The best 2003 fiction features
Sep 23 '07 (Updated Nov 22 '07)
The Bottom Line see review, follow links! (and write reviews of the the unreviewed three, s.v.p.)
In 2003 there were four big-budget movies in English based on big best-sellers. Three of them make my list, though I think that they fell short of greatness:
Cold Mountain, directed by Anthony Minghella from the mega-best-seller by Charles Frazier, seems to have disappointed some fans of the book (as almost all adaptations of big novels do). I don't think that it needs to have run as long as it did, but I find the images and the three leading performances excellent. It's definitely "elephant" rather than "termite" art, but does that explain the hostility of some to this and other Minghella movies? Also, Civil War movies other than "Gone with the Wind" have been box-office disappointments (including Ang Lee's often compelling Ride with the Devil, though not Glory being a notable exception). I liked the music and the performances (all-around, but especially Jude Law, who had real chemistry with Nicole Kidman, and Renee Zellwegger in her Oscar-winning performance). John Seale's cinematography was exceptional.
Something failed to click for me in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," directed by Peter Weir from the novel series by Patrick O'Brian, though I thought that visually both it and "Cold Mountain" were awe-inspiring, and I thought that Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany were both superb. It took quite a while for me to "get into" the seafaring story. Russell Boyd's cinematography received the Oscar, about which I can't muster any complaint.
I approve of the Oscars awarded Sean Penn and Tim Robbins for their performances in Mystic River (though I thought both of them deserved the awards more for performances earlier in their careers; Kevin Bacon and Laurence Fishburne are also very good in the less flamboyant parts as policemen), and don't mind Clint Eastwood being rewarded for taking on another best-seller (though Dennis Lehane's novel was not so blockbuster a seller as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which I think has been underappreciated and The Bridges of Madison County, which pretty much everyone thinks improved on the book). Like many Eastwood-directed films, "Mystic River" moves at a slow pace. Tom Stern's cinematography deserves praise.
A smaller-scale film from another best-seller that seemed to me not to have the pacing problems of the Big Three (and the 2003 installment of "Lord of the Rings": Return of the King) was The House of Sand and Fog, from the book by Andre Dubus III. I think that Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly are superb in a culture clash that turns tragic, though I can muster little sympathy for Connelly's feckless character failing to open her mail. Roger Deakins's atmospheric cinematography deserves to be singled out for praise, and James Horner's music adds to the effect.
Before continuing with smaller-budget films not based on big American best-selling books, I want to list possible candidates that I have not seen (yet, though there are some I won't ever see):
13
21 Grams
All the Real Girls
Bad Santa
The Cooler
Dogville
Down with Love
In This World
Intolerable Cruelty
The Italian Job
Kill Bill 1
Love Actually
Monster
Ondskan
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Touching the Void
Tupac: Resurrection
Veronica Guerin
X-Men 2
Zelary
and those I saw and was considerably less impressed by than others (including award-givers) were, some of which I actively dislike:
The Barbarian Invasion
Big Fish
Elephant
Last Samurai
Lord of the Rings, Return of the King
Lost in Translation
A Mighty Wind
Millennium Mambo
Oldboy
Osama
Seabiscuit
Supersize Me
Testosterone
The Tripletts of Belleville
I was moved and/or more impressed by some other English-language movies:
I'm really glad that I saw Stephen Frears's "Dirty Pretty Things" on DVD, since I needed subtitles to understand much of it. Like the protean Frears's "My Beautiful Laundrette," DPT shows some difficulties immigrants face in England. Benedict Wong, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sophi Okonedo, and Sergi Lopez (just the actors' names signals the ethnic range) are superb. It takes a while to get one's bearings, I'll admit.
The New York City in Jim Sheridan's "In America" is less threatening than the London of DPT, but still a difficult place for immigrants: The Irish actor Johnny (Paddy Considine), his wife Sarah (Samantha Morton), their daughters Christy (Sarah Bolger) and Ariel (Emma Bolger, and the dying, raging African played by Djimon Hounsou. "In America" is more sentimental than DPT (it has children in prominent parts, you know?) but I thought was quite interesting.
So was "Raising Victor Vargas" written and directed by Peter Sollett with Victor Rasuk in the title role. It looks to have been shot on a frayed shoestring, but with considerable heart and very natural-seeming performances from youth recruited on Manhattan's Lower East Side to play posturing insecure youth. That it was slapped with an R rating is absurd.
I also liked much of "Better Luck Tomorrow," made on a shoestring by Justin Lin. It is a sometimes amusing movie about overachieving and remarkably unsupervised Southern California Asian American teenagers. No parents, no teachers, no bosses (for the lead character who, for a while has a fast-food job), no police attention (for many crimes) or DEA agents, no chaperones (for a scholastic competition in Las Vegas?!), and (for four of the five main male characters) no morals... and too many would-be epiphanies. In an impressive ensemble cast, Parry Shen (as Ben Manibag) does the heaviest lifting, including narration. And although Karin Anna Cheung's part is underwritten, but she makes it memorable. Is the movie a wake-up call? Well, hopefully to those making decisions about funding Asian Americans to make movies.
