Since we received so many positive comments about our Best of 2003 CDs list, we have decided to give the film world the same treatment. Five years allows films to grow or shrink in stature. Our experiences since then may have brought some realizations or epiphanies that cause a sea change in our opinions. When coming up with this feature, the question the Spectrum Culture staff pondered was this: “How well do these films play NOW!” Even looking back on my own list from 2003, two movies got the heave-ho this time around (Master and Commander: Far Side of the World and Man On The Train in favor of other films that have since haunted me). This list is designed to give new perspective on things five years old. Thank you so much for reading!
- David Harris, Editor-in-Chief
10. Fog of War (Dir: Errol Morris)
In Errol Morris’ The Fog of War former secretary of defense Robert McNamara explains his actions and involvement in the Vietnam War. Like all of Morris’ documentaries, we are allowed to hear McNamara’s narrative as an oral history. The Fog of War follows McNamara’s life from his rise to the presidency of the Ford Motor Company through his bitter departure from the Department of Defense in 1967. Never wasting time on the exposition and history of the last 60 years, the film jumps directly into World War II and never lets go. Throughout the film, Morris plays discussions between McNamara and President Lyndon Johnson in which discusses the necessity of getting out of Vietnam early in the conflict. McNamara is a brilliant man who, when placed in a difficult situation, made difficult choices. You end up feeling a little sorry for one of the more prominent figures of the Vietnam War. I wonder if Donald Rumsfeld will ever receive the same treatment. - Nicholas Ryan
- Old School (Dir: Todd Phillips)
Old School. The setting is familiar to you, either because you went to college at some point and heard about/participated in frats and heavy drinking and wild parties or because you know you can just imagine it perfectly. Regardless, you can sympathize with our heroes, the mildly rounded and loveably foibled characters. Too, you know these characters and those who play them, and for the most part you like them, kind of, for what you know. You know they can make you laugh in a weird gut-clenching way. The theme is also one you know: party-going, easy-life lovers versus the establishment. There are even scenes lifted straight from great movies of the past, but you won’t care–think of it as a useful literary device. Though now, this time, our heroes are facing the same dilemma faced by Will Ferrell fans across the globe–the approaching age of responsibility. We have Vince Vaughn: fast-talking, deal-making, problem solver/party planner; owner of Speaker City. Luke Wilson: amiable, innocent, put-upon badass lawyer who thankfully stars in very few scenes that have anything to do with the law (there’s no place for such in Old School). And then we have Will Ferrell. Ah, Will. Equipped with savage one liners, numerous beer funnels, and a wife he estranges with a fascinating combination of drunken, misplaced streaking, poorly chosen words, and a healthy imagination, Frank “the Tank” rises like a doped-up walrus from the wreckage of a child’s birthday party to truly entertain us all. - Ian Lasell
9. A Mighty Wind (Dir: Christopher Guest)
It’s amazing how Christopher Guest can direct so many mockumentaries and manage to make each one stand out on different merits. While A Mighty Wind may be the sappiest and most heartfelt of all of Guest’s films, it maintains the comedic genius that makes his movies so infectious. This film reunites aging folk singers for a live memorial concert in New York City, in spite of the hardships endured by each group. Guest brings his usual talented acting crew to the screen, including Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Fred Willard and a delightfully dorky Parker Posey. Employing a casual conversational tone, each performer manages to make you laugh out loud without making you cringe at their ineptitude. The never disappointing Levy is awkwardly hilarious as a mentally unbalanced, heartbroken performer. Although his character could grow old quickly, screen time is balanced enough so that the amount of Levy is just right. His character, Mitch, is half of a once-in-love singing duo. His partner in folk-crime is played by O’Hara in an amazing performance. She breathes a humanity into her character that is rarely seen in the Guest movies. And for the first time, Guest doesn’t go for the jugular, as if he senses that we don’t want a Stonehenge-size failure to fall upon these innocent musicians. It’s feel-good but not mushy, and funny without being adolescent or crude. A Mighty Wind is one of those movies you need to watch two or three times to catch the innuendos and inside jokes you may have missed before, but once you do, there are enough one-liners to annoy your family for years. -Lisa Bahr
