Filmbrain's Best and Worst of 2004, or: Eleven is the new Ten

Contrary to claims made by others, Filmbrain didn't find 2004 an outstanding year for film. In fact, when reviewing the list of new films he saw this past twelve months, many (by established directors) were either outright disappointments or simply sub-par (Mike Leigh, Jim Jarmusch, Wes Anderson, Lodge Kerrigan, Todd Solondz, Martin Scorsese, etc.) Still, there were seventeen films that made his shortlist, and cutting them down to ten proved to be too difficult a task, so what follows is his list of the eleven best films of the year. While compiling his list, Filmbrain began to notice a trend -- an overwhelming majority of the films he loved this year were about relationships -- but of the doomed, damaged, or dysfunctional kind. Films about adults who find themselves lost, broken, wanting, or simply not at peace with themselves and the people around them. Characters who are suffering from lack, and (in most cases) searching for fullfillment in all the wrong places. That's not to say that Filmbrain only cares for bleak, depressing tales, but he finds films about people who must accept a certain, often unpleasant truth far more interesting. Tales of redemption and sweet endings often exist solely to make the audience feel good, and Filmbrain just isn't interested in that type of manipulation. Still, some of his picks actually have happy endings -- sort of. This realization goes a long way in explaining what is was he didn't like about Before Sunset -- a film that topped many "Best of..." lists. Linklater has made a fine film, and, yes, those final moments are touching, but the whole thing is a bit too precious. The desire to recapture, relive, or rekindle the past often turns out disastrous, as Hong Sang-soo shows us in Woman is the Future of Man, and it's this type of story that Filmbrain finds more appealing. After nine years and eighty minutes, Celine and Jesse's outcome seems almost too convenient. But hey, this whole list thing is intrinsically subjective anyway. . . [NB: Dogville and Goodbye Dragon Inn, though released in the US in 2004, were both on Filmbrain's 2003 list thanks to festival screenings.] In reverse order: 11. The Brown Bunny (Vincent Gallo, USA) This is the one that is going to make some eyes roll back. Yes, it's about as narcissistic as a film can get, and yes, the blowjob is unnecessary and excessive, but Gallo has created a road film richly steeped in 70's American cinema that is very personal, brave, and simply mesmerizing to look at. 10. Sideways (Alexander Payne, USA) A great screenplay, four wonderfully developed characters, and a star turn for Paul Giamatti. However, if one more person tells Filmbrain "Miles reminds me of you!", he may very well lose his mind. 9. Secret Things (Jean-Claude Brisseau, France) Though not as explicit as the work of his peers, Brisseau's film is a rare example of the kind of intelligent European art-core sex film his peers wish they could make. This over-the-top fable about sex and power is full of surprises, grabs you from the first moment, and somehow brilliantly manages to avoid turning into pretentious trash. 8. Oldboy (Park Chan-wook, Korea) Park's often brutal tale of vengeance, with influences ranging from Kubrick to David Fincher, is intelligent, stylish, and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Choi Min-sik is one of the greatest actors working today. If there's any justice in this world, the plans for an American remake will be scrapped. 7. Closer (Mike Nichols, USA) Four damaged characters damaging each other. A lot. As with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Angels in America, Nichols has once again successfully turned a stage play into something quite cinematic. 6. 2046 (Wong Kar Wai, Hong Kong) Love. Loss. Repeat. How can a film with so much heartbreak make you feel so warm? A dream of a film that can be viewed again and again. 5. Café Lumière (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Taiwan) Filled with longing, Hou's tribute to Ozu is quiet, poetic, and a love letter to Tokyo and its rail system. 4. We Don't Live Here Anymore (John Curran, USA) Like Closer, a film about four people hurting each other (and themselves), but in this case the stakes are higher. Though it may appear to be on the surface, this is not a film simply about adultery, but rather a painfully honest portrait of marriage, dissatisfaction, and denial -- the sex is more out of desperation than lust. Laura Dern turns in the greatest female performance of the year, by far. It's a shame so few noticed. 3. Woman Is The Future Of Man (Hong Sang-soo, Korea) How men are. Three characters searching for a future by dangerously looking to the past. Gets better and better on repeated viewings. 2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, USA) Two people know in advance how their relationship ends. They proceed nonetheless. Kaufman at his most romantic, and probably one of the greatest endings of all time. 1. Last Life in the Universe (Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, Thailand) The one perfect film in 2004, and the one that had the greatest emotional impact on Filmbrain. The story of two characters who, with only a few words, speak volumes to each other. Christopher Doyle's cinematography alone is nothing short of magical, and all of the other pieces fall into place with sheer perfection. The entire experience was, for Filmbrain, the strongest reminder of why he loves the art of cinema so much. Could have made the list: Birth, The Assassination of Richard Nixon, Saraband, The Infernal Affairs trilogy, Gozu, Time of the Wolf, Twentynine Palms. FAR better than expected: Collateral, Napoleon Dynamite. Worst films of the year: The Passion of the Christ, Million Dollar Baby, The Stepford Wives, Fear and Trembling. Ten great discoveries (in no particular order): Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (Shuji Terayama, 1971) Pastoral: To Die in the Country (Shuji Terayama, 1974) Outcast of the Islands (Carol Reed, 1952) Aimless Bullet (Yu Hyonmok, 1960) Lord Love a Duck (George Axelrod, 1966) The Housemaid (Kim Ki-young, 1960) The Landlord (Hal Ashby, 1970) Puzzle of a Downfall Child (Jerry Schatzberg, 1970) Night of the Iguana (John Huston, 1964) The Cincinnati Kid (Norman Jewison, 1965) Please feel free to leave your own best/worst lists below, as well as any comments.

