-The What-the-fuck-is-he-talking-about? award
-2 Films Most Evocative of the Recent
  Presidential Campaign
-Worst Read
-Best Audience Response to a Shitty Movie
-Best Audience Response to a Good Movie
-He Means Well, But… Award
-Genre of the year
-Best Opening
-Best Ending
-Most endings in a single movie
-(Il)literacy campaign of the year
-The Just Stay in the Fucking Car Next Time Award
-Most common mistake committed by critics
-Best critical Mad Libs
-Sucks For Moviegoers In the Digital Age Award
-Most overrated generational anthem
-Most Valuable Player (Year Two)
-Best unheralded original score composer
-The Wash ‘Em Again Award
-The “Wait, Let’s Stop and Think About This
  for a Second” Award
-Best "time passes" montage
-Worst "time passes" montage
-Natalie Portman Award
-Worst Review Titles
-Best follow-up to Meet the Parents
-Worst Remake
-Best cinematic contraception since Rosemary’s Baby
-The "So Reflexive It Hurts" award
-Spike Lee Award
-Most almost (but not really) underrated movie
-Suck-In-Your-Breath Moments of 2004
-Still Hurting Film Culture

The What-the-fuck-is-he-talking-about? award:
Armond White
Film criticism’s one true unclassifiable was in fine fettle this past movie year. Whether inveighing against the complaisance of mainstream reviewers in the face of mass culture or the latest atrocities by ambitious whippersnappers who know nothing—nothing!—about making movies, the New York Press’s Armond White could be counted on for the most outraged, least tempered opinions on a weekly basis. It’s a shame that the glimmers of sense that peek through his writing are routinely eclipsed by his dazzling talent for wrong-headed hyperbole. Quick, what cinematic offense was “indicative of a dead-end culture”? That’s right, Before Sunset. White has also mastered the art of the inexplicable straw man, as when he lashed out against hipsters, whose harmful influence on film culture could be seen in the success of…Birth. (There was a bandwagon the size of a biscuit.) In a year-end feature story, White gave readers a crash course in film history, a valuable service that unfortunately was marred by his Dale Peck-ish volleys, such as, “Remember how praise of Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven meant the dismissal of Douglas Sirk?” Uh, no, I don’t. Unexplained cheap shots, willful perversity, contrarianism against nonexistent trends, and the odd arbitrary reference to Roxy Music and Cinerama: this is criticism at its daffy, infuriating best—or worst, depending on the week.
—EV

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2 Films Most Evocative of the Recent Presidential Campaign: Sideways and The Aviator
Wait, so the problem with Sideways is what, exactly? Since when have we grown tired of white male crises? By comparison, the goodwill given The Aviator—no less white or male—is telling. Without the across-the-board rave reviews that Sideways garnered it won’t have to answer to backlash, even though there’s not a single shade of nuance in the picture. Actually, that’s entirely the difference. Call Sideways the John Kerry film of 2004—too nuanced, too awkwardly on point, too smart for its own good, too human, too correct, politically and otherwise. Which is no match for good ol’ slam-bang entertainment, a paint-by-numbers script with a manufactured hero at the fore, known for talking loud and saying nothing, oil in his veins and hints of disabililty in his composure, dogged by those damn Ivy Leaguers with their big words and book smarts. A scion of wealth from Texas as underdog hero, a dilettante as maligned genius, an irrational CEO as freedom-fighting capitalist—are we certain that Karl Rove didn’t ghost this gem for John Logan? The press turned around and torpedoed something it had already determined was very good, smart, and qualified because, well, it just wasn’t Great enough. Not big, bold, and dumb enough to connect with the masses. We write about how we want something and someone better, smarter, more human, but really we just don’t want to be caught riding the losing horse. We follow the money and the marketing. Then, once the dust clears, we can write about how it’s all such a travesty.
—EH

Worst Read: The Slate Movie “Club”