8. Angels in America (Dir: Mike Nichols)
Not many plays can easily be transformed from fixed stage to multi-setting screen. When HBO decided to take on the daunting task of spotlighting the play, Angels in America into a miniseries of three hour-long segments, many might have wondered if it would be possible. Playwright Tony Kushner adapted his text for the screen and Mike Nichols directed. When the line-up of actors became introduced, it almost seemed a given that this production would be a masterpiece. It is written in the script that the seven main actors play at least two roles. This becomes even more of an achievement as Al Pacino takes on the role of closeted McCarthyist lawyer, Roy Cohn who not-so-silently becomes afflicted with AIDS. Growing up watching The Godfather, I never would have imagined Pacino to have been capable of such a tortured, traumatic role. He is beyond brilliant as Cohn. The cast also includes Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Jeffrey Wright, Mary-Louise Parker who may have been a deer in another life with the most haunting stares imaginable, Patrick Wilson, Justin Kirk and Ben Shenkman. It is necessary to mention all these names because they share the screen in equal increments and without all of them, this rendition would not be as compelling. Angels in America covers Mormonism, depression, sexuality, betrayal, the beauty and discomfort of love and relationships. This is a Pulitzer Prize and Tony award winning play (and Golden Globe and Emmy award winning miniseries) that deserves every one of its accolades and acknowledgments. This is a true ensemble film with each character acting as thread that slowly creates a giant tapestry in the end–textured and filthy and uncomfortably stunning. -Aimee Herman
- Elephant (Dir: Gus Van Sant)
2003 marked Gus Van Sant’s incendiary return to the art house with the releases of Gerry and Elephant, the opening two chapters in his aptly named “Death Trilogy”. But where Gerry sharply divided audiences with its stark minimalism and the trilogy’s final chapter Last Days was an undisputed fiasco, Elephant stands out as not only one of the most powerful entries in Van Sant’s celebrated ouvre, but also one of the most hauntingly beautiful films of all time. All the more remarkable is that the film has seemingly developed with age, becoming increasingly more relevant and affecting. Working with a mostly untested high school cast and crew as well as a script intentionally left open to improvisation, Elephant ranks alongside Rian Johnson’s Brick as the most surreally perfect depiction of the fragile nature of youth in cinema. The controversial nature of the story, loosely based on the real life events at Columbine, unfortunately led to the media focusing more on what the film wasn’t about than what it was. But Van Sant proved himself to be a director more than capable of handling sensitive subjects. In Elephant, every character, both murderer and victim alike, are depicted as uniquely complex and deeper than their age and status allow them to be. It’s no wonder that last year, Van Sant’s similarly delicate and masterful take on the life of Harvey Milk dominated so many critics’ year end lists. – Morgan Davis
7. Finding Nemo (Dir: Andrew Stanton)
2003 was just another perfect year for Pixar. Coming off the success of the whimsical Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo was a film that didn’t need monsters to convey a sense of wonder and awe, instead utilizing the fantastic diversity of life beneath the world’s oceans. And like all Pixar films, Nemo proved that the most unique aspect of the famed studio is its capability to fill digital characters and background with profound emotion. Pixar had been building towards larger and larger worlds and casts, and in many ways Nemo represents the pinnacle of this: beautiful fish fill most scenes, lush coral backgrounds are seen throughout, and in the short time the film moves above water, even relatively minimal domestic settings appear epic in scope. It’s hardly surprising that having reached such heights, Pixar would spend the next few years scaling down and trying to make the smaller things in life look more realistic in the digital realm. Five years later, Nemo can be seen as perhaps the last time a Pixar film would be truly innocent, with later films such as Wall-E and The Incredibles instead searching for hope within relatively bleak, adult worlds. But perhaps given the increasingly bleaker times we face, it’s only fitting that our children get used to it as soon as possible. -Morgan Davis
6. Mystic River (Dir: Clint Eastwood)
