THE DUKE'S
FAVOURITE FLICKS
OF 2004
FAVOURITE FLICKS
OF 2004
What it is, folks, is there comes a point in a man’s life when he
has to admit, to accept, that he just can’t fucking well do
everything. When it came to flinging together my Best Of 2003 list
(which, oddly, featured some of the flicks I was gonna put on
here, before I noticed the overlap on account of fucked-up release
dates and such), it took until April 2004 before I felt
comfortable with it. This year, I strove for timeliness.
Now what I’m gonna do is take a leaf out of fellow Blogcritic
James Lars Ericson's book and just admit that there are flicks I
still haven’t seen, not for want of trying, and so what this is,
is My Favourite Flicks Of 2004 Thus Far, Until Such Times As I See
Everything.
Of course the things I still have to see (Birth and 2046 at one
end of the spectrum, being the Can’t-Wait’s, and shit like Polar
Express at the other, being a Couldn’t Care Less If I Tried) might
not affect the balance one way or the other. But they might, and
if they do, you’ll be the collective first motherfucker ever to
know.
Now, this right here isn’t a simple procedure, by any stretch of
the imagination. For the serious cineaste, what has to be done is
dozens upon dozens of lists have to made, and pie-charts
consulted, and percentages deduced and probably some shit
involving Pythagoras’s Theorem and all sorts a nonsense before one
even considers jotting down the numbers 1-14 and allocating flicks
to said numerical positions.
Shit like this right here, in fact;
The Year In Statistics
Number Of Flicks Witnessed In Inappropriate Conditions, I.E,
Creepy Asian Horror Watched In Daylight As Kids Ran About The
Place Hollering And Throwing Chocolate : 7
Toilet Breaks Per Home-Viewing Average: 1.5
Average Length Of Opening Credits, Post-Studio Logo Until
“Directed By” Or Similar: 4 minutes.
Number Of Arguments Occurring During Flick-Observing: 3.6
Rewind Average, I.E, Scene Missed Because Of Argument / Daydream /
Kirsten Dunst Walks Past Window: 54%
Cannibals, On Average, Per Minute In Selected Flicks: 0.02
Sex-Acts Witnessed During Screening In Multiplex (Non-Film-
Related): 1
So anyway, before we get to the list proper, there’s a few
prologues to wade through, i.e., this shit right here.
The Mondo Awards 2005 (Awarded To Flicks Released During 2004)
Performance Of The Year By Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Dunst (The Cat’s Meow)
The Golden Placenta – Awarded To Flick With Astounding Birthing
Sequence
Gozu (Dir: Takashi Miike)
Best Newcomer
Various Sharks (Open Water)
The Coming Or Going Award – For Outstanding Achievement In The
Field Of Bi-Sexuality
Glen / Glenda (Seed Of Chucky)
Outstanding Contribution With Regards Being A Mean Motherfucker
And Taking Not One Ounce Of Commie Taliban Horseshit, You Sons A
Bitches
Bill O’Reilly (Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War On Journalism)
Credits Of The Year
The Manson Family (Dir: Jim Van Beeber)
Outstanding Contribution To Spanners In Cinema
Rip Torn (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story)
Merit Award, i.e., You Ain’t Done Shit Worth A Shit, But One Time
You Did, So Here’s An Award
Dario Argento
Letter Of The Year
The Letter “S” (Saw, Spiderman 2, Shaun Of The Dead, School Of
Rock, Some Kind Of Monster, Searching For The Wrong Eyed Jesus,
Seed Of Chucky, etc)
Sort Of Honourable Mentions – Shit You May Have Expected To See On
The List, But Won’t
I Am A Robot
This flashy bout of flinging stuff about was the celluloid
equivalent of a decent masturbatory wank. Great fun at the time,
no doubt, but a fella feels a bit empty afterwards, and struggles
to remember much of anything about it. Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
Wimbledon
This had everything going for it, most of all a fantastically high
Kirsten Dunst / Screentime ratio, yet ended up being one of the
lesser entries in The Motherfucking Cinema Of Kirsten Dunst. Sorry
Kirsten, but I know you respect The Duke’s critical integrity.
Most likely somebody else’s fault, though. Read The Duke’s
Appraisal.
Exorcist – The Beginning
For sure, it had maggot riddled stillborn infants, possessed
youngsters, some nonsense or other about CGI hyenas, and a
motherfucking Zulu face-off. It was nasty as all hell, and
gleefully so. However, it narrowly misses the grade. Apologies,
Satan. Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
Kill Bill Vol. 2
Some folks believe that this is a better film than Vol.1, but then
some folks also think that Martians invaded their rectal holes for
to learn about science. When I heard that the limb-lopping would
be taking a back seat so as some prime Tarantino gibberish could
ride up-front, I was giddy as a fella smacked to the teeth on the
ganja-weeds. Turns out, though, what we get is a buncha horrible,
self-consciously “hip” toss about Superman, five-minute pauses
between syllables, and some old bollocks or other about what
Quentin believes regarding the womenfolk. And then there’s a
tortuously drawn-out, self-indulgent, crushingly tedious finale
intended to wring poignancy and closure from the situation, but
instead issuing a kick to the nut-glands of any motherfucker who
sat through the previous two-hours of pretentious pish.
Tarantino has never said anything remotely worthwhile about
anything, but at least the vacuous hearts of his previous flicks
were eclipsed by brilliant, witty banter and effortless cool. As a
film in it’s own right, Vol. 2 is among the worst of the year. As
a conclusion to the tale, it’s like if Frodo and that other hairy
bugger had just flung the ring into a bush and then spent three
hours exchanging stilted-dialogue about genital boils.
However, it does receive Disappointment Of The Year What Is 2004,
and in a year that saw not only Aliens Versus Predator, but also
The Village and The Grudge, that’s a mighty motherfucking
achievement. Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
The First Hour Of Fahrenheit 9/11
It’s a bit of an old critical cliché, truth be told, but it’s
shockingly appropriate; Fahrenheit 9/11 would have been twice the
film at half the length.
Also, never look a gift horse’s bird in the bush, or something.
Following an exhilarating first 45 minutes, Michael Moore goes off
on half a dozen tangents, gallivanting round his hometown, and
offering some stuff about Iraq. The latter makes sense, since like
the vastly shitty The Village, this is primarily a flick about
post 9/11 America, as opposed to a simple-minded Stomp Bush To
Fuck deal, regardless of what Moore himself assumes. It ain’t the
subject matter that’s at fault, but the handling of it. Again,
like The Village.
What occurs, is that Fahrenheit 9/11 pretty much plays out like a
blockbuster in reverse, with the frantic, nerve-rattling
revelations and emotional pay-off’s all happening in the first
act, with the flick becoming all the more restrained, settled and
unchallenging as it trundles along. Still, killer opening though,
and a notable decline half an hour in never did Saving Private
Ryan any lick of harm. Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
Dawn Of The Dead
Folks nowadays can’t be expected to have to bother with
superfluous shit like satire or social commentary. Fuck that
idealistic hippy shit right the hell now, is what. So what
happens, is that folks decided to remake Dawn Of The Dead, a
zombie flick that has little to do with zombies, all being told,
being more concerned with the consumerist rituals and the like,
except they ignored all that zany liberal seventies bullshit and
just had some heads exploding instead.