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Best Audience Response to a Shitty Movie: Open Water
After 80-something minutes of not-quite-blood-curdling, barely-acted, freakshow- reality TV gimmickry and borderline incomprehensible pixel-grains blown up to 35mm delusions of grandeur, the Upper West Side audience was understandably anxious and disappointed. It’s not a case of mismarketing or thriller-hype oversensationalism—you’re talking to a Blair Witch devotee (nothing but branches, dude) and a staunch defender of The Village (nope, no monsters, better get used to it). In this case, director Chris Kentis really pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes: Yes, digital video enabled him to bring his crew to the middle of the ocean and get uncomfortably close with his helplessly floating actors. Problem is, unlike Blair Witch, the camera itself doesn’t factor into the narrative; thus the crappo artifice is hopelessly apparent. A few cutaways to some rather tame looking sharks, followed by actors grimacing in pain does not a movie make. The alligators in the drain-pipe episode of Fear Factor carried more narrative oomph. Thus, when the addled teenager behind me shouted “Fuck you, Chris Kentis!” the moment the silent credits began to roll and threw his soda cup at the screen (and missed by quite a few yards), I couldn’t help but sympathize.
—MK

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Best Audience Response to a Good Movie:
Million Dollar Baby
Upon first seeing Eastwood’s brilliantly modulated genre de-threading, I was moved merely by the director’s audacity, the ability of a studio-backed film to realize its uncompromisingly grim vision unimpeded. But it was a critics’ screening: an airless, stuffy room filled with impregnable, tight-lipped “professionals.” Then the second and third screenings, with paying audiences, were utter revelations. When that final slow dolly into Clint sitting in The Diner at the End of the World fades out and the gentle Eastwood piano score tinkles in, the hush of the crowd felt like the weight of the world on my shoulders. You could hear a pin drop: all those earned tears about to spill over into heart-heavy grief. Sometimes, the communal experience of seeing a film requires no words at all.
—MK

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He Means Well, But… Award: Robert Greenwald
In the shadow of Jesus Christ and President Bush, Robert Greenwald’s Fassbinder-esque year was almost overlooked by critics and audiences. His strident pamphlets—Uncovered, Outfoxed, and Unconstitutional—were rushed into release for maximum electoral effect, a noble intention that, unfortunately, also made for lackluster movies. Shoddily assembled polemics that had little regard for art or form, Greenwald’s docs had you nodding in agreement even as you cringed at their plain-as-day ineptitude. That progressives gladly embraced them seemed an apt metaphor for the choice Democrats faced in 2004: these movies may be bland and uninspiring, but at least they’re ours.
—EV

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Genre of the year: Not documentary, but comedy
2004 had a lot of smart, flighty yet occasionally moving comedies: The Incredibles, Eternal Sunshine (well, Charles Taylor thought it was a comedy), Anchorman, I Heart Huckabees, Shaolin Soccer, 13 Going on 30, and Harold and Kumar. At least half of these had more ideas-per-second than even pretty good films like Sideways and Infernal Affairs. Anchorman, especially, is one of the weirdest and most intellectual dumb comedies I’ve seen—far closer to Dada, Hong Kong, and McSweeney’s than to Saturday Night Live. It’s definitely smarter than I Heart Huckabees, winner of the Movie-That-All-My-Friends-Loved-But-I-Thought-Was-Totally-Obnoxious Award. The only difference between the two is that, in a year of purified and hermetic art-for-art’s-sake filmmaking, I Heart Huckabeesis one of the few overly filmy films that isn’t sealed off from the audience. As a film, it’s easily dumber than, say, Shaolin Soccer, but as a self-help tract, Norton’s Anti-Virus for all your boorish habits, manic depressive anxieties, and materialism, it’s the best film of the year.
—KC

