Continuing our journey through 2003 with the films of May 2 through July 25. A lot happened in this period: the beginning of Pirates of the Caribbean, the end of Sean Connery, Pixar and comic book films leveling up artistically and commercially. It was quite the time to be alive.
Of these thirteen, three were brand new to me (Camp, Capturing the Friedmans, Dirty Pretty Things). Of the remaining ten, I’d only seen half of them multiple times before this (X2, The Room, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Down with Love, 28 Days Later).
X2
release: May 2
dir: Bryan Singer
pr: Lauren Shuler Donner / Ralph Winter
scr: Michael Dougherty & Dan Harris and David Hayter, story by Zack Penn and David Hayter & Bryan Singer
cin: Newton Thomas Sigel
Saw this in theaters with my sister Sarah. Anyway, common wisdom at the time held that this was the best of the two X-Men movies, the one-two punch of this and the previous year’s Spider-Man heralding a new era of genre cinema. Brian Cox is the villain here, a man with a secret facility where he experiments on and enslaves Mutants while encouraging some sort of Mutant Registration Act or something. Revisiting it for the first time since a rewatch at my friend’s house in high school, I realized just how…busy…this thing is. A lot of characters, a lot of story, a lot of conversations that clearly use “Mutant” as a parallel for race and sexual identity. Ambitious in its emotional scope. Perhaps there’s too much going on: by the time we wrap up Jean Grey’s arc, we’ve already gone through Xavier’s mindfuck, Magneto’s prison escape, Wolverine reconciling with his past, Rogue and Bobby navigating their relationship, Storm and Nightcrawler navigating their civics syllabus, Brian Cox’s scheme, Magneto’s scheme…it’s a lot! I’ve no time for Jean’s migraines!
Down with Love
release: May 16
dir: Peyton Reed
pr: Bruce Cohen / Dan Jinks
scr: Eve Ahlert & Dennis Drake
cin: Jeff Cronenweth
Think I saw this during its HBO debut and immediately bought the DVD, which I revisit every other year, at least. A charming and hilarious valentine to the Rock Hudson-Doris Day comedies, with Ewan McGregor as a playboy journalist locking horns and lips with feminist self-help author (her debut opus is the titular book) Renée Zellweger. David Hyde Pierce and Sarah Paulson are their sidekicks, desperate for companionship, trying to impress, almost cripplingly neurotic. Great homage but you don’t need to have seen the originals to appreciate the over-the-top absurdity and genuinely sexy shenanigans. Perhaps its greatest wink is the attention to detail in the costumes and sets: so stylized, so glamorous, so calculated to impress that one is simultaneously tickled and awed. It’s too much but exactly! Ross Hunter would be proud. If this isn’t in my Top Ten of 2003, I’ve been kidnapped.
Finding Nemo
release: May 16
wins: Best Animated Feature
nominations: Best Original Screenplay, Best Score (Randy Newman), Best Sound Editing (Gary Rydstrom / Michael Silvers)
dir: Andrew Stanton
pr: Graham Walters
scr: Andrew Stanton & Bob Peterson & David Reynolds, story by Andrew Stanton
cin: Sharon Calahan / Jeremy Lasky
Clownfish Marlin searches the ocean for his disabled son Nemo, who was kidnapped by a scuba diver and is now in a dentist’s aquarium. I seem to remember at the time there being serious rumblings about this being Pixar’s first Best Picture nominee. That didn’t come to pass, of course, but it’s no mystery as to why those rumblings took place. It’s impressively mounted, these cartoon fish blending seamlessly into their almost photo-realistic environment (maybe the best fake water until Avatar: The Way of Water). An epic comedy about growing up, letting go, finding community and courage, and, of course, the love between parents and children.
The Italian Job
release: May 30
dir: F. Gary Gray
pr: Donald DeLine
scr: Donna Powers & Wayne Powers
cin: Wally Pfister
Remake of the 60s thriller about double-crossed thieves who plot a heist against the man who betrayed them. Great fun. Think I saw this in theaters with my friend Tony? I remember the Mini Coopers becoming quite trendy after they appeared in this movie. Fun to watch twenty years later now that I’m actually familiar with the Los Angeles locations and how absolutely horrifying their hacking the traffic cameras is. Game cast with great chemistry and everyone is smoking hot. Franky G!
Wrong Turn
release: May 30
dir: Rob Schmidt
pr: Erik Feig / Brian J. Gilbert / Robert Kulzer / Stan Winston
scr: Alan B. McElroy
cin: John S. Bartley
A group of hot friends going somewhere (a concert?) take a wrong turn and find themselves at the mercy of inbred cannibals. Shocking, gruesome movie. Vividly remember watching this at home with my sisters and one sister’s lesbian friends and everyone gasping at a particular shot of a glistening Eliza Dushku in the woods, not an inherently erotic shot but, uh, effective. As, indeed, everything in this movie is: the scene where our survivors must stay silent while watching one of their best friends get butchered, cooked and devoured is unforgettable. Blech. Between this, House of 1000 Corpses, and the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , there was quite a revival of “beware of the rurals” horror in 2003. Anyhow, I love this movie.
Whale Rider
release: June 6
nominations: Best Actress (Keisha Castle-Hughes)
dir/scr: Niki Caro
pr: John Barnett / Frank Hübner / Tim Sanders
cin: Leon Narbey
Only my second time seeing this coming-of-age drama about a Māori girl who challenges convention and tradition by training to lead her people - against her chief/grandfather’s wishes, of course. Modest. Lovely.