As a result, it’s almost as brain-dead as the pasty-faced
motherfuckers of the title, ie, the dead, rather than folks called
Dawn. Certainly that Dawn from the Buffy was very intelligent. Not
intelligent enough to bag her own series, but that’s the politics
of the telly TV for you.
Dawn Of The Dead 2004, by way of counteracting the lack of
philosophical musings, went ahead and utilised some spectacular
sleight-of-hand, by way of a brilliant opening, some adrenaline
molesting violence, lashings of guts and some nice black comedy
interludes. Not the best horror flick of the year, and not even
the best zombie flick of the year, and not even the best zombie
flick of the year that has “…Of The Dead” in the title, but a
bustin’ bag of cackles and hilarity nonetheless. Read The Duke’s
Appraisal.
Dodgeball
Funny as this shit was, and it was funny as a “cock flavoured
lollypop”, The Duke just can’t shake the notion that it failed to
live up to the potential. It’s consistently amusing, and maybe
it's a sign of just how damn good this year was for anything
concerning chuckles that it doesn’t make the list, but the fact
remains that the folks involved were funnier in other flicks, and
two of them have 2004 next to the title.
Still, seeing a man get spanners flung at his head is always worth
an hour and a half of any motherfucker’s day. And you just can’t
fault that “cock flavoured lollypop” gag.
Team America – World Police
This right here had a lot of stuff going for it. It had incredibly
funny songs. It had a brilliant opening ten minutes. It pretended
to despise all those Bruckheimer / Simpson pictures but couldn’t
hide the fact that deep down it loved the shit out of them.
However the hell, forty minutes in, some shit started to make
itself known. For one thing, it ran out of ideas. For another
thing, calling folks F.A.G’s isn’t funny. It’s what playground
bullies yell at the kids who prefer to watch some Woody Allen than
grab each other’s dicks on a football field by way of being manly.
And that’s without mentioning how the message, i.e., Apathy Is The
Way Forward, is as disgusting as any amount of puppet-puke.
When it works, though, this is as good as the best South Park
episodes. When it doesn’t, it’s like the ones that decide to call
Paris Hilton a whore for half an hour. Smug, self-righteous and
thoroughly unpleasant. Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
Battle Royale 2 – Requiem
What it is, y’see, is that I dunno if this is a very, very smart
satire, or a very, very stupid garble of bollock-paste. The former
is supported by overwrought dialogue and the shameless pillaging
of Hollywood war-movie set-pieces. Incidentally, all this supports
the latter argument, too. So is it blindingly intelligent or
shoddy arse hack-work? We’ll never fucking know. What we do know
is that it’s a hell of an exhilarating ride. You can read This
Review From Back A Long Many Days Ago, when The Duke reviewed for
The Harry Knowles Digest under the assumed pseudonym Ed Wood.
Any Other Year, Man – Flicks That Juuuussst Missed Out
Outfoxed : Rupert Murdoch’s War On Journalism
One of the best documentary flicks in a year filled with them, and
still not quite wonderful enough to rest alongside the absolute
best of 2004. That’s some mark of quality, is what.
What Outfoxed concerns itself with is the Fox News, and how it
serves to spit out right-wing propaganda under the ludicrous
declaration “Fair And Balanced.” It also gives Bill O’
MotherfuckinReilly his rightful place on the silver-screen, and
provides one of the most memorable scenes of the year, when the
hard-faced old fucker incredibly starts yelling abuse at the son
of a 9/11 victim. Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
The Manson Family
I fell in love with this the second it started, is the truth to be
told. Running out of funding every farts-end, Jim Van Bebber’s
demented, morally dubious concoction has been screening in varying-
states-of-completion at festivals since at least 1997. It finally
reached the UK this year, to not much fuss from anyone.
The opening credits are wonderful, a perfect homage to the flicks
of the late-60’s, early 70’s. It’s all in how those titles are
presented. The film-stock, the cast listed on one page, pretty
much, everything is spot-on. It has a fella genuinely questioning
whether this is a recent flick at all. That right there, that
level of dedication to making sure it feels just right, is why The
Duke fell in love with it.
And it’s just as well, since there are bits herein that a fella
could be hard pressed to sit through. If all the full-frontal
nudity doesn’t put you off a tad, chances are the reconstruction
of the Tate / LaBianca killings complete with lashings of
ridiculous rubber gore might.
Also, the present-day interludes concerning a crazed bunch of
Manson fans are pretty useless.
The stuff concerning the cult itself, though, shot with an array
of different film-stocks, looking a bit like Natural Born Killers
at times, most of that stuff is incredible. It reconstructs
documentary footage, news-reports, blurring fact and fiction
seamlessly. It’s a depressing, disorientating film, tasteless
beyond all reason, but it’s brilliant in its own way nonetheless.
Saw
At times Saw resembles nothing more innovative than a goth-rock
music video. One scene in particular seems lifted directly from
Marilyn Manson’s video for The Beautiful People. In addition, the
script is full to the nuts of shit like; “It appears that what has
happened is…” and “What’s going on is that…” and “I bet this is
all because of the time that…” i.e., exposition-heavy bullshit.
Also, at any given time, at least one of the two central actors is
abominable. They seem to take turns.
However the hell, Saw is a motherfucking delight from start to
end. A high-concept, low-budget serial killer flick that knows
it's got a hook worth hocking, and so does, relentlessly. Two
folks wake up in a room, chained at the ankles to the walls. One
of them has to kill the other, or his family is going to be
slaughtered.
Who can fail with such a premise? Into all this we get Danny
Glover, who’s too old for this shit, but who believes he knows the
identity of the killer. Also, we get loads of backstory, being a
tool with which to present a handful of fiendishly inventive games
the killer has played in the past. One woman has a bear-trap like
device strapped to her head, with the twist being that it springs
open instead of closed, thus ripping her head apart, unless she
finds the key to unlock the damn thing, which is buried in
somebody’s guts.
It never lets up, and it never gets tiresome, even if a couple of
the “twists” could have done with a further screw or three. It’s
original and imaginative, and worthy of a damn viewing, is what.
Omagh
Pete Travis’ exploration of the 1998 Omagh Bombing here in the
Northern Ireland is incredibly powerful, infuriating, lurching
violently from the serene to the tumultuous and back again. Co-
written by Paul Greengrass, who made the earlier Bloody Sunday (a
flick to which Omagh bears some resemblance), this right here
utilises the verite-esque cameras and the unflinching long-takes
to humanise something so often flung around as a political
missive. To take a disturbing series of statistics and headlines
and breathe life into them.
It’s a bit overlong, though, and the board-room dramas of the
second half can’t hope to compete with the visceral shock of the
first. But, alongside the aforementioned Bloody Sunday, it’s one
of only two flicks set in The Northern Ireland, of the dozens that
have been released in the last five years, that are in any way
worth watching.
Collateral
It’s high-time folks recognized Michael Mann for the consistently
brilliant genius he so obviously is. The Keep, Heat, The Outsider,
and now this right here. What more proof do you need?
Collateral was the best hit-man flick since Grosse Point Blanke,
and it gave Tommy Boy Cruise his best role since Jerry MacGuire.
And it still didn’t make The Duke’s List. What the fuck is wrong
with folks in this day and age? Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
Starsky And Hutch
Fuck knows what folks who expected a faithful homage to the TV
series made of it all. Maybe they expected Kurt Russell and Jeff
Fahey to be tracking down some low-ass drug cartel or some such.
