my movie awards for 2004
so it's the oscar season, and in protest of all that is big, bloated and over-hyped, i have decided to recognize some movies that i thought were far and away more enjoyable than their blockbuster kin.
to start, i want to honor HERO as the most beautiful movie ever made. i absolutely loved it, and i think it is so weird that that it didn't get even one nomination, when the flavor-of-the-month-sometime-in-2002 (crouching tiger) was half the movie HERO is.
next, i really think HOTEL RWANDA was an important and effective movie. i wish i could make everyone watch it. yes, it is hard to watch at times, but the filmmakers are careful to keep the shock value to a minimum so they can focus on telling the story.
i know that ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND is up for a few oscars. but really, it should be up for many more, including best picture and best actor. and i should say that i don't even like jim carrey either. it's just one of the most creatively ambitious movies ever.
any movie with angelina jolie in it should be automatically termed as a hollywood blockbuster. but SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW is different. first of all, the director had never done any movie before. and he animated the 6-minute short to land the deal all by himself on a mac II. the entire movie was shot on bluescreen and composed digitally for a really small budget. so it's an indie movie (kinda), and i liked the style.
and finally, hats off to SHAUN OF THE DEAD, a weird and quirky zombie comedy romance that actually works. those crazy brits!
yes, i know. i skipped napoleon (dynamite) because everyone knows about it already, so either you love it or hate it, and i can't say that it isn't overhyped anymore. i did enjoy some of the year's hollywood movies as well, like THE INCREDIBLES, THE BOURNE SUPREMACY and THE VILLAGE. but i'm all for the little guy, and i'll gladly skip most of the oscar pictures just because they all seem so pretentious and devoid of all creativity, striving with all their might to be terribly important and oscar-worthy.
posted by brett at 2:14 PM
3 Comments:
I hate to be the one to bring this up. really, I do.
but ... where do you see the passion fitting on the indie/blockbuster continuum?
7:04 AM
well, i have to respond. if only because you used 'continuum' in a sentence correctly.
no mike, "the passion" is not hollywood, or even mainstream, but i do believe that it has received as much attention as any film this year, so that's part of it. and here's the rest: i don't think it was that great of a movie. it's full of overwrought and heavy-handed emotionalism, and i don't think it really deserves to be awarded as much as some of the other films. but that's ok i think, because i think mr. gibson was shooting at a much loftier goal, which is to affect change in people's perception of who Jesus really was. and in that case, i believe he succeeded. and i am happy about it too. but looking at it purely as a movie, it didn't succeed nearly as much as i think it could have.
that said, i do wish to recognize GARDEN STATE, albeit after the fact. i guess it wasn't spectacular, because i forgot about it altogether, but i would still say that it was well-done and kitchy in a pleasant way, despite being a pretty blatant romance story.
12:48 PM
1 post oscars thought: i saw "million dollar baby" and was pretty disappointed. hilary swank did do a really great job on the lead character, but the rest was a bunch of supremely calculated emotional manipulation, meant to depress the snot out of you and impress everyone into buying into the media frenzy about the acting legend being so socially-conscious. boo! hiss! murmur!
3:13 PM
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