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Best Opening: The Terminal
Coming off of the career-capping triple threat of A.I., Minority Report, and Catch Me If You Can, Spielberg moved onto the promising true story of an Iranian immigrant who lived for fifteen years in the DeGaulle airport terminal. Turns out, the connection to this true story, in all its sociopolitical implications, was negligible; dumbed-down to the point of near-retardation, though The Terminal certainly had its desperate Spielberg defenders lined up to recoup its Capracorn as allegory. If the film peters out to a soul-deadening degree, then at least the case for its glorious promise can be made by the opening 20 minutes. Minimal musical accompaniment, towering nearly dystopic sets, unencumbered and incisive cinematographic brilliance from Janusz Kaminski: the economic and expansive brilliance of the film’s setup begs to be seen. When Spielberg soon falls back into the suffocation of Hollywood machine-tooled plotting it’s hard to even remember this initial exhilaration.
—MK

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Best Ending: The Spongebob Squarepants Movie
A problem I’ve always had with animated filmmaking is how oddly timid it tends to be even in the face of the visually fantastic creations which populate it. The Disney (and now Pixar and Dreamworks and…) formula of transposing the rules of our world to another locale with select, fantastical additions (mermaids, genies, talking animals, crockery) never lets things get too far out of hand—we’re always in a legible space that asserts its continuity as it bends real rules. But why must this always be the case? The audience that these films primarily cater to would probably benefit from a little bit of the surreal. Enter a tie-wearing (maybe homosexual?) sponge who lives under the sea with his starfish sidekick. I won’t go out of my way to praise the film as a whole. It’s amusing and colorful but not much more than that—but its delirious climax left me gasping for breath. Spongebob is in dire straits. Arch-Villain Plankton’s zombie army has subdued King Neptune and his daughter, sealing up his takeover of Bikini Bottom. What’s a sponge to do? The only (il)logical thing—morph into a robe wearing, guitar wielding, undersea rock god and zap the baddies with blazing solos ripped from the frets of a Prince-ly purple guitar while his starfish friend dons fishnets and stilettos and vamps like it’s the heyday of the Rolling Stones. The whole sequence feels like some lost trip from the Seventies and describing it in mere words can’t come close to doing it justice. Suffice it to say, this utter nonsense is packed with more true, creative spirit and invention than most animated features can muster in their entirety.
—JR

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Most endings in a single movie:
House of Flying Daggers
Similar to what’s said of the weather in New England, if you don’t like this one’s ending, wait a minute or two. Wisely recognizing that the hyper-stylized body of his film resists the formation of deep emotional connections between its audience and its characters (even to the limited degree permitted in Hero), director Yimou Zhang is freed at its climax to plunge headlong into formal play. Shuffling the multiple permutations possible among its three central characters and the binaries loyalty/betrayal and life/death, the film’s multiple endings become a meditation on audience expectation and a quest for narrative symmetry.
—BW

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(Il)literacy campaign of the year:
The Day After Tomorrow
Finally, a big budget movie that appreciates the power of books...for BURNING. The Day After Tomorrow seemed to start out like a healthy endorsement of the nurturing power of the American public library system. Heck, they're apparently the only safe haven sparing you from an icy apocalypse...that is, if you embrace books for their sole purpose as fossil fuel. And, while there’s nothing quite so resplendent as seeing rich prep school types illuminated by the flickering firelight of irreplacable first editions burning to ash, it does seem a pointed dig at the value this culture places on the written word. So, remember kids, books may save your life, but you learned about it in a movie. Take that, American Library Association! And take heart, wacky right-wing religious factions. Maybe during the next cold front you can write off one of your favorite hobbies as a humanitarian effort...and we all know how much you guys like “saving” things.
—SS

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The Just Stay in the Fucking Car Next Time Award for Worst Ending to an Otherwise Terrific Movie: Red Lights

Most common mistake committed by critics:
Selection bias.
Kill Bill Vol. 2, Goodbye Dragon Inn, Sideways, Eternal Sunshine, Bad Education, The Dreamers, and, in a way, Notre musiqueand Dogville—all were films either about filmmaking or starring shy, easily-identifiable*, intellectual white guys (i.e. the critic) as their protagonists.
—KC
*If you are a shy intellectual white guy.

