2004's Oscar Nominees

man, biopics

This year and the last one, you postponed them for a reason...I liked Sideways and probably still would, though it's been a while. Million Dollar Baby and The Aviator, kind of pedestrian. Haven't seen the other two.

Is that Werner Klemperer in the clip? Hardly aged at all.

It's surprising that Eternal Sunshine didn't get nominated this year

very much an air of lifetime service awards this year

you postponed them for a reason

Truly almost all the good years (at least post 1960) are definitely done and polled already

The Aviator. Def lower-tier Scorsese which means for me v good, he did a good job w/it and for a biopic at least it's kinda oddball and interesting like HH himself. But for it to be the best here has more to do with the competition.

Million Dollar Baby is a movie I'm happy to have only seen once, and little did we know then it would unleash further Paul Haggis on the world, but it's the only one I can back here ... "more to do with the competition" indeed

Ray without hesitation, one of the better biopics. I like Sideways. What a shitty year

Sideways by default. I don't hate The Aviator or even Million Dollar Baby, but they're weak sauce in what may have been one of the very few solid post-millennial years for American cinema (Eternal Sunshine, Before Sunset, The Incredibles, Kill Bill Vol. 2--what am I forgetting?). Never saw the other two nominees and likely never will.

Eternal Sunshine, Before Sunset, The Incredibles, Kill Bill Vol. 2--what am I forgetting?

Dogville got its American release in 2004. Also, there was Primer, I ♥ Huckabees, and The Life Aquatic, if you're into any of those things.

My Top 10 that year:

1. Mayor of the Sunset Strip
2. Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry
3. Sideways
4. My Architect: A Son's Journey
5. End of the Century
6. A League of Ordinary Gentlemen
7. Before Sunset
8. Word Wars
9. Baadasssss!
10. Spider-Man 2

I'm surprised I had Before Sunset on there; all I remember is seeing it with someone I had a crush on and pretending to like it more than I did.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry)
Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembène)
Before Sunset (Richard Linklater)
Vera Drake (Mike Leigh)
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-Liang)
I ♥ Huckabees (David O. Russell)
Ray (Taylor Hackford)
Ocean’s Twelve (Steven Soderbergh)
Mean Girls (Mark Waters)
Notre Musique (Jean-Luc Godard)

Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand)
Light is Calling (Bill Morrison, USA)
Kings and Queen (Arnaud Desplechin, France)
Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, USA)
Anatomy of Hell (Catherine Breillat, France)
Bad Education (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain)
The Case of the Grinning Cat (Chris Marker, France)
Vera Drake (Mike Leigh, UK)
Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembene, Senegal)
The Raspberry Reich (Bruce LaBruce, Canada)

Some of these came out in '05 here, obv. Crimson Gold, Dogville, and Los Angeles Plays Itself, all technically '03 films, I'm pretty sure I didn't see until '04. All would be in the top half of this list if I counted them.

Really awesome year tho. My next 10 in line:

Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, USA)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, USA)
Cinevardaphoto (Agnès Varda, France)
Howl’s Moving Castle (Hayao Miyazaki, Japan)
Notre Musique (Jean-Luc Godard, France)
The Ister (David Barison & Daniel Ross, Australia)
Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, USA)
Ma Mère (Christophe Honoré, France)
Tomorrow We Move (Chantal Akerman, France/Belgium)
The World (Jia Zhangke, China)

Many of your picks made my 2005 list, yeah

Mysterious Skin was definitely '05, release-wise. Joseph Gordon-Levitt deserved an Oscar nod for that one.

I voted Ray over The Aviator mostly because I think Jamie Foxx was better than Leo. But yeah, weak list. Never saw Finding Neverland. Sideways and Million Dollar Baby are both OK but I had issues with each.

My lists are kept by IMDB/Letterboxd year once a year or so has passed

According to my records, these were the NY release 2004 films I saw that year:

A Very Long Engagement (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)	con
Adored: Diary of a Male Porn Star (Marco Filiberti)	con
Alila (Amos Gitai)	mixed
Anatomy of Hell (Catherine Breillat)	pro
Around the World in 80 Days (Frank Coraci)	con
Bad Education (Pedro Almod�var)	PRO
Bear Cub (Miguel Albaladejo)	mixed
Before Sunset (Richard Linklater)	PRO
Benji: Off the Leash! (Joe Camp)	con
Blind Swordsman, The: Zatoichi (Takeshi Kitano)	pro
Blissfully Yours (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)	PRO
Bobby Jones -- Stroke of Genius (Rowdy Herrington)	CON
Born Into Brothels (Zana Briski & Ross Kauffman)	con
Bright Leaves (Ross McElwee)	pro
Broken Lizard's Club Dread (Jay Chandrasekhar)	CON
Brother to Brother (Rodney Evans)	pro
Cellular (David R. Ellis)	pro
Cinderella Story, A (Mark Rosman)	CON
Clearing, The (Pieter Jan Brugge)	con
Closer (Mike Nichols)	mixed
Connie and Carla (Michael Lembeck)	CON
Cowards Bend the Knee (Guy Maddin)	pro
Cowboys & Angels (David Gleeson)	con
Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi)	PRO
Dig! (Ondi Timoner)	mixed
Dirty Shame, A (John Waters)	mixed
Distant (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)	pro
Dogville (Lars von Trier)	pro
Dreamers, The (Bernardo Bertolucci)	mixed
Empathy (Amie Siegel)	pro
Enduring Love (Roger Michell)	mixed
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry)	PRO
Exorcist: The Beginning (Renny Harlin)	CON
Fahrenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore)	mixed
Five Obstructions, The (Jorgen Leth & Lars von Trier)	pro
Garfield (Pete Hewitt)	con
Good Bye Lenin! (Wolfgang Becker)	con
Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst (Robert Stone)	mixed
Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (Danny Leiner)	pro
Hero (Zhang Yimou)	pro
House of Flying Daggers (Zhang Yimou)	mixed
In the Realms of the Unreal (Jessica Yu)	con
Infernal Affairs (Andrew Lau & Alan Mak)	mixed
Innocence (Mamoru Oshii)	mixed
James's Journey to Jerusalem (Ra'anan Alexandrowicz)	con
Kill Bill Vol. 2 (Quentin Tarantino)	pro
King Arthur (Antoine Fuqua)	con
Ladder 49 (Jay Russell)	CON
Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen)	PRO
Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood)	PRO
Moolaade (Ousmane Sembene)	PRO
Mr. 3000 (Charles Stone III)	mixed
Napoleon Dynamite (Jared Hess)	mixed
New Guy (Bilge Ebiri)	mixed
Notebook, The (Nick Cassavetes)	CON
Notre Musique (Jean-Luc Godard)	pro
Primer (Shane Carruth)	mixed
Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagment, The (Garry Marshall)	CON
Raising Helen (Garry Marshall)	CON
Raja (Jacques Doillon)	pro
Ray (Taylor Hackford)	con
Resident Evil: Apocalypse (Alexander Witt)	con
Shrek 2 (Andrew Adamson & Kelly Asbury & Conrad Vernon)	CON
Sideways (Alexander Payne)	mixed
Sleepover (Joe Nussbaum)	CON
Spider-Man 2 (Sam Raimi)	mixed
Stepford Wives, The (Frank Oz)	mixed
Super Size Me (Morgan Spurlock)	con
Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (Bob Clark)	con
Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette)	mixed
Taxi (Tim Story)	con
Team America: World Police (Trey Parker)	mixed
Testosterone (David Moreton)	con
The Machinist (Brad Anderson)	con
The Saddest Music in the World (Guy Maddin)	mixed
Time of the Wolf (Michael Haneke)	pro
Twentynine Palms (Bruno Dumont)	CON
Two Brothers (Jean-Jacques Annaud)	con
Vera Drake (Mike Leigh)	PRO
Village, The (M. Night Shyamalan)	mixed
Zelary (Ondrej Trojan)	con

I do not miss that City Pages gig tbh

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Mysterious Skin was definitely '05, release-wise. Joseph Gordon-Levitt deserved an Oscar nod for that one.

― niall horanburger (cryptosicko), Monday, April 24, 2023 2:27 PM bookmarkflaglink

one of the most gut-wrenching stories I've seen. I saw the theatrical version before seeing the movie, which is even more shattering because unlike the movie, they obscure what happened to the main character as a child until the final scene, without so much as even leaving bread-crumbs.

JGL was definitely excellent in a very tough role

The Aviator and Sideways were the two I liked the most of these at the time, but I'm not sure how I'd feel about either now.

Sideways has the delightful quote - "I am NOT drinking any FUCKING MERLOT"

sideways, the movie about manbabies who hate women and are highbrow because they like wine

As I recalled, Sideways did take the Film Comment critics’ poll that year

https://www.filmcomment.com/article/best-films-of-2004/

Hard to imagine it surviving the gauntlet today

(The top 5 in the unreleased films poll … holy shit!)

scraped my posts from noize board & ILF, this was my cringey list lol:

2046
The Taste of Tea
Howl's Moving Castle
Oldboy
House Of Flying Daggers
The World
Clean
Nobody Knows
Tony Takitani
Last Life in the Universe

Hero (which Eric mentions)) was a 2002 release but maybe didn't make it to NA theaters until 2004...? I remember being really gorgeous.

Yeah, I can’t remember why it took so long to get to the states but Hero vs House was one of the big cinephile debates of the year iirc

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LOL I tried