1. 21 Grams
The lives of three people (Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio Del Toro) are intertwined by tragic circumstances revealed, layer by layer, in a jumble of non-chronological scenes. Threatening pretentiousness at every turn, Mexican auteur Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu instead delivers a hard-hitting dissection of human emotions and dramatic knockouts from all three of its leads.
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Sure it’s ass-numbingly long, has 12 endings and is more about emotional payoffs than emotional depth, but the lingering effect is undeniable. As a trilogy, the films enter the pantheon of classic epics, and director Peter Jackson should look forward to a Best Director Oscar for his inspired and masterful vision.
3. Finding Nemo/The Triplets of Belleville
Two films that pushed the animation envelope: one a transcendent, gorgeous testament to technology from Disney-Pixar, the other a hand-drawn hallucinatory experience from France. Both are intense, wildly imaginative exemplars of a still-thriving film genre.
4. Kill Bill: Vol. 1
Pretend to hate it all you want, but Quentin Tarantino’s self-indulgent wet dream of a B-martial arts flick is unabashedly infectious, visually stunning and overall, a sly piece of pop art. Killer soundtrack, too.
5. American Splendor
Paul Giamatti shines as cartoonist and lovable loser Harvey Pekar in this charming indie gem that deftly combines fact, fiction and animation and boasts the year’s best and most irreverent screenplay.
6. Mystic River
At the very least, proof that Clint Eastwood is an even greater director than he is an actor. At its best, a devastating human tragedy that takes what could have been a Boston-set episode of “Law ‘ Order” and makes it Shakespearean in depth.
7. The Fog of War
In a banner year for nonfiction films, none was as compelling as Errol Morris’ devastating portrait of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara: equal parts sage intellectual, convincing moralist and deceptive stonewaller.
8. Shattered Glass
The true story of fabulist New Republic reporter Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen) and the editor (the stellar Peter Sarsgaard) who finally broke his lying streak: a rare biopic that is as academic as it is thrilling.
9. House of Sand and Fog
A compelling human tragedy about three good people (Jennifer Connelly, Ben Kingsley, Ron Eldard) thrust into a bad situation with only their all-too-human hubris to govern their actions.
10. The Good Thief
This overlooked gem from the erudite Neil Jordan (a remake of Jean-Pierre Melville’s seminal Bob Le Flambeur) has Nick Nolte’s finest performance as a ne’er-do-well gambler and thief spearheading a superb cast in a stylized and incredibly infectious caper film.
THE WORST FOUR:
1. Elephant
Gus Van Sant’s Cannes Palme D’Or winner, which rehashed the Columbine shootings at a no-name school in a no-name burg with no-name young actors, claims to have the explanation to why it all happened: There isn’t one! Fine with me, but why make a movie at all when we have the real Columbine accounts and other nonfiction material to more effectively make that claim? This is something that Van Sant must have understood, which is why he irresponsibly threw in every troubled kid cliché he could think of, a few sophomoric gathering clouds metaphors and the hope that this vanity project would somehow spur enlightenment. It’s hard to believe that this sub-student-film exercise in pretentiousness shares the same director as Good Will Hunting.
2. The Hulk
Has Ang Lee ever read a comic book? I never thought it possible to suck so much life out of a Marvel Comics staple, or that such a talented director would be so ill suited to the material.
3. Mona Lisa Smile
A quasi-feminist Dead Poets Society starring Julia Roberts. It doesn’t get much worse than that.
4. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Based on a towering graphic novel, LXG had a great cast and the potential to be the year’s best comic book film, but its one-note dialogue, plodding script and general plot lunacy make you wonder what the hell they were thinking.
1. Mystic River In a year of sucker-punch cinematic tragedies, Clint Eastwood’s vast and gripping South Boston dirge resonates the most. Credit the film’s sobering implication of every character in the cycle of tragedy, so that violence becomes the culmination of the neighborhood’s sins. This, we realize with a gasp, is how people survive.
2. Lost in Translation It’s possible to view Sofia Coppola’s funny, elegant brief encounter as an admirable stylistic exercise owing plenty to French New Wave forebearers. But it’s also possible to wander into it on a dreary day and feel its commingling of post-adolescent aimlessness and middle-aged anomie very, very deeply.
3. House of Sand and Fog One of the only American films to even hint at uneasiness between Anglo-American and Islamic cultures, and a startling work of moral quicksand. Under the direction of first-timer Vadim Perelman, Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly create utterly convincing portraits of everyday people brought to ruinous circumstances.
4. Thirteen An angry film about the sexualization and commodification of young teenage life. Director Catherine Hardwicke collaborated with 15-year-old co-star Nikki Reed on the script, and the film throbs with knowing anguish. Holly Hunter and Evan Rachel Wood do a riveting mother-daughter tango.
5. Capturing the Friedmans Andrew Jarecki’s jaw-dropping assemblage of home movies from the Friedmans, a family besieged by sexual abuse allegations against a father and brother, showcases an upwardly mobile Long Island community that’s all too eager to revel in one family’s disgrace. The favorite in a year of tasty documentaries.
6. A Mighty Wind The party line on Christopher Guest and company’s latest mockumentary was that it wasn’t quite as hilarious as Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show. I can’t think of a taller order for a movie to fill, but this homage to clueless folk singers was the year’s funniest anyway. Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara are surprisingly touching as a star-crossed, reunited duo.
7. 21 Grams Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s fractured melodrama goes for broke and soars, and those who complain it’s too over-the-top would be singing its praises if it were in Spanish. In a year of actors playing broken people, Naomi Watts’ performance may be the most harrowing.
8. The Magdalene Sisters Catholic bashing may be overly fashionable these days, but Peter Mullan’s extraordinary account of Irish workhouses for wayward girls presided over by abusive nuns will have you joining the party.
9. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World Because only Peter Weir could improve an 19th century high-seas adventure by stopping the action cold to gape at the Galapagos Islands wildlife.
10. In America Jim Sheridan’s shimmering-memory screenplay triumphantly overcomes treacle in its portrayal of an Irish immigrant family overcoming the death of a son and trying to make it in the big, bad American city.
THE WORST FIVE: 1. The Barbarian Invasions Torturous examination of mortality, aging and geriatric lechery in Denys Arcand’s insufferable portrait of self-involved French Canadian liberals.
2. The Life of David Gale Courtesy of Alan Parker, a stunningly irresponsible, boneheaded mess of a film that lionizes anti-death penalty crusaders, then makes them seem like self-defeating lunatics.
3. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days Drag him to see Donald Petrie’s shrill, ugly amalgamation of every awful romantic comedy cliché.
4. Cold Creek Manor Incredibly inept hillbilly-revenge thriller. Listen closely, and you can hear director Mike Figgis cashing his paycheck.
5. The Hulk The stilted histrionics of Ang Lee’s multiplex-clearer made Nick Nolte’s DUI mugshot look like a good career move.