Instead they got further proof that Todd Phillips is a
motherfucking God of comedy. From his Hated – GG Allin And The
Murder Junkies to Old School to this right here, ain’t a damn
wasted frame in his filmography. Ben Fokker and the fella from the
Jackie Chan stuff were good too. Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
Hellboy
Hellboy was nothing less than a whole heap of glee, is what. Also,
it had some seriously disturbing imagery in amidst all the blowing
stuff up. Those Lovercraftian squid-beasts hanging from out the
clouds made The Duke shudder something serious, I’m not afraid to
admit.
Also, although the notion of Nazi’s as supernatural mastermind’s
pisses The Duke off like little else, that S&M motherfucker was
one memorable nasty, is what. Prince Harry, I think he was called.
Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
Infernal Affairs
This Hong Kong number was released theatrically in the United UK
this year, but it took until it came to DVD for mine skull-blobs
to cross it. Holy shit, is all a fella could say. It’s an action
flick, sort of, and yet it’s one that doesn't even really have to
bother with gun-play for to get a man’s sweat-glands bouncing left
and right. The tensest moment in the whole damn thing involves
nothing more dangerous than a mobile phone, although I hear that
if you keep one in your pocket chances are the radiation and stuff
adversely affects your willy.
Napoleon Dynamite
I loved every second of this damn thing. There’s humanity dripping
from every frame, every character is memorable, the dialogue is
perfect, and it’s got the funniest scene about throwing an orange
that I ever in my motherfucking life witnessed even once.
Thing is, man, there’s only room for 14 motherfuckers in the list.
Sorry, is all.
And, Without Further Ado, The Duke’s Favourite Flicks Of 2004
Note – The Very Best Flick Of 2004 is listed first, and the rest
are alphabetical.
The Very Best Flick Of 2004
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
Eternal Sunshine is the kinda picture you don’t wanna show to your
significant other, in case they start getting ideas. It’s
painfully close to the mark, is what it is. Chances are, if you’ve
been sharing your tongue with the same person for a year or more,
bits of this’ll have your ears burning like some motherfucker just
erected a tiny barn in there and then next thing you know, holy
shit, the barns on fire.
Save the cows, for God’s sakes.
Anyhow, The Duke has loved Charlie Kaufman since I first saw Being
John Malcovich, and Adaptation only confirmed that this wire-
headed sonofabitch was a man fit for my jealousy. For sure, his
previous collaboration with Michele Gondry, Human Nature, was a
tad under-whelming, but they made up for that right the hell here.
And Kirsten. My God, woman, will you ever rest for a minute and
give some other schmuck a chance? What with your radiance and all
that jazz, how can anyone even care about Jim Carrey and something
to do with he forgets about Kate Winslet, even though he saw
Titanic at least twice, and taped Jude off of the telly one night,
although he thinks maybe he taped over it, he’s not sure.
Always label your videocassettes. You might wanna add “Don’t
touch” on there, in case someone wants to be recording Popular
Idols over the top of Henry 2 – Mask Of Sanity.
Anyhow, Eternal Sunshine is without doubt the most incredible
flick released this year. A breathtaking thing, is what it is.
It's Total Recall meets When Harry Met Sally, except with less
Martians and more Kirsten Dunst.
When Harry Forgot Sally, in fact.
Good fucking work Kaufman and Gondry. I hate you that little bit
more.
And Kirsten. What more accolades need I fling? I would bow, but I
can’t type properly from the floor.
21 Grams
Tell you the truth, Amores Perros always seemed to me to be much
less profound than it imagined. Which isn’t to say it wasn’t
great, cause it was, but still, it had less going on than you
might expect.
No such nonsense here, though. 21 Grams is easily the better film,
nothing short of a motherfucking masterpiece. Like Eternal
Sunshine, it makes you work for the rewards, is what. You don’t
get nothin’ for free in this day and age, except venereal disease,
and most times you gotta pay for that, too. 21 Grams takes a
fairly straightforward tragedy and flings the narrative components
onto the screen seemingly without rhyme nor reason. It’s like
you've accidentally hit the “random” thing on the DVD player. It
works like a charm, though, and a good charm, too, not one of
those voodoo affairs that make your head shrink or some shit.
Also, it’s doubtful whether Naomi Watts, Sean Penn or Benicio Del
Toro will ever better this shit right here.
Note – Technically, 21 Grams is a 2003 flick, but was released in
The United Uk in 2004.
Anchorman
Anchorman is unbelievably self-indulgent. Thankfully, Will Ferrell
is a funny fucker, so he can indulge himself all he chooses, is
what The Duke would invite. This right here has the best
improvised comedy this side of a Christopher Guest number, and
thank the lord that everyone else is as good as Ron Burgundy
himself.
“I’ll punch you in the ovaries” indeed.
Comedy Of The Year, is what Anchorman revealed itself to be.
The Cat’s Meow
This was originally made for telly back in 2001, would you
believe, but at long last has been granted a theatrical release.
And thank fuck for that. If you thought maybe Peter Bogdanovich
had gone off the boil a tad, then it’s time you redressed that
assumption.
What The Cat’s Meow concerns itself with is the legendary,
possibly apocryphal story of the murder of a young Hollywood go-
getter aboard William Randolph Hearst’s yaught back in the 1920’s.
The performances herein are astounding. Jennifer Tilly is as
brilliant as ever, Eddie Izzard as Charles Chaplin proves that he
can do more than just tell stupid jokes about birds, and Edward
Herrmann as Hearst is as good as he’s been since he was Max in The
Lost Boys.
The motherfucking head vampire, don’t you know?
The star of the whole damn thing, though, is undoubtedly Kirsten
Dunst, in what might actually be her very best performance thus
far. Playing Hearst’s wife, Marion Davies, she flirts endlessly
with Izzard’s Chaplin. When she does that smile she does where she
kind of looks up from under her eyelids and only one side of her
mouth goes up, when she does that in the direction of Chaplin as
Hearst looks on, it’s heart-breaking is what. And yet you never
even consider disliking her. And those elbow-length gloves. Shit,
man.
This is marvellous. God bless you, Peter Bogdanovich, Kirsten etc.
Control Room
What Control Room concerns itself with, is the day-to-day workings
of Arab news network Al-Jazeera in the midst's of the Iraq war.
Granted full access to every conceivable area, Jehane Noujaim
paints a picture of this most controversial of operations with a
matter-of-fact, non-judgemental tone that proves his earlier
documentaries like the marvellous StartUp.com were no flukes.
Al-Jazeera found itself in the rather perplexing situation of
being condemned by the Bush administration as a propaganda outlet
for Saddam Hussein, whilst Saddam Hussein was accusing it of being
a propaganda outlet for Bush. Noujaim’s film similarly found
itself condemned on all sides, not asking enough questions, asking
too many questions, too sympathetic to the Iraqis, too sympathetic
to the Americans etc etc. The film doesn’t offer concrete answers
on anything, but presents a series of characters, on both sides of
the conflict, whose views are treated with dignity and respect.
The Incredibles
Brad Bird is a fella I always hoped would hit it lucky. He was
behind some of the finest Simpsons episodes, and his criminally
overlooked The Iron Giant had the misfortune to be in the wrong
place at the wrong time, and burdened with a studio who couldn’t
give a flying gnat’s wank about it. Finally, praise be to God,
help arrived in the form of Pixar, themselves no strangers to
studio strife. What emerged may not be the best Pixar flick (For
The Duke’s money Toy Story 2 still has the edge), but is still one
of the best animated features produced by the U.S since back when
Snow White was sharing a bedroom with a loada sex-starved midgets.
