I’m playing along with Zombyboy’s game, but I am not adhering to the rules of having to list only the best, I will list what I want to talk about, the ones that have made an impact either positively or otherwise.

Today we talk about Films of 2004. Ones I have not seen (either in part or in full) will be noted as such.

Honorable mentions. So honorable that a Frenchman can’t even pronounce the damn word properly enough to describe these films.

1. Kill Bill Volume 2 — This film gets the top honor in my book, and maybe it will stay my favorite movie of all time. If the ornate, highly stylized fighting of its first half offered us the purity of Tarantino’s filmmaking form, Vol. 2 offered the purity of essence. This is the way to make a revenge flick. Not to end it with a bang, but to make sure that the bang itself does not upstage and outshine the sheer joy and anguish of necessary vengeance.
2. Spiderman 2 — Many superhero flicks—including the second and third attempts at milking people for money called The Matrix: Reloaded and The Matrix: Revolutions—have relied heavily on computer-generated imaging to handle the superhuman feats of its protagonists. While Spiderman 2 is no different, the cinematography—heh, if we can call it that—of his high-swinging activities gives life to The City itself. Besides, it’s a classic good versus evil movie where the hero gets the girl and the villain finds redemption. And lastly, but most important, Nickelback didn’t return to make the theme for this one.
3. Hero — I have not seen a greater movie that combines pro-Communist propaganda with so much beauty. Wes Bentley’s character in American Beauty would have soaked his pants in what would otherwise be nocturnal emissions had he even experienced a small fraction the vistas this film presented. It is, beyond the message that fascism is good if it is “under heaven,” a movie for everyone. Sappy romantics, beauty buffs, foreign film nuts, action/Wuxia fans… it even has a special place for those who adore eunuchs. Hundreds upon hundreds of imperial eunuchs…

Slightly dubious honors:

1. Lost In Translation — I can’t relate. Seriously. I’m a twentysomething dude who’s never been in a relationship where estrangement with my partner leads me to cavort with a younger woman who is just as estranged with her partner as I am with mine. In Japan. Where they expect me too cook thinly sliced meat in a huge pot of boiling water in the middle of a table, a pot that is so unsecured that here in litigious America you don’t actually have to wait for the baby to turn it into bathwater before you can file a lawsuit.

   Oh, and I slept through the movie twice. And I am still, still curious about what Bill Murray’s character told the girl when they hugged in the middle of the street. Could it have been “for a fun time, make it Suntory time,” or could it have been someting more benign? We may never know, because whatever honors Sofia Copolla got for this were were meant for The Virgin Suicides anyway.

2. In The Mood For Love — It’s a pretty movie. But again. I should stop with the masochistic practice of wasting time on films that I cannot relate to. Want to see how Chinese adulterers in the forties tried to carefully go about their business courting each other? Here’s a hint: it’s more careful than how porcupines have sex, and the marching of glaciers is faster than its pace. My one liner critique? Like watching water come to a boil.

Dubious honors:

1. Alien vs. Predator — How not to bring together two badass creature cultures in a movie.
2. Catwoman — How not to make a superhero movie. (Not watched. I wasn’t even going to risk pirating it to see Halle Berry destroy her career with this.
3. The Day After Tomorrow — How not to make a disaster movie. Awful, cheap, condescending, “America gets kicked in the balls again” movie with no redeeming value other than seeing the tax code go up in flames.
4. The Grudge — As if the lesson of The Ring has not been learned. Reshot Japanese cult horror films do not, I repeat do not, gain any sort of artistic validation. Nor do they rake in confidence in the consumer investment called the Theatre Ticket. The Gigli horror film of 2004. I daresay it may be so. I daresay.
5. Troy, Alexander, and King Arthur (all tied, none of which I have watched) — “Epic” medieval battles ended their popularity with The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King and will not regain stature with audiences for years to come. Nice try, guys, but medieval battles are so 2003.

And that’s my list for the Films of 2004.