Few 'Sideways' Glances

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

'The Austin Chronicle' Top 10 Films of 2004

1) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

2) Before Sunset

3) Million Dollar Baby

4) Shaun of the Dead

5) Control Room

6) (tie) Tarnation
The Incredibles
Bad Education

9) (tie) Hotel Rwanda
The Aviator

The Aviator

Marjorie Baumgarten

1. The Aviator

All right, already: Give Scorsese every award he's due. In Howard Hughes he has found his great Kane, and who knows when he'll strike oil again.

2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

This "delightful little wormhole," as I called it in my review, is the only movie this year that completely transported me from my so-called reality.

3. Million Dollar Baby

Just like those terse characters he's played for so many decades, Eastwood the director gets the job done with nary a wasted gesture or motion.

4. Control Room

The media are the message of this cautionary tale about the spinning of political realities and the emotional allegiances that color our reportage of the human drama.

5. Bad Education

Million Dollar Baby

Almodóvar shapes his most narratively complex film ever: Despite his subversion of film noir structure, we still have to cherchez la femme.

6. Hero

Of the two films Zhang Yimou directed this year, most choose House of Flying Daggers as their favorite, but for me Hero's playful storytelling trumps Dagger's dazzle.

7. Vera Drake

Leigh's period portrait of a dowdy British matron as an abortionist is free of cant and ideology: The facts of life slam into the pillars of society.

8. Notre Musique

Godard makes his most entertaining and rigorous film in a long time – one that's provocative on numerous political and aesthetic levels and has a kickass montage sequence to boot.

9. Before Sunset

A testament to filmmaking as a collaborative art and to the idea that the work of good movies is not over just because the words "The End" appear onscreen.

10. Moolaadé

Africa's master filmmaker Ousmane Sembène tackles the subject of female genital circumcision in this fiction film that honors village traditions, progressive thought, and above all, the power of the individual.

Sideways

Steve Davis

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Love in all its irrational glory is perfectly crystallized in Charlie Kaufman's poignant screenplay about broken hearts on the mend. Truly a work of genius.

2. Million Dollar Baby

Clint Eastwood's humanist boxing drama is an eloquent knockout about the ways we try to redeem our lives, without a special effect in sight.

3. Sideways

Bad Education

This serio-comic look at the little boy inside every man harkens back to the best of the character-driven movies of Seventies American cinema.

4. I Heart Huckabees

Who would have ever thought that existential philosophy could provide such fertile comic ground? The meaning of life in a nutshell, albeit a cracked one.

5. Control Room

This documentary – the year's best, by far – about the Arab television network Al-Jazeera provocatively examines the elusive nature of journalistic objectivity in time of war.

6. Shaun of the Dead

Tarnation

Clever to a fault, this parody (of sorts) of the zombie genre is heads, arms, and other body parts above the rest. The year's sleeper!

7. Bad Education

The great Almodóvar is back to tantalizing form in this revisionist film noir, in which the femme fatale straddles notions of gender.

8. Garden State

Is Zach Braff the new Woody Allen? It's too early to tell, but this affecting film about twentysomething angst offers the promise of future greatness.

9. Napoleon Dynamite

In the words of the deadpan geek with the Brillo pad 'do and the worst suit in the history of movies: "Sweeeeet."

10. Tarnation

Jonathan Caouette's homemade scrapbook of memories about his mentally ill mother resonates with an unvarnished truth that most contemporary movies can't touch.

The Incredibles

Kimberley Jones

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

The one film this year that broke my heart and, more miraculously, put it back together, again and again.

2. House of Flying Daggers

Two words for Zhang Yimou's operatic tale of Tang Dynasty lovers double- and triple-crossing each other: wowee zowee.

3. Before Sunset

Literate, soulful, yearning. And Julie Delpy's last-reel shuffle and sway to Nina Simone? Sexiest thing I saw all year.

4. Closer

Mike Nichols and Patrick Marber's impeccably put-together, vicious little romantic roundelay was enough to turn me off to love altogether. Which, I think, is a compliment.

5. The Incredibles

Family entertainment at its smartest and slyest.

6. Hotel Rwanda

As a clear-eyed guide through genocidal hell, Don Cheadle is extraordinary in this true-life story of survival in war-ravaged Rwanda.

7. Tarnation

The almost-improbably damaged Jonathan Caouette rewrites his own history with this astonishing movie-as-memoir.

8. Maria Full of Grace

Or: How to dramatize the plight of Colombian "mules" without being pious or preachy, while simultaneously announcing the arrival of a tremendous acting talent.

9. Bad Education

Gael García Bernal makes a wicked femme fatale in this stylish, uneasy film noir. Not Almodóvar's best, but a master class in mood and manipulation nonetheless.

10. Garden State

Scoff at the so-called quarter-life crisis all you want – Zach Braff's lyrical first film nails it but good.

Shaun of the Dead

Marc Savlov

1. Before Sunset

Every cinematic life needs a gorgeous pair of flickering bookends. Now Richard Linklater has given Austin its own matching set.

2. Shaun of the Dead

You've got dread on you. And love, friendship, pathos, comedy, chips, and Rizlas.

3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

End of the Century

As close to the wonderful, poisonous carnival of emotions that is modern romance and its debris trail as you'd ever want to get without a Kevlar vest and an autoclave.

4. Tarnation

One of the most affecting documentaries ever made is also one of the most stylistically and technologically original. And it's by a Texan.

5. The Incredibles

Pixar and Brad Bird know that even in animation – especially in animation – it's all about the story. Smart, funny, touching, and worth every pixel.

6. Hotel Rwanda

Dear Pillow

Don Cheadle anchors this real-life nightmare with a calmly electrifying performance, the best of his career. Now, about Sudan ...

7. Hellboy

Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman bring Mike Mignola's all-too-human comic-book demon to life and knock this fiery little fastball clean out of the park.

8. End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones

Gabba gabba hey! 'Nuff said.

9. Garden State

Where's Elliott Smith when you really need him? Zach Braff is the new Graduate. For now, at least.

10. Dear Pillow

Homeboy Bryan Poyser's feature debut nails all the right quirks in this hormonally turbocharged peek under the covers.

<i>Before Sunset</i> screenwriters (l-r) Ethan
Hawke, Julie Delpy, and Richard Linklater

Before Sunset screenwriters (l-r) Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, and Richard Linklater