This is a great article
http://throughablogdarkly.blogspot.com/2007/06/cinephiles-are-from-mars-everyone-else.html
5. Fear of black-and-white films. Seeing something in black-and-white instantly turns people off. A study from an article I read on colorization said something like 85% of people will automatically switch the channel if they see a movie on TV and it's in black-and-white
6. Belief that the farther back in time we go, the less funny people were. Charlie Chaplain has probably never been topped, and he didn't even have the convinience of dialogue to work with in his best films. The R-rated comedies by Judd Apatow and starring the Frat Pack are only now starting to approach to the raunchiness and political incorrectness that Billy Wilder subversively achieved. I also like to cite Duck Soup is proof that humor is something that's only modern.
Showing posts with label Frat Pack. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frat Pack. Show all posts
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Wedding Crashers (2005) review
This is another review that I'm proceeding to move from another site. I actually gave Wedding Crashers only a so-so review, despite the fact that most people loved it:
From the same comedic team (more or less) that brought you Zoolander, Dodgeball, and Old School, the latest annual installment of a comedy has arrived about people who don’t actually exist (frat boys who technically aren’t college students, professional dodgeball players, etc), but could very easily exist when you think about it.
The comedic team that I’m talking about is combination of at least one guy with the last name Wilson, Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Will Ferrell who rotate playing the lead, playing the sidekick/rival, not being in the movie at all, and providing a much loved 2-minute cameo. Owen Wilson and Vaughn take the leads as two more characters that guys could easily enjoy vicariously living through for a couple hours: John Beckwith and Jeremy Klein (Wilson) are two divorce lawyers who spend their spare time crashing weddings solely to meet girls.
After years of practice they’ve refined it down to an art. One of the best running comic gags, in fact, is that they have a lengthy rule book that they memorize and regularly cite from in various situations.
The story begins when after a very successful wedding season, shown through a well-made opening montage; the two buddies decide to end off the season with a bang by crashing what will be their most high stakes wedding to date. Why this wedding is a bigger deal to them than any other wedding is beyond me, but nevertheless, the two go to the wedding and both find themselves with bigger messes than they can clean up by wedding’s end. Jeremy falls for one of the bride’s sisters, Claire, and all is going well until he meets her boyfriend. Rachel McAdams (The Notebook) plays Claire a little too lackadaisically charming to come off as anything but clichéd.
John, meanwhile, has such good luck with the bride’s other sister that he manages to have sex with her before the wedding is even over. Unfortunately, she mistakes his love of the chase for true love and his efforts to flee the scene get foiled by his love-struck partner in crime who insists they stick around. This is the point in the movie when, like John, it would be best to flee the scene ourselves.
While the film is lined with sharp and hilarious snippets of dialogue throughout, the story is unevenly paced and it never really gets back to that screwball comedy feel it attains in the film’s first half hour.
If not for the fact that these guys will probably be appearing in movie theaters again in some cameo or comedy vehicle before I even finish mourning their failure, I’d have been disappointed because with a few minor tweaks, I could have seen this movie working. For example, one of the downturns that are used in these types of romantic comedies to prevent the guy and girl from getting together before working things out takes up almost a year of the story and one of the characters gets depressed to the point of feeling suicidal. In this scene and in general, the movie too often drifts a little too far away from lighthearted-comedy mode. Considering how with characters that revel in the joy of taking advantage of girls at weddings, the movie’s tone is quite cynical when you think about it, it wouldn’t be a good idea to get the audience taking the film too seriously at all.
From the same comedic team (more or less) that brought you Zoolander, Dodgeball, and Old School, the latest annual installment of a comedy has arrived about people who don’t actually exist (frat boys who technically aren’t college students, professional dodgeball players, etc), but could very easily exist when you think about it.
The comedic team that I’m talking about is combination of at least one guy with the last name Wilson, Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Will Ferrell who rotate playing the lead, playing the sidekick/rival, not being in the movie at all, and providing a much loved 2-minute cameo. Owen Wilson and Vaughn take the leads as two more characters that guys could easily enjoy vicariously living through for a couple hours: John Beckwith and Jeremy Klein (Wilson) are two divorce lawyers who spend their spare time crashing weddings solely to meet girls.
