Friday, October 30, 2009

A Little Help From My Friends

This week I decided that I was going to be reviewing the 2004 acting nominees as part of my feature The Races. I like to look at the competition as though I have a say in Oscar history. It's a fun little game of make-believe.

While working on the Best Actor race, however, a number of glaring snubs (Giamatti, Neeson, Bardem) convinced me to broaden my horizons a bit and look beyond Oscar. In addition to the acting races I'd like to look at 2004 (and other years, later) as a whole and talk about its strong points and influential pieces of cinema.

So if you could all do me a favor and recommend some films from 2004 you think I should see, that would be great. Titles I've already profiled from the year can be found here. Thanks in advance for your help!

3 comments:

Univarn said...

Let's see, I'm sure you've probably seen a few of these but haven't profiled them yet...

* Before Sunset (not sure if you've seen Before Sunrise though)
* Collateral - Great Tom Cruise performance.
* Der Untergang(Downfall) - great German film
* Garden State
* The Machinist
* Mean Creek - dreadfully overlooked dark indie teenage drama

I've been told Motorcycle Diaries is great but I've yet to see myself so I can't comment there :x. GL Look forward to your post on it :)

Ryan McNeil said...

Univarn mentioned it, but allow me to confirm it - MOTORCYCLE DIARIES is solid. Give it a look.

Along with those already mentioned, I'd suggest the following:

THE SEA INSIDE
THE HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS
HELLBOY
THE AVIATOR
THE INCREDIBLES
HOTEL RWANDA
CLOSER
SPIDER-MAN 2
A LIFE AQUATIC
COLLATERAL
I (heart) HUCKABEES

That oughta give you a wide enough sampler!

Andrew K. said...

I have to see I heart Huckabees. But year everything else mentioned, Mean Girls, Birth, The Sea Inside. Just three off the top of my head that weren't mentioned. You should check out my archives for my take on the year.

Post a Comment