problems are minor in the big picture.

For the most part, Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes failed to engage me both intellectually and emotionally. The only segment that had me going was the one featuring Bill Murray. The rest were mostly a dud with the topics of conversation not funny, uninteresting nor insightful.

~Edwin

Alexander Payne's Sideways

~Edwin

Ray
8 of 10
Foxx is outstanding and is in the hunt. I'd like to see some others now before I go handing him the trophy. I also enjoyed SOME of the supporting work, but too often supporting roles are just sloppy and stilted.

On top of that the script is unfortunately trapped in the basic biography template. Like Ali you get a lot more "and then" and a lot less character arc and real storytelling. There is some, which is why I give it an 8 (it flirted with 7.5), but this film has some of the same flaws that troubled ALI last year, without the great Mann touch to help it.

Good film, nowhere near Best Pix material.


I have Control Room and Super Size me both half done, waiting on the wife to get some time to finish them with me. Also Sideways is on deck for me today, hopefully Kinsey will fall in line with this weekend as well.

Marc Forster's Finding Neverland


Next Up: FahrenHYPE 9/11

~Edwin

Sideways
9.5 of 10
Only the fact that the film plays a little dry at times keeps it from being a 10 for me. Its an excellent blend of serious drama and outrageous silliness in line with Payne's other works. The direction is outstanding in the film with a wistful style that plays perfectly to the story being told. I liked Schmidt more, but this is yet another outstanding effort by Payne.

Alan Peterson's FahrenHYPE 9/11

~Edwin

Updated with:

The Machinist- An effective and moody mystery yarn with another powerhouse performance from the great Christian Bale. The cinematography is perfect, lending a truly grim feel to the proceedings. I love Anderson's use of symbolism in telling the story, especially the constant fork in the road sequences. One aspect of the story was rather predictable, but with the direction the film took, said aspect worked well enough for the situation. When the ending finally came, it really hit the mark, and the idea Anderson was exploring came off well. An excellent and actually rather saddening film, giving Anderson his second straight winner.

Steven Spielberg's The Terminal - an amusing flight of fancy. Spielberg takes a simple idea of a man who must take residence at a New York City airport and makes it into a modern-day fantastical tale of pursuing romantic interests, the American dream and promises made.

~Edwin

Before Sunset
10 of 10
While short and simplistic in that it is merely a film about 2 people talking, Linklater has recaptured what made Before Sunrise such a terrific film. First, the dialog is outstanding. The interaction between the characters in both films exhibits an openess and honesty that is refreshingly interesting in modern films, even independent films.

Second, in both films Linklater identifies the problem with a talking head film and aggressively solves it by keeping their discussion on the move in beautiful surroundings. As they walk into new areas the sense of changing acts and tones comes through visually. At the same time there are often backdrops of interesting motion that keep the viewer from tiring of some static conversation.

Even how their conversation and relationship escalate is paralled in how their physical position changes, going from sitting, to walking, to riding a boat, then a car and finally climbing the stairs to her apartment.

It's less than 80 minutes screen time but its an extremely satifying tale of star-crossed lovers with perhaps my favorite last lines of the year.

Catching up as I've been buried in work, sick, or out of town visiting relatives. This month has pretty much killed any chances of me hitting my goal of seeing 400 movies for the year and I'm seriously behind on new, theatrical releases.

Elf - While this is grounded completely in the conventional and far too "wacky slapstick" for my usual tastes, Will Ferrell's energy and relentless enthusiasm eventually wore me down and had me enjoying the movie almost against my will. It didn't hurt that Zooey Deshanel was so scrumpdillyiscious. Though again it is disappointing that so many movies feel the need to insert "bad guys" and false tension/danger just to have an "exciting climax" when that is really the last thing these kinds of movies need. B

Team America World Police - Trey Parker and Matt Stone's spot-on parody of American action movies and narrowmindedness may not be the best comedy film I've seen this year, but it certainly had me laughing the loudest and longest. It is also a surprisingly well-made film. The detailed model work and puppetry movement can be quite breathtaking when it isn't being intentionally humorous. There are many laughs to be had in the familiar soap opera plot and action movie genre trappings. The best sequences though, are expressed in song, several of which are gut-bustingly funny.

While some reviewers were offended that the filmmakers take no sides and cynically skewer all comers, to me they reflect an honest view of a land where all sides are compromised. The only area where I think the film takes a wrong turn is its relentless fixation on celebrity behaviour. Perhaps this simply reflects the society in which I live in as well, but I just don't find the idea of blowing up the Baldwins or George Clooney nearly as funny as they do. A-

Zhou Yu's Train - I rented this for one reason only, to see the luminous Gong Li, one of the best actresses of the 90's who has been almost completely absent from filmscreens for the last 5 years. (though she does appear in Wong Kar Wai's 2046 and Eros which have not received general release in the US yet) On this, the film delivers, as she is as beautiful, intelligent, and moving onscreen as ever. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the story, which involves her romantic relationship with a poet and a slightly more platonic one with a veterinarian. The poet lives in a distant city, thus Zhou Yu must take a long train journey twice a week to see him and the film is full of train iconography and scenes set on the titular train.

The film is beautifully photographed and features a lush score and sound design, but is needlessly convoluted. It flashes forward and back with seemingly no rhyme nor reason and features Gong Li in a dual role, only there isn't a clue to the viewer that she's supposed to be two different people until almost the end of the film. While Gong Li is able to movingly communicate the many facets of her character despite this, the movie's male characters aren't so sucessful at it. What could have been a sadly romantic tale is too often interrupted by unneeded directorial flourishes. B-

The Stepford Wives - A film that exists on such a plane of absolute silliness and lazy writing and direction that little even needs to be said about it. D+

I'll try and write something on Sideways tomorrow. It is the first film I've added to my top 10 in a few months. It replaces Touching The Void. I've also rearranged my list with The Brown Bunny moving up to #3, The Trilogy: On The Run moving up, and Shaun of the Dead and The Five Obstructions moving down.

Also was able to revisit the Dawn remake after buying the DVD. A 2nd viewing reconfirmed to me how strong of a film it is and it isn't exaggeration for me to say this is the best American horror film in several years. That this is a remake probably says a lot about the state of horror filmmaking here.

Next Up: The Terminal

Motorcycle Diaries
8.5 of 10
Salles film is beautifully photographed and should be one of the cinematography Oscar noms. Bernal is once again in top acting form as well. However, there is an issue with a road picture, whose narrative is driven by distance and location goals, when it suddenly comes to long, reflective halts. This is not to say that those moments aren't a part of the journey, but rather that the film fails to fully establish the emotional growth arc appropriately early on.

I never felt Geuvara was lacking and while I understood his concerns for the people he met, I didn't fully feel that this was truly a new discovery for him. It often felt much more like "here is a nice guy being nice". Fine as a character trait, but terrible as the driving force for the narrative. Better to just stick to clipping off the miles or to indicate how the final Che is really that much different than the introspective, kind Che that set out on the journey in the first place.

The result is that the film begins to bog down the minute our travelers stop traveling since this is the narrative journey it has asked us to take with them. Fix that issue and you have a homerun. As it stands its a good film that becomes to slow and dry at points to be great, lacking the passion that made Frida so outstanding.