After years of practice they’ve refined it down to an art. One of the best running comic gags, in fact, is that they have a lengthy rule book that they memorize and regularly cite from in various situations.
The story begins when after a very successful wedding season, shown through a well-made opening montage; the two buddies decide to end off the season with a bang by crashing what will be their most high stakes wedding to date. Why this wedding is a bigger deal to them than any other wedding is beyond me, but nevertheless, the two go to the wedding and both find themselves with bigger messes than they can clean up by wedding’s end. Jeremy falls for one of the bride’s sisters, Claire, and all is going well until he meets her boyfriend. Rachel McAdams (The Notebook) plays Claire a little too lackadaisically charming to come off as anything but clichéd.
John, meanwhile, has such good luck with the bride’s other sister that he manages to have sex with her before the wedding is even over. Unfortunately, she mistakes his love of the chase for true love and his efforts to flee the scene get foiled by his love-struck partner in crime who insists they stick around. This is the point in the movie when, like John, it would be best to flee the scene ourselves.
While the film is lined with sharp and hilarious snippets of dialogue throughout, the story is unevenly paced and it never really gets back to that screwball comedy feel it attains in the film’s first half hour.
If not for the fact that these guys will probably be appearing in movie theaters again in some cameo or comedy vehicle before I even finish mourning their failure, I’d have been disappointed because with a few minor tweaks, I could have seen this movie working. For example, one of the downturns that are used in these types of romantic comedies to prevent the guy and girl from getting together before working things out takes up almost a year of the story and one of the characters gets depressed to the point of feeling suicidal. In this scene and in general, the movie too often drifts a little too far away from lighthearted-comedy mode. Considering how with characters that revel in the joy of taking advantage of girls at weddings, the movie’s tone is quite cynical when you think about it, it wouldn’t be a good idea to get the audience taking the film too seriously at all.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Review of Dodgeball (2004)
Dodgeball is a riveting and sharp comedy about a sport we all stopped taking seriously after our last elementary school gym class.
Vince Vaughn plays Peter LaFluer, owner of a rundown gym called Average Joe's. His membership total consists of just five, but nevertheless, the personable LaFluer is happy to be of service to his clients, even if they are all pathetically out of shape and a little off the norm. His gym is in financial trouble, however, and LaFluer is notified at the start of the film that he has thirty days to pay off its loan or it will be shut down. LaFluer's gym will be bought out by Globo, owned by the villainous White Goodman. Stiller pulls out the stops as Goodman, taking every opportunity to make himself dislike-able so that his demise at the film's end will be all the more sweeter.
In need of a desperate solution, LaFluer and his clients sit down in his office and brainstorm. The solution comes from Gordon (Root) who reads in his magazine Obscure Sports Quarterly about an upcoming dodgeball tournament in which they could win the required money, so the ragtag bunch sets out to learn the sport and win the tournament. Their biggest obstacle is that in order to ensure Average Joe's shutdown, Goodman fields a team of bodybuilders to win the tournament and deny LaFluer the money, setting the stage for a David vs Goliath match up in the upcoming tournament.
If there's one thing, aside from the satire, that there is to love about this movie, it's the quirky group of guys who comprise LaFluer's team. With the exception of Dwight (Williams), whose quirkiest attribute is his hatred of his previous job at the airport, the group is a very creative assemblage of underdogs. Vaughn plays the straight man, next to Stiller, his own team, and pretty much everyone else in the movie. You'd think that the love interest Christine Taylor as the lawyer, initially hired by Goodman to shut down Average Joe's but ends up joining the team out of disgust for the villain, but she turns out to have her own weird attributes.
In a sense, Dodgeball is sort of a quasi-sports film because it centers around a sport that doesn't actually exist in terms of a spectator base, and uses that to poke fun at some of the sillier aspects of our present-day athletic culture. Be warned, this film is merciless, attacking everything from bodybuilders to ESPN to team uniforms. I particularly found it hilarious that the tournament was broadcast on ESPN 8, which probably is only a couple years away at this rate, and that one of the sports commentators (Arrested Development's Jason Bateman) knew absolutely nothing of what he was talking about.
