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.
