For my first movie-related post -- a quickie -- here's what I thought were the ten best films of 2003, plus one anomaly:
(note: (f) means I saw it on film, (v) means on video/DVD.)
0. Irréversible (Gaspar Noé) (v)
1. Gerry (Gus Van Sant) (f)
2. The School of Rock (Richard Linklater) (f)
3. Kill Bill Vol. 1 (Quentin Tarantino) (f)
4. Down With Love (Peyton Reed) (f)
5. Finding Nemo (Andrew Stanton) (f)
6. X2 (Bryan Singer) (f)
7. The Secret Lives of Dentists (Alan Rudolph) (f)
8. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson) (f)
9. The Trilogy: On The Run (Lucas Belvaux) (f)
10. Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Gore Verbinski) (f)
An incomplete list of other movies I liked (in alphabetical order):
28 Days Later (Danny Boyle) (f), Bad Santa (Terry Zwigoff) (f), Dreamcatcher (Lawrence Kasdan) (v), Elf (Jon Favreau) (f), Hulk (Ang Lee) (f), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir) (f), The Trilogy: After Life (Lucas Belvaux) (f), The Trilogy: An Amazing Couple (Lucas Belvaux) (f)
Critical favorites I haven't caught up with yet: Capturing the Friedmans, Elephant, Spellbound, The Station Agent, All The Real Girls, Bus 174, Dirty Pretty Things, Dracula: Pages From A Virgin's Diary, The Son, Shattered Glass, The Company.
Some of my least favorite movies of 2003: The Eye (Pang Brothers) (f), The House of the Dead (Uwe Boll) (f), The Hunted (William Friedkin) (f), Identity (James Mangold) (f), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Stephen Norrington) (f), Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola) (f), The Matrix Reloaded (The Wachowski Brothers) (f), Mystic River (Clint Eastwood) (f), Run Ronnie Run (Troy Miller) (v), Spider (David Cronenberg) (v)
Hopefully, I'll follow this up (sooner rather than later) with some explanations, like why there's a #0 in my list, why I didn't care for Mystic River, and maybe even why I liked Dreamcatcher more than Lost in Translation.
Where we saw it: film | We deign to rate it: outta 100