The movie gets caught up in all the satire, however, and towards the end drifts off into an absurd ending that really left a bad taste in my mouth. The ending threw so much of reality out the window, that it felt like a Mel Brooks film, which is a shame because up until the last couple minutes, the film did a terrific job at cracking out hilarious jokes within the context of a story. Looking back, though, the first couple of hours more than make up for the last couple of minutes, and I would have rather the movie aimed high and missed a couple notes, rather than being safe and not being as funny.
Vince Vaughn plays Peter LaFluer, owner of a rundown gym called Average Joe's. His membership total consists of just five, but nevertheless, the personable LaFluer is happy to be of service to his clients, even if they are all pathetically out of shape and a little off the norm. His gym is in financial trouble, however, and LaFluer is notified at the start of the film that he has thirty days to pay off its loan or it will be shut down. LaFluer's gym will be bought out by Globo, owned by the villainous White Goodman. Stiller pulls out the stops as Goodman, taking every opportunity to make himself dislike-able so that his demise at the film's end will be all the more sweeter.
In need of a desperate solution, LaFluer and his clients sit down in his office and brainstorm. The solution comes from Gordon (Root) who reads in his magazine Obscure Sports Quarterly about an upcoming dodgeball tournament in which they could win the required money, so the ragtag bunch sets out to learn the sport and win the tournament. Their biggest obstacle is that in order to ensure Average Joe's shutdown, Goodman fields a team of bodybuilders to win the tournament and deny LaFluer the money, setting the stage for a David vs Goliath match up in the upcoming tournament.
If there's one thing, aside from the satire, that there is to love about this movie, it's the quirky group of guys who comprise LaFluer's team. With the exception of Dwight (Williams), whose quirkiest attribute is his hatred of his previous job at the airport, the group is a very creative assemblage of underdogs. Vaughn plays the straight man, next to Stiller, his own team, and pretty much everyone else in the movie. You'd think that the love interest Christine Taylor as the lawyer, initially hired by Goodman to shut down Average Joe's but ends up joining the team out of disgust for the villain, but she turns out to have her own weird attributes.
In a sense, Dodgeball is sort of a quasi-sports film because it centers around a sport that doesn't actually exist in terms of a spectator base, and uses that to poke fun at some of the sillier aspects of our present-day athletic culture. Be warned, this film is merciless, attacking everything from bodybuilders to ESPN to team uniforms. I particularly found it hilarious that the tournament was broadcast on ESPN 8, which probably is only a couple years away at this rate, and that one of the sports commentators (Arrested Development's Jason Bateman) knew absolutely nothing of what he was talking about.
The movie gets caught up in all the satire, however, and towards the end drifts off into an absurd ending that really left a bad taste in my mouth. The ending threw so much of reality out the window, that it felt like a Mel Brooks film, which is a shame because up until the last couple minutes, the film did a terrific job at cracking out hilarious jokes within the context of a story. Looking back, though, the first couple of hours more than make up for the last couple of minutes, and I would have rather the movie aimed high and missed a couple notes, rather than being safe and not being as funny.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Top 10 Films of 2004
Review of 2004:
-This was the year of the biopic, in my opinion. Ray, Kinsey, The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Beyond the Sea, and Vera Drake were among the most successful this year. Also, there was Delovely. I don't think I'm a genius for coming to that conclusion, either. It was just an obvious trend that for some reason all happened this year.
-This was the year where there was a sense that there was a Brat Pack. The term was coined by the media somewhere (don't remember who) and they were kind of cemented. It's hard to explain how that stuff works but factors that lead to it were: 2 of the biggest water cooler movies of the summer in Anchorman and Dodgeball along with a lot of Ben Stiller movies: Envy, Starsky and Hutch, and Meet the Fockers (one of the highest grossing films of the year). The brat pack is basically Owen Wilson, Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, Vince Vaughn and Will Ferrell. In this year all of those people except Owen Wilson was in Anchorman in some form or another, Stiller and Vaughn were in Dodgeball, Owen and Stiller were in Meet the Fockers and Starsky and Hutch together, and Stiller and Black were in Envy together. You can trace this group back and forward (i.e. Old School was Luke, Ferrell, and Vaughn, see the pattern?)
