Part four of our discussion on the films of the 00’s, this time focusing on 2003.
1) Best of 2003?
2) Worst of 2003?
3) Most underrated?
4) Most underseen?
5) Most overrated?
6) Best performance(s) of the year?
7) Best single scene/sequence of the year?
8) One thing you could change about any single film in 2003 (Example: different cast, different director, different style, different release date, different studio).
9) Most memorable (good or bad) theatergoing experience of the year?
10) Most influential film/performance/style/director?
Obviously feel free to answer only the questions you’re interested in or to write/respond to something else entirely. The lists themselves are just a starting point designed to foster discussion.
Lots of good films that year. I put Dirty Pretty Things as the best.
Other good ones: The Good Thief, A Mighty Wind, Blue Car, Finding Nemo, Spellbound, American Splendor, The Magdalene Sisters, Kill Bill Vol. 1, Mystic River, Pieces of April, The Station Agent, The Missing, Master and Commander, Bad Santa, Return of the King, In America, House of Sand and Fog, The Triplets of Belleville
Best Performances: Sean Penn, Mystic River, Frances McDormand, Laurel Canyon
Over-Rated: X2, Pirates of the Caribbean, Seabiscuit
1) Best of the year?
TOP FIVE (in preference order): American Splendor, Kill Bill Vol 1, Memories of Murder, May, Oldboy
THE REST (in alphabetical order): Bad Santa, Bend it like Beckham, Cabin Fever, Capturing the Friedmans, Confidence, Elephant, Freaky Friday, Haute Tension, The Hunted, Identity, Lost in La Mancha, Lost in Translation, Master and Commander, Monster, Phone Booth, The Rundown, School of Rock, The Shape of Things, Shattered Glass, X2
2) Worst of the year? (in alphabetical order)
Anything Else, Battle Royale II, Battle of Shaker Heights, The Core, Daredevil, Dark Blue, Darkness Falls, Dreamcatcher, Duplex, Freddy Vs. Jason, Jeepers Creepers II, Johnny English, Ju-On 2, Laurel Canyon, Legally Blonde 2, Love Actually, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, The Recruit, Spun, Stuck on You, Tears of the Sun, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Thirteen
3) Most underrated?
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle…just kidding.
Memories of Murder
4) Most underseen?
From Justin to Kelly: With Love (It’s a blast)
5) Most overrated?
Finding Nemo (Good, but didn’t love it.), Old School, Thirteen
6) Best performances of the year?
Thornton in Bad Santa, Paul Giamatti in American Splendor, Hope Davis in American Splendor, Min-sik Choi in Oldboy, Charlize Theron in Monster, Rachel Weisz in The Shape of Things, Angela Bettis in May
7) Best single scene/sequence of the year?
Oldboy: Hallway fight
The last 10-15 minutes of Elephant
Final Destination 2: Freeway carnage
Terminator 3: Crane chase
The Matrix Reloaded: Car chase
The last 30 minutes of Kill Bill
8) One thing you could change about any single film in 2003?
Erase the Matrix sequels from existence.
9) Best or worst cinematic experience of the year?
Positive: Seeing Alien on the big screen for the first time.
Negative: Realizing that the Emperor had no clothes about 20 minutes into the third Matrix film and almost walking out.
10) Most influential film/performance/director/style of the year in terms of overall cinema?
Nothing comes to mind. Why is this year a complete blur to me?
I love James’ best of lists, because there’s always a complete “Huh?” moment.I didn’t see Phone Booth, so in all honesty I can’t argue the point all that strenuously. Seriously though, a Schumacher film being one of the year’s best truly defies plausibility.
I’ll probably have mine up later this week.
The one thing I’m wondering about James’ list is what’s with the alphabetical order? That’s not really a best of list. Can’t tell from that if Freaky Friday was considered better than Master and Commander.
Of the limited amount of films from this year I’ve seen, a fairly ordinary bunch
Best – Touching the Void (although I didn’t think it quite deserved the amount of praise it got), The Magdalene Sisters, Intolerable Cruelty, The Animatrix (released in cinemas in Australia, had more of interest and reflected the spirit of the original Matrix better than either of the official Matrix sequels did)
Overrated – Bad Santa (poor man’s ‘The Ref’), American Splendor, Elf (Ferrell was good though), A Mighty Wind, Lost in Translation (was OK but but unmemorable)
Underrated – Down With Love (falls apart in the last quarter but for most part good fun)
Worst – Kill Bill (despised it), My Boss’s Daughter
Passable but forgettable- The In-Laws (no worse than the overrated original)
Best Performance – Stuck On You showcased the continued decline of the Farrelly brothers, but Greg Kinnear was great in it.
Worst Performance – Harold Perrineau in the Matrix sequels; such an insipid and sappy performance. Couldn’t imagine him in a million years being part of the crew of the ship of the original Matrix film.
Hard to characterise where to put ‘Phone Booth’. On the plus side it was quite gripping and one of the better films I’ve seen of this year but it was rather pointless and unpleasant and probably not deserving of the praise it received.
As for the Matrix sequels, the first one was half-decent but not a patch on the original. The worst thing about the 2nd sequel is that it’s a watchable, ho-hum, safe film. You would’ve rather they’d produced a risk-taking disaster than that.
