THE YEAR OF SWIFT BOATS: On Wednesday I listed my favorite films of 2014. Now let's leap back another 10 years.

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked at 2004, it gave its Best Picture award to Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby, a reasonably good movie that lasts longer than it needs to. Here are some better efforts:

1. Bad Education
Written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar

No one wrings meaning from melodrama the way Almodóvar does.

2. Kill Bill: Vol. 2
Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

The second installment of the Kill Bill sequence deepens our sense of the story's characters, treats this objectively silly material seriously, and somehow makes me take it seriously too. Not by loudly proclaiming its seriousness, as so much trash aspiring to arthood does, but by earning my respect; by letting me get attached to these pulp characters with their truth serums, their kung fu superpowers, and their very human attachments and resentments and revealing little lies.

3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Directed by Michel Gondry
Written by Charlie Kaufman

Three years before the term "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" was coined, this subverted every Manic Pixie Dream Girl movie that would ever be made.

4. The Wire 3
Written by David Simon, Ed Burns, Richard Price, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Rafael Alvarez, and Joy Lusco
Directed by Ed Bianchi, Steve Shill, Rob Bailey, Ernest Dickerson, Dan Attias, Leslie Libman, Tim Van Patten, Agnieszka Holland, Alex Zakrzewski, Christine Moore, and Joe Chappelle

In which reform turns out to be difficult for an individual and just about impossible for an institution.

5. Deadwood
Written by David Milch, Malcolm MacRury, Jody Worth, Elizabeth Sarnoff, John Belluso, George Putnam, Bryan McDonald, Ricky Jay, and Ted Mann
Directed by Walter Hill, David Guggenheim, Alan Taylor, Ed Bianchi, Michael Engler, Dan Minahan, and Steve Shill

Studies in state-building.

6. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Directed by Wes Anderson
Written by Anderson and Noah Baumbach

"What would be the scientific purpose of killing it?" "Revenge."

7. Sideways
Directed by Alexander Payne
Written by Payne and Jim Taylor, from a novel by Rex Pickett

The movie that made the critical establishment take note of Virginia Madsen. (Me, I've been a fan since Candyman.)

8. Palindromes
Written and directed by Todd Solondz

If you want to see a bleak, sardonic comedy about abortion, this one is even darker than Citizen Ruth.

9. Team America: World Police
Directed by Trey Parker
Written by Parker, Matt Stone, and Pam Brady

I wouldn't say this explains the Bush era, but at least it'll give you a sense of what it was like to be there.

10. Nobody Knows
Written and directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda

One of the great—make that four of the great—child performances.

Honorable mentions:

11. Howl's Moving Castle (Hayao Miyazaki)
12. Undertow (David Gordon Green)
13. In the Realms of the Unreal (Jessica Yu)
14. The Assassination of Richard Nixon (Niels Mueller)
15. Panorama Ephemera (Rick Prelinger)
16. Before Sunset (Richard Linklater)
17. Garden State (Zach Braff)
18. Light Is Calling (Bill Morrison)
19. Kung Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow)
20. Primer (Shane Carruth)

Finally, a note on The Incredibles: "Everyone's special" does not, in fact, mean that no one is special, because people can have different specialties. (But it is still a decent movie, especially by kidflick standards. I miss the days when this was the typical level of Pixar quality.)

Of the films of 2004 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in The Place Promised in Our Early Days.

posted by Jesse 9:51 AM

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THE YEAR OF TIME LOOPS: It's December, so critics around the world are listing their favorite films of 2024. But not here at The Perpetual Three-Dot Column, where our sole staffer—me—can't keep up with all the latest releases. Instead, the tradition at this site is to post my top 10 movies of 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and so on, heading back until I reach a year where I haven't seen 10 flicks worth recommending. In this installment, we'll set our dial for Late Obamatime.