Like The Iron Giant, The Incredibles takes fantastical elements
and makes them endearingly human, blends genuinely touching pathos
with funny as all hell quips and slapstick. And it’s given
Samuel L Jackson his best role in years.
Oldboy
To be honest, I didn’t think Chan-Wook Park would better Sympathy
For Mr. Vengeance. I’m still not sure if he did, but fuck me with
a brick if Oldboy doesn’t come as near as dammit.
What occurs is that a fella finds himself kidnapped and locked in
a room for 15 years with not even a hint of a clue as to why or
who’s behind it. You can be damn sure he’s gonna find out, though,
and along the way we’re gonna be treated to some live-squid being
eaten, and some fairly unpleasant hammer-teeth unions.
And that ending will ring around your skull for days, is what.
The Passion Of The Christ
Saw could have easily been Exploitation Flick Of The Year, if it
only had the sense for to stay indoors for another year. Best
Exploitation Flick Of 2004, though, can be nothing other than this
right here. The Passion Of The Christ not only has the high-
concept (“Jesus Dies! For Two Hours!”) but also a Titian-esque
beauty about it all. Easily the most stunningly cinematographed
flick this year, and when the subject of the visuals is a fella’s
flesh being torn asunder, that’s some achievement.
The only worrying thing is that I gotta credit Mel Gibson with
making one of my favourite films. Let’s just pretend it was
Fellini. And holy shit, man, for a dead fella this is a hell of a
movie. Read The Duke's Appraisal (My Very First For Blogcritics,
Don’t You Know?)
Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus
Here’s second best Rockumentary of the year, although it isn’t
really a Rockumentary at all. What it concerns is alt. country (or
“Hick-Hop”) troubadour Jim White taking us on a tour of the rural
American south, interspersed with performances from any number of
similarly mournful folks, be it The Handsome Family or 16
Horsepower.
The flick takes us to under-funded prisons, borderline-demented
revivalist meetings, corner-stores and bars, and presents a
mythical America fit for any amount of Gram Parsons lyrics.
The best documentary about rural America since Wisconsin Death
Trip.
Seed Of Chucky
Don Mancini knows a thing or two about subverting the horror
genre, is what. If he’s not scribbling a narrative about Chucky
and Tiffany (voiced by the unspeakably brilliant Jennifer Tilly)
are Bonnie And Clyde lovers on the run, then he’s writing and
directing this here masterpiece, concerning the sexual orientation
and the family trauma and the addictions and recovery.
Seed Of Chucky is remarkable for millions of reasons, but here’s a
handful; It has Jennifer Tilly playing two roles, one of which is
Jennifer Tilly. Upon closer inspection it reveals itself to be
possibly even smarter, and certainly subtler, than Bride Of
Chucky. It’s visually stunning. It effortlessly invites one to
consider Chucky as a fella with issues that need addressed, rather
than a doll what kills folks for the fuck of it. It has the best
performance by David Bowie of all ever, and he isn’t even in it.
And, of course, it starts off in Chucky’s nuts. A damn
masterpiece. Read The Duke's Appraisal or The Duke's Interview
With Don Mancini.
Shaun Of The Dead
Sometimes hype can be a good thing. Sometimes it means that a
brilliant flick which might otherwise be ignored can get the
audience it deserves. Other times, though, what happens is that
said audience’s expectations are raised so high that nothing on
God’s Green Earth, certainly nothing that doesn’t feature Kirsten
Dunst, can satisfy. Both of these situations, strangely enough,
affected Shaun Of The Dead.
What it is, is a beautiful, incredibly funny romantic comedy that
just happens to take place amidst a zombie outbreak of some sort.
You may have heard that it’s from the fellas who gave us the cult
UK comedy Spaced, but truth be told it bears little aesthetic
relation to that occasionally hit-and-miss telly show. It shares
its affection for popular culture, though, which is why we get
possibly the greatest use of the music of The Smiths in any flick
ever, the best joke about The Stone Roses, a snide comment
concerning 28 Days Later and loads more pleasingly smart-arse guff
that would need a motherfucking list of its own just to
accommodate.
It’s also imminently quote-worthy. “Would any of you cunts like a
drink” and “You’ve got red on you” are going to be boring the fuck
out of innocent civilians in Students Union bars from now till
doomsday.
Thanks a fucking bunch, various zombies. Read The Duke’s
Appraisal.
Some Kind Of Monster
After seeing this masterpiece, I went out and got hold of the St.
Anger record, the making of which is painstakingly detailed
herein. Surely it couldn’t be as bad as it appears in the film, I
thought? Surely that shit scrawled on pieces of paper in-between
therapy sessions didn’t make it onto the actual lyric sheet? Well
fuck me with a nun, it turns out it was that bad, and yes, those
are the lyrics.
The point is that the music in this flick is uniformly shitty. And
yet Some Kind Of Monster is completely captivating, transfixing,
the best documentary of the year, and one of the 14 best flicks of
any persuasion to have (2004) next to the title. At times you
wanna cringe like in The Office when David Brent did his stand-up
routine at the start of Series 2. At others you wanna cry like
when David Brent might be getting sacked at the end of The Office
Series 2. At still other moments, you laugh like when David Brent
was doing his comic relief dance in The Office Series 2.
It’s one of the best rockumentaries I’ve ever seen. It’s as good
as Don’t Look Back or Eat The Document or The Filth And The Fury
or Hated – GG Allin And The Murder Junkies, and it’s better than
Let It Be or I Am Trying To Break Your Heart. It’s fucking
sublime, and at two-and-a-half-hours, still feels far too short.
Read The Duke's Appraisal.
Spiderman 2
If you’ve read The Duke’s recent musings on the similarities
between Spider-Man and The Passion Of The Christ, you’ll have
picked up that I found this to be a remarkable film, but more so
on a second viewing.
This is the best comic-book film ever made. It’s better than
Richard Donner’s two Superman flicks, it’s even better than
Superman 4 – The Quest For Peace, when Superman had to fight David
Lee Roth or whoever the fuck that Nuclear fella was. It’s better
than Ichi The Killer, it’s better than Ang Lee’s masterful Hulk. I
don’t know how the hell Sam Raimi is gonna better this, but even
if Spider-Man 3 turns out to be a disappointment, this here’ll
shine on for decades.
And let The Duke state for the record, no amount of cars flinging
through windows would have caused that kiss for to be postponed.
Not all the taxis in NYC.
A Tale Of Two Sisters
Nowadays everybody wants to be twisting and turning in the horror
flicks. It’s rare, though, that the twists and the turns prove
more rewarding with each successive viewing. That right there,
amongst many other things, is what Ji-woon Kim has accomplished in
this stunning, visually beautiful fairy tale.
And it is a fairy tale, it’s even based on one, but that doesn’t
mean you won’t get freaky fucking ladies hiding below the kitchen,
or similarly gut-bothering females trundling through a bedroom. It
does have a wicked stepmother though, but even that gets subverted.
It’s a masterpiece, is what it is. Truly fucking exceptional. Read
The Duke's Appraisal.
The Twist At The End
The twist is that there’s a 15th flick, and it’s none other than
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, which bettered the
previous two instalments in pretty much every imaginable area, and
also had a cameo from none other than Ian Motherfucking Brown.
Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
Well folks, that’s your damn lot. Now to get thinking about 2005,
the list for which has been started a couple nights ago.