Capturing the Friedmans
release: June 13
nominations: Best Documentary Feature
dir: Andrew Jarecki
pr: Andrew Jarecki / Marc Smerling
cin: Adolfo Doring / Aaron Phillips
A documentary about a family torn apart when the patriarch and the oldest son are accused of child molestation. Hate to say “fascinating” like it’s some pulp fiction but, damn, the family dynamics here are fascinating. The father admits he’s a pedophile early on! The mother doesn’t stand by him or her son but doesn’t disavow them, either, she seems both shellshocked and like she’d been waiting for this shoe to drop. And the brothers protest everyone’s innocence even after the father’s confession (they repeatedly complain that their mother never understood them, that there was a dynamic of Dad and His Boys vs. Her which is very…well, it says a lot, I think, about how premeditative the dad was)! That’s just the first half, it’s a rollercoaster.
28 Days Later
release: June 27
dir: Danny Boyle
pr: Andrew Macdonald
scr: Alex Garland
cin: Anthony Dod Mantle
Cillian Murphy wakes up to an England ravaged by a virus in under a month, turning people into…not zombies, but infected with rage. Many years and many viewings later, I still think the second half - a speed run of Day of the Dead - drags, though of course that lethargy is part of it: these military men are bored, restless, and corrupted. All around? A great movie, two hours of “how’d they do that?” - even the performances, frankly, have a rare rawness that feels intrusive to watch. The crow scene is one of the greatest sequences in “zombie” cinema, horror cinema, cinema at large.
The Room
release: June 27
dir/pr/scr: Tommy Wiseau
cin: Todd Barron
For a while this was the must-see “so bad it’s good” flick. Adult Swim marathoned it one April Fool’s Day, didn’t they? And it is almost inconceivably terrible. The story is a reliable one - a woman, bored with her life, cheats on her perfect partner with his best friend and things go awry - but the execution is mind-boggling. No one speaks like a human being. No one acts like a human being. Even the songs on the soundtrack are alien. It is gripping, though. I’ve probably seen it twenty times. If you like bad movies, this is for you.
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
release: July 9
nominations: Best Actor (Johnny Depp), Best Makeup (Ve Neill / Martin Samuel), Best Sound Mixing (Christopher Boyes / David Parker / David E. Campbell / Lee Orloff), Best Sound Editing (Christopher Boyes / George Watters II), Best Visual Effects (John Knoll / Hal T. Nickel / Charles Gibson / Terry D. Frazee)
dir: Gore Verbinski
pr: Jerry Bruckheimer
scr: Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio, story by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio and Stuart Beattie and Jay Wolpert
cin: Dariusz Wolski
Based on the Disney Theme Parks ride about, well, pirates…of the Caribbean. Saw this in theaters with a coterie of friends from the theatre summer day camp I attended. You could feel a classic being born, the energy in the room when Jack Sparrow stepped off the sinking mast into the dock was unforgettable. The very idea of a plotless theme park ride being adapted into a motion picture was risible…until we saw the first trailer. And then the movie? Great effects and makeup, great sets and costumes, great dialogue and plot, great performances of great characters, great score. It launched Keira Knightley, kept Orlando Bloom around, and gave Gore Verbinski the cred he needed to make the bonkers A Cure for Wellness. All wins.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
release: July 11
dir: Steven Norrington
pr: Don Murphy
scr: James Robinson
cin: Dan Laustsen
Based on the comic, this is about a bunch of classic characters from the Victorian age being brought together as heroes and villains to do…well, I forget the plot but I do know it has Sean Connery as Allan Quatermain (spelled and pronounced various ways throughout the film) fighting alongside Captain Nemo. Dumb fun until it gets dull, which is more often than you’d think. Notoriously served as the final stake in the heart of Connery’s passion for the work. Not the worst thing anyone’s ever made or seen but you can live without it.
Dirty Pretty Things
release: July 18
nominations: Best Original Screenplay
dir: Stephen Frears
pr: Robert Jones / Tracey Seaward
scr: Steven Knight
cin: Chris Menges
Undocumented immigrants in London struggle to just live and stumble upon an organ harvesting scheme. Which sounds like a horror movie but, no, it’s a romantic drama between hotel night manager Chiwetel Ejiofor (a doctor in his home country) and maid Audrey Tautou. A credible story, surprisingly filled with dark humor - we have to laugh, don’t we, isn’t that what gets us through it all? - that complements some of the more depressing elements of ruthless survival. And always optimistic! I think it’s great!
Camp
release: July 25
dir/scr: Todd Graff
pr: Danny DeVito / Pamela Koffler / Katie Roumel / Michael Shamberg / Stacey Sher / Christine Vachon / Jonathan Weisgal
cin: Kip Bogdahn
Can you believe I never saw this movie? It’s about teens at a sleepaway summer camp for theatre kids, where they put on multiple shows a season - some wildly inappropriate for this age group - and the feelings and longings and lusts of these hormonal drama queens - and kings. Delightful and, I can tell you, very truthful. The one exchange where the adults of the camp realize one camper is poisoning another to get the lead and can only be impressed at the chutzpah and gossip about it instead of doing anything? Yes, exactly, theatre people are crazy. The subplot of the washed-up Broadway director coming to do shows at the camp doesn’t really work, the stakes among the kids should be enough. Love triangles! Skinny dipping! Attempted murder! Camp, indeed!
Tomorrow, two Best Picture nominees: Lost in Translation and Seabiscuit!
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