The List of Critics
Worst of 2004

2003 Scoreboard
Worst of 2003
Scoreboard of Bad

The Critics Lists
Critics List 1

AP reviewers David Germain
and Christy Lemire
Pick their favorite films of 2004

The top 10 films of 2004, according to AP Movie Writer David Germain:

1. The Saddest Music in the World : Filmmaker Guy Maddin spins a blissfully twisted tale of a legless Depression-era beer baroness (Isabella Rossellini) who stages a contest to find the world’s gloomiest tunes, and a can-do American (Mark McKinney) determined to win the prize for the Yanks. The distorted black-and-white images and demented music perfectly complement Maddin’s absurdist tone.

2. A Very Long Engagement : Amelie in the trenches. Audrey Tautou and director Jean-Pierre Jeunet reunite for this charmer that combines the whimsy and dash-along pace of their romance Amelie with heavy drama and biting commentary on the folly of war. Tautou is bewitching as a woman driven by indefatigable faith that her lover survived the battlefields of World War I, all evidence to the contrary.

3. Million Dollar Baby — Hilary Swank deserves a second Academy Award as an explosively dauntless boxer who knows in her bones when to pounce — and when to quit after life throws her the cruelest of left hooks. Director and star Clint Eastwood follows Mystic River with another terrific morality play. He, co-star Morgan Freeman and Swank merit serious Oscar consideration.

4. Sideways — Speaking of Oscar, Paul Giamatti is a modern Ernest Borgnine, a character player who has broken into romantic leads. If Borgnine can win an Oscar for Marty, why not Giamatti as an endearing loser with a fresh chance at love in Alexander Payne’s sparkling road-trip comedy? Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh zestfully complete Payne’s near-perfect quartet.

5. House of Flying Daggers — What a year for director Zhang Yimou (see No. 6 below). His martial-arts epic is the year’s most gorgeous film, awash in color and masterful imagery, packed with dazzlingly choreographed dance and fight sequences. Zhang Ziyi combines ferocious spirit and a tenderly tragic heart as a rebel caught in a love triangle with two allies (Takeshi Kaneshiro and Andy Lau) turned rivals.

6. Hero — The belated 2004 U.S. release of Zhang Yimou’s first martial-arts saga served as a glorious appetizer for House of Flying Daggers. The 2002 adventure stars Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi and Donnie Yen in a craftily constructed assassination tale that unspools in a cascade of shifting flashbacks, each presented with its own radiant color scheme.

7. The Motorcycle Diaries — The seeds of the humanist revolutionary are planted in Walter Salles’ wry, raucous tale of a road trip through South America by young Ernesto Guevara and a mischievous buddy. The future El Che is passionately played by Gael Garcia Bernal, while Rodrigo de la Serna makes for the sort of comically intrepid sidekick we all should be blessed with as traveling companion.

8. The Village — Listen up, all you backbiters who say M. Night Shyamalan’s run out of tricks. This commentary on modern times was not about scares or surprises. Cloaked in puritan garb, the film offers a great morality debate about our contemporary culture of fear and one community’s radical solution to escape a hostile world. Bryce Dallas Howard is superb as a blind girl battling her darkest terrors for love.

9. Super Size Me — Morgan Spurlock chows down in the name of the greater good health. His documentary chronicling his monthlong all-McDonald’s diet is uproariously funny and more than a little frightening as his body and spirit deteriorate. By going to extremes, Spurlock becomes a pudgy, slothful poster boy for a nation of overeaters.

10. Spanglish — Writer-director James L. Brooks presents a sharp, full-blooded story centering on a contest of wills between the fiercest of adversaries — two moms with vastly discordant world views. The comic drama about a Mexican housekeeper at odds with her American employers features tremendous performances from Tea Leoni, Paz Vega and Cloris Leachman — and a surprisingly subtle turn from Adam Sandler.