Thanks folks.
Drop The Duke A Line
has to admit, to accept, that he just can’t fucking well do
everything. When it came to flinging together my Best Of 2003 list
(which, oddly, featured some of the flicks I was gonna put on
here, before I noticed the overlap on account of fucked-up release
dates and such), it took until April 2004 before I felt
comfortable with it. This year, I strove for timeliness.
Now what I’m gonna do is take a leaf out of fellow Blogcritic
James Lars Ericson's book and just admit that there are flicks I
still haven’t seen, not for want of trying, and so what this is,
is My Favourite Flicks Of 2004 Thus Far, Until Such Times As I See
Everything.
Of course the things I still have to see (Birth and 2046 at one
end of the spectrum, being the Can’t-Wait’s, and shit like Polar
Express at the other, being a Couldn’t Care Less If I Tried) might
not affect the balance one way or the other. But they might, and
if they do, you’ll be the collective first motherfucker ever to
know.
Now, this right here isn’t a simple procedure, by any stretch of
the imagination. For the serious cineaste, what has to be done is
dozens upon dozens of lists have to made, and pie-charts
consulted, and percentages deduced and probably some shit
involving Pythagoras’s Theorem and all sorts a nonsense before one
even considers jotting down the numbers 1-14 and allocating flicks
to said numerical positions.
Shit like this right here, in fact;
The Year In Statistics
Number Of Flicks Witnessed In Inappropriate Conditions, I.E,
Creepy Asian Horror Watched In Daylight As Kids Ran About The
Place Hollering And Throwing Chocolate : 7
Toilet Breaks Per Home-Viewing Average: 1.5
Average Length Of Opening Credits, Post-Studio Logo Until
“Directed By” Or Similar: 4 minutes.
Number Of Arguments Occurring During Flick-Observing: 3.6
Rewind Average, I.E, Scene Missed Because Of Argument / Daydream /
Kirsten Dunst Walks Past Window: 54%
Cannibals, On Average, Per Minute In Selected Flicks: 0.02
Sex-Acts Witnessed During Screening In Multiplex (Non-Film-
Related): 1
So anyway, before we get to the list proper, there’s a few
prologues to wade through, i.e., this shit right here.
The Mondo Awards 2005 (Awarded To Flicks Released During 2004)
Performance Of The Year By Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Dunst (The Cat’s Meow)
The Golden Placenta – Awarded To Flick With Astounding Birthing
Sequence
Gozu (Dir: Takashi Miike)
Best Newcomer
Various Sharks (Open Water)
The Coming Or Going Award – For Outstanding Achievement In The
Field Of Bi-Sexuality
Glen / Glenda (Seed Of Chucky)
Outstanding Contribution With Regards Being A Mean Motherfucker
And Taking Not One Ounce Of Commie Taliban Horseshit, You Sons A
Bitches
Bill O’Reilly (Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War On Journalism)
Credits Of The Year
The Manson Family (Dir: Jim Van Beeber)
Outstanding Contribution To Spanners In Cinema
Rip Torn (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story)
Merit Award, i.e., You Ain’t Done Shit Worth A Shit, But One Time
You Did, So Here’s An Award
Dario Argento
Letter Of The Year
The Letter “S” (Saw, Spiderman 2, Shaun Of The Dead, School Of
Rock, Some Kind Of Monster, Searching For The Wrong Eyed Jesus,
Seed Of Chucky, etc)
Sort Of Honourable Mentions – Shit You May Have Expected To See On
The List, But Won’t
I Am A Robot
This flashy bout of flinging stuff about was the celluloid
equivalent of a decent masturbatory wank. Great fun at the time,
no doubt, but a fella feels a bit empty afterwards, and struggles
to remember much of anything about it. Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
Wimbledon
This had everything going for it, most of all a fantastically high
Kirsten Dunst / Screentime ratio, yet ended up being one of the
lesser entries in The Motherfucking Cinema Of Kirsten Dunst. Sorry
Kirsten, but I know you respect The Duke’s critical integrity.
Most likely somebody else’s fault, though. Read The Duke’s
Appraisal.
Exorcist – The Beginning
For sure, it had maggot riddled stillborn infants, possessed
youngsters, some nonsense or other about CGI hyenas, and a
motherfucking Zulu face-off. It was nasty as all hell, and
gleefully so. However, it narrowly misses the grade. Apologies,
Satan. Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
Kill Bill Vol. 2
Some folks believe that this is a better film than Vol.1, but then
some folks also think that Martians invaded their rectal holes for
to learn about science. When I heard that the limb-lopping would
be taking a back seat so as some prime Tarantino gibberish could
ride up-front, I was giddy as a fella smacked to the teeth on the
ganja-weeds. Turns out, though, what we get is a buncha horrible,
self-consciously “hip” toss about Superman, five-minute pauses
between syllables, and some old bollocks or other about what
Quentin believes regarding the womenfolk. And then there’s a
tortuously drawn-out, self-indulgent, crushingly tedious finale
intended to wring poignancy and closure from the situation, but
instead issuing a kick to the nut-glands of any motherfucker who
sat through the previous two-hours of pretentious pish.
Tarantino has never said anything remotely worthwhile about
anything, but at least the vacuous hearts of his previous flicks
were eclipsed by brilliant, witty banter and effortless cool. As a
film in it’s own right, Vol. 2 is among the worst of the year. As
a conclusion to the tale, it’s like if Frodo and that other hairy
bugger had just flung the ring into a bush and then spent three
hours exchanging stilted-dialogue about genital boils.
However, it does receive Disappointment Of The Year What Is 2004,
and in a year that saw not only Aliens Versus Predator, but also
The Village and The Grudge, that’s a mighty motherfucking
achievement. Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
The First Hour Of Fahrenheit 9/11
It’s a bit of an old critical cliché, truth be told, but it’s
shockingly appropriate; Fahrenheit 9/11 would have been twice the
film at half the length.
Also, never look a gift horse’s bird in the bush, or something.
Following an exhilarating first 45 minutes, Michael Moore goes off
on half a dozen tangents, gallivanting round his hometown, and
offering some stuff about Iraq. The latter makes sense, since like
the vastly shitty The Village, this is primarily a flick about
post 9/11 America, as opposed to a simple-minded Stomp Bush To
Fuck deal, regardless of what Moore himself assumes. It ain’t the
subject matter that’s at fault, but the handling of it. Again,
like The Village.
What occurs, is that Fahrenheit 9/11 pretty much plays out like a
blockbuster in reverse, with the frantic, nerve-rattling
revelations and emotional pay-off’s all happening in the first
act, with the flick becoming all the more restrained, settled and
unchallenging as it trundles along. Still, killer opening though,
and a notable decline half an hour in never did Saving Private
Ryan any lick of harm. Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
Dawn Of The Dead
Folks nowadays can’t be expected to have to bother with
superfluous shit like satire or social commentary. Fuck that
idealistic hippy shit right the hell now, is what. So what
happens, is that folks decided to remake Dawn Of The Dead, a
zombie flick that has little to do with zombies, all being told,
being more concerned with the consumerist rituals and the like,
except they ignored all that zany liberal seventies bullshit and
just had some heads exploding instead.
As a result, it’s almost as brain-dead as the pasty-faced
motherfuckers of the title, ie, the dead, rather than folks called
Dawn. Certainly that Dawn from the Buffy was very intelligent. Not
intelligent enough to bag her own series, but that’s the politics
of the telly TV for you.