When the Motion Picture Academy looked back at 2014, it gave its Best Picture award to Birdman, which is both a backstage drama and a sort of meta-superhero movie. I like that one, on balance. But I like these ones better:

1. Too Many Cooks
Written and directed by Casper Kelly

Yes, the best motion picture of 2014 is a viral video that first aired as late-night cable filler. Easily. By a mile.

2. Boyhood
Written and directed by Richard Linklater

A movie about kids that feels like it has actual kids in it. Actual adults, too.

3. It Follows
Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell

Embarrassed confession: When this came out, I thought it was a sequel to It.

4. The Leftovers
Written by Damon Lindelof, Tom Perrotta, Kath Lingenfelter, Jacqueline Hoyt, Elizabeth Peterson, Curtis Gwinn, and Carlito Rodriguez, from a novel by Perrotta
Directed by Peter Berg, Keith Gordon, Lesli Linka Glatter, Carl Franklin, Mimi Leder, Michelle MacLaren, and Daniel Sackheim

Once you notice Alex Berenson's name in the credits, it's hard not to read this whole show as a metaphor in advance for the COVID era. Fortunately, it isn't a metaphor that you'd need to be a Berensonian to appreciate.

5. The Babadook
Written and directed by Jennifer Kent

Between this and It Follows, it was good year for both the fear of sex and the fears of parenthood.

6. The Grand Budapest Hotel
Directed by Wes Anderson
Written by Anderson, from a story by Anderson and Hugo Guinness

"You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed, that's what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant...oh, fuck it."

7. When Marnie Was There
Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi
Written by Yonebayashi, Masashi Andō, and Keiko Niwa, from a book by Joan G. Robinson

Not every great Ghibli film was made by Miyazaki.

8. Fargo
Written by Noah Hawley
Directed by Adam Bernstein, Randall Einhorn, Colin Bucksey, Scott Winant, and Matt Shakman

This is more than just a Coen Brothers pastiche. But it is, also, an awfully good Coen Brothers pastiche.

9. The Infinite Man
Written and directed by Hugh Sullivan

The "'—All You Zombies—'" of romantic comedies.

10. American Sniper
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by Jason Hall, from a memoir by Chris Kyle with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice

A lot of people missed this movie's underlying antiwar worldview, partly because they assumed a film based on Chris Kyle's memoir would reflect Chris Kyle's militarist outlook, but also because it isn't the sort of antiwar worldview that you usually see in even a pro-peace Hollywood picture.

Honorable mentions:

11. The Tribe (Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy)
12. John Wick (Chad Stahelski, David Leitch)
13. Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy)
14. Kumiko the Treasure Hunter (David Zellner)
15. Unedited Footage of a Bear (Alan Resnick, Ben O'Brien)
16. The Americans 2 (Joel Fields, Joe Weisberg)
17. BoJack Horseman (Raphael Bob-Waksberg)
18. Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson)
19. Peaky Blinders 2 (Steven Knight)
20. The LEGO Movie (Phil Lord, Christopher Miller)

The Americans, BoJack Horseman, and Peaky Blinders are TV shows, so the names listed after those titles are showrunners, not directors. Though in the case of Peaky Blinders, every episode this season had the same director—Colm McCarthy—so perhaps I should have inserted his name instead? Please don't report me to the DGA.

It is interesting, I note idly, that #8 and #14 would appear the same year. But I didn't call this the Year of the Fargo Extended Universe. I called it the Year of Time Loops, even though there is just one time loop movie in that list (The Infinite Man), because...well, not only have I seen several other time loop films from 2014 (Edge of Tomorrow, One-Minute Time Machine, and arguably Interstellar, all worth watching), but I'm told there are a ton of more, from a sex comedy (Premature) to an adaptation of the Heinlein story that I mentioned in my Infinite Man blurb (Predestination). Maybe I'll have watched them all by the time these lists loop back to 2014 again.

That said: Of the films of 2014 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Frank.

posted by Jesse 3:21 PM

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