Getting back to clashing cultural expectations, while staying in the city of Angels (LA) I thought that my critical faculties were knocked out by "Latter Days," directed by Jay Cox. I was sufficiently reassured by its high aggregate IMDB rating to include it in my meandering list. In it, a fast-lane West Hollywood gay man undertakes seducing a Mormon missionary, primarily to show that he can. But like many 1930s and 40s Hollywood comedies, the game turns to love and love turns to disaster, as the missionary is recalled to Utah and tortured ("reparative therapy") at the behest of his horrified parents. Wes Ramsey and Steve Sandvoss are superb as the star-crossed lovers (as if Mercutio fell in love with Tybalt rather than Romeo).
I also want to mention Cowboys and Angels, directed by David Gleeson, a charming "buddy movie" that includes a female "buddy" (Amy Shiels) in addition to roommates engagingly played by Michael Legge and Allen Leech as young adults in gentrified Limerick. (That's would be Ireland.) Like "Better Luck Tomorrow," I'd have to cut it to pare down to a top-ten list. Probably, "Raising Victor Vargas," too.
And "The Station Agent," directed by Thomas McCarthy, a road picture in which there is only one short journey (along with many walks on railroad tracks and the protagonist's fascination with trains). It is a quiet and quirky movie about a dwarf (Peter Dinklage, Living in Oblivion) who was not interested in making friends, and three others who wanted to befriend him. For all my own recluse tendencies, I was most sympathetic to Joe (Bobby Cannavale), who is marooned far from the city (Queens) in which he belongs. Not much happens, and what does seems contrived, so most everything depends on a viewer's interest in the characters.
In addition to interesting films shot in English about being far from home or safe harbor, there was some modestly budgeted films in other language (subtitled for those not speaking the languages) from 2003 that would make my list before some of the Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning films on my "underwhelmed" list from above (if there are no epinions of it, I have italicized the English-language title):
(1) I found the Hungarian film Kontroll ( Control, directed by Nimrd Antal) exhilarating cinema. It blends dark humor about ticket-control officers in the Budapest subway with a murder mystery and the mystery of what has made Bulscu (Sandor Csanyi) unable to function above ground, or even venture there. "Kontroll" takes place entirely underground in the Budapest Metro, on trains and in stations. The escalator up and out seems to terrify the movie's protagonist (who seems like an anti-hero most of the time, but is, I think, heroic in the last analysis or last reel).
(2) "Ruang rak noi nid mahasa "(Last Life in the Universe," cowritten and directed by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang with cinematography by Christopher Doyle) is far less frenetic (except for flashes of violence), but is exhilarating cinema for those who focus on visual compositions (the Michelangelo Antonioni/Wong Kaiwar tradition). Filmed in Thailand with a Japanese protagonist, the exceptionally versatile Asano Tadanobu (Ichi, the Killer). The lingua franca between him and the Thai woman in a very offbeat romance (Sinitta Boonyasak) is English.
(3) "Mang jing" (Blind Shaft, directed by Li Yang) shows some chillingly bad characters on the frontier of capitalism in the PRC (coal mines in which safety regulations are flouted). It has good performances. Confusing at first, it becomes clear (and even more horrifying!) what the two older men are up to. (This also fits with the set of dangers away from home leitmotif of my list.)
(4) Beautiful Boxer, written and directed by Ekachai Uekrongtham, has much of the formulaic sports triumph movie mixed with a sensitive portrayal of a boy, played by Thai kick-boxing champion Asanee Suwan, seeking gender realignment surgery. Besides fine acting all-around, it has ravishing cinematography by Choochart Nantitanyatada.
(5) Ingmar Bergman returned to screen-directing to shoot Saraband, which follows up on the couple (Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson) from "Scenes from a Marriage," though the main characters are the musician son (Borje Ahlstedt) and grand-daughter (Julia Dufvenius) of Josephson's character. (Leaving home is definitely a major theme in this film. And some guy named Bach contributed much of the music.)