Best critical Mad Libs: Fahrenheit 9/11
“determined”/”did not determine” the election and was an “blatantly irresponsible piece of agitprop”/“the greatest film not just of the year, or even of the decade but ever made.” This game is suitable for children of all ages and comes with variations for Dogville and The Passion of the Christ. Try it in the comfort of your own home!
—KC

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Sucks For Moviegoers In the Digital Age Award: Narrative
Damn narrative. We cinephiles have to look with some envy at all those kids who download that one Britney or Xtina song that hits their sweet spot, fit them in their iTunes alongside Wilco and Guided By Voices and get their three minute sugar fix any time they want. Our only option is to pay $10 at a corporate owned multiplex for some corporate-produced piece of shit and hope that there might be some redeemable element we can hold onto when it’s over. Downloading scenes? There’s plenty to find if you want to look, but most of that stuff focuses on young starlets disrobing, and the quality’s usually terrible. And even if we could resort to P2P for our favorite moments, it’s usually the context that makes them count. But then maybe that’s what’s so special about being a cinephile, especially now—that sense of the possible, the sense that anything could happen after purchasing a ticket (like, for instance, having a riotously good time during John Waters’s A Dirty Shame, which I’d fully expected to loathe). We may have to work a little harder than digital crate diggers to get our fix, but is that so bad when the rewards can be so great?
—JR

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Most overrated generational anthem: Garden State
Fanboys and girls fell for Zach Braff’s deceptively precocious debut, a ballsy stab at making his generation’s The Graduate—a comparison the movie courts from the get-go with an opening set unnecessarily on an airplane. Braff manages a couple of epiphanies—all of which involve Natalie Portman’s incandescent face—but look closer and Garden State turns out to be as bereft of heft as the ghost world it judges. As Andrew Largeman, Braff staggers through the movie in prime brooding form. That same seriousness is denied most of the movie’s denizens, who amount to quirky cartoons Braff uses to score easy laughs. Its portrait of an overmedicated, underachieving generation resonated with Braff’s cohorts, who were perhaps too busy seeing themselves in the characters to realize how trite and transparent the movie is. Certainly not without its pleasures—Portman and Peter Sarsgaard, to name two—Garden State is ultimately all attitude and affect, a confection that turns from beguiling to annoying from scene to scene. Besides, any movie that has its anguished characters literally scream into an abyss deserves to be called out.
—EV

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Most Valuable Player (Year Two): Harris Savides
So exacting, so ominous, so intimate yet grandiose, so bafflingly there. This director of photography tricked audiences in 2003 into thinking that Gus Van Sant suddenly grew a brain and a pair of testicles. Elephant’s over-conceptualization of the Columbine massacre inadvertently trivialized its devastating subject matter, and Gerry’s Bela Tarr teenybopping was trying so damn hard to prove itself that it crossed the line into the risible; yet in both films Savides created spaces onto which so much existential terror could be projected that it became hard to criticize the films too harshly—even after Finding Forrester and Good Will Hunting. Again this year, many people attempted to recoup Jonathan Glazer’s hilarious Birth as a post-Kubrick tone poem. One can see why: That opening shot! That scene at the opera! Those Upper West Side interiors! Gorgeously hollow or hollowly gorgeous, Birth, like Gerryand Elephant, so resists easy (any!) reading that it ends up as even subtextually bereft. Harris, make your own movie next time…we simply can’t wait.
—MK

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Best unheralded original score composer: Jon Brion
Can you imagine how imposing Jon Brion’s oeuvre would be if this film composing thing weren’t just a moonlight gig? In 2004, the indie songwriter and producer wrote the music for two movies, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and I Heart Huckabees, commissions that bolstered his reputation as the unsung genius of the original score. Over the course of only five films—he scored P.T. Anderson’s Hard Eight, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love—Brion hasn’t just provided accompaniment to idiosyncratic movies—he has given a generation of romantics and neurotics their own dizzy, lovely motifs. Poised between hope and heartache, Brion’s scores are messy tapestries of pure feeling, punctuated by the ripe vibrations of a xylophone, or the cosmic intimations of a harmonium. That range gives him an edge over my second runner-up, the inimitable Mark Mothersbaugh, who, like his collaborator, Wes Anderson, refuses to grow up at his own risk.
—EV