It’s been debated whether Mystic River, director Clint Eastwood’s crime drama/thriller/noir, belongs in 2003′s top ten. Just in case you’ve forgotten the plot: the violent murder of ex-con Jimmy Markum’s (Sean Penn) teenage daughter reunites childhood friends–one is investigating the murder, and the other is wrongly-accused. Despite numerous Oscars and nominations, the A-listers (namely Sean Penn and Tim Robbins) are accused of overacting, and the film is accused of being a far-fetched, overhyped studio film. Eastwood and the others deserve a bit more veneration. We must consider that this film is an adaptation of a novel; also, at this point in his career, Eastwood couldn’t escape the “studio film” if he tried. Mystic River was his first attempt at adaptation, and it offered a challenge. In an interview, he said “the book had wonderful dialogue in it, but…could go on and on for pages about what’s going on in people’s minds, and we have to do it in one look…and get the same feeling across.” Mystic River is solid, expert filmmaking, and and its visual and overall style incorporates classic noir elements. Form follows function, throughout. During exposition, shots are more sweeping and creative. As the action moves indoors, and inside characters, the composition is tighter. Eastwood defied conventions when deciding on the score, he gave the actors considerable creative liberty, and he cast actors whose appearances reflected a certain authenticity. These choices suggest an attempt to alter the believability of a story not written for the screen. Eastwood chose a project just as bleak and violent as many of his other pictures, but unlike others he’s been commended for. He enjoys complex versions of crime, justice, and morals, but Mystic River pulls these issues outside their usual setting. Overacted or not, Sean Penn’s portrayal of grief is not only affecting, unsettling, and absent from other films of 2003, but is also a grief few are qualified to judge.- Caren Scott
5. The Triplets of Belleville (Dir: Sylvain Chomet)
You know a film is special when it manages to be adorable and grotesque at the same time. This is the case for pretty much every character in The Triplets of Belleville. While the movie is special for many reasons, this dual aesthetic is what seems to be the thread running through Sylvain Chomet’s bizarre, satirical piece, pulling it all together. Beyond the apparent novelty (It’s French! It’s animated! It’s devoid of any dialogue!) The Triplets of Belleville functioned as part mystery, part musical and part political commentary. On paper, the movie is a cute story about a trio of frog-eating ex-starlets helping a mother search for her cyclist son. But Chomet’s odd animation style and characters made it quirky, the constant barrage of French/U.S.A. jokes allowed for new appreciation upon repeated viewings and the dark and scathing touches made for an intimate and unique vision. The absence of spoken word helped make The Triplets of Belleville both subtle in its techniques and lavish in its details. While it was never crude or inappropriate it was at times subversive in its jabs and weirdness. But what gives The Triplets of Belleville its staying power is the whole rather than its parts. You enter Chomet’s world, which is so authentic that it transcends its oddities, and simply leaves you feeling like you watched something endearing, if not a little uncomfortable. - Melissa Muenz
4. 28 Days Later (Dir: Danny Boyle)
Among other things, 28 Days Later proves that horror movies don’t need overt scare tactics to have impact. Danny Boyle’s post apocalyptic gem following four survivors of a mass infection in Britain bears a quiet but edgy style rarely found in the genre. Under Anthony Mantle’s fluid camerawork and an organic sound design, the group sets off across the wasteland countryside of Britain, warily hiding from “The Infected,” anonymous zombified miscreants with a sole agenda of mindless violence. Yes, it’s another zombie movie. Yes, it too provides social commentary on man’s intrinsic faults. But Boyle’s unorthodox tampering creates a memorably captivating vision of a stark, abandoned London. It’s the end of the world as we know it – and we feel fine under Boyle’s confident guidance. It’s a profound journey through all emotions: fear, desolation, betrayal, anger and epiphany. Most boldly, Alex Garland’s screenplay shifts toward drama in the final act. Rather than fumble in the redundancy of Oh my God, it’s another zombie! Run!, as often happens in high concept horror, we are left to ponder the motivations and personal mourning each character must confront. There was a normal world and now it’s gone, and rarely in film does this situation feel so authentic and probable. And there’s nothing scarier than that. - Jory Spadea
3. Kill Bill Vol. 1 (Dir: Quentin Tarantino)