Dawn Of The Dead 2004, by way of counteracting the lack of
philosophical musings, went ahead and utilised some spectacular
sleight-of-hand, by way of a brilliant opening, some adrenaline
molesting violence, lashings of guts and some nice black comedy
interludes. Not the best horror flick of the year, and not even
the best zombie flick of the year, and not even the best zombie
flick of the year that has “…Of The Dead” in the title, but a
bustin’ bag of cackles and hilarity nonetheless. Read The Duke’s
Appraisal.
Dodgeball
Funny as this shit was, and it was funny as a “cock flavoured
lollypop”, The Duke just can’t shake the notion that it failed to
live up to the potential. It’s consistently amusing, and maybe
it's a sign of just how damn good this year was for anything
concerning chuckles that it doesn’t make the list, but the fact
remains that the folks involved were funnier in other flicks, and
two of them have 2004 next to the title.
Still, seeing a man get spanners flung at his head is always worth
an hour and a half of any motherfucker’s day. And you just can’t
fault that “cock flavoured lollypop” gag.
Team America – World Police
This right here had a lot of stuff going for it. It had incredibly
funny songs. It had a brilliant opening ten minutes. It pretended
to despise all those Bruckheimer / Simpson pictures but couldn’t
hide the fact that deep down it loved the shit out of them.
However the hell, forty minutes in, some shit started to make
itself known. For one thing, it ran out of ideas. For another
thing, calling folks F.A.G’s isn’t funny. It’s what playground
bullies yell at the kids who prefer to watch some Woody Allen than
grab each other’s dicks on a football field by way of being manly.
And that’s without mentioning how the message, i.e., Apathy Is The
Way Forward, is as disgusting as any amount of puppet-puke.
When it works, though, this is as good as the best South Park
episodes. When it doesn’t, it’s like the ones that decide to call
Paris Hilton a whore for half an hour. Smug, self-righteous and
thoroughly unpleasant. Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
Battle Royale 2 – Requiem
What it is, y’see, is that I dunno if this is a very, very smart
satire, or a very, very stupid garble of bollock-paste. The former
is supported by overwrought dialogue and the shameless pillaging
of Hollywood war-movie set-pieces. Incidentally, all this supports
the latter argument, too. So is it blindingly intelligent or
shoddy arse hack-work? We’ll never fucking know. What we do know
is that it’s a hell of an exhilarating ride. You can read This
Review From Back A Long Many Days Ago, when The Duke reviewed for
The Harry Knowles Digest under the assumed pseudonym Ed Wood.
Any Other Year, Man – Flicks That Juuuussst Missed Out
Outfoxed : Rupert Murdoch’s War On Journalism
One of the best documentary flicks in a year filled with them, and
still not quite wonderful enough to rest alongside the absolute
best of 2004. That’s some mark of quality, is what.
What Outfoxed concerns itself with is the Fox News, and how it
serves to spit out right-wing propaganda under the ludicrous
declaration “Fair And Balanced.” It also gives Bill O’
MotherfuckinReilly his rightful place on the silver-screen, and
provides one of the most memorable scenes of the year, when the
hard-faced old fucker incredibly starts yelling abuse at the son
of a 9/11 victim. Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
The Manson Family
I fell in love with this the second it started, is the truth to be
told. Running out of funding every farts-end, Jim Van Bebber’s
demented, morally dubious concoction has been screening in varying-
states-of-completion at festivals since at least 1997. It finally
reached the UK this year, to not much fuss from anyone.
The opening credits are wonderful, a perfect homage to the flicks
of the late-60’s, early 70’s. It’s all in how those titles are
presented. The film-stock, the cast listed on one page, pretty
much, everything is spot-on. It has a fella genuinely questioning
whether this is a recent flick at all. That right there, that
level of dedication to making sure it feels just right, is why The
Duke fell in love with it.
And it’s just as well, since there are bits herein that a fella
could be hard pressed to sit through. If all the full-frontal
nudity doesn’t put you off a tad, chances are the reconstruction
of the Tate / LaBianca killings complete with lashings of
ridiculous rubber gore might.
Also, the present-day interludes concerning a crazed bunch of
Manson fans are pretty useless.
The stuff concerning the cult itself, though, shot with an array
of different film-stocks, looking a bit like Natural Born Killers
at times, most of that stuff is incredible. It reconstructs
documentary footage, news-reports, blurring fact and fiction
seamlessly. It’s a depressing, disorientating film, tasteless
beyond all reason, but it’s brilliant in its own way nonetheless.
Saw
At times Saw resembles nothing more innovative than a goth-rock
music video. One scene in particular seems lifted directly from
Marilyn Manson’s video for The Beautiful People. In addition, the
script is full to the nuts of shit like; “It appears that what has
happened is…” and “What’s going on is that…” and “I bet this is
all because of the time that…” i.e., exposition-heavy bullshit.
Also, at any given time, at least one of the two central actors is
abominable. They seem to take turns.
However the hell, Saw is a motherfucking delight from start to
end. A high-concept, low-budget serial killer flick that knows
it's got a hook worth hocking, and so does, relentlessly. Two
folks wake up in a room, chained at the ankles to the walls. One
of them has to kill the other, or his family is going to be
slaughtered.
Who can fail with such a premise? Into all this we get Danny
Glover, who’s too old for this shit, but who believes he knows the
identity of the killer. Also, we get loads of backstory, being a
tool with which to present a handful of fiendishly inventive games
the killer has played in the past. One woman has a bear-trap like
device strapped to her head, with the twist being that it springs
open instead of closed, thus ripping her head apart, unless she
finds the key to unlock the damn thing, which is buried in
somebody’s guts.
It never lets up, and it never gets tiresome, even if a couple of
the “twists” could have done with a further screw or three. It’s
original and imaginative, and worthy of a damn viewing, is what.
Omagh
Pete Travis’ exploration of the 1998 Omagh Bombing here in the
Northern Ireland is incredibly powerful, infuriating, lurching
violently from the serene to the tumultuous and back again. Co-
written by Paul Greengrass, who made the earlier Bloody Sunday (a
flick to which Omagh bears some resemblance), this right here
utilises the verite-esque cameras and the unflinching long-takes
to humanise something so often flung around as a political
missive. To take a disturbing series of statistics and headlines
and breathe life into them.
It’s a bit overlong, though, and the board-room dramas of the
second half can’t hope to compete with the visceral shock of the
first. But, alongside the aforementioned Bloody Sunday, it’s one
of only two flicks set in The Northern Ireland, of the dozens that
have been released in the last five years, that are in any way
worth watching.
Collateral
It’s high-time folks recognized Michael Mann for the consistently
brilliant genius he so obviously is. The Keep, Heat, The Outsider,
and now this right here. What more proof do you need?
Collateral was the best hit-man flick since Grosse Point Blanke,
and it gave Tommy Boy Cruise his best role since Jerry MacGuire.
And it still didn’t make The Duke’s List. What the fuck is wrong
with folks in this day and age? Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
Starsky And Hutch
Fuck knows what folks who expected a faithful homage to the TV
series made of it all. Maybe they expected Kurt Russell and Jeff
Fahey to be tracking down some low-ass drug cartel or some such.