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The Wash ‘Em Again Award for portrayal of OCD in cinema: The Aviator
Amidst all the aeronautic, industrial, and romantic derring-do lies the latest high-profile entry in OCC—Obsessive-Compulsive Cinema—joining As Good As It Gets and Ridley Scott’s 2003 curio Matchstick Men. Instead of generic mogul madness, a la Citizen Kane, or a Caine Mutiny-style paranoia, Scorsese’s Hughes suffers very specifically from OCD, repeatedly washing his hands and inflecting magical phrases. As employed by Scorsese, the illness is key to the film’s basic macro/micro structure, careering between Hughes’s high-flying grandiose business exploits and the suffocating rathole of his phobic hell. Both arenas, however, share the need for absolute control, and this specificity of OCD writ large, with its tragic ambivalence between need and actual autonomous desire, leavens the film’s frank revels in plutocratic prerogative and male wish fulfillment (each a consequence of resurrecting the Golden Age of cinema). And when Hughes directs this preternatural attention to motion pictures, the reflexive result is an eloquent addition to the iconography of filmmaking. Forget the director-as-dictator-in-chaps, or Truffaut’s cast-as-rambunctious-family, Scorsese’s newest metaphor for filmmaking as a whole is OCD plain and simple. Embodied by Hughes’s endless reshoots and implied in the standard practices of retakes, continuity, and megalomania, the idea captures the twin hallmarks of cinema mundane and marvelous: the exquisite repetition of production and the folly of total control.
—NR

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The “Wait, Let’s Stop and Think About This for a Second” Award: The Polar Express
Manohla Dargis’s now-famous New York Times acknowledgement of the Leni Riefenstahl influences manifest in the grandiose Santa Clause-emerges climax certainly may have planted the seeds of Jewish paranoia in my already overstimulated paranoid brain; but wait, let’s stop and think about this for a second. Perhaps all this Triumph of the Will iconography isn’t so out of context if we look back at Robert Zemeckis’s truly awful techno creep-out. (Kids with guttural adult voices? Nice one, Bob, not jarring or off-putting at all…). A huge, terrifying old-style locomotive screeches up in front of the homes of kids who are losing the Christmas spirit (i.e., nonbelievers…take note, Mel), and whisks them off to the North Pole for social re-education, where they’ll meet the power-tripping Saint Nick himself as he lurches to his pulpit, his entrance accompanied by the perfect-unison chanting of thousands of arm-raised elves: “You better watch out…you better not cry…” Almost hypnotically blind to its own theocratic implications, Polar Express is simply another in a long line of Christian propaganda films, willfully ignorant of the alienation it can cause even in its target demographic. (i.e, Why does the sad-eyed impoverished tyke who lives by the railroad tracks and has an eternal smudge of dirt on his face need to be reassured that there is indeed a benevolent, bearded gift-giver, when he knows every Christmas goes by without so much as a lollipop?) Only Christmas with the Kranks even attempted to deal with the homogenization and gentrification of holiday-cheer statements such as these; the rest of us non-Christians better start stockpiling ornaments now before the train pulls up. It may seem innocuous to some, but let’s hope that Phillip Roth hasn’t seen it.
—MK

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Best "time passes" montage: Sideways
Alexander Payne and editor Kevin Tent craft one of the cinema’s finest portraits of a "dinner out." Conflating time without sacrificing an ounce of truth or nuance, the restaurant scene shared by the film’s four principles is a seamless patchwork of drifting, focus-racking camerawork, lighting on a telling look or gesture while the occasional soft clinking of flatware or intelligible word or two serve as aural punctuation. In a matter of seconds the sequence carries us from aperitif to first course, deftly depositing our protagonist in a state of frustration and drunkenness we can almost taste.
—BW

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Worst "time passes" montage: Sideways
. Alexander Payne and editor Kevin Tent confuse the hell out of me. Maybe I’m just not familiar enough with how the “wine-tasting montage” is usually handled, but I mean what’s with that music, the split-screen, and those fucking birds? Thought for sure the projectionist swapped reels with some Sixties Travel Industry promo.
—BW

