MOVIES: Top Ten

I lied again. Today's top ten list is movies, not comics.

Wow, I saw a lot more movies this year than I thought I had. According to this list, these are all the films I saw in 2004 whose first theatrical release in America was during this calendar year. The ones I saw first on DVD or TV are marked with an asterisk. (Links go to my original review of the film, where applicable.)

We'll start with my ten best first:

1. Fahrenheit 9/11
   The most powerful, infuriating, chilling, and yes, important film of the year. I wish more of the people filling the seats for Passion of the Christ had seen this film instead, and had opened their hearts and their eyes to the real pain, the real horror, the real suffering happening to real people, right now.



2. Hero
   Epic in scale and emotion, this martial arts masterpiece was ceaselessly thrilling to behold. I look forward to seeing the current release House of Flying Daggers by the same director, which is, by all accounts, even better.



3. The Incredibles
   I can't believe an animated film better than Shrek 2 came along this year. That's a good year for animation. This is simply a great movie, not just a great cartoon.



4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
   Ceaselessly amazing in its visual inventiveness and its unflinching look at the power -- and the pain -- of love. Anyone who still denies Jim Carrey's acting prowess after seeing this film deserves a poke in the eye.



5. Spider-Man 2
   Is it the best superhero movie ever made, as Roger Ebert claims? Could be, could be. Only the original two Supermans even come close. It was certainly a giant leap forward for the genre, investing as much attention in its characters as in its spectacular action sequences.



6. Kill Bill Vol. 2
   The ultra-violence took a back seat to character development this time around, but that just meant more opportunities for the trademark Tarantino dialogue to flow. Super-cool, as are all things QT, but with an emotional resonance he's never before achieved.



7. Shaun of the Dead
   A great comedy and a great horror film, with surprisingly touching dramatic moments interspersed throughout the laughter and gore.



8. The Dreamers*
   I've tried before to write my review of Bernardo Bertolucci's wonderful film, but words failed me. It's a chronicle of cultural revolution, cinematic revolution, and sexual revolution. It's beautiful, it's ethereal, it's provocative, it's compelling, it's smart and seductive and it's the most erotic thing to hit the screens this year -- every word of which applies as equally to the film as it does to its breathtaking leading lady, Eva Green, making her transcendent film debut. She's as luminous and electric as Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, as Grace Kelly in Rear Window, as Kim Novak in Vertigo. But with copious amounts of nudity.



9. Shrek 2
   Funny, touching, exciting, beautiful, even better than the original, with a great vocal performance by Jennifer Saunders as the Fairy Godmother nearly stealing the movie from that big green ogre.



10. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
    The funniest movie of the year. Will Ferrell is unquestionably the new king of comedy.

TIED FOR ELEVENTH PLACE

Dawn Of The Dead
Best straight-up horror movie of the year, with incredible special effects and action, and an ending true to the zombie genre.

Garden State
The first half deserves to make the top ten; the second half kept it out. Still a tremendous debut film from Zach Braff.

Spartan*
A truly smart and suspenseful thriller, from writer-director David Mamet, with Val Kilmer showing he still knows how to act.

Team America: World Police
Another contender for funniest movie of the year, just edged out by Anchorman.

The Terminal
Spielberg and Hanks, together again. Funny and sweet, but with a miscalculated romantic plot with Catherine Zeta-Jones gumming up the works.

ALSO WORTHY

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Mean Girls*
The Punisher*

PROBABLY COULD'VE WAITED FOR THE DVD

Broken Lizard's Club Dread
The Bourne Supremacy
Hellboy
Starsky & Hutch

WISELY DID WAIT FOR THE DVD

50 First Dates*
Eurotrip*
Home On The Range*
The Lion King 1 1/2*
Man on Fire*
Napoleon Dynamite*
Taking Lives*

THE WORST PIECE OF CRAP OF THE YEAR (TIE)

The Butterfly Effect*
The Grudge

COMICS: More Wed. 11/10/04

Finishing where I left off yesterday:

Fables: There doesn't seem to be an overriding story to the most recent couple of issues. I mean, there's a story -- the administration of Fabletown is changing, Snow has her babies, Snow and Bigby go their separate ways -- but there's no menace or villain to combat. (There's something suggested by Piggy on the last page, but that's all.) And that's fine with me. The writing is so fun, and the art such a joy, that I'm relishing these relatively uneventful issues just for the time we get to spend with the characters. Although I hope we finally get to meet the Adversary some time soon.

