Best Movies of 2004

Although it's only 80 minutes, this movie has a lot more than some do in 3 hours! Stunning scenery also.

Amazing! The best animated movie of all time. Funnier than most live-action movies that have been made in the past 25 years. Brad Bird deserved his Oscar.

Sideways can be easily considered the best movie of the year. If it wasn't for Million Dollar Baby, this film should have easily grabbed Best Picture. Paul Giamatti was robbed of an Oscar nomination and that will forever go down in Oscar history as one of the worst snubs. Thomas Haden Church and Virginia Madsen both received nominations, as they should have, and Alexander Payne was nominated for Best Director. This film won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar (won by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor) and finally broke the barriers for Comedies to go beyond stereotypes and win Oscars now. This film is incredible. The dramatic atmosphere, yet subtle comedy makes it so enjoyable. It is a touching movie that everyone should see. It's not boring, it's creative and artistic. I love it. Quite simply the best of 2004.

Bin-jip [3-Iron] (2004)
director: Kim Ki-duk
starring: Jae Hee, Seung-yun Lee, Hyeok-ho Gweon

Review coming soon .

One of the best movies of 2004. Vera Drake is underrated because it doesn't have the explosions and nudity that other films do, so people tend to ignore these kind of films. It's absolutely terrific. There is no solid male role in this film, but the role of Vera Drake, played perfectly by Imelda Staunton, was the key performance. It is one of the best performances of the past 10 years and Imelda Staunton should have taken home the Oscar that year. It was a heartbreaking movie. Especially the part where they make her take off her wedding ring for security reasons at the prison. I felt her pain. The screenplay, which was nominated for an Oscar, was terrific and the direction was awesome, too. Mike Leigh's masterpiece Secrets & Lies was astonishing and this one is no different. Leigh was also nominated for the Best Director Oscar. This film is controversial, yet stunning. I highly recommend it.

This is a disturbing movie about sex, lies, affairs and everything else that destroys people's lives. The tagline for this film is absolutely perfect: "If you believe in love at first sight, you never stop looking." It's so accurate, it's scary. Mike Nichols helms this film and makes it very different than his previous films. His film [i]The Graduate[/i] deals with affairs and such, but not to the extent this film does.

Adapted by Patrick Marber from a novel by Patrick Marber, this story is very good. Patrick Marber released a similar story last year (2006) about relationships that end because of affairs, [i]Notes on a Scandal[/i]. With this film, Mike Nichols can rid his goody-goody image and finally be looked at as a serious director who is not afraid of taking risks. He has had previous risky films like [i]The Graduate[/i] and [i]Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?[/i], but nothing like this.

This film has some of the best and most intriguing scenes in recent history and this is mostly because the cast was phenomenal. Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Clive Owen and Natalie Portman were fantastic (with Owen and Portman winning the Globe and nominated for Oscars). There is no established protagonist(s) in this film. This is probably because they are all antagonists. They are all likeable at one point and are all despised at one point, also. Natalie Portman gives the best supporting performance by a female I have seen in a long time.

With the subject matter of this film one can conclude that it is not appropriate for young children or even teens for that matter (although I have seen it). It also might not appeal to people who have been through an affair because this film is very descriptive when it comes down to the sexual content. If you can get past the uncomfortableness, this film is brilliantly written and spot-on, also.

One of the best films of 2004, Mike Nichols brings us a film that is scary. Not scary because of man-eating monsters, but because this story is very real. People might think this film is a little exaggerative of the real world, but it really isn't, that's the sad thing. a bravo to the cast and Mike Nichols.

A must see for two really strong performances alone.

Funny. Good voice work but doesn't compare to its predecessor. Jennifer Saunders, John Cleese and Julie Andrews do fantastic jobs with the voice work for their first Shrek picture.