Comments

[cynthia]

i agree with aaron that filmbrain's list shows how different we are...i've already mentioned what a boring pretentious waste i thought we don't live here anymore was, and how mediocre and irritating i felt sideways was. but i only watched about 8 movies this year so i don't have a top 10. i have a top two: huckabees and eternal sunshine. which are nearly the same movie, so that makes sense. oh and #3 would be time of the wolf.

[Sarmoung]

As noted above, the release dates and availability of film varies geographically. I only saw two of the films in your list in a cinema. I was very unconvinced by Eternal Sunshine, but I know films like this are for me very dependent on mood. You're in a cinema and it was very much a couple's sort of film over here. You've come to see it with two couples. You've been drinking gin and tonics beforehand. The whole experience was rather maudlin. Like those French films I'd pore over as a child late at night. Upon which I blame everything! Well, English sarcasm aside, I suspect I might have liked it if it hadn't made me so sad. Could have been the gin though...

Oldboy was the film I was most excited about, and how I first found Filmbrain. UK releases of Korean films are patchy at best, although quickly improving, and I suspect the far higher Korean population in the US may help to track some of these down. The UK is great for Bollywood though. 2005 was the year that I first noticed Korean cinema and that's been a great revelation in what I've discovered so far. I haven't seen a film with the impact of Sympathy in a very long time and I pretty much force it upon anyone who hasn't seen it who visits!

There were two films that I saw this year that reduced me to a guffawing wreck. One was Gozu (although VIsitor Q came close behind. Both came out this year on DVD in the UK) and the other Fassbinder's Satan's Brew. The steady re-release of Fassbinder's work and its arrival in the local shop has been very welcome. Let's hope Berlin Alexanderplatz isn't far behind. Reitz' Heimat came out last month and I've just finished that saga.

The film that I really didn't like was Hero. I'd seen one sequence on loop in Singapore airport Duty Free. Looked wonderful, but when I saw the entire film, it struck me as an exorbitant waste. How many Miike Takashi or Fassbinder could you get for that budget? It was a very sterile confection with a skewed vision of China's unification in that period and, as an East Asian historian, I left fuming at its poverty of vision and I'm a complete sucker for Chinese historical dramas.

Last Life in the Universe just arrived in the shop and I'm going to watch that now. I hope the knowledge that Chris Doyle has taken Zhang Yimou's shilling doesn't put me off too much. I'd like to see far less digital colour grading of film in 2005. I know that's not going to happen though!

[Sarmoung]

I mean 2004 in that second paragraph!

[Filmbrain]

Sarmoung -- loved the Eternal Sunshine comment. Not to far off from what I wrote about it back in April.

[Steve]

Well, since I've already seen yours and questioned the inclusion of "We Don't Live Here Anymore" over at Listology, I may as well show you my entirely more prosaic and embarrasing list. So you can point and laugh at me, as I too fell for the cheap melodrama of "Million Dollar Baby".