-This might have been the very peak of the summer blockbuster season. 2005's grosses went downhill and that's not so much because 2005 was a failure, just for the fact that 2004 had so many humongous movies hitting the theater pretty much every weekend. Troy had a big opening weekend gross of $45 million, only to be brushed aside 5 days later when Shrek 2 nearly set a box office record eventually becoming #3 all time, followed by Harry Potter with a $245 million domestic gross, followed by Spiderman 2 which dominated the box office for 2 weeks, to be then be set aside by a string of films I, Robot/Bourne Supremacy/Village, each of them grossing over $50 million opening weekend. In between, The Day After Tomorrow grossed enough its first weekend to set a record for the highest film never to hit #1. The year produced 3 films that broke into the top 10 all-time, Shrek 2, Spiderman 2, and Passion of the Christ, which brings me to the next bullet
-There was a whole thing in the press about a red-state and blue-state divide that got blown up a lot. This was representative through two big successes. One appealed to the religious right because it was a big picture about Jesus, and the other was not really religious in nature but it was made with the purpose of removing George W. Bush from office. The connection is somewhat hasty, but nevertheless: Passion of the Christ was a humongous film coming from Mel Gibson and was made even more impressive by the fact that it was in subtitles, incredibly violent and very long, which usually isn't a good formula for commercial success. On the other side, Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 set a box office record for documentaries and looked like it had the potential to really make an impact
-A couple small independent films made a splash. The first, Garden State was written, directed by and starred Zach Braff and won him the National Board of Review honor for new director, a Grammy for best soundtrack, and a lot more young fans in addition to those who love him on the TV show Scrubs. The second, Napoleon Dynamite, an offbeat film about incredibly odd characters growing up in Idaho, became a cult hit. This wasn't significant from an art standpoint (at least I hope not. I hope a lot of people don't imitate this), but it did mark a success for the people at the Sundance Film Festival where the film was originally released and sold for national distribution. The following year, Sundance also saw more success for independent films Hustle and Flow and Junebug which both got national distribution and Oscar nominations
-Lastly, it was a big year for Martin Scorsese, or at least it had the potential to be. His movie the Aviator was very hyped up and was supposed to guarantee him an Oscar. As you can see from my list, i thought it was a great film, and others did too. It also did win a lot of Oscars, but the big prize at the end of the evening went to Clint Eastwood, so Scorsese had to go back to the drawing board.
Top 10 Movies of 2004:
10. Anchorman, Adam McKay
I’m sure I’m in the minority in calling Anchorman one of the best films of the year, but when done well a pure comedy can be just as much a show of great film-making as anything else. Set in a 1970s San Diego newsroom, Anchorman is the best display of improvisational comedy on screen since Christopher Guest. The comic timing was excellent as jokes were pushed to extreme situations (i.e. the West Side Story like brawl, the random a capella rendition of “Afternoon Delight”). More than that, however, a great comedy is about the characters and what I loved about this film is how everyone in the cast stepped it up to match Will Ferrell’s intensity in mining the zaniness out of their characters.
9. Ray, Taylor Hackford
Ray showed us a portrait of a man who whether morally in the right or wrong, was unquestionably a man of great vision. Heeding his mother’s parting advice to not let anyone treat him like a charity case, Ray Charles refused to act blind. He denied himself a walking cane or even a helping hand. At the same time, however, Charles was blind in a way: to skin color. Despite the discrimination he faced, he befriended black and white people alike and musically opened himself up to both style. Jamie Foxx turns in the best performance of the year that captures the man inside and out.
8. Manchurian Candidate, Johnathan Demme
Johnathan Demme’s remake of the 1962 classic managed the rare feat of updating an original to a contemporary setting while preserving the spirit of the original. Demme’s version also plays out more like a thriller than the original much like the novel. Even by the standards of Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep, the performances are surprisingly tuned in.
7. Fahrenheit 911, Michael Moore
Michael Moore didn’t succeed in changing the course of national history with his documentary. He did, however, succeed in infusing the non-fiction format with mainstream entertainment and broke a box office record along the way. More than just a presentation of facts, Moore’s documentary tells a story infused with emotion that brings the viewer to tears and laughter.
