• Top Films of 2004:
  1. Shaun of the Dead
  2. Team America: World Police
  3. Saddest Music in the World
  4. Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
  5. Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
  6. Fahrenheit 9/11
  7. A Dirty Shame
  8. The Corporation
  9. Spiderman 2
  10. Dogville (surprise)
• Bottom 5 films of 2004:
  1. Saw
  2. The Village
  3. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
  4. House of Flying Daggers
  5. Starsky & Hutch
• Best Reissue: Monty Python’s Life of Brian
• Best Remake/Reworking: Dawn of the Dead
• Best Director: John Waters
• Best Actress: Isabella Rosselini (Saddest Music in the World)
• Best Actor: Paul Bettany (Dogville)
• Best Supporting Actress: Lynn Redgrave (Kinsey)
• Best Supporting Actor: Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead)
• Best Ensemble: Shaun of the Dead
• Best Original Screenplay: Shaun of the Dead
• Best Adapted Screenplay: Spiderman 2
• Best Cinematography: Dogville
• Best Soundtrack: Team America: World Police
• Most Alarming Cinematic Trend: Ben Stiller’s Increasingly
  Annoying Schtick
• Most Memorable Line: Team America: World Police
  Lisa: Promise me you’ll never die.
  Gary Johnston: You know I can’t promise that.
  Lisa: Promise me you’ll never die and I’ll make love to you right now.
  Gary Johnston: I promise I’ll never die.
• Best Documentary: End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones
• Best Faux Documentary: The Battle of Algiers
• Movie which was good, yet didn’t make it anywhere else on this list:
  Napoleon Dynamite
• Best Fake Television Network: “The Ocho” – Dodgeball
• Reinforcement that M. Night Shyamalan sucks: The Village
• Best use of Special Effects in a lame movie: Sky Captain and the
  World of Tomorrow
• Most audience manipulating “Documentary”: Tarnation
• Film I won’t watch until I can get it off Napster: Metallica:
  Some Kind of Monster
• Best Interviews in a Documentary: The Fog of War
• Film I feel guilty for missing (tie): Sideways & The Motorcycle Diaries
• Film I don’t feel guilty for missing: MXP: Most Xtreme Primate

Here’s a list of the movies I saw this year…  If you compare it to last year’s list, you’ll notice that I saw a few more films in the theatre this year, more than one a week on average (which isn’t surprising since I head up the Boston Sunday Night Film Club).  You might also notice that I saw fewer films on video this year…  I guess that’s what getting a job’ll do to ya…  Damn employment! :)

This year’s list should be far more accurate than last year’s, since I kept track of the movies as I watched them, as opposed to trying to reconstruct the list from memory and Netflix history like I did last year.  I might have missed a few, but overall it is pretty comprehensive.  I even decided just now to link each of the films to their IMDB page (some are linked to Amazon because IMDB has no listing), so if you are wondering what a particular film was all about, you don’t have to hunt the info down.

Obviously, if I watch a film in the next 11.5 hours I will add it to the list, but I don’t expect to…  Then again, given that on average I’ve watched a movie almost every other day, you never know… :)

Continue reading “The Movies I saw in 2004” →

commented on how many movies I put in the previous post. I decided to try and list all of the movies I saw this year, both in the theater and on TV (dvd, hbo, etc.). I pulled this list from memory, from email archives, and by stepping through every post I made to LJ in the past year. I am going to try and keep a more accurate list for 2004. I figure if I start now I can have a pretty accurate model of what I see this year.

The theater list is pretty accurate, and I don’t think I missed much on it. The video list, however, is probably VERY incomplete.

Update (8/27/2004): I found an option at netflix to retrieve my entire rental history, so I was able to fill in some missing data.

Continue reading “The Movies I saw in 2003” →

• Most surprising film of the year: Rivers and Tides
  • I really expected this one to be a complete snoozer, but it was so
    beautiful I watched most of it with my jaw dropped.
• Most disappointing film: Spider
  • I was disillusioned with Cronenberg after eXistenZ, but this film was
    just ho-hum.
• Saddest film: Lost in La Mancha
  • I love Terry Gilliam and it is so sad to see his creation squashed by
    various forces. This documentary does a great job of putting you in
    Gilliam’s head.
• Most surprising B-movie (non-horror): Poolhall Junkies
  • Sure, it’s a cheesy mix of Rounders and The Color of Money, but
    a campy Christopher Walken performance makes the film a must-rent
• Most surprising B-movie (horror): House of 1000 Corpses
  • Hey, I have to admit that I didn’t give Rob Zombie a fair shake. I
    expected him to pooch it and he completely delivered.
• Best Christopher Guest Movies: A Mighty Wind and Spellbound
  • Sure, Spellbound might not have ACTUALLY been directed by Christopher Guest, and it’s not a mockumentary, but that doesn’t change the fact that it very well COULD be.
• Best coming-of-age film: Whale Rider
  • You just gotta love those Maori!
• Best Use of Digital Video: 28 Days Later
  • DV gave this film the immediacy of a nightly news report, and
    contributed to the overall spooky nature of this film.
• Best Use of Johnny Depp: Pirates of the Caribbean
  • Come on, he rocked.
• Film which made me feel guilty for not surfing: Step Into Liquid
  • I never got into Endless Summer, but Step Into Liquid is a masterpiece
    and makes a part of me wish I grew up in California.
• Best Horror Film: Freddy vs. Jason
  • This is definitely a biased category for me, but fuck it.
• Best use of Bill Murray in ages: Lost in Translation
  • I didn’t see Charlie’s Angels 2 because Bill Murray wasn’t in it.
• Best Kids Movie That Adults Should See: School of Rock
  • The people behind School of Rock took a formula that has been done over
    and over and over again and turned it into something fresh.
• Best referential homage-fest: Kill Bill Vol. 1
  • Quentin Tarantino did an amazing job of distilling his thousands of
    sources and inspiration down into a hip, fun, exciting movie. I can’t
    wait to see the second half.
• Best Reissue: Alien: Director’s Cut
  • It was tough picking between Alien and Scarface, but really, Alien is
    the scariest movie ever made, and doesn’t feel dated one bit. Scarface
    is just as amazing, but I am simply more attached to Alien.
• Best completion of a Trilogy: Return of the King
  • Peter Jackson has made some of my favorite films (Bad Taste, Dead Alive, Meet the Feebles…). When I heard he was going to be tackling LotR, I really didn’t think he was up to the task. He showed me.
• Worst completition of a Trilogy: Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions
  • I liked the second film, and enjoyed the third film, but Corinna summed
    it up perfectly when she said that if they felt the need to make a
    sequel they should have combined these two films into one. I love the
    first film, but the two sequels released this year were a disappointment
    (if not still enjoyable).
• Worst film of the year: Gerry and Friday Night (tie)
  • I just can’t pick. Both of these films are complete wastes of time.