Natalie Portman Award for Oscar-Nominated Bad Acting: Natalie Portman in Closer

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Worst Review Titles: The New York Times
A publication that agonizes over its article titles (like this one) might seem a tad indulgent to the average reader. A publication that criticizes the titles of another probably seems just plain stupid, but hear me out. A well-chosen title should tell the reader something about how that writer approaches their material, a Rosetta Stone and an introduction, not merely a placeholder. Too clever is no good, but not nearly as bad as the blandness that dominates the New York Times movie section each week. Quick, pick your favorite movie of last year—Before Sunset? Okay, I’ll guess “An American Boy, a French Girl, and the Time That Got Away.” Close—the real title is “Reunited, Still Talking, Still Uneasy.” How about The Aviator? “The Flying Machines That Dreams Are Made Of.” A little off on this one—correct answer: -“Savoring a Legend Before It Curdled.” Are these generated by feeding press kits into a computer? And what does this say about the content that follows? There has to be a way to turn this into a drinking game.
—JR

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Best follow-up to Meet the Parents: The Aviator
Mr. Hughes’ introduction to the Hepburn clan rings both hilariously and painfully true to anyone who’s stood on the outside of a sweetheart’s seemingly impregnable family circle looking in. Complete with the still-adored "ex" hanger-on, this irresistible dinner scene lacks only human remains-turned-kitty-litter and a discussion of the relevance of nipples to the milking process. Parental approval still proves the great leveler, reducing even the wealthiest man in the world to the status of pimply prom-night suitor. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some more of that "movie watching ‘guff’ to attend to.
—BW

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Worst Remake: The Stepford Wives
A modernization of The Stepford Wives seemed like a good idea, with its intriguing premise positing an assembly of men so threatened by their successful spouses that they lure them away to a gated suburb in order to literally reprogram them, so the letdown of that potential makes its failure so much the worse. The wild conceit remains simply that, the development of ideas abruptly halted after the expository elements are served on a platter. With nothing to propel it to the next level beyond mere novelty (and, as a remake, it’s not even that), its contrived stylishness is unable to cope with demands for anything as tricky as nuance or consistency of tone, the dark promise of those retro-chic opening titles and campy candyland colors never fulfilled. What makes the film doubly depressing is that it features Nicole Kidman, herself having become something of an icon for the cause after stepping down from the role of Mrs. Cruise and emerging in the aftermath of the divorce not only as a star in her own right but as a true actress. Sadly, even she can’t save it.
—KM

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Best cinematic contraception since Rosemary’s Baby: Gozu
If Japanese director Takashi Miike’s perverse obsession with geysers of breast milk in his prior cinematic efforts didn't turn you off the child-rearing process, the image of an all-too-petite woman giving birth to a full grown man in his oddball opus Gozu ought to do it. Taking the natural evolutionary leap (that is, if you’re an evolving demented visionary) from his cautionary Audition, which taught all men a lesson about courting seemingly demure women (thereby validating the theory that it’s always the sane looking ones that end up slicing off your feet with piano wire), Gozu sears the image of a fully grown fetus sliming its way out of the womb and skidding across the floor so effectively, it’s difficult to recall anything else for hours after the face. Not the ideal date movie, but perfection for seventh grade sex education classes intent on scaring adolescent girls mindless.
—SS

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The "So Reflexive It Hurts" award goes to...
Ocean’s Twelve
As if the George Clooney slumber party/feature film Ocean’s Twelve didn’t already have us mouthing the words “breezy celebrity romp” in our seats, the plot takes an unpardonable turn in acknowledging that Julia Roberts’ character, Tess, looks an awful lot like...Julia Roberts! Soderbergh’s references, as always, are impeccable, nodding to Robert Altman’s The Player by using Roberts and Bruce Willis (playing himself) in this capacity. And yeah, the Sixth Sense cracks were pretty funny, but somehow this went too far, even for a film so insistent on its status as “light entertainment.” You could see it coming but hoped they wouldn’t actually go there. When the bomb hit all you could do was sit stunned, mourning that fourth wall.
—BW