Instead they got further proof that Todd Phillips is a
motherfucking God of comedy. From his Hated – GG Allin And The
Murder Junkies to Old School to this right here, ain’t a damn
wasted frame in his filmography. Ben Fokker and the fella from the
Jackie Chan stuff were good too. Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
Hellboy
Hellboy was nothing less than a whole heap of glee, is what. Also,
it had some seriously disturbing imagery in amidst all the blowing
stuff up. Those Lovercraftian squid-beasts hanging from out the
clouds made The Duke shudder something serious, I’m not afraid to
admit.
Also, although the notion of Nazi’s as supernatural mastermind’s
pisses The Duke off like little else, that S&M motherfucker was
one memorable nasty, is what. Prince Harry, I think he was called.
Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
Infernal Affairs
This Hong Kong number was released theatrically in the United UK
this year, but it took until it came to DVD for mine skull-blobs
to cross it. Holy shit, is all a fella could say. It’s an action
flick, sort of, and yet it’s one that doesn't even really have to
bother with gun-play for to get a man’s sweat-glands bouncing left
and right. The tensest moment in the whole damn thing involves
nothing more dangerous than a mobile phone, although I hear that
if you keep one in your pocket chances are the radiation and stuff
adversely affects your willy.
Napoleon Dynamite
I loved every second of this damn thing. There’s humanity dripping
from every frame, every character is memorable, the dialogue is
perfect, and it’s got the funniest scene about throwing an orange
that I ever in my motherfucking life witnessed even once.
Thing is, man, there’s only room for 14 motherfuckers in the list.
Sorry, is all.
And, Without Further Ado, The Duke’s Favourite Flicks Of 2004
Note – The Very Best Flick Of 2004 is listed first, and the rest
are alphabetical.
The Very Best Flick Of 2004
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
Eternal Sunshine is the kinda picture you don’t wanna show to your
significant other, in case they start getting ideas. It’s
painfully close to the mark, is what it is. Chances are, if you’ve
been sharing your tongue with the same person for a year or more,
bits of this’ll have your ears burning like some motherfucker just
erected a tiny barn in there and then next thing you know, holy
shit, the barns on fire.
Save the cows, for God’s sakes.
Anyhow, The Duke has loved Charlie Kaufman since I first saw Being
John Malcovich, and Adaptation only confirmed that this wire-
headed sonofabitch was a man fit for my jealousy. For sure, his
previous collaboration with Michele Gondry, Human Nature, was a
tad under-whelming, but they made up for that right the hell here.
And Kirsten. My God, woman, will you ever rest for a minute and
give some other schmuck a chance? What with your radiance and all
that jazz, how can anyone even care about Jim Carrey and something
to do with he forgets about Kate Winslet, even though he saw
Titanic at least twice, and taped Jude off of the telly one night,
although he thinks maybe he taped over it, he’s not sure.
Always label your videocassettes. You might wanna add “Don’t
touch” on there, in case someone wants to be recording Popular
Idols over the top of Henry 2 – Mask Of Sanity.
Anyhow, Eternal Sunshine is without doubt the most incredible
flick released this year. A breathtaking thing, is what it is.
It's Total Recall meets When Harry Met Sally, except with less
Martians and more Kirsten Dunst.
When Harry Forgot Sally, in fact.
Good fucking work Kaufman and Gondry. I hate you that little bit
more.
And Kirsten. What more accolades need I fling? I would bow, but I
can’t type properly from the floor.
21 Grams
Tell you the truth, Amores Perros always seemed to me to be much
less profound than it imagined. Which isn’t to say it wasn’t
great, cause it was, but still, it had less going on than you
might expect.
No such nonsense here, though. 21 Grams is easily the better film,
nothing short of a motherfucking masterpiece. Like Eternal
Sunshine, it makes you work for the rewards, is what. You don’t
get nothin’ for free in this day and age, except venereal disease,
and most times you gotta pay for that, too. 21 Grams takes a
fairly straightforward tragedy and flings the narrative components
onto the screen seemingly without rhyme nor reason. It’s like
you've accidentally hit the “random” thing on the DVD player. It
works like a charm, though, and a good charm, too, not one of
those voodoo affairs that make your head shrink or some shit.
Also, it’s doubtful whether Naomi Watts, Sean Penn or Benicio Del
Toro will ever better this shit right here.
Note – Technically, 21 Grams is a 2003 flick, but was released in
The United Uk in 2004.
Anchorman
Anchorman is unbelievably self-indulgent. Thankfully, Will Ferrell
is a funny fucker, so he can indulge himself all he chooses, is
what The Duke would invite. This right here has the best
improvised comedy this side of a Christopher Guest number, and
thank the lord that everyone else is as good as Ron Burgundy
himself.
“I’ll punch you in the ovaries” indeed.
Comedy Of The Year, is what Anchorman revealed itself to be.
The Cat’s Meow
This was originally made for telly back in 2001, would you
believe, but at long last has been granted a theatrical release.
And thank fuck for that. If you thought maybe Peter Bogdanovich
had gone off the boil a tad, then it’s time you redressed that
assumption.
What The Cat’s Meow concerns itself with is the legendary,
possibly apocryphal story of the murder of a young Hollywood go-
getter aboard William Randolph Hearst’s yaught back in the 1920’s.
The performances herein are astounding. Jennifer Tilly is as
brilliant as ever, Eddie Izzard as Charles Chaplin proves that he
can do more than just tell stupid jokes about birds, and Edward
Herrmann as Hearst is as good as he’s been since he was Max in The
Lost Boys.
The motherfucking head vampire, don’t you know?
The star of the whole damn thing, though, is undoubtedly Kirsten
Dunst, in what might actually be her very best performance thus
far. Playing Hearst’s wife, Marion Davies, she flirts endlessly
with Izzard’s Chaplin. When she does that smile she does where she
kind of looks up from under her eyelids and only one side of her
mouth goes up, when she does that in the direction of Chaplin as
Hearst looks on, it’s heart-breaking is what. And yet you never
even consider disliking her. And those elbow-length gloves. Shit,
man.
This is marvellous. God bless you, Peter Bogdanovich, Kirsten etc.
Control Room
What Control Room concerns itself with, is the day-to-day workings
of Arab news network Al-Jazeera in the midst's of the Iraq war.
Granted full access to every conceivable area, Jehane Noujaim
paints a picture of this most controversial of operations with a
matter-of-fact, non-judgemental tone that proves his earlier
documentaries like the marvellous StartUp.com were no flukes.
Al-Jazeera found itself in the rather perplexing situation of
being condemned by the Bush administration as a propaganda outlet
for Saddam Hussein, whilst Saddam Hussein was accusing it of being
a propaganda outlet for Bush. Noujaim’s film similarly found
itself condemned on all sides, not asking enough questions, asking
too many questions, too sympathetic to the Iraqis, too sympathetic
to the Americans etc etc. The film doesn’t offer concrete answers
on anything, but presents a series of characters, on both sides of
the conflict, whose views are treated with dignity and respect.
The Incredibles
Brad Bird is a fella I always hoped would hit it lucky. He was
behind some of the finest Simpsons episodes, and his criminally
overlooked The Iron Giant had the misfortune to be in the wrong
place at the wrong time, and burdened with a studio who couldn’t
give a flying gnat’s wank about it. Finally, praise be to God,
help arrived in the form of Pixar, themselves no strangers to
studio strife. What emerged may not be the best Pixar flick (For
The Duke’s money Toy Story 2 still has the edge), but is still one
of the best animated features produced by the U.S since back when
Snow White was sharing a bedroom with a loada sex-starved midgets.
