Return to Splendor...Best and Worst Film & DVD releases of 2004

Zombies swarmed in Dead Meat and Shaun Of The Dead. (See either three times and they’ll own you.) Nu-romanticism reigned as we got lost with Sofia, basked with Charlie K. and fell back into the arms of Mr. Linklater. Meanwhile, Asian cinema seduced (or blitzkrieged) all with its queasy charms. By winter, if you hadn’t witnessed the immortal piscine abuse of The Isle, the generic dementia of Save The Green Planet, the glories of Zatoichi and the splendour of Hero, well then, you could hardly raise your head in decent society. Ha! Hate to say we told you so, but you know… Even though Ben Affleck and Kevin Smith are still allowed to make movies together, it’s been swell. ‘Til ’05, keep cool, but care.

BEST FILM RELEASES OF 2004:

NO. 1
THE RETURN
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s scintillating debut, a child-centric Oedipal thriller set in a distinctly post-worker’s paradise Russia, is a work of incredible doleful beauty that bows to the Earth-en peasants and tractor (the love that dare not speak its name) classics of Soviet cinema, then lies prostrate at Tarkovsky’s altar, quoting from the late master’s work in a manner that’s positively evangelical. Days after the thrilling heart-in-the-mouth finale you’ll keep expecting to trip on a decomposing swan.

NO. 2
OLD BOY
Once in a very long while – only when you’ve been a very obedient, diligent sort of film critic – you find your just reward in a movie that lunges off the screen, affects a kind of primal, come to daddy howl, slavers all over your face and leaves you stumbling into the daylight gasping for air and several stiff gins. Park Chan-Wook’s Old Boy, a Kafka-esque revenge fantasy with Choi Min-Sik’s wronged protagonist charging about like a smacked-up Charles Bronson in need of his next fix as painted by Hieronymus Bosch, is a horrible, downward spiral of feverish Hitchcockian tension, weasly Polanskian menace and sickly Miike barbarity. Best date movie since Secretary.

NO. 3
BEFORE SUNSET
Before Sunrise, Richard Linklater’s swooning 1995 romance, is one of those movies you just succumb to or you don’t. Like much of the Austinite’s work, it’s basically a movie about kids hanging out, but the languid structure effortlessly swirls into a heart-wrenchingly authentic portrait of those bolt of lightning, take-me-I’m-yours encounters. This sequel sees lovers Cecile (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) reunite nine years after the fact. Yes, they do remain madly, passionately and desperately in love, and their chemistry still bewitches. Cue wistful sighs all round.

NO. 4
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND
For his latest astonishing trick, slacker deity Charlie Kaufman tackled the twisty, time-travelling, amnesiac romance with vaulting success. This elaborate, sci-fi brainteaser featured splendid performances from Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet as an ill-suited couple desperate to forget each other, and their passionate, bizarre efforts made Eternal Sunshine an illogical, sweeping affair to remember.

NO. 5
LOST IN TRANSLATION
Sofia Coppola followed the rapturously received Virgin Suicides with a movie so sublime, it made you want to cartwheel out of the cinema. This wistful depiction of an unfulfilled and incongruous romantic brush between Bill Murray’s washed up actor and Scarlett Johansson’s confused young bride made superb use of its alien Tokyo setting with Coppola finding a rare poetic beauty amidst the fucked-up manga porn, ‘Pizza Of Death’ t-shirts and plastic cherry blossoms. Shoot on, sister.

NO. 6
KILL BILL VOL. 2
It’s just so difficult to review a Tarantino movie without sounding like a stalker fan-girl who’d happily dwell in his celluloid garbage. Or worse, his actual garbage. Somewhat predictably, I found KB2 head-trippingly, knee-knockingly fantastic – an orgy of references to grindhouse cinema that pitched movie quotations like nunchucks, resulting in an overwhelming nuerochemical fizz that lit up parts of the brain I had quite forgotten. ‘Til the next instalment of Quentinese, it’s gonna hurt.

NO. 7
A TALE OF TWO SISTERS
Like a lot of Korean creep-outs, this phantasmagorical Alice In Wonderland riff has a strong Heavenly Creatures undercurrent and a grand mind-fucking Electra In Mourning finale, so menstruating madwomen, girl ghosts having bad hair days and psychiatric disorders are all present and correct. All in all, Tale Of Two Sisters is just about the most terrifying thing to emerge from Korea since the Dear Leader.

NO. 8
THE FOG OF WAR
Only a filmmaker as divinely gifted as Errol Morris could deliver a documentary portrait of Robert McNamara, one time dread architect of the Vietnam war, which might rightly be described as oddly romantic. As the former US Defence Secretary discusses vital lessons learned under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, while nursing the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Indo-Chinese maelstrom that became the Vietnam war, you can’t really be sure if his critique of US unilateralism marks a deathbed conversion or a last Machiavellian bow.

NO. 9
CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS
For a movie featuring a clown, Andrew Jarecki’s documentary was far from being the jolliest affair. A thoroughly disquieting tale of familial discord, child abuse and inept judicial proceedings, this compelling film skilfully avoided judgements, recalling Wiseman’s use of the form as a mediation of truth.

NO. 10
ADAM AND PAUL
Unlike most junkie-scumbag screenplays, Adam And Paul contains not a hint of pot-pourri condescension. Lenny Abrahamson’s feature film deftly weds social realism and vaudevillian comedy, heartbreaking circumstance and hilarity to brilliant effect, and the central performances by Tom Murphy and screenwriter Mark O’ Halloran left us all feeling smack happy.

WORST FILM RELEASES OF 2004:

THE LAWS OF ATTRACTION
‘Twas all in good fun. Yeah right. Adam’s Rib by way of porcine regurgitation, this partially Irish set rom-com starring Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore tragically neglected to include scenes with shillelagh-wielding maniacs foraging in ditches for potatoes without blight marks. For shame. I mean, if you’re going to be borderline racist and make a movie where ornamental leprechauns feature heavily, why not go for the big score?

GODSEND
Fuck ethics, as Russell may not have said. There can be no more compelling argument for outlawing stem cell research and human cloning than the prospect of more movies like Godsend, a rubbish Bad Seed reworking with Robert DeNiro as a sulphuric surgeon with a god complex. Surely the Bobster can find more dignified ways to shoulder his hefty mortgage and acrimonious, expensive divorce. Don’t they have crack-whores in New York?

THE PUNISHER
What the hell was Marvel thinking? It was bad enough when they resurrected The Punisher to cash in on the vigilante fever of the Reaganite ‘80s, but to give him another movie? Wasn’t the 1989 Dolph Lundgren one quite enough? One can only presume that somebody imagined post-9/11 America was aching for another big dumb meathead with no comprehension of due process to blast the shit out of everything. As he crashes about in a manner that makes Rambo look like a Guardian reader and The Green Berets like The Green Party, you can’t help but long for the comparatively enlightened politics of Fox News.

MAN ON FIRE
How I yearn for the day I awake to discover that moppet du jour Dakota Fanning has blossomed into a hellraising teen with a taste for PVC, artichokes and Colin Farrell. In Tony Scott’s latest instalment of moody, slow-mo, dry-iced bombast, Dakota reprises her cutesy routine opposite Denzel Washington with spectacularly mawkish results. In between the schmaltz and the seizure inducing edits, there lurked a Christian allegory so fixated on salvation it could have been authored by Mel Gibson’s Free-Presbyterian equivalent. Vile.

Best DVDs of 2004 with Tara Brady