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Spike Lee Award for Most Dismissed Spike Lee Film:
She Hate Me
By now, we know what to expect. When Spike Lee releases a film, expect some snickers, a few waves of the arm, and a quick yank from its 350-theater release. This extends from his masterpieces (Bamboozled, 25th Hour) to his equally worthwhile less-thans (She Hate Me); of course, it’s much easier to dismiss than to bother wrestling with the issues that Lee dares raise. Perfect art objects these films are not; yet as rambling, gawky cine-essays, Spike Lee is as essential to the American political landscape as Michael Moore, or at least he should be. Rather than go with your kneejerk response, give it some thought: Is the dual narrative of sperm donation and corporate slush corruption really so haphazardly grafted? Do you really think Lee could possibly be supposing that lesbians truly just want some deep-dicking? Are his dreamscape flights-of-fancy really merely clueless narrative gaps? No one could ever position She Hate Me as a perfect, or even a great, film, yet Spike Lee’s use of comedic gambits to work out some big questions he’s got for America couldn’t come at a messier time in our Nation’s history. It’s more of an uninhibited bile session, yes; but that wondrously optimistic conclusion speaks to something so much more humane. Give it another chance.
—MK

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Most almost (but not really) underrated movie:
Kill Bill Vol. 2
My friend Aziz and I are the only people I know who liked Kill Bill Vol. 2 more than Kill Bill Vol. 1, which was so monotonously spectacular and predictably sadistic that I started checking my watch far earlier than I did in the last Hou Hsiao-Hsien flick I saw. And I’m a wuxia fan! Take away the first Kill Bill’s high-key colors, awesome soundtrack, and Yuen Woo Ping choreography—and yes I know this is unfair—and you get the sophomoric 10th-grade cruelty of The Butterfly Effect. The two Kill Bills and the two Zhang Yimou flicks are a quartet of glamorous movies I didn’t really like but had to love, films that lacked character and humanism but had (embarrassingly enough) gusto. But unlike the first Kill Bill, the second had: the Umbrellas of Cherbourg-ization of the trailer park; the only character with any secrets (Michael Madsen’s Budd); the only living characters who aren’t the personified forces of maternal vengeance (not just Bill and Bud and everyone played by Michael Parks, but was anyone else as surprised as I was at the sudden appearance of normal people at the Bride’s wedding rehearsal?); the only fun (as opposed to bloodlessly cool) appropriation in the whole series (Gordon Liu’s Pai Mei); and cinematography that was impressive not because of cool signifiers, the couture outfits, backflips, and hot Asian girls, but because they actually related to the emotions onscreen. As my friend Aziz said, “When Pai Mei showed up, I was like ‘Do they really expect us to believe that this guy is 300 years old. But then when Daryl Hannah says she’s poisoned him, I was like ‘That bitch! How could she kill a man who was 300 hundred years old!’”
—KC

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Suck-In-Your-Breath Moments of 2004:

Twentynine Palms second “climax”; Norman Bates redux

The Village: morning love confession on the porch in extreme foreground, curls of fog in the background

Vera Drake: police visiting the engagement party; Vera’s face falls in long agonizing closeup

Before Sunset: Slow fade-out to Nina Simone, Julie Delpy breaks a million hearts simultaneously

Dogville: Patricia Clarkson smashing Nicole’s prized Hummel figurines; Dogville shows its teeth indeed
—MK

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Still Hurting Film Culture: Richard Roeper
Not violent by nature, when I ran into Richard Roeper recently in the green room for the “Fox and Friends” (don’t they know this is the title of a Fassbinder film about gay hustlers?) morning show, I thought for a hot second about popping him one right in his smug kisser. I thought better of it, until I saw him on the monitor re-hashing the “Michael Moore Academy Award Booing Scandal” nearly two years after the fact with the show’s trio of pinheaded yobos. This is one I’ll take with me to the grave.
—JR