6. Spanglish, James L Brooks
In his first film of the new millennium, Brooks does a great job of exploiting both the humorous and dramatic possibilities of the cultural and class barriers between a wealthy suburban family and their new Mexican housekeeper. Adam Sandler gives a surprisingly mature performance that doesn’t compromise his likability, the underrated Tea Leoni hits the right notes as a high strung wife, and the introduction of Paz Vega as the housekeeper is a welcome surprise. She gives a delicate performance of a character that acts as a counterbalance to the dysfunction.
5. The Life Aquatic, Wes Anderson
Some were disappointed with Wes Anderson’s follow-up to The Royal Tannenbaums, but I might just be a sucker for Jack Cousteau-type adventures. Still, it’s hard to see what’s not to like with the addition of Willem Dafoe, Cate Blanchett, and Jeff Goldblum in place of frat-packers Luke Wilson and Ben Stiller, and Bill Murray back at the helm, the Life Aquatic brings an ensemble of rich and multilayered characters that mesh together in the trademark Wes-Anderson-style. The plot follows a ship out at sea and it could be argued that it’s not particularly focused, but with such beautiful visuals and a soundtrack of such original sources as David Bowie covers covered in Portuguese, it’s fine just to sit back and enjoy the ride whatever direction it takes you.
4. Sideways, Alexander Payne
A somber and highly engaging comedy that derives its humor from its strong footing in the tragedies and subsequent triumphs, however small they may be, in real life. Payne’s last film, the critically acclaimed About Schmidt starred Jack Nicholson in a toned-down role. In contrast, this film centers around four quirky character roles cast perfectly with Thomas Haden Church as the brash playboy, Sandra Oh as a raunchy single mom, Virginia Madsen as a fragile waitress, and Paul Giamatti as an introspective elementary school teacher who wants just a little more in life.
3. Motorcycle Diaries, Walter Salles
One of the greatest and most important stories of Latin-American folklore is brought to the American movie screen and turns out a winner. The Motorcycle Diaries is the firsthand account by a young Ernesto “Che” Gueverra and his traveling companion of an 800-mile motorcycle trek through South America. Guevuerra would go on to become one of world history’s most notorious revolutionary figures, and the immense appeal of this story is its tale of a naïve and innocent man before en route to becoming the icon that so many of his countrymen revere.
2. Hotel Rwanda, Terry George
Described as “Schindler’s List set in Africa,” Hotel Rwanda is an intense gritty war drama is powerful in its horrific imagery, shot on location. Yet, it is a story of hope as well. Don Cheadle plays Terry George as a hotel manager in Rwanda who first tries to save his immediate family from the conflict, but is then moved to save everyone he can. It’s a truly eye-opening experience about a part of the world and one of the many conflicts within that all-too-easily get ignored.
1. Aviator, Martin Scorsese
2004 was undoubtedly the year of the biopic with movies being made about singers, abortion activists, sex researchers, and whether Howard Hughes was a more important figure in history than Bobby Darin or Ray Charles, it was clear that no biopic story this year was told with more passion for its subject than The Aviator. Like the Golden Age of Hollywood in which the movie is set, Aviator was quality film making at every end, with big production values, a majestic score by Howard Shore, and a roster of talent so deep that bit parts were being filled out by the likes of Jude Law and Willem Dafoe. Alec Baldwin as a slithery airline executive and Kate Beckinsdale as bombastic belle Ava Gardner stand out for their performances, and Leonardo DiCaprio tosses aside his “pretty boy” persona for a deeper performance.
-This was the year of the biopic, in my opinion. Ray, Kinsey, The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Beyond the Sea, and Vera Drake were among the most successful this year. Also, there was Delovely. I don't think I'm a genius for coming to that conclusion, either. It was just an obvious trend that for some reason all happened this year.