The Walking Dead: My main complaint about this series continues to be the new artist, Charlie Adlard, who replaced the excellent Tony Moore; half the time I can't tell one generic-looking light-haired bearded man he draws from another. Very abrupt ending to the time on the farm. Kirkman explains in the letter column that he had originally planned on the farm story ending five issues earlier; I guess the extension of the story allowed him to shake things up a bit with the characters, but the ending was so sudden and anti-climactic, and the pacing's change from leisurely to sprinting forward in time was so jarring, he either should've ended it earlier, make the whole thing go by quickly, or he should've taken a little more time to make the ending more satisfying. I mean, that's how we're going to leave Farmer John (I forget the character's real name, and don't have the comic in front of me to reference, but you know who I mean) -- shell-shocked, muttering, "I think I've lost my mind" -- now we're going to leave that character? And leave David behind with him? Maybe that's the point -- it's a horror story, there aren't really supposed to be satisfying ends -- but it just didn't work for me. Still enjoying the comic overall, though. Oh, also: fan letter from Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead) this issue. Cool. I wish I got fan letters from the creators of cult-classic British sitcoms.

TV: Spaced

All this week, Trio is showing episodes of Spaced, the British sitcom (or Britcom, if you will -- but I hope you won't) from the creators and stars of Shaun of the Dead. (Possibly they've been showing the episodes for a while now, and I only just became aware of it.)

I've seen two episodes so far. The first one threw me for a loop -- I hadn't known what to expect, but certainly nothing quite like that. Lots of quick cuts and shaky cam and other irritating camera tricks -- it was going for the look of a film, but a really annoying film, one directed by Michael Bay. (Kind of like Keen Eddie.) It took me a while to get into the show's point of view; the creators are obviously heavily versed in and influenced by action movies (and video games and comic books), and are clearly spoofing those elements as they use them. (Most of the time -- sometimes I think they just use those elements because they think they're cool.) You can pick out about a dozen specific movie spoofs in each episode, from The Matrix to Star Wars to The Shining to Evil Dead to a bunch I probably didn't even get.

The second episode won me over completely. I had gotten used to the look of the show, and figured out who the characters were, and could just sit back and enjoy it. And I certainly did. When they got to a dramatic, elaborately choreographed shoot-out scene with no guns -- everyone's just using their fingers and making sound effects with their mouths -- I was laughing so hard I could barely see the TV.

The basic premise behind Spaced is that the two main characters (and the show's writers), Tim (Simon Pegg, Shaun in Shaun of the Dead) and Daisy (Jessica Stevenson, Yvonne in Shaun) are pretending to be a couple so they can rent a room in a house. Kind of a reverse Three's Company. Why they have to do that, I don't know -- I only got that much information from the IMDb page. It didn't really come up in the episodes I watched.

There's a lot of story packed into each episode. There are half a dozen main characters, and they split off into three separate plotlines each episode (or in the two I watched, anyway). And there are a lot of side characters with their various stories. But at the heart are the two leads, both of whom are very funny and very likeable, and who are going through the aimless, post-college, video game playing, bar hopping, still looking for a career and a mate, late 20s years.

It's a shame there were only 14 episodes made. Crazy Brits, with your seven-episode TV seasons. No wonder you have to fill up your TV with American reruns!

MOVIES: Shaun of the Dead

Shaun of the Dead is brilliant, the kind of idea I could kick myself for not having first -- but, I have to admit, realized far better than I ever could have. (On the other hand, I think Dorian -- who was one of the people I saw the movie with -- and I, as we joked on being subjected to the horrible, horrible preview for Hilary Duff's Raise Your Voice, really could write a generic teen movie far better than the actual teen movies that get made, and make a mint.)

Shaun is a zombie comedy, and amazingly, it succeeds at both genres. (It's also supposed to be a romance, I guess -- the creators have referred to it as a "rom zom com" -- but while it doesn't utterly fail at that part, it doesn't really contribute to its success.) It's truly hilarious, one of the funniest movies I've seen this year. I laughed out loud often, from the small details -- Shaun being completely oblivious to the bloody handprints all over his local market -- to the grandly hysterical --- the simultaneous pool-cue beating of a zombie, synchronized to a Queen song on the jukebox. Or there's Shaun and his best friend Ed confronted with advancing zombies, with only Shaun's record collection as weapons, and they actually take time to debate which record can be sacrificed. (Shaun wants to save Purple Rain and the Stone Roses, but Prince's Batman soundtrack is fair game.)

And it's also good and horrifying. There's no skimping on the gore -- Shaun is a true zombie flick, in the grand Romero tradition, with blood and guts and everything. Though the creatures are often played for laughs, there are more than a few scenes of genuine, frightening menace, gripping action, grisly violence, and emotionally affecting tragedy. The film plays off all the familiar elements of the classic zombie films (complete with in-jokes -- when Shaun and Ed call Shaun's mom on the phone, and tell her they're going to rescue her, Ed yells, "We're coming to get you, Barbara!" -- a great reference to Night of the Living Dead), but it uses them well, satirizing them and taking them seriously at the same time. It all works out to one of the best movies I've seen in the theaters this year.