“Tall drink of cocksucker ain’t dead!” Michael Park’s most memorable line in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 doubles as an assessment of the film’s vitality half a decade later. Quentin Tarantino’s two-part fourth film (let us pray for the oft-promised single-volume edition) is a masterpiece of violence — simultaneously a lovesick pastiche of/primer on Asian action cinema, a sampling of Tarantino’s record collection, and, above all, a ripping good martial arts revenge flick. Violence permeates the film’s very celluloid. Our first image is our bruised, broken, blood-splattered Bride getting her brains blown out in stark black and white. As she gets ever closer to her eponymous goal, blood sprays like a broken sprinkler where the body parts of her enemies used to be. All of this leads to the bloody ballet that is the final action set piece. The House of Blue Leaves mega-fight manages to do in its 20 exhilarating minutes what The Wachowski Brothers and their computers can only grasp at during the entire 138 minutes of The Matrix Reloaded as a Game of Death Uma Thurman, katana in hand, pirouettes through an army of black-tie bad guys in Kato masks and their limbs fly off. Soon, we find out, it’s a mere overture to the final battle in a indoor garden of perpetual winter where fake snow sprinkles from the invisible ceilings. Never has a vengeful sword battle felt so serene nor winter so apocalyptic in a perfect reunion of Leone and Kurosawa. Finally, with the film’s last line of dialogue, we get that beautiful revelation that would sweeten The Bride’s inevitable revenge — that made Spring 2004 feel eons away. No, this tall drink of cocksucker is far from dead. -Danny Djeljosevic
2. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Dir: Peter Jackson)
Ben-Hur turns 50 later this year. It won 11 Academy Awards and is looked on as a monumental achievement in cinema history. The only other movies to win 11 Academy Awards are Titanic in 1997 and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King in 2003. Already, people cringe at the thought of Titanic being called “one of the all-time greats.” But will we look back 45 years from now and see Return of the King to be one of them? Yes. Why? There is no area where Return of the King or the rest of the trilogy falters. From beginning to end it is executed brilliantly and has set the standard for modern cinema. The board is set for war but the story remains incredibly personal, shuffling us between the two parties of protagonists, one being with Aragorn, the ideal hero, and the other with Frodo, the everyman, in an attempt to raise the oppressed people of Middle-Earth. Aragorn must wage a suicide war against Mordor and Frodo must persevere in his martyr-like quest to destroy the One Ring. All the while, Peter Jackson remains true to J. R. R. Tolkien’s core themes of loyalty and responsibility while using his modernized direction to appeal to audiences of the time. Simply put, Return of the King is the gold standard of its class, and will be remembered as the grandiose finale of the greatest trilogy assembled. It resonates deeply inside of us, proposing the question of whether or not we would carry on in the face of unstoppable doom. A question which we see the characters grapple with for this and two other films. But what else would you expect from an adaptation of “the book of the millennium?”- Nick Cane
1. Lost in Translation (Dir: Sofia Coppola)
We live in a loud society- traffic is noisy, television is noisy, people are noisy, life is noisy. It’s easy to forget that simple quietness can have a deep and lasting power, but a film like Lost in Translation hinges on it. Sometimes a movie connects with an audience through sheer silence and ambiguity, and Sofia Coppola’s sophomore film is definitely a textbook for that. Critically lauded and somehow commercially successful despite the depressive, meandering plot, Lost in Translation was savaged by some for its lack of resolution and action, but that’s missing the point.
Life is complicated and without resolution, and despite the exotic (to Westerners) locale and movie-star baggage, and Lost in Translation sticks to that. There’s no clear cut endings to anything, and Coppola’s film forces us to look that full in the face and realize that happy endings are for lesser stories. Bill Murray reaches the full flowering of his autumnal character, the sadsack millionaire he began exploring in Rushmore, while we see the beginnings of true stardom and glamour in Scarlett Johansson’s portrayal of a confusingly neglected and narcissistic young wife. For a film in which so little actually happens (or has opportunity to), there are any number of indelible moments- Japanese strippers gyrating to Peaches’ “Fuck the Pain Away”, “Evelyn Waugh was a man,” and perhaps most touching of all, Bill Murray’s slow karaoke rendition of “More Than This.” In that one off-tune quavering scene, we have the entire movie; romance that never gets to happen, longing that knows from its birth that it will have no fulfillment.
And despite that, it’s a beautiful and affirming film. Lost in Translation is not a sad movie, despite being built from tragic components. It’s about how the most ephemeral of relationships can be the greatest, and how we don’t always need to know how everything will turn out in the end. -Nathan Kamal