(6) "Mibu gishi den" (When the Last Sword Is Drawn, directed by Takita Yojiro) is long (133 minutes) has a strong romance (or two). I was often unclear who the sides were in various battles, though Yoshirmura Kanichi (Nakai Kiichi), Warriors of Heaven and Earth) is clearly going down with the Tokugawa Shogunate side. He sometimes seemed a clown, but proved to be terminally determined (as well as being a highly skilled swordsmen). The flashback (from 1899 to the 1860s) structure seems gratuitously to complicate the story. It is beautifully photographed and Nakai delivers a very rich performance. Less would have been more: 20-30 minutes could profitably have been trimmed, and the flashback expositions seem to me unnecessarily complicated. The DVD includes lengthy, but not very interesting interviews of novelist, director, and star, plus production footage. The audio and visual transfer coulda/shoulda been better. (Like Sanada the year before in the more compelling Twilight Samurai, Nakai won the Japanese Academy Award as best actor in a film that was judged the best picture of the year.)
(6) "La Finestra di front" (Facing Windows, written and directed by Ferzan Ozpetek) has excellent acting, cinematography, and music, but is somewhat slack and meandering. And I don't see the disappointments of the 2003 wife (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) as being in the same league of those of the lost old man (Massimo Girotti, who died between the shooting and release of the movie) whom her husband takes in and whose counsel she eventually takes.
(7) Andre Zvyagintsev's feature film debut. Vozvrashcheniye (The Return) has to be the bluest (colored) movie I've ever seen. Even without cobalt blue, there are multiple shades of blue (and some ravishing greens, too, from time to time). Like "Last Life in the Universe" it is very short on exposition, leaving it to the audience to figure out the past, in this instance, what happened to the father (Konstantin Lavronenko) of two boys who returns after a twelve-year-absence and takes them along on a fatal road trip. Vladimir Garin, who drowned shortly after making the movie, plays Andrei, the elder. Adrei is willing to accept the man who insists on being called "Dad." His intense younger brother Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov) is not, refuses to call the man "Dad," and seethes with resentment and makes numerous complaints about most everything.The boys go along to fish (Ivan) and to bond (Andrei); the father has a different agenda, though he also wants to bond with the boys.
(8) "Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom "(Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring,written and directed by Kim Kiduk with gorgeous cinematography by BaekDong-hyeon) provides an unsubtle parable, but the location and photography and acting compel including it (or at least considering including it!)
(9) "O Homem Que Copiava" (The Man Who Copied, written and directed by Jorge Furtado) takes too long to get going. Its narrator, Andre (Lazaro Ramos [Madame Sata]), a shy 19-year-old Afro-Brazilian working as a photocopy operator in Porto Allegro (in southern Brazil), earning very little and having no luck in interesting girls, has some self-deprecating charm. The voyeurism/stalker angles should be creepy, but (as in one installment of the Decalogue) seems justifiable in the end and almost cute.
(10-tie) "Heung joh chow heung yau chow" (Turn Left, Turn Right, 2003, directed by Johnny To [The Mission, Running Out of Time] and Wai Ka-Fai [Needing You], based on popular graphic novel by Jimmy Liao), starred the Taiwanese House of Flying Dragons and Chunking Express dreamboat Kaneshiro Takeshi, who has almost as difficult a time connecting with his love (the ditzy Gigi Leung) across a light shaft in Taiwan as he did fleeing through the forests in "Daggers." There's meeting cute twice and then multiple cute missed connections as a soccer-crazed motorcycled delivery girl (Terri Kwan) stalks him and a physician (Edmund Chen) stalks her, until the latter two aggressive suitors realize they are destined for each other (about an hour after it was obvious to viewers). One can either find the ineptness of connecting cute and charming or hopelessly stupid. After so many failed connections in German (or in Tsai's Taiwanese movies), I was in the mood for a happy ending. I thought the second pair had more chemistry than the first, but I can gaze at Kaneshiro Takeshi for much longer than the movie's running time. The art direction is good, though it is hard to believe that the violinist (Kaneshiro) and translator (Leung) have such large and elegantly furnished apartments. The cinematography of photography by Siu-Keung Cheng is also praiseworthy. The Hong Kong DVD offers a choice of the Mandarin in which it was filmed or dubbing into Cantonese, with legible English subtitles.
(10-tie) Parts of Good-bye, Lenin!, cowritten and directed by Wolfgang Becker) are quite funny and the movie was internationally successful. "The Man Who Copied" teeters on making the audience complicit with crimes; "Good-bye, Lenin" teeters on fostering nostalgia for East Germany (East German consumer goods!!!). I think that it is too long (has slow-pacing appeared elsewhere in this Epinion?) and the ending is unclear (another 2003 pattern?).
And, finally, some 2003 films that I mostly enjoyed:
American Splendor
Calendar Girls
Finding Nemo
The Girl with the Pearl Earrings
Ripley’s Game
School of Rock
Shanghai Nights
Shattered Glass
The Snow Walker
Something's Got to Give
Whale Rider
Young Adam
I have also written about the best documentary films and tv miniseries(es) of 2003 at http://www.epinions.com/content_5105950852
and posted lists of
the greatest filmsever,
my favorite films,
the best movies of the1940s, the the1980s,
1939, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005.
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