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Lindsey Ramsey's Top 10
1. Garden State
Internal Sunshine Polar Express, and Spiderlove fallient! This has movie since...
girlfriend drive is searching for... tentious piece of
Gibson's film disdory of a worst- This pointless horsesigned to incite its message.
I have no idea how to express how much and why I love Garden State. Zach Braff, that evil genius on Scrubs, wrote, directed and starred in the movie that was missing from my life. Then he goes and puts my female crush, Natalie Portman, in it and I was gone. If that wasn't enough he produced a soundtrack that took my CD player hostage for weeks on end. Not to mention he filled his Garden State with funny, genuine, smart, kill-me-now cute moments and he did it all with a style and grace that defies any other film this year.
2. Before Sunset
Perhaps some may disagree with this choice but I've never watched a movie where the characters seem more realistic. The film is laced with long takes of just good conversation amidst
beautiful Paris scenery. The follow-up to the equally stunning Before Sunrise is smart, fresh and unabashedly romantic just the way I like it.
3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Charlie Kaufman script + Michael Gondry direction - usual film rules + Jim Carrey in a welcome subdued role - Kirsten Dunst's usual annoying traits + Kate Winslet's power and talent x a little dose of Elijah Wood and Mark Ruffalo for good fortune = the most fun, romantic but quirky manifesto on the importance of memory retention film ever.
Speaking of astounding, Jamie Foxx defines the word in Ray. The way he sways back and forth at the piano, the way he smiles, everything at his performance
4. Ray
was perfect and he carried what could have been a mediocre look at the highlights and low points in Ray
Charles' life to a film and a biopic truly worth admiring and applauding.
6. Collateral
5. The Aviator
True, I have not yet viewed this Leonardo
That wily Jamie Foxx makes another standout performance in Collateral, but it's not just him. Some guy named Tom Cruise shows up, dyes his hair, suddenly loses all flashes of his former self and turns into someone truly chilling. As he visits his various victims, director Michael Mann creates something, perhaps in the camera work or in the eerie way L.A is presented or perhaps the appearance of random wolves, which was different in all the right ways.
DiCaprio/Martin Scorsese biopic but I have faith in the makers. The trailer gives me chills and the source material has loads of promise. Unless something goes wrong like Leo not astounding with looks and talent (not possible), *The Aviator* will be
7. Closer
Not for the romantic-comedy crowd but a raw look into the tangled lives of four beautiful people who can't stop hurting each other. Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, Jude Law
flashy and tortured, just like the great Howard Hughes himself.
and Natalie Portman all are phenomenal as they repeatedly deceive each other. The dialogue is filthy and vulgar but it works because. . . I don't really know but you just feel cooler after watching it. Or really disturbed but either way you can't forget it.
8. Kill Bill, Vol.2
9. The Incredibles
Some may have forgotten that the Bride finally got her revenge earlier this year but I couldn't because it was so wonderfully fulfilled. The first *Kill Bill* was all violence. This one had heart and the Bride (a.k.a Mommy) was all the better for it
"Every time they run, you take a shot." And with this immortal line, Pixar films weren't just for kids anymore. Sure they could enjoy The Incredibles with the rest of us but the themes in this film weren't just for kiddies. After The Incredibles the standards have been set. Animated movies must adhere to its genius or we will never have this much fun in a theater again.
And Napoleon is not alone, so to you Kip, a toast to one of the funniest, most random films of the year, or decade.
Of all the losers I loved before, I will never love another as I love Napoleon. His hair; his boots; his sweet dance moves; all of this beauty and humor wrapped into one loud-breathing, nunchakus-wielding, Pegasus-loving kid.
10. Napoleon Dynamite
Honorable mentions: Sideways, I Heart Huckabees, Finding Neverland, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Bourne Supremacy, Saved!, Super Size Me
Jon Ralston's Top 10
1. Spider-Man 2
This is more than a great comic book movie: it's a great movie. Period. With spot-on acting, complex character development and smart writing to match the spectacular action,
Spider-Man 2 focuses more on the human side of being a hero than the super powers side of it. Sam Raimi's sequel does more than surpass the original — it surpasses any other movie this year..
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Music video director Michael Gondry's feature debut is the most original movie about relationships ever. With a screenplay written by king of the trippy movie, Charlie Kaufman, and pitch-perfect acting by Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet as the unhappy couple who erase one another out of their memories, Eternal Sunshine came out last spring, but should not be forgotten come in February and the Oscars.
3. The Incredibles
Pixar's best movie to date, The Incredibles is also its most mature and adult friendly. It's a superhero film that deals with subjects such as mid-life crises and dead-end jobs, and still has the usual Pixar humor present in Toy
Storyand Monster's Inc. With this and Spider-Man 2, it has been a good year for the superhero on screen.
4. Garden State
Scrubs star Zach Braff's feature directorial debut is quirky and offbeat, and manages to be darkly hilarious throughout. Braff plays a man who comes out of a social
coma when he stops taking his antidepressants after being heavily medicated most of his life by his psychiatrist father. This is also one of the sweetest movies of the year - Braff and Natalie Portman are adorable together.
5. Sideways
6. Collateral
Sideways might be the first road-buddy/wine connoisseur movie. Paul Giamatti plays Miles and Thomas Haden Church plays Jack, two friends who spend a week traversing around California's wine counties before Jack has to get married. Church comes out of nowhere and is great as the sleazy Jack, and Giamatti has Oscar written all over his performance.
Before Jamie Foxx received mass critical acclaim for playing Ray Charles, he was pretty darn good as Max in Collateral.
Foxx is a cabbie who one night picks up Vincent, who happens to be a hitman hired to kill five people in
Los Angeles before dawn the next day. Writer/director Michael Mann's dialogue is so authentic that it's easy to forget this is scripted material.
7. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
The first two Harry Potter movies were good. The third is great. Alfonso Cuarón took over directing for Chris Columbus and all of a sudden Harry wasn't a family-friendlyWiener anymore. By far the darkest of the three movies, young Potter and company are maturing quite nicely in Prisoner.J.K.Rowling's creativity and sense of humor mixes with Cuarón's deeper, more complex and authentic vision quite nicely.
8. Team America: World Police
There are few things funnier than a marionette puking its guts out after a night of heavy drinking ... Maybe puppets having
sex. It's not surprising that the funniest movie of the year comes from the minds of the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. They bring their take-noprisoners philosophy to make fun of everything and everyone from librals in Hollywood to
America's pretentiousness to always feel like it has to "save the mother fucking day, yeah!" Derka derka.
9. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
The most visually original movie of the year, Sky Captain is a throwback to serial radio shows from the '30s. Jude Law is perfectly cast as the dashing pilot and so is Gwyneth Paltrow as a nosy reporter. Shot entirely in front of a blue screen, the film has a hazy, surreal appearance that it's like watching a living dream.
10. Kill Bill, Vol.2
Quentin Tarantino's first movie in five
no's first movie in five years is split in half, with volume 1 released in at the tail end of 2003. The film is a revenge picture and never tries to be anything else. Where volume 1 is a throwback to kung-fu movies from the '60s, 2 is an Homage to the spaghetti western
in the days of Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone. And Uma Thurman looks pretty good kicking butt, too.
12. 9.04 Jayplay
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