This was a tough field to narrow down, as this year was full of old favorites and new discoveries. Here’s to the ones that didn't make the final cut: 28 Days Later, Cold Mountain, Elephant, House of 1000 Corpses, The Last Samurai, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and Phone Booth.
My Top Ten, in alphabetical order:
Big Fish
dir: Tim Burton
pr: Bruce Cohen / Dan Jinks / Richard D. Zanuck
scr: John August
cin: Philippe Rousselot
I come from a long line of storytellers on both sides. Nana's direct but surprisingly warm and amusing memories of coming of age in WWII Germany, Poppa's jokes and remembrances structured and narrated with an expert flow that at times recalled Eudora Welty, Dad’s various anecdotes peppered with imitations that showed an ear for unique speech patterns and physicality, Cousin John’s colorful assortment of characters subjecting our chin-flicking hero to all manner of irritations. Yes, I am susceptible to a tale of a patriarch who embroiders the truth with amusing embellishments but is so dedicated to the art of the story and the heart behind his telling of them that even in death, he insists on blurring fact and fantasy. And while that may be frustrating for a son (or any relative) just trying to get to know who they think the real person is, bottom line is, you’ll never truly know someone’s story - though even in their fictions, they constantly tell you who they are.
Capturing the Friedmans
dir: Andrew Jarecki
pr: Andrew Jarecki / Marc Smerling
cin: Adolfo Doring / Aaron Phillips
Maybe it shouldn't be so watchable - this is, after all, about a family torn apart by accusations of child sexual abuse lobbied against both the patriarch and his youngest son - but the way it doles out its information so that you have to question not just guilt or innocence but whether the investigation and its tactics were fair... Here we have a man who is an admitted pedophile, whose own family doesn't see how he's manipulated the dynamics so that his sons shut out their mother, who keeps photos and magazines of that sort in the house! A sick man, a dangerous man - but did he do the things he is accused of doing? Was it a fair trial? Is his son guilty or is he just another victim caught up in the whirlwind of an investigation whose own detectives admit they manipulated, whether consciously or not, alleged victims' statements to get the answers they wanted? Oh, it's a mess and a tragedy. I'm reminded of Pontius Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar: "We both have Truths, are mine the same as yours?"
City of God
dir: Fernando Meirelles
pr: Andrea Barata Ribeiro / Mauricio Andrade Ramos
scr: Bráulio Montovani
cin: César Charlone
Stands alongside The Irishman (I know it came out 16 years before but I saw The Irishman first so roll with me here) as a perfect crime epic that details how the corruption and the violence are, indeed, systemic - the police and the politicians allow the infection to spread, the press comes in every now and then for a great photo, a riveting story, then pays who it needs to and moves on (its side detail of a female editor deflowering a young photographer from the slums is one of a million problematic cinematic portrayals of round-heeled newswomen, but here there is a patina of elitist fetishization and further exploitation that is in keeping with the rest of the film's concerns). As breathless, exciting, and, yes, fun as the movie can be, the rug is constantly pulled out from under the audience, forcing us to confront the truth of the situation. Everyone involved is under 25; none of them can even let less at a discotheque without fear of violence.
Down with Love
dir: Peyton Reed
pr: Bruce Cohen / Dan Jinks
scr: Eve Ahlert & Dennis Drake
cin: Jeff Cronenweth
In 1980, Universal Pictures put a hip, modern spin on MGM musicals with Xanadu, which bathed in the same too-sincere waters as its predecessors and even roped in the best of its participants, Gene Kelly, to pay tribute. In 2003, 20th Century Fox paid homage to Universal's Rock Hudson-Doris Day-Tony Randall sex comedies of the late 50s/early 60s with Down with Love, which embraced the ludicrous, hyperactive energy of its predecessors and took the piss by playing it all straight, its actors walking a hilarious highwire of physical, verbal, and horny comedy without once winking or double-taking. - they even roped in Tony Randall to play along. Like Charles Busch says in the intro to one of his play anthologies, it's only funny if the actors play the absurdity dead seriously. Everyone passes the test, impressive when you consider Renee Zellweger's game-changing monologue or Ewan McGregor's accent work or Sarah Paulson's cigarettes or David Hyde Pierce! Looks great, plays great, great to watch again and again.
Kill Bill Vol. 1
dir: Quentin Tarantino
pr: Lawrence Bender
scr: Quentin Tarantino, story by Quentin Tarantino & Uma Thurman
cin: Robert Richardson
Another movie that knows its genre (martial arts/western/revenge) intimately, a “remix” by Tarantino: anime segments, sequences and costumes lifted from Bruce Lee flicks, Japanese surf rock, music ranging from Bernard Herrmann’s Twisted Nerve to the Ironside theme to original tracks by RZA. It is, yes, half a movie, but so much of the focus being on the Bride’s pursuit of O-Ren Ishii gives it not only its own narrative but a distinct genre separate from the next volume. Even the way O-Ren’s own revenge tale is in conversation with the Bride’s is enough to give her story its own space - and, let’s not forget, this movie begins with Vernita Green living the family life she helped deprive the Bride of. It’s lean but it isn’t mean, you feel the respect between colleagues and the tragedy of lives hard lived in every scene.
