December 29, 2004
My Ten Favorite Films Of 2004
- Before Sunset (dir. Richard Linklater)
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring (dir. Kim Ki Duk)
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (dir. Michel Gondry)
Undertow (dir. David Gordon Greene)
Tarnation (dir. Jonathan Caouette)
Time Of The Wolf (dir. Michael Haneke)
Birth (dir. Jonathan Glazer)
Million Dollar Baby (dir. Clint Eastwood)
Spiderman 2 (dir. Sam Raimi)
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (dir. Wes Anderson)
Oasis (dir. Lee Chang Dong)
I Heart Huckabees (dir. David O. Russell)
The Dreamers (dir. Bernardo Bertolucci)
Notre Musique (dir. Jean Luc Godard)
Vera Drake (dir. Mike Leigh)
Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster (dir. Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky)
Primer (dir. Shane Carruth)
Coffee & Cigarettes (dir. Jim Jarmusch)
Hotel Rwanda (dir. Terry George)
The Incredibles (dir. Brad Bird)
The Brown Bunny (dir. Vincent Gallo)
There were so many great films this year, I can't even remember the bad ones. A few exemplary efforts have been rather arbitarily and perhaps unfairly excluded from this list. But you know how top ten lists go, and while I may be bad with numbers, I'm not that bad.
Posted by David Lowery at December 29, 2004 02:02 PM
Comments
Nice list, David.
Out of your 20 or so, I think five of the titles will also appear on my top ten list.
And congrats on SXSW, dude. I look forward to seeing your film when you get a chance.
Posted by: Moriarty at January 5, 2005 01:09 AM
Thank you, sir. Nice to see you around!
We were hoping to have an LA screening of our film before the end of the year, but obviously, that hasn't happened...but it will certainly happen in 2005, and hopefully before AFM in the fall.
Of course, screeners do leak...
Wait, what am I saying? No they don't!
Posted by: Ghostboy at January 5, 2005 02:01 AM
i would also like to offer my congratulations. and i for one am hoping that that LA screening will happen sometime in the near future. good luck david.
Posted by: bryan at January 5, 2005 07:40 PM
No collateral, what gives? heh If you've only watched it once I recommend giving it a second look. I really enjoyed it the first time. Then appreciated it even more when my parents rented it.
Posted by: Adan at January 6, 2005 04:30 PM
I loved Collateral -- Michael Mann is a genius -- but I didn't love it enough to give it that much love. It's a great thriller, but it ain't no Last Of The Mohicans or The Insider.
Posted by: Ghostboy at January 7, 2005 01:38 PM
Nice list, what about The Machinist?
Posted by: Rick at January 16, 2005 08:39 PM
I enjoyed The Machinist for the most part -- Bale was amazing, and the mood Brad Anderson established was wonderful. And I liked the story. What I really was turned off by, though, was the apparent need to turn this simple, disturbing character study into a lame thriller by introducing that Ivan character, whose role in the film was so obvious and annoying that it alone kept a decent little movie from being great.
Posted by: Ghostboy at January 16, 2005 10:36 PM
Hate to admit it, but I haven't seen everything on the list. Of those I have, only one I'd disagree with even mildy is PRIMER, which I thought cheated by deliberately witholding information unnecessarily, when it would have been smart enough without doing so.
Your reccomendation of BIRTH is the only one I respect enough to actually consider seeing it at some point.
Posted by: LYT at January 17, 2005 01:21 AM
Also: It's COFFEE AND CIGARETTES, not vice versa.
Posted by: LYT at January 17, 2005 01:23 AM
D'oh! Duly noted. Cigarettes and Coffee is Paul Thomas Anderson's short film, but I can never remember which title goes to which movie.
Posted by: Ghostboy at January 17, 2005 03:46 AM