-This was the year where there was a sense that there was a Brat Pack. The term was coined by the media somewhere (don't remember who) and they were kind of cemented. It's hard to explain how that stuff works but factors that lead to it were: 2 of the biggest water cooler movies of the summer in Anchorman and Dodgeball along with a lot of Ben Stiller movies: Envy, Starsky and Hutch, and Meet the Fockers (one of the highest grossing films of the year). The brat pack is basically Owen Wilson, Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, Vince Vaughn and Will Ferrell. In this year all of those people except Owen Wilson was in Anchorman in some form or another, Stiller and Vaughn were in Dodgeball, Owen and Stiller were in Meet the Fockers and Starsky and Hutch together, and Stiller and Black were in Envy together. You can trace this group back and forward (i.e. Old School was Luke, Ferrell, and Vaughn, see the pattern?)
-This might have been the very peak of the summer blockbuster season. 2005's grosses went downhill and that's not so much because 2005 was a failure, just for the fact that 2004 had so many humongous movies hitting the theater pretty much every weekend. Troy had a big opening weekend gross of $45 million, only to be brushed aside 5 days later when Shrek 2 nearly set a box office record eventually becoming #3 all time, followed by Harry Potter with a $245 million domestic gross, followed by Spiderman 2 which dominated the box office for 2 weeks, to be then be set aside by a string of films I, Robot/Bourne Supremacy/Village, each of them grossing over $50 million opening weekend. In between, The Day After Tomorrow grossed enough its first weekend to set a record for the highest film never to hit #1. The year produced 3 films that broke into the top 10 all-time, Shrek 2, Spiderman 2, and Passion of the Christ, which brings me to the next bullet
-There was a whole thing in the press about a red-state and blue-state divide that got blown up a lot. This was representative through two big successes. One appealed to the religious right because it was a big picture about Jesus, and the other was not really religious in nature but it was made with the purpose of removing George W. Bush from office. The connection is somewhat hasty, but nevertheless: Passion of the Christ was a humongous film coming from Mel Gibson and was made even more impressive by the fact that it was in subtitles, incredibly violent and very long, which usually isn't a good formula for commercial success. On the other side, Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 set a box office record for documentaries and looked like it had the potential to really make an impact
-A couple small independent films made a splash. The first, Garden State was written, directed by and starred Zach Braff and won him the National Board of Review honor for new director, a Grammy for best soundtrack, and a lot more young fans in addition to those who love him on the TV show Scrubs. The second, Napoleon Dynamite, an offbeat film about incredibly odd characters growing up in Idaho, became a cult hit. This wasn't significant from an art standpoint (at least I hope not. I hope a lot of people don't imitate this), but it did mark a success for the people at the Sundance Film Festival where the film was originally released and sold for national distribution. The following year, Sundance also saw more success for independent films Hustle and Flow and Junebug which both got national distribution and Oscar nominations
-Lastly, it was a big year for Martin Scorsese, or at least it had the potential to be. His movie the Aviator was very hyped up and was supposed to guarantee him an Oscar. As you can see from my list, i thought it was a great film, and others did too. It also did win a lot of Oscars, but the big prize at the end of the evening went to Clint Eastwood, so Scorsese had to go back to the drawing board.
Top 10 Movies of 2004:
10. Anchorman, Adam McKay
I’m sure I’m in the minority in calling Anchorman one of the best films of the year, but when done well a pure comedy can be just as much a show of great film-making as anything else. Set in a 1970s San Diego newsroom, Anchorman is the best display of improvisational comedy on screen since Christopher Guest. The comic timing was excellent as jokes were pushed to extreme situations (i.e. the West Side Story like brawl, the random a capella rendition of “Afternoon Delight”). More than that, however, a great comedy is about the characters and what I loved about this film is how everyone in the cast stepped it up to match Will Ferrell’s intensity in mining the zaniness out of their characters.
9. Ray, Taylor Hackford
Ray showed us a portrait of a man who whether morally in the right or wrong, was unquestionably a man of great vision. Heeding his mother’s parting advice to not let anyone treat him like a charity case, Ray Charles refused to act blind. He denied himself a walking cane or even a helping hand. At the same time, however, Charles was blind in a way: to skin color. Despite the discrimination he faced, he befriended black and white people alike and musically opened himself up to both style. Jamie Foxx turns in the best performance of the year that captures the man inside and out.
