Wow, it's been a long time since I got back to this.
2003: Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Really, I can't say much more about this than what has already been said. Two Towers is my favorite of the trilogy in a lot of ways, but RotK would be worth it just for Sam and Frodo at Mt. Doom, even if there was nothing else in the movie I love--which there's plenty of. Sam will break my heart every damn day.) (I also saw RotK as part of Trilogy Tuesday, a marathon of the extended versions of the first two LotR movies right before the premiere at the Cinerama theater in Seattle. There was a guy that sat near![[personal profile]]()
feochadn and I who spent the time in front of Fellowship expounding on the books and the movies as a whole, giving his serious critique of how everything was handled, and playing very cool and analytical. He then spent most of the rest of the afternoon/night SOBBING through the movies. Which was kinda sweet.)
Honorable Mentions: Master & Commander: Far Side of the World (If it wasn't RotK year, this would absolutely have been my favorite of the year. Another I saw at Cinerama with its sound-system: you could feel the sounds of the cannons in your breastbone. And I still hold out hope for them to eventually go back and make at least one more movie, maybe something which combines Reverse of the Medal and The Letter of Marque.)
(Going through the list for 2003, I kept thinking, "Wow, there's a lot of bad but fun movies. And just bad movies." But it was also the year of some pretty unexpectedly good/interesting horror films like Ju-On and Jeepers Creepers 2.)
2004: The Incredibles
Honorable Mentions: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (My favorite of the movies, and not just because it introduces Remus and Sirius, though it helps. It is darker, it is more adult, and it looks great.), Layer Cake (Oh, yeah), Shaun of the Dead, Walk on Water (Another one of my favorites where I wish more people even had access to se it! It's an Israeli-made movie about a Mossad agent who is set to get close to a young, gay German man, whose grandfather is suspected to be a Nazi war criminal.)
2005: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (I almost didn't see this, as what little press it got involved "the kiss", but then I saw a write-up of it which gave a nod to its neo-noirness, but also compared the dialog tempo to His Girl Friday, which meant I had to see it. Which I did. In the theater. For the week and a half it was in the theater. Have seen it a lot more since I got the disc.)
Honorable Mentions: Call of Cthulhu (One of the best productions of a Lovecraft story AND homage to silent films--and it's fan made by the HP Lovecraft Historical Society!), Kinky Boots (CHIWETEL!), Kingdom of Heaven (This is one of those rare cases where the extended director's cut not only filled in a lot of necessary information left out of the theatrical movie, it's actually paced better! But I loved seeing it on the big screen, nonetheless.), Serenity (meep)
2006: The Fall (This is a gorgeous film directed by Tarsem Singh. It's about a silent film-era stuntman, who is in a sanitorium after being paralyzed while filming. He ends up telling stories to a little Romanian girl who is there after having broken her arm. While, as with any Tarsem Singh project, the visuals are stunning, what I love the most is the role perspective plays on the entire film. The stuntman is telling the story a western, but the visuals are all from the little girl's perspective, who is populating them with some of the people she and her parents work with as migrant workers, and given a decidedly non-American western flair.)
Honorable Mentions: Bon Cop, Bad Cop, Casino Roayle,
2007: Live Free or Die Hard (I could say it was something else I enjoyed more, but it's not. NO APOLOGIES!)
Honorable Mentions: Sunshine, 3:10 to Yuma, The Mist
Not on the list: The Last Legion, which I had been so excited about when it was announced since it was Colin Firth as a Roman legionnaire. I am here to say it's one of the worst movies ever made. Besides the terrible writing and directing, I think they blew the entire budget on the cast (CF, Ben Kingsley, Kevin McKidd), because they certainly didn't put it into special effects. Yes, there's "special" effects.
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2003: Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Really, I can't say much more about this than what has already been said. Two Towers is my favorite of the trilogy in a lot of ways, but RotK would be worth it just for Sam and Frodo at Mt. Doom, even if there was nothing else in the movie I love--which there's plenty of. Sam will break my heart every damn day.) (I also saw RotK as part of Trilogy Tuesday, a marathon of the extended versions of the first two LotR movies right before the premiere at the Cinerama theater in Seattle. There was a guy that sat near
![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
feochadn and I who spent the time in front of Fellowship expounding on the books and the movies as a whole, giving his serious critique of how everything was handled, and playing very cool and analytical. He then spent most of the rest of the afternoon/night SOBBING through the movies. Which was kinda sweet.)Honorable Mentions: Master & Commander: Far Side of the World (If it wasn't RotK year, this would absolutely have been my favorite of the year. Another I saw at Cinerama with its sound-system: you could feel the sounds of the cannons in your breastbone. And I still hold out hope for them to eventually go back and make at least one more movie, maybe something which combines Reverse of the Medal and The Letter of Marque.)
(Going through the list for 2003, I kept thinking, "Wow, there's a lot of bad but fun movies. And just bad movies." But it was also the year of some pretty unexpectedly good/interesting horror films like Ju-On and Jeepers Creepers 2.)
2004: The Incredibles
Honorable Mentions: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (My favorite of the movies, and not just because it introduces Remus and Sirius, though it helps. It is darker, it is more adult, and it looks great.), Layer Cake (Oh, yeah), Shaun of the Dead, Walk on Water (Another one of my favorites where I wish more people even had access to se it! It's an Israeli-made movie about a Mossad agent who is set to get close to a young, gay German man, whose grandfather is suspected to be a Nazi war criminal.)
2005: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (I almost didn't see this, as what little press it got involved "the kiss", but then I saw a write-up of it which gave a nod to its neo-noirness, but also compared the dialog tempo to His Girl Friday, which meant I had to see it. Which I did. In the theater. For the week and a half it was in the theater. Have seen it a lot more since I got the disc.)
Honorable Mentions: Call of Cthulhu (One of the best productions of a Lovecraft story AND homage to silent films--and it's fan made by the HP Lovecraft Historical Society!), Kinky Boots (CHIWETEL!), Kingdom of Heaven (This is one of those rare cases where the extended director's cut not only filled in a lot of necessary information left out of the theatrical movie, it's actually paced better! But I loved seeing it on the big screen, nonetheless.), Serenity (meep)
2006: The Fall (This is a gorgeous film directed by Tarsem Singh. It's about a silent film-era stuntman, who is in a sanitorium after being paralyzed while filming. He ends up telling stories to a little Romanian girl who is there after having broken her arm. While, as with any Tarsem Singh project, the visuals are stunning, what I love the most is the role perspective plays on the entire film. The stuntman is telling the story a western, but the visuals are all from the little girl's perspective, who is populating them with some of the people she and her parents work with as migrant workers, and given a decidedly non-American western flair.)
Honorable Mentions: Bon Cop, Bad Cop, Casino Roayle,
2007: Live Free or Die Hard (I could say it was something else I enjoyed more, but it's not. NO APOLOGIES!)
Honorable Mentions: Sunshine, 3:10 to Yuma, The Mist
Not on the list: The Last Legion, which I had been so excited about when it was announced since it was Colin Firth as a Roman legionnaire. I am here to say it's one of the worst movies ever made. Besides the terrible writing and directing, I think they blew the entire budget on the cast (CF, Ben Kingsley, Kevin McKidd), because they certainly didn't put it into special effects. Yes, there's "special" effects.