Ten Best (all films released in NYC in '04):

1) Before Sunset (Richard Linklater)
2) Kill Bill, Vol. 2 (Quentin Tarantino)
3) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry)
4) Sideways (Alexander Payne)
5) Dogville (Lars von Trier)
6) Twentynine Palms (Bruno Dumont)
7) Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright)
8) Cowards Bend the Knee (Guy Maddin)
9) Napoleon Dynamite (Jared Hess)
10) Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood)

And, of course, the Ten Worst:

10) The Girl Next Door (Luke Greenfield)
9) Van Helsing (Stephen Sommers)
8) Shrek 2 (some hacks)
7) Catch That Kid (Bart Freundlich)
6) Free Radicals (Barbara Albert)
5) Garfield: The Movie (Peter Hewitt)
4) Kaena: The Prophecy (Chris Delaporte and Pascal Pinon)
3) The Stepford Wives (Frank Oz)
2) George Bataille’s Story of the Eye (Andrew Repasky McElhinney)
1) Make a Wish (Sharon Ferranti)

[Steve]

Also, I forgot to mention, but... I am SO freakin' jealous that you've seen "Puzzle of a Downfall Child".

[nkw88]

BTW, where's your another favorite, 'A Good Lawyer's Wife', Filmbrain?
Is it in your top ten 2003?

[Dave W]

I think your list is pretty balanced--however I was somewhat surprised that you left off 'A Good Lawyer's wife' as you raved about the impression it had on you. Personally I loved the film--it had some surprising/shocking twists, but unfortunately hasn't been seen much outside of Korea.

[Sei Jin]

Well, since everyone is sharing, here's my top 11:

11) Napoleon Dynamite - Yes, I have a dumb sense of humor
10) The Taste of Tea - Frenetic and hilarious
09) A Very Long Engagement - Ok, I'm a sucker for Jeunet films
08) The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - I'm not a Wes Anderson fan...so why do I like this one?
07) Tarnation - Beautifully disfunctional
06) Old Boy - Flawed, but the outstanding parts are really well done
05) Control Room - Has a lot of critics but I think it at least tries to be balanced
04) Bitter Dream - Not what I expected from an Iranian film. Well done.
03) Cowards Bend the Knee - This may be my favorite Guy Maddin film
02) Last Life in the Universe - Enough has been said about this film here (Can't wait 'til Feb 15th)
01) Bin-jip - If you have a multiregion dvd player, go buy/see this

Worst movie: Lana's Rain - May be the worst movie I've ever paid money to see

I haven't seen a couple of the movies that have been discussed here (notably MDB and Sideways) but I think it's been kind of a down year for US films (at least seems like it, looking at a lot of the lists here).

[Alex]

Wow - those are some serious lists -
Oldboy, Primer, Eternal Sunshine, Shaun of the Dead, Kill Bill and sideways.... Those were the only ones that still stick with me, but I'm waiting on 2045 and Woman is the future of man. Thanks for all the reccomendations this year - life's been better with filmbrain.

[Wayne]

Unless I've missed something, it would seem that no-one has included a single film from Eastern Europe in the best-of-the-year listings. For my part, I would nominate the remarkable Hungarian film 'Hukkle' (http://www.hukkle.hu/, directed by
György Pálfi) as one of the year's best, not least for its remarkable detailed examination of the soundscape of the village it depicts. Another great film not yet mentioned is Nuri Bilge Ceylan's 'Uzak' (aka Distant), which also takes care to capture the ambient sounds of street and field.

[Filmbrain]

I'm not even sure that Hukkle played in NYC -- if it did, it passed me by.

As for A Good Lawyer's Wife, I decided against including a film that has no chance of ever receiving distribution in the states. I probably should have made special mention of it -- certainly an oversight. (Or did I see it in 2003?)

[Wayne]

I saw 'Hukkle' in the UK only recently, but it seems to have been shown in a few NYC cinemas in late 2003.

Another excellent film from Eastern Europe in 2004: Andrei Zvyagintsev's 'the Return'.

[jfigl]

Yes! 2004 was my year of "The Landlord", as well (your "Ten great discoveries" list). Did I know Beau Bridges was at least his brother's equal? Did I know how funny both Lee Grant and Pearl Bailey could be, could I have imagined their one-of-a-kind rapport? Did I know that there was one more great Hal Ashby movie to be discovered, one that almost no one remembers / has seen? Did I care who the hell Al Kooper is? Did I know that we lost a great actress much too young when cancer took Diane Sands a few years after this film? No, until 2004.

Truly a diamond in the rough, that, like so many of my favorite films, ranges gracefully from laugh-out-loud-funny to deeply tragic.