Love Actually
dir/scr: Richard Curtis
pr: Tim Bevan / Eric Fellner / Duncan Kenworthy
cin: Michael Coulter
I could explain its presence here by immediately leaping to defend it against increasingly loud nay-sayers but I think the haters hate what I love about it. It’s earnest to a fault, its depictions of “romance”, overall structure, and odd conceits perhaps not quite up to the task of presenting a story about how love actually is all around (“Now is the time for all good men to believe in love,” as Hair’s Sheila Franklin would say; apropos for a film that wants to remind us at the outset of the post-9/11 world we live in). Yet. It recognizes innocence in the unlikeliest of places (nude stand-ins for actors in an erotic drama), sees the spectrum of love as not just romantic but familial (as between a stepfather and stepson) or platonic (as between a rocker and his manager), fancies that love is the universal language (great if the two of you speak different languages!). It’s also realistic about love thwarted, love of family having to take precedence over the possibility of romantic love, or love in marriage being something you must constantly work on, must decide is worth putting effort into. And it’s funny!
Monster
dir/scr: Patty Jenkins
pr: Mark Damon / Donald Kushner / Clark Peterson / Charlize Theron / Brad Wyman
cin: Steven Bernstein
I already went on about Charlize Theron’s performance getting to the core of a traumatized, defensive person clawing back at the world, her act of self-defense mutating into blind vengeance against all men. I’ve talked about its place, in my mind, as a great Florida film, depicting the state as a common last stand for the desperate, its odd insistence on being both a place of true freedom and ultra-conservatism (both represented when Aileen and Selby have their roller rink date), and the dismissive tone with which people greet the name Daytona Beach. I think I even talked before about how I love the writing: Aileen narrating her life, not getting into the details on some things, sometimes narrating with clarity, sometimes defensively addled, abruptly moving past the “boring stuff” (anything between the arrest and sentencing) to instead focus on the moments in Aileen’s life when she was most free and most betrayed. If I haven’t mentioned all this before, I am know. And it’s all true.
Shattered Glass
dir/scr: Billy Ray
pr: Craig Baumgarten / Tove Christensen / Gaye Hirsch / Adam Merins
cin: Mandy Walker
Due respect to Bad Santa and School of Rock, to me the funniest thing in 2003, the moment I keep remembering randomly and giggling over, is Hayden Christensen’s shameless fraud of a reporter going all sad puppy and pouting, “Are you mad at me?” whenever he’s about to get caught. And it works! Until it doesn’t, of course. Obviously, a great film about journalistic ethics at the dawn of the new millennium and what we value in our reportage, it’s also a great one about the very human tendency to silence those inner doubts you have about a person because, oh, they’re so funny and charming and popular, it must be me that’s the problem. Every character gets a moment where something Stephen Glass says doesn’t make sense and they make the decision to ignore their instincts. Question everything! Question everyone! Go ahead and doubt! Raise your concerns and pursue them! What’s more important, entertainment or the truth?
Something's Gotta Give
dir/scr: Nancy Meyers
pr: Bruce A. Block / Nancy Meyers
cin: Michael Ballhaus
So witty, so sexy, so adult, it could stand comfortably among the great rom-coms of Old Hollywood. It's definitely Nancy Meyers' best work: the principals played by Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson are likable but thorny, inevitably drawn to each other but so perfectly crafted as individuals and as a possible couple that you can see a realistically happy ending where it doesn't work out. And with the hot doctor Keanu Reeves, it depicts a healthy, functioning relationship that is perfect but still isn't quite right, a good match but not the match, even if it seems insane to toss aside Keanu Reeves in favor of an aging Jack Nicholson (then again, hello, this is Jack Nicholson, who at any age is still...Jack Nicholson). Much of the first half unfolds like a sophisticated play - is this why playwright Erica Barry lets her guard down, she’s in familiar territory? - its use of early social media is as canny and accurate as You've Got Mail, its willingness to introduce and then drop dynamic characters (looking at you, Frances McDormand) to maintain the reality of these people and the fantasy of the situation...it's a tricky balance but Meyers pulls it off.
Thirteen
dir: Catherine Hardwicke
pr: Jeffrey Levy-Hinte / Michael London
scr: Catherine Hardwicke & Nikki Reed
cin: Elliot Davis
The biggest surprise of the new watches. As specific as this story is to its setting - yeah, I’m sure there are a lot of temptations teens and pre-teens living in Los Angeles have access to that I wouldn’t have even considered in college, to say nothing of the distractions and priorities that this land of broken dreams and perpetual hopes offers parents and other would-be guardians - even I recognized familiar scenes and behaviors from my own youth. The Jekyll/Hyde whiplash of a typical teen who suddenly becomes an abrasive stranger, calculatedly kind and unthinkingly cruel, the paralyzed confusion of the adults. But it acknowledges that this isn’t a “bad seed” story but one of adolescents looking for a place in the world: some journeys of self-discovery are also self-destructive. Very moving.
Next time, the nominees for the 2003 Retro Hollmann Awards.
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