Review Links (Alpha ordered)

2046 (2004) 87/100
8 Mile (2002) 71/100
19 Months (2002) 62/100
Agent Cody Banks: Destination London 33 1/3/100
All the Real Girls (2003) 88/100
American Gun 53/100
At Five in the Afternoon (2003) 76/100
Beauty and the Beast (1946) 88/100
The Bourne Supremacy (2004) 85/100
Breakfast With Hunter (2002) 64/100
Bus 174 (2003) 89/100
Butterfly Effect (2004) 55/100
Le Cercle Rouge 1970) 83/100
City of God (2003) 88/100
Cellular (2004) 63/100
Code 46 (2004) 78/100
Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1996) 79/100
Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen(2004) 48/100
Le Corbeau(1942) 91/100
Corner Gas (season one, 2004) 90/100
Les Dames du Bois Boulougne (1945) 74/100
The Damned (1969) 68/100 
Death in Venice 80/100
The Delicate Art of Parking (2003) 82/100
Diary of a Country Priest (1951) 86/100
Dogville (2004) 94/100
Down With Love (2003) 61/100
Drole de Drame (1937) 81/100
Expiration (2003) 66/100
Elephant (2003) 59/100
Escape from New York (1981) 79/100
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) 74/100
Fatigue (2003) 49/100
Frida 69/100
Gerry (2003) 84/100
Giant (1955) 81/100
Going the Distance (2004) 44/100
The Good Thief (2003) 82/100
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew  (1965) 82/100
The Grapes of Wrath (1940) 92/100
Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2004) 79/100
Hero (2002) 92/100
The History of Rock and Roll (1995) 78/100
Hope Springs (2003) 45/100
I am Curious (Yellow) 68/100
Imitations of Life (2003) 78/100
Josie and the Pussycats (2001) 70/100
Just an American Boy (2003) 76/100
Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003) first viewing 82/100 2nd and 3rd viewing 91/100
Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004) 79/100
Kingdom of Fear(2002) 79/100
La Strada 88/100
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003) 90/100
Lost in Translation (2003) 85/100
Love, Sex and Eating the Bones (2003) 75/100
Lovers and Leavers (2002) 74/100
Lucia, Lucia (2003) 72/100
The Madgelene Sisters (2003) 74/100
The Man Without a Past (2003) 86/100
Maria Full of Grace (2004) 72/100
My Fair Lady (1964) 72/100
The Naked Proof (2003) 84/100
The Notebook(2004) 65/100
The Other Boleyn Girl (2003) 69/100
The Pornographers (1966) 87/100
Quai des Orfevres (1947) 90/100
Rage in Lake Placid (2003) 61/100
Reefer Madness 50/100
Republic of Love (2003) 81/100
Reservoir Dogs (1992) 91/100
Robot Stories (2002) 65/100
Ronin (1998) 77/100
The Rules of the Game (1939) 94/100

Saints and Soldiers (2002) 54/100
Seabiscuit (2003) 66/100
Shaun of the Dead (2004) 76/100
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2002) 88/100
Six Feet Under (Season one, 2001) 77/100
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) 68/100
Slaptastic (various shorts) NS
Spider (2003) 57/100
Steven Soderbergh's Schizopolis 66/100
Sweet Sixteen (2003) 82/100
Tokyo Story (1953) 93/100
Touching the Void (2003) 83/100
Tupac: Resurrection (2003) 77/100
Umberto D (1955) 89/100
Vanity Fair (2004) 66/100
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001) 82/100
You Shall Know Our Velocity (2003) 70/100




The Ten Best Films of 2003

Over the course of the next week, I am going to profile the outstanding films of the year past. Today, we will focus on films that take place on what is for many of us unfamiliar terrain.

City of God

Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles has his modern gangsta film references down--a dash of Tarantino of there, a dollop of Scorcese there, mixed in with some worldly veritas in the form of third world socio-economic degradation and dehumanization, et voila, you have the bitterly ironically titled City of God, one of the most explosive and viscerally charged films of 2003. Like William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, this is a story about a world virtually devoid of adult presence, and the resultant aimlessness and amoral opportunism is hardly surprising. However, unlike Golding, Meirelles holds out some hope, in the person of Rocket, who, unlike say the disillusioned and broken Ralph of LOF, retains his optimism and hope in the face of crushing odds. There is some inconsistency in the quality of the performances, particularly in the supporting cast, but the leads, especially the dude playing L’il Dice (Fermino da Hora), who has one helluva screen presence, are pretty much uniformly terrific. A mesmerizing, stylishly told tale.

Grade: 88/100

Lost in Translation

Bill Murray is sublime, carrying his world-weariness with a grace and dignity that belies his character’s deeply-rooted sadness and confusion. Murray’s great performance has been overshadowing the work of the ever-watchable Scarlett Johansson in the perhaps more difficult role of Charlotte, which she plays with just the right combination of youthful yearning and preternatural intelligence. These are two characters at very different points in their lives—Murray’s is on the downslope of his career, Johansson’s just entering into the world--yet they are drawn together by a similar sense of disconnection and anomie. And the scene where they lie in bed together talking about life, and the closest they get is Murray’s hand on Johannson’s foot, is one of the year’s most sensuous and touching moments in film. The movie has taken some heat for its cultural insensitivity, particularly in the film’s weakest and most obviously sit-com-y scene, when Murray is attacked by an assertive hooker who urges him to "lip my stockings." Still and all, despite a few such furtively lagging moments, the film treats Japan with no more than a typical outsider’s disconcertion, which says far more about the character’s confusion and disorientation (you KNEW that was coming, didn’t you?) than it does about the host nation. Writer/director Sophia Coppola has a filmmaker’s eye with the camera (though cinematographer Lance Accord must get some of the credit for capturing the surreality that is Tokyo so beautifully), and the storyteller’s gift of a great ear (or else Murray oughta receive a screenwriter’s credit).

Grade: 85/100

Bus 174

The best in a year of many, many great documentaries (Capturing the Friedmans, Spellbound, To Be and to Have, Stevie, Winged Migration), Bus 174 is as powerful and tension-laden a film as any made in the fictional realm. The story of a Y2K hostage taking on a Rio de Janeiro bus involving a street kid who easily could have been one of the