Like The Iron Giant, The Incredibles takes fantastical elements
and makes them endearingly human, blends genuinely touching pathos
with funny as all hell quips and slapstick. And it’s given
Samuel L Jackson his best role in years.
Oldboy
To be honest, I didn’t think Chan-Wook Park would better Sympathy
For Mr. Vengeance. I’m still not sure if he did, but fuck me with
a brick if Oldboy doesn’t come as near as dammit.
What occurs is that a fella finds himself kidnapped and locked in
a room for 15 years with not even a hint of a clue as to why or
who’s behind it. You can be damn sure he’s gonna find out, though,
and along the way we’re gonna be treated to some live-squid being
eaten, and some fairly unpleasant hammer-teeth unions.
And that ending will ring around your skull for days, is what.
The Passion Of The Christ
Saw could have easily been Exploitation Flick Of The Year, if it
only had the sense for to stay indoors for another year. Best
Exploitation Flick Of 2004, though, can be nothing other than this
right here. The Passion Of The Christ not only has the high-
concept (“Jesus Dies! For Two Hours!”) but also a Titian-esque
beauty about it all. Easily the most stunningly cinematographed
flick this year, and when the subject of the visuals is a fella’s
flesh being torn asunder, that’s some achievement.
The only worrying thing is that I gotta credit Mel Gibson with
making one of my favourite films. Let’s just pretend it was
Fellini. And holy shit, man, for a dead fella this is a hell of a
movie. Read The Duke's Appraisal (My Very First For Blogcritics,
Don’t You Know?)
Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus
Here’s second best Rockumentary of the year, although it isn’t
really a Rockumentary at all. What it concerns is alt. country (or
“Hick-Hop”) troubadour Jim White taking us on a tour of the rural
American south, interspersed with performances from any number of
similarly mournful folks, be it The Handsome Family or 16
Horsepower.
The flick takes us to under-funded prisons, borderline-demented
revivalist meetings, corner-stores and bars, and presents a
mythical America fit for any amount of Gram Parsons lyrics.
The best documentary about rural America since Wisconsin Death
Trip.
Seed Of Chucky
Don Mancini knows a thing or two about subverting the horror
genre, is what. If he’s not scribbling a narrative about Chucky
and Tiffany (voiced by the unspeakably brilliant Jennifer Tilly)
are Bonnie And Clyde lovers on the run, then he’s writing and
directing this here masterpiece, concerning the sexual orientation
and the family trauma and the addictions and recovery.
Seed Of Chucky is remarkable for millions of reasons, but here’s a
handful; It has Jennifer Tilly playing two roles, one of which is
Jennifer Tilly. Upon closer inspection it reveals itself to be
possibly even smarter, and certainly subtler, than Bride Of
Chucky. It’s visually stunning. It effortlessly invites one to
consider Chucky as a fella with issues that need addressed, rather
than a doll what kills folks for the fuck of it. It has the best
performance by David Bowie of all ever, and he isn’t even in it.
And, of course, it starts off in Chucky’s nuts. A damn
masterpiece. Read The Duke's Appraisal or The Duke's Interview
With Don Mancini.
Shaun Of The Dead
Sometimes hype can be a good thing. Sometimes it means that a
brilliant flick which might otherwise be ignored can get the
audience it deserves. Other times, though, what happens is that
said audience’s expectations are raised so high that nothing on
God’s Green Earth, certainly nothing that doesn’t feature Kirsten
Dunst, can satisfy. Both of these situations, strangely enough,
affected Shaun Of The Dead.
What it is, is a beautiful, incredibly funny romantic comedy that
just happens to take place amidst a zombie outbreak of some sort.
You may have heard that it’s from the fellas who gave us the cult
UK comedy Spaced, but truth be told it bears little aesthetic
relation to that occasionally hit-and-miss telly show. It shares
its affection for popular culture, though, which is why we get
possibly the greatest use of the music of The Smiths in any flick
ever, the best joke about The Stone Roses, a snide comment
concerning 28 Days Later and loads more pleasingly smart-arse guff
that would need a motherfucking list of its own just to
accommodate.
It’s also imminently quote-worthy. “Would any of you cunts like a
drink” and “You’ve got red on you” are going to be boring the fuck
out of innocent civilians in Students Union bars from now till
doomsday.
Thanks a fucking bunch, various zombies. Read The Duke’s
Appraisal.
Some Kind Of Monster
After seeing this masterpiece, I went out and got hold of the St.
Anger record, the making of which is painstakingly detailed
herein. Surely it couldn’t be as bad as it appears in the film, I
thought? Surely that shit scrawled on pieces of paper in-between
therapy sessions didn’t make it onto the actual lyric sheet? Well
fuck me with a nun, it turns out it was that bad, and yes, those
are the lyrics.
The point is that the music in this flick is uniformly shitty. And
yet Some Kind Of Monster is completely captivating, transfixing,
the best documentary of the year, and one of the 14 best flicks of
any persuasion to have (2004) next to the title. At times you
wanna cringe like in The Office when David Brent did his stand-up
routine at the start of Series 2. At others you wanna cry like
when David Brent might be getting sacked at the end of The Office
Series 2. At still other moments, you laugh like when David Brent
was doing his comic relief dance in The Office Series 2.
It’s one of the best rockumentaries I’ve ever seen. It’s as good
as Don’t Look Back or Eat The Document or The Filth And The Fury
or Hated – GG Allin And The Murder Junkies, and it’s better than
Let It Be or I Am Trying To Break Your Heart. It’s fucking
sublime, and at two-and-a-half-hours, still feels far too short.
Read The Duke's Appraisal.
Spiderman 2
If you’ve read The Duke’s recent musings on the similarities
between Spider-Man and The Passion Of The Christ, you’ll have
picked up that I found this to be a remarkable film, but more so
on a second viewing.
This is the best comic-book film ever made. It’s better than
Richard Donner’s two Superman flicks, it’s even better than
Superman 4 – The Quest For Peace, when Superman had to fight David
Lee Roth or whoever the fuck that Nuclear fella was. It’s better
than Ichi The Killer, it’s better than Ang Lee’s masterful Hulk. I
don’t know how the hell Sam Raimi is gonna better this, but even
if Spider-Man 3 turns out to be a disappointment, this here’ll
shine on for decades.
And let The Duke state for the record, no amount of cars flinging
through windows would have caused that kiss for to be postponed.
Not all the taxis in NYC.
A Tale Of Two Sisters
Nowadays everybody wants to be twisting and turning in the horror
flicks. It’s rare, though, that the twists and the turns prove
more rewarding with each successive viewing. That right there,
amongst many other things, is what Ji-woon Kim has accomplished in
this stunning, visually beautiful fairy tale.
And it is a fairy tale, it’s even based on one, but that doesn’t
mean you won’t get freaky fucking ladies hiding below the kitchen,
or similarly gut-bothering females trundling through a bedroom. It
does have a wicked stepmother though, but even that gets subverted.
It’s a masterpiece, is what it is. Truly fucking exceptional. Read
The Duke's Appraisal.
The Twist At The End
The twist is that there’s a 15th flick, and it’s none other than
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, which bettered the
previous two instalments in pretty much every imaginable area, and
also had a cameo from none other than Ian Motherfucking Brown.
Read The Duke’s Appraisal.
Well folks, that’s your damn lot. Now to get thinking about 2005,
the list for which has been started a couple nights ago.
Thanks folks.
Drop The Duke A Line
