2004 Film List (1 Viewer)

[Jason Seaver]

Four more, the last ones before the Boston Fantastic Film Festival and American League Championship series comspire to kill me:

#109: Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence - :star::star:¾ - Neat ideas, poor consolidation of same into a story.
#110: Rick - :star::star::star:¼ - Amusing transposition of Rigoletto to the corporate world.
#111: Tarnation - :star::star: - Self-absorbed and occasionally staged-feeling documentary.
#112: I ♥ Huckabees - :star::star::star:½ - Occasionally the veneer of whimsey over its philosophizing gets a little thin, but very amusing nonetheless.

 

[Joe Kamsan]

Updated with Michael Mann's alright but not that great Collateral. The amount of praise this film is getting on these boards is mystifying, but to each his/her own I suppose. Mann's fingerprints on the film, plus strong performances from Cruise and Foxx keep this movie from being shelved alongside the likes of Training Day and Phone Booth. B+

 

[Seth Paxton]

Secret Window
6.5 of 10
Functional thriller that is hurt somewhat by other films beating it to the punch on the main premise. As far as King adaptations go this is probably in the upper middle. The film looks and sounds great, but the story just doesn't have a lot of life to it.

Team America: World Police
8 of 10
A very funny send-up of current politics, action movie cliches, and even Broadway. The puppet humor is hilarious as are most of the songs. Its not nearly as tight as Bigger, Longer, Uncut was, but its still a pretty good comedy.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow - A lot of huffin' and puffin' and not much of anything else.

~Edwin

 

[Seth Paxton]

Touching the Void
8 of 10
Great story and beautiful cinematography, but a little slow at times. I found the DVD mini-documentary about their return to the mountain for the filmming to be perhaps more powerful from a human emotions standpoint.

 

[Brook K]

My 2004 renting has been derailed by the Horror Challenge. I've got all the October releases I was interested in lined up at Netflix for November.

I'm Not Scared - Italian film about a boy who's childhood world is shattered by the discovery of a dark secret the adults of the town, including his parents, are hiding. The idea of this story has potential, but the execution is less than ideal. Part of my problem is I didn't think the boy playing the lead was very good. He didn't draw me into his life or story. Plus, since the film is seen through his eyes, none of the other characters are really developed. This mystery behind the motivations of other characters might have worked in the hands of a more skilled director, but it never comes alive here. C+

 

[Jason Seaver]

Stuff from The Boston Fantastic Film Festival:

#113: Five Children and It - :star::star:¾ - Decent little kids' movie.
#114: Saw - :star::star::star:¾ - Very spiffy thriller.
#115: Infernal Affairs - :star::star::star::star: - Great, great, great crime movie.
#116: Alive - :star::star: - Early Kitamura, not quite up to Versus or Azumi
#117: The Bottled Fool - :star::star::star:½ - Proof you can still make a good sci-fi/horror movie with about five dollars worth of props.
#118: Appleseed - :star::star::star:½ - Pretty snazzy anime with actual good CGI.
#119: Darklight - :star: - Pretty awful Sci-Fi Channel production.
#120: Ong-Bak - :star::star::star::star: - Ass-kicking action movie.
#121: Freeze Frame - :star::star::star:½ - Nice, paranoid thriller with Lee Evans in a serious role.
N/A: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance - :star:½ - Well, that's unpleasant.
#122: A Tale of Two Sisters - :star::star::star:½ - Quality creepy horror from Korea.

 

[Seth Paxton]

Jason, you've got me excited about Infernal Affairs which has a truly great premise at the very least.


Hidalgo
7.5 of 10
It's just popcorn fun, but done well. In other words a somewhat template adventure/biopic that doesn't suprise you but doesn't make you groan either. Pleasant enough as a rental with some good horse action and nice cinematography (even if it feels derivitive of LoArabia, any pix in this setting is bound to).

 

[ChrisBEA]

Just added:
The Yes Men: very funny at points, but I wasn't sure whther to laugh or feel sorry for the world....

Birth: Utter waste of time, worst film I have seen this year.

IMHO. of course...

 

[scottLarson]

2004 movies that I have seen
Eurotrip-B+
Passion of the Chirst-B
The Girl Next Door-B
Dawn of the Dead-B+
Hellboy-B+
Van Helsing-B-
Shrek 2-A-
Spider-man 2-A
Bourne Supmeracy-B
AVP-D
Sky Captain and the world of tomorrow-B+
Friday Night Lights-B+
Scooby Doo 2-C
50 First Dates-A
Starsky and Hutch-B

 

[Brook K]

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)

 

[Seth Paxton]

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.

 

[Dana Fillhart]

Okay, this has GOT to be the longest stretch this thread (or its predecessors) have gone without an update.

I'll be sure to amend that when I get home tonight - gotta post my list updates to include The Incredibles and I think I never added Hero to the list, either. Yikes, I'm so behind.

Speaking of so behind ... when is that Top 10 of 2004 thread gonna start up, eh? I'm itchin' to compile the stats again

 

[Nick Sievers]

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

 

[Brook K]

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!

 

[Seth Paxton]

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.

 

[Brook K]

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-

 

[Seth Paxton]

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.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

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

 

[Jason Seaver]

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

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