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FILM COMMENT
March / April 2004
Above: Mystic River
FILM COMMENT'S READERS' POLL: TOP FILMS OF 2003
Fits of Passion
"Claude Chabrol's criminally underrated The Flower of Evil was easily the best film of the year. It showed a classical rigor and control worthy of Fritz Lang, and was as underrated as Lang's late films were when they were released. The ending was enormously moving and it proves once again that by stripping away all but the most essential elements of his visual style, Chabrol's "classicism" has proved itself far more modern than the strenuous attempts at "modernism" or "postmodernism" we have seen from other filmmakers." - Richard Menello, Matawan, NJ
"If future generations want a snapshot of the bubbling, boiling psyche of the American people as they invaded Iraq please refer them to Dreamcatcher. Aliens sodomize hard-drinking super-powered folksy folks and get their butts kicked by a retard whose name sounds a lot like "Dubya". Morgan Freeman grows his eyebrows like Lo Lieh and intones Department of Homeland Security palaver before he chases Tom Sizemore with a helicopter. So much noise, so much anal fear, so much paranoia. What the hell: Lawrence Kasdan had to make a good movie eventually." - Grady Hendrix
"Stone Reader has become one of my favorite films. For many I know that would rather read a book than do anything else, this film was their Woodstock. It also did what no other film did this year, brought back into print a long lost novel. While said novel, The Stones of Summer may not be quite the masterpiece the documentary would have one believe, the fact that it came back in print at all is a testimony to the power of film. Stone Reader is also the most enjoyment I had watching a film the last few years. After four viewings, it still speaks to me. I have showed it to several friends and will continue until everyone I know has seen it." - John Dodd, New York NY
"Altman's The Company should not be overlooked. It acheived the 'voyeuristic' look and feel that (while still amazing) Van Sant's Elephant failed. There was no spiking (even extras) of the camera or anything that would allow the audience to think 'hey these people are acting.' It was pure natural reality, something I wish we as artists would strive for. Altman has reinvented himself again and the film is beautiful." - Stephen Gillis, Vancouver BC
"Masked and Anonymous was highly underrated, and while it had its flaws, it provided an unabashed look at an imperial, facist pseudo-America and had some of the best music of the year, thanks to the ever-fresh Bob Dylan." - Sam Heaton, Gibsons, British Columbia
"The knee jerk negative response to Masked and Anonymous was as if Dylan went electric all over again. The reaction to this flawed little film was the most ridiculous critical pile on of the year." - Jay Herzog, Arcata CA
"The Shape of Things is this year's Storytelling. Both are audaciously provocative and unapologetically vitriolic; both were transparently savaged by, well, just about everyone. Personally, I'd take Solondz or LaBute's genuine bite anyday over Lost In Translation's designer brooding or American Splendor's Woody Allen wanna-be crankiness." - Josh Timmerman
"After the undue hype heaped on Sam Raimi's Spider-Man two years ago, it was not surprising to see a whole new market to finally open up for adaptations of some of the most respected comic book creations. The two best evocations of the comic book aesthetic were created out of this, though they both were despised by those who turned a blind eye to the narrative and visual compromises of Bryan Singer's X2. Daredevil, a dark yet sexy Hell's Kitchen kung-fu incarnation of the blind justice seeker Matt Murdock, and Ang Lee's Jekyll-and-Hyde Hulk, were the most faithful and exciting "comic-book" films created since Tim Burton left the Batman series (though something could be said for Wesley Snipes's hammy yet fun Blade films). Both exemplified the ideal mainstream marriage of digitally-glistened effects and raw, pulp melodrama." - Patrick Kennelly, Northridge CA
"Assembling a Top 10 was a tough call. But I'll always remember this as the year that gave us In The Cut, which in turn gave us an actual great performance from Meg Ryan and a flawless performance from Mark Ruffalo." - Matthew Bridges, Australia
"My favorite film of the year - Peter Pan - wasn't perfect, but it had truer emotional depth than some of the adult dramas I was supposed to go mad about: Mystic River and House of Sand and Fog - two films which, by God, were going to be bleak as hell no matter what plot contrivances were necessary to make it happen." - David Dwyer
"Down with Love was fun, colorful, and consistently surprising. And Renee Zellweger is only a little annoying. Seriously, does she have to make that face?" - Eric Johnson
"The Missing is the one anomaly in my top five, but I can't understand why no one liked this movie. I love Westerns, and this is easily the best since Unforgiven. The locations were suitably rugged and mean, the tone was dark, especially for Ron Howard, and the movie pulled no punches, at least until the end. And Cate Blanchett has got to be among the top three living, working actresses. So why was it not received better?" - Jeff Jewell, Ann Arbor, MI
"Divine Intervention was the only film I managed to see twice, during a year in which my film viewing was severally limited. A unique voice, and a unique vantage upon which to view a world situation that couldn't possibly make sense to a country hell-bent on "Homeland Security" - Ivan Zeile, Denver CO
"Peter Watkins emerged this year with La Commune (Paris 1871), one of the most important films I have seen in my life. It's a terrible shame how few will ever see it again." - Valeria Mogilevich, New York NY
"I picked Crimson Gold as the best film of the year (following its appearance at the New York Film Festival) because it was precisely the type of film that Hollywood would never make - a film that charts the slow humiliation and decline of its protagonist and delineates the economic strata of a divided nation without hyperbole or sentimentality. The film portrays this world with a removed, dispassionate gaze - as seemingly dispassionate and unmotivated as the protagonist himself -that merely observes the progress of the action." - Leo Goldsmith, New York NY
© 2004 by the Film Society of Lincoln Center