Well, it’s no Charlie’s Angels – but I admired Phone Booth’s ingenuity and overall execution. A solid b-level thriller is hard to come by these days.
Well, I started doing it that way to save time with ranking but I’ve revised my list above to include a “top five”. I’ll do the same thing in the future.
Yes, Freaky Friday obviously goes above Master and Commander on any list.
Very good selection. I remember thinking Perrineau held such promise when I first saw him in Wayne Wang’s Smoke. Since then, I’ve been borderline embarrassed by much of his work…not sure what happened there.
A few contenders for worst film: the Matrix sequels, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.
I didn’t care for Phone Booth. It was too conscious of its gimmick (and of course almost instantly anachronistic, as they used the last phone booth standing in NYC to film it).
This, to me, sums up Schumacher’s entire career in a nutshell.
“Pointless” and “unpleasant” are spot on. I’m not sure that many Schumacher films have been overpraised.
The only films he’s made that I’ve enjoyed are Phone Both, The Lost Boys (it’s fun) and parts of The Client. Everything else is ugly, overblown and awful.
Didn’t Schumacher do Tigerland?
That was at least…curiously watchable. Except for Josh Lucas(?) and his awful performance as the sergeant.
‘Falling Down’ is a probably a better summation of Schumacher’s work than ‘Phone Booth’. It’s vivid, has some memorable scenes and I really enjoyed it when I saw it at the cinema back in ‘93. But looking back it’s a pointless, manipulative film of very little substantive value.
2003
Not seen: Best of Youth, Elephant, The Cooler, Gigli (only saw five minutes once), Gothika, Dreamcatcher, Confidence, Capturing the Friedmans
1) Best of 2003?
Oldboy, Master and Commander, Memories of Murder, Lost in Translation, Touching the Void, Finding Nemo, The Return, Pirates of the Caribbean, LotR – Return of the King, ‘Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring’, X-Men 2, Triplettes of Belleville, Elf, Old School, Kontroll, Kill Bill, Bad Santa, Ong-Bak, Open Range, Lost in La Mancha, American Splendor, Station Agent, Dogville, Zatôichi, Identity
2) Worst of 2003?
Mona Lisa Smile, Ondskan, Matrix Revolutions, Stuck on You
3) Most underrated?
Ong-Bak, The Rundown
4) Most underseen?
Ong-Bak – The plot and acting is terrible but the stunts and acrobatics need to be seen to be believed
The Return – Russian drama about two brothers reunited with a man who may be their father. Like Malick in Russian
Kontroll – A thriller set exclusively inside the Hungarian subway system is more effective, atmospheric and memorable than most American thrillers with ten times the budget.
Triplettes of Belleville – Because it’s just filled with an inventiveness and joy for life
Lost in La Mancha – It’s amazing watching this. It’s like watching a potential Gilliam “Brazil” behind the scenes, but as a train crash in slow motion.
5) Most overrated?
Big Fish, Ondskan, 21 Grams, Mystic River (somewhat), Once Upon a Time in Mexico,
6) Best performance(s) of the year?
Choi Min-Sik in Oldboy
Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow
Charlize Theron in Monster
Max Pirkis in Master & Commander (the blond kid)
Takeshi Kitano in Zatôichi
7) Best single scene/sequence of the year?
- Oldboy goes Double Dragon
- The doctor does self-surgery in Master & Commander
- Sharks have a veggie conference in Finding Nemo
- Anime sequence in Kill Bill
- Gollum debates with himself in Return of the King
8) One thing you could change about any single film in 2003
- Not change but see, mostly, how good 21 Grams would be if it was edited into its chronological order
- All right, I’d trim all the farewells in Return of the King a little
9) Most memorable (good or bad) theatergoing experience of the year?
- Seeing Master and Commander with my father and brother at a cinema with a proper sound system. “I could hear the cannon blasts behind me!” my father exclaimed afterwards. That Christmas the tv mysteriously stopped working and an emergency purchase of a 44 inch plasma screen with a major surround system was brought into the household. Much sleep has been lost by my mother as dad watches Band of Brothers at what he considers a ‘realistic’ sound level.
10) Most influential film/performance/style/director?
American Splendor: That kind of quirky indie film with animated sequences and mixtures of real-life characters and whatnot became much more prevalent after the success of the film.
Master and Commander: Its lack of mega-success stalled one of the potentially greatest series of films ever made.
You know what the funny thing about Kontroll is? I recommended that to you, Nick, and then I never got to see it myself. They had posters up for it at the Magnolia in Dallas for several months, and I probably saw the trailer there half a dozen times, but it never did end up opening for some reason.
Every part of this story is awesome.
You know what? 2003 was a pretty good year.
Best: Lost in Translation, Finding Nemo, Touching the Void, ‘Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring’, Elephant, X2, Dirty Pretty Things, In America, City of God
Also Notably Good: Big Fish, Whale Rider, Dogville, Master and Commander, Open Range, The Fog of War
Overrated: American Splendor, Kill Bill V1
Worst, and in Contention for Worst of the Decade: The Leage of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Quite Likely Even Worse, If That’s Possible, but Valuing My Dignity I Didn’t See Them: The Cat in the Hat, Daddy Day Care
Not Fair to Call Them the Worst, but Boy, Did I Hate Them: LOTR3, House of Sand and Fog