2004 in Film

2004 is a weird film year in my own personal viewing. Normally there is a pattern to the way one watches movies in any given year. You start out making an effort to go see the movies that really look interesting to you, but since they are just coming out you have no idea whether they are being perceived as good or not. So, the first 10 movies you see end up having a lot of duds—one star movies. As time goes on, some of the movies you thought you wanted to see but didn’t have time for, drop off your “must see” lists because the buzz about them is so bad. You begin to hear good things about movies you overlooked or didn’t think you wanted to see as they came out. So as your list of movies from a year grows it collects more and more “quality” films. I have seen 51 films that were released in 2004. Most of them were not great, and for some reason I have not seen a lot of the ones considered the greatest of that year.
Another strange thing about 2004 is that a lot of the movies I like the most are not the ones to which I gave the highest rating. The Passion and Spiderman were very well made movies, for example, but I am tempted to almost leave them off my top ten; while I had some big problems with Ocean’s Twelve (script and story) and The Bourne Supremacy (editing), but I enjoy them enough to revisit them.

Top 10 Personal Movies of 2004
1. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
2. The Village
3. The Incredibles
4. Spider Man 2
5. Shrek 2
6. Shaun of the Dead
7. The Passion of the Christ
8. Hellboy
9. Ocean’s Twelve
10. The Bourne Supremacy

Bottom 5 Personal Movies of 2004
1. Sideways
2. AVP: Alien vs. Predator
3. Hidalgo
4. Cindarella Story
5. King Arthur

Top Movies I still Want to See or Revisit
1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2. Finding Neverland
3. Night Watch
4. Banlieue 13
5. Maria Llena Eres de Gracia