2003

Best Movies of 2003
The Usual Choices
Dogville (Lars von Trier)
Kill Bill Vol. 1 (Quentin Tarantino)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson)
Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola)
Mystic River (Clint Eastwood)

But how about...
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir)
I have a peculiar liking for seafaring epics, on film and in literature, and yet, I am not even remotely sea-ish (I have the sealegs of Uluru and the stomach of Old Faithful). This mighty film joins and leads the ranks of Mutiny on the Bounty, The Sea Hawk and Captain Blood, primarily because it stays onboard for the whole voyage, giving us a taste of what it really was like, months and months on end, rocking to and fro, at the mercy of the bastard sea. The British navy crew (circa 1810) aboard the HMS Surprise, is shown as a disciplined fighting machine in total adoration of their brilliant & humane captain. The cinematography is stirring (that word had to be used somewhere), the character development is based on recognisable emotion and the battle scenes are exciting and frightening. This film is the best of its kind.

...and what about...
The Station Agent (Tom McCarthy)
While the story is centred on a trainspotting dwarf, it could just as easily be an autistic stutterer: someone who doesn't fit in, is regularly reminded of that, and just wants to be left alone, because people hurt. The problem with being an isolate is that some people just won't permit that to happen...and once you let someone in, it is near-impossible to return to your alone life. This film explores all that, but does it with comedy (for the first two-thirds, anyway), reminding us that Life is rarely unadulterated mundane shit...it can also be unpredictably joyful. Peter Dinklage plays the short guy, with a Buster Keaton stoneface that cracked me up everytime he was surrounded by people-who-just-want-to-be-friendly. A story with a wry understanding about the big important things in life.

...not to mention...
Matchstick Men (Ridley Scott)
I have personal reasons for adoring this film (it's a father-daughter thing...don't ask...I'll start bawling), and am quite content to agree that I have overrated it. The story of a con artist with a myriad of tics & hangups & idiosyncrasies (question: would an extremely obsessive clean freak really be a chainsmoker?) who discovers his long-lost daughter...and, much to his own surprise, parental happiness too. This is the ideal Nicolas Cage role because the lead character is a comedic weirdo, and Nic acts it for all its worth...a performance gem that helps compensate for his many, many crappy ones. And Alison (at age 24) plays a plausible, delightful, memorable 14 year old...when she cries, the sound breaks my heart. While the twist in the tale is probably inevitable, it still hurts in its cruelty and the upbeat ending never entirely makes up for it. Still, this film has a permanent slot in my Movie Jukebox.

...and one personal unmentionable...
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Stephen Norrington)
Alan Moore's classic 1999 graphic novel is my favourite non-Marvel/DC superhero book. A clever and imaginative display of sheer storytelling prowess, it would make a great movie. But this sure ain't it. Only a committee could screw something up this much...the majority-vote decisions to substitute characters (instead of Fu Manchu popping up we get Tom Sawyer), alter character motivation (the vampiress has sex with ringer Dorian Gray), change plotlines (to allow for sequels...HA!), speed up the editing cuts (to appease the popcorn crowd), select cheaper actors without charisma (only Sean, of course, has that...the rest are a dreary lot), cut SFX costs (check out how the Nautilus "slices" through the sea) and add a young American wannabe-heart-throb to pander to the U.S. teenage market (isn't he dreamy?). The climax is a frantic, hysterical mess and the whole shebang is about as steampunk as an Edsel. If there is any film which is deservedly screaming out for a remake...

My Top 10 Films of 2003
"Er...darlin'...this is when I need to remind you
that I only come once a year."
#01  A   Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Weir)
#02  A   American Splendor (Berman; Pulcini)
#03  A   Zero Day (Ben Coccio)
#04    House of Sand and Fog (Perelman)
#05  A-  Matchstick Men (Scott)
#06  A-  The Station Agent (McCarthy)
#07  A-  Shattered Glass (Ray)
#08  A-  Gettin' Square (Teplitzky)
#09  A-  Hulk (Lee)
#10  A-  Bad Santa (Zwigoff)
Overflow: More A-/B+ Films
#11  A-  Kill Bill Vol. 1 (Tarantino)
#12  A-  The Hunted (Friedkin)
#13  A-  Monster (Jenkins)
#14  B+ Confidence (Foley)  
#15  B+ Lost in Translation (Coppola)
#16  B+ The Cooler (Kramer)
#17  B+ Girl With a Pearl Earring (Webber)
#18  B+ I am David (Feig)
#19  B+ Runaway Jury (Fleder)
#20  B+ Mystic River (Eastwood)
#21  B+ School of Rock (Linklater)
#22  B+ Holes (Davis)
#23  B+ The Snow Walker (Smith)

Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
B   X2: X-Men United [if you don't want your initial opinion diminished, don't watch it again]
B   Thirteen [good kid hangs out with bad kids and does bad things; Go Ask Alice again, but even harder]
B   A Mighty Wind [aka This is Spinal Tap Unplugged...and Not as Funny]
B   I Capture the Castle [poor British family / between wars / coming-of-age / star-crossed lovers / nice & mild]
B   Alexandra's Project [lotsa tension with a clever premise, but more unpleasant than gripping]
>    Calendar Girls [lightly amusing British whimsy with lots of charming boobs]
B   Japanese Story [sweet love story that occasionally strays into blandness]
B   The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King [is it over now?...whaddya mean there's another trilogy coming?]
B-  Peter Pan [well-made with nice kids but do we really need yet another version of this?]
>  B-  Daredevil [c'mon...apart from Colin & Jennifer...and the playground stoush...it wasn't that bad...]
B-  Freaky Friday [well-acted but too-mushy retelling of what is eternally a B-Grade family fantasy]
B-  The Shape of Things [a prime example of a movie that is sort-of good & sort-of bad]
B-  Seabiscuit [just another racehorse movie that's not as good as National Velvet]
B-  The Missing [wants to be another The Searchers, but very very slowly shows that it's not]
B-  Cold Mountain [a Civil War epic mixed in with a love story...hmm...that sounds familiar...and long...]
B-  Love, Actually [if the 2 crap stories had been cut out, it would've been as good as Notting Hill]
B-  Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl [a Disney pirate movie franchise-starter]
>    Intolerable Cruelty [Death is easy...Comedy is hard...a Catherine Zeta-Jones Comedy is impossible]
>  C   Dogville [very challenging, very spartan, very High School Drama where Miss Fletcher gives your group a C]
  Ned Kelly [more grit and less reverence is needed to tell this story properly]
D   The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen [A Personal Unmentionable]

"Ah!..Sweet Mystery of Life...": 2003 Films I Apparently Still Need to See
Big Fish (Burton); The Core (Amiel); Elephant (Van Sant); The Human Stain (Benton); Identity (Mangold); I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead (Hodges); Intermission (Crowley); Levity (Solomon); The Mother (Michell); My Life Without Me (Coixet); Off the Map (Scott); Open Water (Kentis); Owning Mahowney (Kwietniowski); The Reckoning (McGuigan); Secondhand Lions (McCanlies); Swimming Upstream (Mulcahy); Something’s Gotta Give (Meyers); Song for a Raggy Boy (Walsh); Stander (Hughes); Sylvia (Jeffs); 21 Grams (Inarritu); The United States of Leland (Hoge)


Best Performances of 2003
Oft-Mentioned Choices
Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Ben Kingsley in House of Sand and Fog
Bill Murray in Lost in Translation
Sean Penn in Mystic River
Tim Robbins in Mystic River
Charlize Theron in Monster
Renee Zellweger in Cold Mountain
Naomi Watts in 21 Grams

But how about...
Billy Bob Thornton & Tony Cox in Bad Santa
(aka Abbott & Costello Meet Nihilism)
The blackest of black comedies, Bad Santa works because of these two guys. No-holds-barred dialogue requires a no-holds-barred acting-attack, and Billy Bob and Tony give it exactly that. Peppered with profanity (and not just the f-bomb...strings of aggressive sex insults which are breathlessly funny...if you like that kind of thing) and ticking off many of the Top 10 Politically Incorrect Behaviours (y'know...boozing, drugs, violence, suicide, alternate fornication, scrotum kicking). So relentless is the two-pronged assault on yuletide niceness, that I was worried that it couldn't be maintained...that seeing-the-error-of-their-ways was inevitable (like the Yanks usually do in their comedies), but no...it hints at it, but refreshingly doesn't happen. Billy Bob & Tony remain total hilarious dipshits throughout. 

...and what about...
Hayden Christensen in Shattered Glass
I have personal reasons to especially applaud a film about honesty and accountability in journalism. In fact, the only negative I took away from this film is that the lying bastard didn't experience jail time...but that's not the docudrama's fault. Hayden, as the young lying bastard, is a case study in eager-to-please / tell-me-I'm-good / I'm-smarter-than-everybody-else-in-the-room boy-man. The film carefully establishes his popularity among his colleagues and Hayden makes sure that from the very first, there is clearly something not quite right about this guy...nobody warm & vertical can be that considerate, self-deprecating and disarming. When the jig is finally up, the manipulative child tugs on heartstrings while the conniving adult relies on incredulity and trust...I can lie my way out of this, too. Hayden makes this all very real...to his credit, he ultimately plays it as an immature villain with issues. Such a shame his acting career nosedived shortly after this (Darth Vader...a villain too far).

