Movies of the Decade 2004-2005

Better late than never! We're at the halfway point. :)

Bad Education (2004; Pedro Almodovar)

This is a dark, complicated, lush, morally complex movie. It pitches you into three or four different time periods and timelines, where characters exist in all these different story arcs, but are not what they seem; somehow, he manages to draw these strands tighter and tighter around each other until they become one narrative...or do they? It's confusing and maddening and so gorgeously coloured and filmed (the presence of Gael Garcia Bernal, playing three characters, doesn't hurt!) that no matter the end the journey is totally engrossing and worth it.


The Incredibles (2004; d. Brad Bird)

I loved this take on the post-superhero experience in a family friendly redux of the Watchmen premise. Instead of darkness, Bird manages to milk a great deal of humour from the situation, but balances it with a pathos and an emotional complexity. It also smartly plays with the conventions of comic books and cartoons, in the script, the beautiful and thoughtful design of the film, and the gorgeous animation. It was my last film of 2004 and I couldn’t have capped the year off with a better movie.

Original post-movie reaction and review.


Mean Girls (2004; d. Mark Waters)

I saw this in a packed theatre full of teen girls, the target audience. They laughed and giggled at all the jokes, and there were a lot of the great script from Tina Fey, capturing the zeitgeist while using high school and teen movie clichés to skewer teen behaviour. In doing so it points out the damaged attitudes teen girls have each other and tries, in some small way, to fix things. Unfortunately, in our theatre, about three minutes after one of the characters says something about "don't call each other sluts and whores because it just makes it easier for guys to label you that way", a scuffle happened near the bottom of the theatre and a very clear female voice was heard to yell, "You slut!" But I appreciated the efforts of the film, the way it’s so very funny and quotable, and the very good performances by the cast as a whole (and Lindsay Lohan has never been as appealing and personable as she is in this role).


Mysterious Skin (2005; d. Gregg Araki)

As the last scene faded and the credits rolled, there was a complete silence in the theatre, a hush unlike the end of a multiplex popcorn film; whether it was from shock, or deep thought, or sadness - or even, as I felt, a mixture of all three - it was an eerie feeling. This was a deeply moving film about the loss of innocence. It was a very hard movie to watch at times, even when none of the actual abuse is actually depicted; the hardest part is watching two lost characters stumbling through adulthood, trying to make sense of a world that has already failed them and will again and again. But it’s darkly funny too, walking a fine line between the ridiculous and the pathetically profound, and a strange beauty in the horrific details (I can still see the shower of rainbow colored fruit loops that a young Neil gleefully delights in, that his abuser uses to reel him in). The movie adapts the books really well; for me, the ending of the book is one of the most beautifully written passages I‘ve ever read, and the movie comes close to matching the loveliness in the pathos, the beauty in its sadness. My first reaction, when I walked out of the theatre, was of how amazing this movie was, and how I never wanted to watch it again.

Original post-movie reaction and review.


Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005; d. Shane Black)

This is really funny, highly enjoyable neo-noir take on the buddy movie. Robert Downey Jr is so good as the nervy, fast-talking, no good anti-hero, Michelle Monaghan is so appealing as the ultimate girl-next-door, and there's great chemistry between all three leads. I love the construction of the style, the snappy narrative voice, the way the film hurtles back and forth along the timeline, the gloss of the Hollywood setting against the seedy happenings and people.


Kung Fu Hustle(2005; d. Stephen Chow)

I finally saw this last year, and I'm so glad I got to. It is so much fun; I laughed myself silly. It has a shambolic charm, using a well-worn forumlaic David v. Goliath story to hang its many bizarre, funny and wonderful flights of fancy. The restless referencing to old movies - Hollywood musicals of the 40s, classic kung fu pics of the 70s - is great and geeky. It's major failing is in a romantic subplot that is both boring, underwritten and infuriating (he makes her a one-dimensional, actually mute character!).


Movies of the Decade: 2003
Movies of the Decade: 2002
Movies of the Decade: 2000-2001

Movies of the Decade: 2003

Today's Movies of the Decade post brought to you by the number 2003.

Finding Nemo (2003; d. Andrew Stanton)

This movie is so joyous. I don't there really is a bad Pixar film but Finding Nemo remains one of my all time favourite pick-me-up movies. It's so beautiful and gentle and funny; when my friends quote a Pixar movie it's most likely to be a line from Nemo ("Mine! Mine!", "Fish are friends, not food", "...now what?", pretty much this whole page).

Also, this, Happy Feet and Moulin Rouge are the movies that have brought me the most grief (and okay, fun) at uni as I get into my 849th argument about what constitutes an Australian movie.


Kill Bill I (2003; d. Quentin Tarantino)

I was so tense all through this movie; props to QT for sucking me into the story of the Bride so completely. It's such a fantastic movie, from the eye-popping visuals, the layers of music and sound, all those references to older films, the great acting from Uma Thurman. It's funny too, full of deft comic touches that fit seamlessly into a very gory, fastpaced revenge tale. If only part two had been as consistently good and evenly paced as this...


Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003; d. Peter Weir)

For a movie with no women, full of guns and battles and ships - topics I am not normally interested in - I was utterly engrossed in this, and loved it so much I went back and reread a glut of Patrick O'Brien books until I finally got sick of guns and battles and ships. But oh, it's such a great adventure, the friendship between Aubrey and Maturin is so well conveyed and served through the storyline and the fantastic acting by Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany respectively, and it's such a handsome film as well, all expanses of ocean, furious storms, and exacting period detail.


Peter Pan (2003; d. P.J. Hogan)

A beautiful, wonderful film that captures the essence of Barrie's Neverland so well, both fantastic in its bold colours and lush scenery, and dark, as dark as it needs to be to convey the subtext of Barrie's work. The child actors are so good, particularly Rachel Hurd-Wood, who does such a subtle, lovely job as Wendy on the precipice of the end of innocence. It made me fall in love all over again with Peter Pan, restoring the depth in this children's book that had been missing from the Disney version I grew up with.


Chicago (2003; d. Rob Marshall)

I've seen this twice on the big screen, the second while picnicing at twilight in a park. It's a catchy, bold spectacle of a movie, that takes the great songs and balances it out with visuals that both capture the theatrical nature of the original stageshow as well as giving it a fluidity that it could only have onscreen, leaving an indelible impression. Both female leads in this are impressive; Catherine Zeta-Jones is fabulous as the clever, hardened cabaret star/husband killer, and Renee Zellweger plays Roxie well, all shiny surface and 'razzle-dazzle'.


Movies of the Decade: 2002
Movies of the Decade: 2000-2001

The Incredibles (2004; d. Brad Bird)

Wow! This is a fabulous movie - enjoyable, beautiful, intelligent and fun; but never too arch or clever to alienate an audience. The explosions, the deaths, the stretches of cartoon but still fatal violence means that little kidlets are out. However, for everyone else this is a funny, intelligent and beautifully presented movie.

The movie starts with a reel of mock interviews with some leading superheroes - Mr Incredible (who is, basically, incredible - super strong, superfast, kind, etc etc), Elastigirl (who is very "flexible"), Frozone (the power of ice with any available water) - about what they do, how they feel about what they do. But due to the interference of Mr Incredible's biggest fan, the superheroes all have to put their glory days behind them and melt back into normal life - and it seems this exposes the one fault in them all.

We see how everyday life suppresses them - by stopping them from using their superpowers, the beaurocracy and tedium is cutting away at an essential part of who they are. Mr Incredible (now Bob Parr) and his wife of 15 years, Elastigirl (now Helen Parr) find that marriage, and raising children (who themselves have superpowers they are not allowed to use), is not even remotely easy for people who could once save the world over and over again. There's a great deal of comedy to be milked from these, and as much pathos - the squabbling between husband and wife is familiar, and the kids bicker as siblings will; it's just that they can occasionally break out unusual methods of dealing or coping with difficulties.

The adventure part of the story kicks in when Bob is offered a job that promises to return the invincible greatness he once exercised, but it is all shrouded in secrecy, and anyone familiar with the trope of cartoons knows this cannot be a good thing. The script is great - it plays with the conventions of comic books and cartoons, either parodying them or updating them without resorting to mean-spirited mocking. There's a bit where Frozone (now Lucius Best) recounts an old victory where the villian cannot help but start "monologuing" about his inevitable victory on the cusp of destroying the superhero - thus giving the hero plenty of time to escape. Now, who hasn't laughed at moments like this in other movies? However, in a clever self-reference, when Mr Incredible is later trapped by the big bad of the movie, Syndrome interrupts himself mid-monologue and calls it out with a laugh.

A lot of thought has gone into the design of the film. The superpowers are not random, but correspond to the character and what they would like to be, what is hidden in them (for example, the teenage daughter is very self-conscious and thus has the power to become invisible; when she has gained confidence in her ability to use her superpower for good, she gains self-confidence in her "normal" life). The baby has indeterminate powers, as anonymous as any other baby, and basically, when its powers do manifest it's a great surprise that had the theatre laughing in an equal mixture of shock, amusement, and delight.

The animation is gorgeous. The colours are bright and bold yet elegant - which is another fun reference from a great side character, the costume designer Edna Mode - acceptably real while maintaining that cartoon feel. The action is played at a furious pace, but isn't tedious - part of the fun is seeing how their superpowers get them out of each situation - and the set design is just...wow. The science-fiction feel of Syndrome's island hideaway, the minimalist yet technologically eye-popping mansion that Edna lives in, the bland split-level the Barrs find themselves living in the heartland of suburbia - there's such attention to detail and character that builds a wonderful film to watch.