8. Manchurian Candidate, Johnathan Demme
Johnathan Demme’s remake of the 1962 classic managed the rare feat of updating an original to a contemporary setting while preserving the spirit of the original. Demme’s version also plays out more like a thriller than the original much like the novel. Even by the standards of Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep, the performances are surprisingly tuned in.
7. Fahrenheit 911, Michael Moore
Michael Moore didn’t succeed in changing the course of national history with his documentary. He did, however, succeed in infusing the non-fiction format with mainstream entertainment and broke a box office record along the way. More than just a presentation of facts, Moore’s documentary tells a story infused with emotion that brings the viewer to tears and laughter.
6. Spanglish, James L Brooks
In his first film of the new millennium, Brooks does a great job of exploiting both the humorous and dramatic possibilities of the cultural and class barriers between a wealthy suburban family and their new Mexican housekeeper. Adam Sandler gives a surprisingly mature performance that doesn’t compromise his likability, the underrated Tea Leoni hits the right notes as a high strung wife, and the introduction of Paz Vega as the housekeeper is a welcome surprise. She gives a delicate performance of a character that acts as a counterbalance to the dysfunction.
5. The Life Aquatic, Wes Anderson
Some were disappointed with Wes Anderson’s follow-up to The Royal Tannenbaums, but I might just be a sucker for Jack Cousteau-type adventures. Still, it’s hard to see what’s not to like with the addition of Willem Dafoe, Cate Blanchett, and Jeff Goldblum in place of frat-packers Luke Wilson and Ben Stiller, and Bill Murray back at the helm, the Life Aquatic brings an ensemble of rich and multilayered characters that mesh together in the trademark Wes-Anderson-style. The plot follows a ship out at sea and it could be argued that it’s not particularly focused, but with such beautiful visuals and a soundtrack of such original sources as David Bowie covers covered in Portuguese, it’s fine just to sit back and enjoy the ride whatever direction it takes you.
4. Sideways, Alexander Payne
A somber and highly engaging comedy that derives its humor from its strong footing in the tragedies and subsequent triumphs, however small they may be, in real life. Payne’s last film, the critically acclaimed About Schmidt starred Jack Nicholson in a toned-down role. In contrast, this film centers around four quirky character roles cast perfectly with Thomas Haden Church as the brash playboy, Sandra Oh as a raunchy single mom, Virginia Madsen as a fragile waitress, and Paul Giamatti as an introspective elementary school teacher who wants just a little more in life.
3. Motorcycle Diaries, Walter Salles
One of the greatest and most important stories of Latin-American folklore is brought to the American movie screen and turns out a winner. The Motorcycle Diaries is the firsthand account by a young Ernesto “Che” Gueverra and his traveling companion of an 800-mile motorcycle trek through South America. Guevuerra would go on to become one of world history’s most notorious revolutionary figures, and the immense appeal of this story is its tale of a naïve and innocent man before en route to becoming the icon that so many of his countrymen revere.
2. Hotel Rwanda, Terry George
Described as “Schindler’s List set in Africa,” Hotel Rwanda is an intense gritty war drama is powerful in its horrific imagery, shot on location. Yet, it is a story of hope as well. Don Cheadle plays Terry George as a hotel manager in Rwanda who first tries to save his immediate family from the conflict, but is then moved to save everyone he can. It’s a truly eye-opening experience about a part of the world and one of the many conflicts within that all-too-easily get ignored.
1. Aviator, Martin Scorsese
2004 was undoubtedly the year of the biopic with movies being made about singers, abortion activists, sex researchers, and whether Howard Hughes was a more important figure in history than Bobby Darin or Ray Charles, it was clear that no biopic story this year was told with more passion for its subject than The Aviator. Like the Golden Age of Hollywood in which the movie is set, Aviator was quality film making at every end, with big production values, a majestic score by Howard Shore, and a roster of talent so deep that bit parts were being filled out by the likes of Jude Law and Willem Dafoe. Alec Baldwin as a slithery airline executive and Kate Beckinsdale as bombastic belle Ava Gardner stand out for their performances, and Leonardo DiCaprio tosses aside his “pretty boy” persona for a deeper performance.
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