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The top 10 films of 2004, according to AP Movie Critic Christy Lemire:

1. Sideways — Nothing near-perfect about it: This is by far the year’s best film. And it’s the second year in a row that Paul Giamatti stars in the top film (following American Splendor ), proving that beneath his character-actor looks lie the talent and versatility of a leading man. Disarmingly written and beautifully cast, with equal amounts of humor and heart, Alexander Payne’s middle-aged, coming-of-age film resonates long after the lights go up.

2. Team America: World Police — It works on every level: as sidesplitting comedy, sharp political satire, observant parody of bombastic action flicks, even as a musical, with meticulously detailed sets and costumes. And did we mention that the stars are puppets? The South Park guys are at it again, and just when you thought they’d sufficiently shocked you, they’ve come up with a sex scene involving marionette superheroes that will make you laugh so hard, you’ll cry. Easily the year’s funniest movie.

3. A Very Long Engagement — A gorgeous film all around. Jean-Pierre Jeunet directs his Amelie star, Audrey Tautou, in a movie that seamlessly combines history, dark humor and heart-tugging true love. The World War I battle scenes are huge and viscerally evocative, yet even the smallest roles have been cast with obvious care. And Tautou is simply radiant, as always. It’s epic and intimate at the same time — a hard balance to strike.

4. Garden State — A surprisingly assured debut from Zach Braff of the sitcom Scrubs, who directs, writes and stars as a disconnected, semi-successful TV actor who returns home to New Jersey for his mother’s funeral. He runs into old friends (Peter Sarsgaard, always excellent), makes new ones (an effervescent Natalie Portman) and finds out who he really is. A film of warmth and wit, subtlety and sweetness.

5. Metallica: Some Kind of Monster — You don’t have to be a fan of the metal band to enjoy this documentary (though there are plenty of recording sessions to watch if you are). Through the group’s brutally honest therapy sessions, filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky tell a story of loyalty, communication, redemption and the challenges that come with continuing a career in your 40s. The film is so non-judgmental — and often so insightful — it never falls into Spinal Tap -style parody.

6. The Motorcycle Diaries — The rare biopic that avoids the trap of becoming a greatest-hits collection of a famous person’s life. Walter Salles focuses on the road trip Ernesto Guevara took with his best friend before becoming the revolutionary icon El Che. The film morphs mesmerizingly from wacky buddy flick into a tale of politics and personal awakening, much of it shot with the hand-held, gritty immediacy of a documentary. Gael Garcia Bernal and Rodrigo de la Serna have the chemistry of guys who’ve been friends forever.

7. The Door in the Floor — The first third of John Irvings A Widow for One Year provides the basis for a film that couldn’t be more complete, with rich, complex characters, darkly comic moments and a palpable feeling of melancholy. Jeff Bridges is magnetic as a breezy, unpredictable cad of an author who offers his writing assistant (Jon Foster) to help his wife (a haunting Kim Basinger) gets over the deaths of their sons during a summer in the Hamptons.

8. Maria Full of Grace — Catalina Sandino Moreno shows effortless beauty, boundless confidence — and yes, grace — as a headstrong 17-year-old Colombian who becomes a drug mule to create a better life for herself and the baby she only recently realized she’s carrying. That we feel sympathy for a young, pregnant woman who’s bringing drugs into the United States with no remorse is a credit to the actress, but especially to writer-director Joshua Marston for creating such a complex character in his bold, solid first feature.

9. Before Sunset — A lovely, beguiling little film, the sequel to 1995’s Before Sunrise is an unusual example of a follow-up that doesn’t seem forced, but expands easily on the original. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy re-team with director Richard Linklater, with whom they wrote the screenplay, and reveal that their characters never reconnected in Vienna as they’d promised. But they end up spending a couple hours together wandering around Paris, where their banter is just as natural and their chemistry is just as alive.

10. Shaun of the Dead — OK, this is admittedly my wacky pick, but I love a good zombie movie. And this is the unusual horror movie that’s funny, intelligent and horrific, and seamlessly so. The undead invade suburban London, and a pack of slackers (led by the pasty Simon Pegg, the film’s star and co-writer) hole up at the local pub before fighting them off in makeshift fashion and with sly humor. By that point, you actually care whether they live or die.