...not to mention...
David Wenham in Gettin' Square
If you've spent any time at all in the front bars of Australian pubs, you would have come across a guy like this: he is a bogan with a mullet (Australianism def. jerk with an ugly hairdo) who has limited education, narrow life experience, simple needs (booze & weed & infrequent but quick sex with a necessarily drunk woman & greasy food that someone else cooked) and an uncanny knack of getting into trouble with good and bad people. David's portrayal of one of these blokes is absolutely hilarious and totally spot-on...the scene where he runs down the street, escaping the cops, wearing nothing but his jocks and thongs is a weeping gutbuster. Easily the funniest performance in Aussie cinema which is fortunately woven throughout a thoroughly enjoyable crime caper of a movie. One of our very best, in fact.

...and one personal unmentionable...
Colin Farrell in Daredevil
While I could have included Jennifer Garner's gangly portrayal of Elektra in this slam, I think that is more a case of poor casting rather than an actress being lousy. Colin, however, should have done better, but he fell into the same trap that Cate Blanchett often trips into...it's a comicbook film so I need to crank it up and play it very broad (as I write, Thor Ragnarok is only a week away from being released...and I am dreading Cate's participation...her Hela is going to join her cringers in Indiana Jones IV and Hanna, I just know it). Bullseye is a relentless assassin, but this doesn't mean that he is a walking looney toon, but this is how Colin plays it...as if comicbooks are still directed towards children and the marginally illiterate. The actor brings no sense of terror or impending doom (surely essential for an insane killer), just haha, look at the funny psychopath. A blight on a well-established, terrifying character. In the comics.

My 10 Favourite Performances of 2003
The Neverending Comeback of Tony Abbott
#01  David Wenham in Gettin' Square
#02  Paul Giamatti in American Splendor
#03  Billy Bob Thornton & Tony Cox in Bad Santa
#04  Charlize Theron in Monster
#05  Alison Lohman in Matchstick Men
#06  Nicolas Cage in Matchstick Men
#07  Jennifer Connelly & Ben Kingsley & Shohreh Aghdashloo & Jonathan Ahdout (House of Sand and Fog)
#08  Paul Bettany in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
#09  Hayden Christensen in Shattered Glass
#10  Peter Dinklage in The Station Agent
Overflow: More List-Worthy Performances
#11  Jamie Lee Curtis & Lindsay Lohan in Freaky Friday
#12  Hope Davis in American Splendor
#13  Rachel Weisz in The Shape of Things
#14  Christina Ricci in Monster
#15  Toni Collette in Japanese Story
#16  Bill Nighy in Love, Actually
#17  Peter Sarsgaard in Shattered Glass
#18  Evan Rachel Wood in Thirteen
#19  Alec Baldwin in The Cooler
#20  Barry Pepper & Annabella Piugattuk in The Snow Walker
#21  Max Pirkis in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
#22  Jennifer Connelly in Hulk

Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
>  Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl [a Disney character in a theme-ride movie]
>  Bill Murray in Lost in Translation [sometimes, over-underplaying demands the cardiac paddles]
>  Sean Penn in Mystic River [competent but not up there with his best]
>  Tim Robbins in Mystic River [Tim seems to me to always be replaying his role in Bull Durham]
>  Renee Zellweger in Cold Mountain [a too-blatant Oscar-bait role & performance]

And so...onto the annual awards (with a nod of appreciation to Danny Peary)...
The Alternate Oscars for 2003 are:

FILM of the YEAR
GOLD: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir)
SILVER: American Splendor (Shari Springer Berman; Robert Pulcini)
BRONZE: Zero Day (Ben Coccio)

LEAD ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Paul Giamatti (American Splendor)
SILVER: Nicolas Cage (Matchstick Men)
BRONZE: Hayden Christensen (Shattered Glass)

LEAD ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Charlize Theron (Monster)
SILVER: Alison Lohman (Matchstick Men)
BRONZE: Rachel Weisz (The Shape of Things)

SUPPORTING ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: David Wenham (Gettin' Square)
SILVER: Paul Bettany (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World)
BRONZE: Bill Nighy (Love, Actually)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Hope Davis (American Splendor)
SILVER: Christina Ricci (Monster)
BRONZE: Patricia Clarkson (The Station Agent)

ENSEMBLE or PARTNERSHIP: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Billy Bob Thornton & Tony Cox (Bad Santa)
SILVER: Jennifer Connelly & Ben Kingsley & Shohreh Aghdashloo & Jonathan Ahdout (House of Sand and Fog)
BRONZE: Jamie Lee Curtis & Lindsay Lohan (Freaky Friday)

JUVENILE: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Evan Rachel Wood (Thirteen)
SILVER: Andre Keuck & Cal Robertson (Zero Day)
BRONZE: Max Pirkis (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World)

The Alternate Razzies for 2003 are:

CRAP FILM of the YEAR
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Stephen Norrington)

CRAP MALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Colin Farrell (Daredevil)

CRAP FEMALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Jennifer Garner (Daredevil)